that Purpose The Supream Law does always interpret all other Laws and make exceptions therein And that Law is The Safety and Preservation of the People according to which Law we ought to explain or limit that Law which says The Parliament can do nothing without the King's consent When the King and the People are opposite the Parliament is Judge But a Judge does not stand in need of the Consent of either of the Parties to give force to the Sentence that is pronounced When the Parliament and the King are agreed for the Preservation of Religion and of the Society in that Case alone it is that one can do nothing without the other To make this Truth manifest we need only invert the Position and say the King can do nothing without the Parliament does it therefore follow that if a Parliament is so head-strong as to render all the Laws of no effect and to ruine the Nation a King of England may not lawfully oppose them and bring the Parliament within its due limits He may do it without all doubt in like manner a Parliament may lawfully provide for the Security of the Nation contrary to the King's Pleasure My Author goes back to the Prince's Declaration alledging it to be filled with sanguinary Orders And what are those sanguinary Orders They are such Clauses of the Prince's Declaration which appeared to him to carry the greatest force in them In one place he calls those who have betrayed their Religion and subverted the Laws of their Country Execrable Offenders who have justly deserved Death In another place He declares that all Papists who shall be found with Arms in their Hands or concealed in their Houses about their Persons or otherwise or who shall be in any Civil or Military Employment under any Pretence whatsoever shall receive no Quarter from his Army but be treated as High-way Men and Banditti by his Souldiers In a third place the Prince does say That they who shall take Arms under any Popish Officer and march under his Command shall be considered as Complices in their Crimes and Enemies to the Laws and to their Country And lastly William of Nassaw saith elsewhere That those Magistrates and other Persons who shall refuse to assist him and in Obedience to the Laws to perform strictly whatever he does require of them c. shall be looked upon as the Greatest Offenders and the most infamous of all Men as Traytors to their Religion to their Laws and to their Country and that he will not fail to treat them accordingly The Truth is we cannot tell if this Man is yet in his right Wits or rather if he is not one of those Bedlams who are tied to prevent the Effects of their Rage Miserable Soul Are these the Marks by which the Cruelty or Clemency of Princes is to be judged Are they not rather Innocent Stratagems by which they strike Terror that no ill may ensue Is not preventing of Resistance a proper means to hinder the Effusion of Blood Is there any Necessity that all such Threatnings should be accomplished How many Commanders and Generals have threatned the Cities which they besieged that they would abandon them to the Fury of the Souldiers if they would not surrender to which nevertheless they afterwards proposed favourable Conditions for a Treaty Let us trace the Footsteps of this Prince Are they marked with Blood What Persons has he put to death Is there any Man who has lost so much as a Nail of his Finger We know that the Papists that are in London and particularly the French talk with an unparallell'd Insolence The Parliament knows it the King is informed of it and hinders the Severities of Justice from taking hold of the Offenders The Ambassadors of the Emperor and of the King of Spain see it they acknowledge it they declare to His Majesty the grateful Sense they have of his Clemency and they inform their Masters of it But it may be said the Prince ought not to have denounced those terrible Menaces If it were so that he ought not to have uttered those Threats it would not have been the Effect of his Cruelty It is in Actions and not in Words that Men look for Blood and Cruelty Besides that the Prince had good reason to speak as he did if he had just cause to do what he did If he was in the wrong upon the matter he was to be blamed in every Circumstance but if he was justifiable in the main he was justifiable in the whole Affair For these are the ordinary Measures taken by Conquerors and Generals in just Wars They utter Threats they impress Fear and strike with Terror they likewise chastise those who yield not themselves upon such Manifesto's Those Traytors who in favor to the King had betrayed their Country Religion and Laws deserved to be called Execrable by the Prince and deserved all the Evils with which he threatned them yet without any design of their Accomplishment as it appeared by the Event He commanded the Papists upon Pain of Death to lay down their Arms. That had been good if after he had declared War against Popery upon his entring the Kingdom he had suffered the Papists to meet together and form a Body against him He declares that it was neither strictly the Persons of Papists nay nor their Religion that he had in his view but that he was resolved to oppose their Attempts by which they endeavoured to destroy the Religion established by Law Must he not then have been permitted to deprive them of their Arms at least seeing he left them their Life Property and Liberty of Conscience The Man complains loudly that the Prince in his Declaration sounds his Order for the Papists laying down their Arms upon their Meeting about London and Westminster with a barbarous Design of making some attempt upon the said Cities either by Fire or a Massacre or by both together He must certainly be very much in the wrong who suspects Papists and Popery of such Attempts they are very little acquainted with them St. Bartholomew's Massacre and many others committed in France The Murders a hundred times attempted upon the person of Queen Elizabeth and committed upon those of Henry the Third and Henry the Fourth The Assassination of William Prince of Orange The Gunpowder Plot for blowing up the Two Houses of Parliament in the beginning of the Reign of James the First The Burning of London The Assassination of Justice Godfrey The Death of the Earl of Essex by a Rasour And that of King Charles the Second by Poyson with a Hundred other Enterprizes of this nature make it appear that we commit an outragious violence against Popery if we believe that she is capable of inspiring the blackest Designs Now by this time the Man who has opposed the current of this present Narrative thus far begins to vomit torrents of Choler and accumulates Injuries upon Outrages The Wretch is a Monstrous Exception out of every Rule and particularly out of this One That Men without Judgment are ordinarily endowed with a good Memory He talks like a Mad-man without Judgment and also without Memory He has forgot where and the person for whom he speaks He speaks in France and he speaks for James the Second It is a mark of great judgment to look for Cruelty out of France and to accuse a Foreign Prince thereof whil'st he lives under the most cruel Government that has been in Europe for these many Ages A Government under which a Thousand Cruelties have been committed upon the Protestants to make them abjure their Religion They abandoned them their Honor and their Life to the Insolence of the Soldiers They tormented them by night and day they burnt they rack'd they tortured them The resolutions of many were shaken by the cruel torments that were used They massacred and burnt and tore many in pieces alive They left infinite numbers of People to perish in frightful Prisons and in unspeakable Miseries They snatch'd the Children from their Mothers the Husbands from their Wives the Wives from their Husbands Friends from Friends to send them away to perish in the American Islands in a direful Exile and horrible Miseries When King William shall have done so much against the English Catholicks we will agree that they abdicate the Notion of his Royal Clemency A Government moreover of whose Cruelty Foreign Nations have been sensible which has not spared either the Honor the Possessions or the Lives of their Allies and Neighbours which has reduced into Ashes the most Beautiful Cities of Flanders and Italy and which carries Horror and Desolation whithersoever she carries her Arms. These are the Men who accuse our Princes of Severity Get you gone then you Infamous Man Go and read Lectures of Clemency to your own Masters before you charge ours with Cruelty Take notice also for whom it is that you speak You speak for a Prince who alone has spilt more Blood by the hand of the Executioner than Twenty of his Ancestors have done together After the defeat of the Duke of Monmouth he sent a Monster of Injustice and Cruelty into the West of England He caused to Hang and Quarter more than two thousand persons in those Counties An Example of horrible Cruelty and which possibly cannot be parallel'd in History In the most Criminal Rebellions the Heads are punished and the Multitude is pardoned But he was for cutting off both Leaders and People and burying them under the same ruins You speak for a Prince who is suspected to have his hands stained with his Brother's Blood and to have dipt them in that of the Earl of Essex You ought to have let these Ideas of Horror sleep and engage those who wish him well not to awaken them and expose them to the view of England This Infamous Libeller acts the Prophet too and has found by an Astrological Scheme of his own that the Prosperity of His Majesty of King William will not last long but the Event without doubt will give this Prophet the Lie God by the continuance of his Favours and Blessings will justifie the Conduct of His Anointed and of His Servant and make Him Victorious in spite of all the Efforts of Calumny and the Machinations of his Enemies FINIS
ANGLIAE Decus Tutamen OR THE GLORY and SAFETY OF THIS NATION Under our Present King and Queen PLAINLY DEMONSTRATING That it is not only the DUTY but the INTEREST of all JACOBITES and DISAFFECTED PERSONS to act for and submit to this GOVERNMENT LONDON Printed and Sold by Richard Baldwin at the Oxford-Arms in Warwick-Lane 1691. ANGLIAE Decus Tutamen OR THE GLORY and SAFETY OF THIS NATION Under our Present King Queen c. THE Physicians have a very bad Opinion of that Disease that begins with most violent Agitations with Tremblings that shake the very Bones out of Joynt and extreamly debilitate the Nerves with dreadful Convulsions with frantic and extatical Indispositions of the Brain that over-run the whole Oeconomy They are never deceived in their Judgment when they pronounce such Distempers mortal It is the same thing in States their Diseases which begin with violent internal Agitations are commonly Presages of great Revolutions France is in this Condition the Preparations that are made against her by all Europe in a joynt Conspiracy threaten her with great Mischiefs and there is nothing more effectual for fortifying the Hopes of the Confederate Princes and States than the convulsive Motions that are observed not only in her Bowels but in all her Actions if we consider her Arms nothing ever appeared so strange France although it be as yet entire and has not incurr'd the loss of either Men or Provinces is subject to all those Agitations to which she can be exposed which would be infallibly improved into the last and fatal Paroxism if there were an Enemy in the midst of the Kingdom She obliges all her Inhabitants to take Arms she exhausts her Treasures to the bottom Ruin and Desolation are the Blessings she leaves in those Places which she cannot keep she is notoriously guilty of the most inhuman Excesses for all the Palatinate and almost all the Countries upon the Rhine with their Towns and Castles that are levelled with the Ground burnt and reduced to Ashes are in such a Motion as cannot be imputed to any thing else but a Fit of a violent Phrensie that is so prodigious that we cannot but see therein the Characters of an internal Agitation that is attended with the most dreadful Violence of all has been as yet observed Every Knight of the Post brings us an Account of Symptoms of this cruel Disease which does expose her to such fearful Agitations and threatens her with the most violent Death and there is something that is singular in the Violence of these Motions and it is this that the Revolution that has lately happened in England by the wise Conduct of William III. King of England does irritate them to so great an Elevation of Fury If his present Majesty had poured his Forces into France and obliged that King to leave his Throne the Rage would have been raised to such a pitch as to admit of no Accession The Piety Clemency and Justice of King William who now strikes Lewis with so great a Terror is the August Subject of this Discourse These glorious Qualities made manifest in his said Majesty's late Expedition into England in Opposition to the French Designs there are the Subject matter of this small Treatise Neither the late King James nor the Irish and English Papists his Friends were so hot in their Resentments as the French There is something extraordinary in it and this boundless Wrath of the French King against William King of England was possibly not so much kindled by the consideration of what he has done as by the fearful prospect of what he can do Yet the most powerful measures they can take for the overthrow of their own Interest is to provoke an Enemy who is so potent at this day It is possible that he is not altogether irreconcileable they ought to be more careful to observe those just and decent Methods by which he is to be treated The Designs of France afforded a necessary occasion for an Expedition the whole Course of which runs parallel with the Rules of Piety which inspire King William's Royal Breast Since the King was of the Years of Knowledge there never passed one year wherein he did not publicly receive the Sacrament several times there passed not one Sunday on which he was not present at the public Service and Devotions he never heard a Sermon which touched him which he obliged not himself to recollect and upon which he made not pious Reflections he never heard a Sermon but with such Attention and Devotion that made Private Persons ashamed He never went out in the Morning without secret Prayer and devout Reading And they who enter'd into his Closet observed his Table to be adorned with Books of Devotion that were fit to nourish Souls His generous way of interessing himself in all the Miseries that those suffered who were Persecuted for the sake of their Religion was a visible Testimony to all the World of the Sentiments of his Heart concerning them We may say that the Qualities of a Hero and of a great Man are chiefly due to himself and to his Blood And God who took care for his Welfare and of his Soul besides other means of Princely Education provided him an Excellent Master in the things of Religion And therefore from his Infancy he received the Seeds of Piety which have sprung up to so great Maturity as we see at this day He affords Matter of Edification to all Protestants who know him He foresaw very well all that the Rage of the contrary Party could say against his Enterprise which obliged him to deliberate on it for a considerable time for he not only loved Vertue it self but cherished the outward appearances of it He had never overcome the scruples that presented themselves if the Security of Religion and of the State had not determined Him As for the Queen it is generally agreed that there was never one more Devout nor more exact in the Practice of her Duties towards God Her Piety is not accompanied with the vain shew of Hypocrisy She is great without being Proud She has a Natural Air she appears in all her Actions without Affectation She is tender and full of Compassion and incapable of forgetting the Obligations of Nature As for his Majesties Expedition into England First It is requisite that we shew that the Possessions and Affairs belonging to the Public are not governed as the Possessions of Private Persons and that we are not to judge of them by the same Rules Princes Kings and in general Sovereigns have Men and reasonable Souls for their Possessions and Private Men for their Possessions have only Houses Lands Oxen Sheep and Horses c. That if a Private Person is of a bad Conduct and does mismanage those Possessions which Providence has put into his hands there will no other inconvenience ensue thereupon but only the disposition of some Lands or Moveables which in respect of the Public will be
at least the Kingdom will be left to him distracted and divided into a thousand Fractions one Party favouring the Stranger and another taking the part of the lawful Heir just as it happened under Charles VI. and Charles VII the English Possessed themselves of the Kingdom some took his part and others were against him and the Kingdom began to sink under the weight of that dreadful War It is then clear that in such a Case a Son after having made respectful Remonstrances to his Father and having made him sensible of the formidable disorders occasion'd by his ill Conduct may with a good conscience make use of force to deliever the Kingdom out of the hands of one who Devotes it to ruin who lays it desolate and does Transubstantiate it into a desart and who by the ill Measures he takes does evidently expose it to a Foreign Invasion Now it is certain that King James was destroying the Kingdoms Bodies Politic and Natural by his Mismanagement of the Government his violation of the Laws and making himself the Arbitrary Judge of their Sanction and Observation dispensing with them at Pleasure by depriving them of their Authority by putting honest Men out of their employs and bestowing those Offices on Men who were by Law incapable of exercising the same by taking off innocent Persons This directly tended first to the ruin of the Religion that was by Law established for he deprived Protestants of their Offices on purpose to bestow them on Roman Catholics who were Enemies to the Protestants and their Religion he violated all manner of Laws as he pleased he filled the Kingdom with Priests and Monks he made the Exercise of the Popish Religion public in all Cities and Counties he gave to the Jesuits the Colleges that were of Antient Foundation and allowed them to found new He ordered Churches to be Built for them The Jesuits open'd Schools in London A Jesuite sat in Council and was the first Minister of State The King sent Ambassadors to Rome and had Ambassadors sent to him from thence and all this against the express Laws of the Kingdom and that he might do all these things securely he maintained a powerful Army in time of Peace which is also contrary to the Priviledge of the English People This Conduct tended to the overthrow of the Monarchy as well as of the Church A Civil War was unavoidable in a little time England's patience was come to an end The Kingdom was fallen into the same condition it was in in the time of King Charles I. It is possible that King James II. would have incurred the same fate with his Father and without doubt the Fanatics would have made themselves Masters of the Government to the Exclusion of the lawful Heir Thus His present Majesty for the preservation of his Religion and the Crown to which he had a good Title and which ought in that juncture to be reduced into possession was obliged to put a stop to the current of those Mischiefs in the Fountain he endeavoured to do this by moderate means He Passed into England to curb the immoderate Power of his Father-in-Law This Father-in-Law could not endure to receive Law from any one He fled he Abdicated the Throne The Nation filled it with him who was come to deliver them His Majesty King William Accepted the Crown it had been a cruel piece of Piety to behold the Bowels of the State torn the Religion of the Kingdom perishing the spilling of so much Blood the oppression of so many innocent Persons so many Families reduced to Beggary and the right of the lawful Heir exposed to evident ruin for I know not what respect to Relation and Kindred Brutus and Manlius were praised for not having spared their own Blood and for having punished by death the Rebellion and Disobedience of their Children God is our first Father our Country is our principal Mother there are no Relations or Alliances which ought not to be Sacrificed to these great Names Besides these general Considerations there are also particular ones which are no less proper for the justification of their Majesties of Great Britain and Ireland The first is that King James II. was not lawful King although he was acknowledged by the Three Kingdoms he had drawn the Subjects of those three Kingdoms thereto by surprise being a Papist he could not be the King of England the People and Kings annex to the Succession of the Crown what Conditions they think fit Since Henry VIII all the Kings and Queens of England Mary excepted were Protestants that is to say Enemies to the Papal Tyranny this was a Quality annexed to the Crown of England All the Laws forbid the acknowledgment of the Pope for Head of the Church and Vicar of Jesus Christ They make the King of England Head of the English Church and it's High-Treason to say otherwise It is true that James the II. made a shift to thrust himself into the Throne in spite of all these Obstacles for the removing of which all imaginable diligence was used false Promises and false Oaths were not wanting It is known what were the Sentiments and the Interests of those who were Assisting in such a Violation of the Laws It is not necessary to make mention of them in this place although the Violation was nothing else but a suspension for the Laws were not Abrogated and tho' they had been so the English would always have had a Right to retrieve and re-establish them which were made for the security of Religion They Enacted Recognised and Declared that to be King of England and a Papist are Qualities that are absolutely incompatible and they were no ways to be blamed for the thing is plain and his present Majesty had reason not to Abandon to another the Succession that belonged to himself and his Royal Consort who have the same Qualities and are of the same Religion as is required by the Law and who moreover are the lawful and next Heirs It is not the first time that the Children have taken the room of the Father whom the Laws and his own personal Qualities excluded from the Enjoyment of the Rights and Possessions which his Birth had allowed him After all we must know that the English Government is not in the hands of one Person There is one King the King is Sovereign but he is not in the Possession of all the Sovereign Power He who cannot make Laws nor break them is not in the Possession of Arbitrary Power The Parliament partakes of the Legislative Authority with the King The People have their Priviledges which the King and Parliament cannot take from them If for Example a Parliament should meet with the King for making an absolute change of the Form of Government for abolishing the use of Parliaments and for depriving the People of all their Priviledges Charters and Immunities the People might justly provide against these Violations James II. endeavoured to Cancel all the Priviledges of the
Answer they received and it amounts 〈◊〉 this The King Declares to the Prince that 〈◊〉 consents to the calling of a Free Parliament and said he had appointed Lords Commissioners to adjust and regulate with the Prince all those Points that were necessary as well for the Free Election of Members to serve in Parliament as for the security of the next Sessions The Prince does propose such Conditions as were most equitable and most necessary for his own and the Public Safety The Prince demands that the Papists beput out of Places of Trust and that they be disarmed there could not have been security enough for himself and his Friends if the Papists had continued in Offices and in Arms with their Sword in their hands He requires that all the Proclamations in which his Friends had been Declared Rebels should be revoked and anulled How could a Free Parliament have been called and what Equity could the Prince have expected from the same if all the Peers and Gentlemen who had Declared for him had been excluded from sitting in Parliament as being Rebels He requires that all those of his side who had been taken should be set at liberty How could he provide for the security of the Laws and Religion so long as those who had come over to their Deliverers side were to be treated as Criminals and if they had been really chargeable was it ever required of a Prince who has his Sword in his Hand that he should condemn himself and give his consent that those who adhered to him should be treated as Traytors The Prince Demands that for the security of the City of London that the Custody and Government of the Tower should be committed to the said City It had been ill that in so nice a juncture King James had remained Master of the Tower to be in a capacity to destroy the City of London and to reduce it to Ashes so soon as ever she should attempt to favour the vigorous Resolutions of a Parliament If 〈◊〉 Prince 〈◊〉 â—â—â—manded that the Tower should be put into his own possession it had been unjust but since his intentions were to take such Measures and use such means as tended to the security of the People's Liberties it was absolutely necessary to secure all those Places of Strength which were made use of for destroying the Liberty of the Subject The Prince desired the King to withdraw from London during the holding of the Parliament or that if he inclined to stay there it might also be allowed that the Prince should be there with an equal Number of Guards a very just Demand The Prince was not obliged to leave King James in a Capacity of Exercising an Absolute Power over the English as well as the Scotch Parliament whilst he abide at London with his Guards which would not have failed to convey to the Tower all such Members who should presume to Declare themselves to be of an Opinion that crossed the King's Interest and Intentions King James and the Prince were at that time as two Parties at Law in a Suit that was to be heard and determined in Parliament and of which the Parliament was the only competent Judge and consequently it was necessary and equitable that the Parliament should enjoy an entire liberty This could not be unless he did overthrow or permit the Prince to be near to stand by his Friends as the King was desirous to defend his own The Prince requires that both the Armies should March 40 Miles from London The Prince could make no Demand more equitable to the end that the Parliament might be left in full Liberty It was not requisite that all King James's Forces should have Encamped round about Westminster and that the said King with his Sword in his hand should have forced the Parliament to Condemn the Prince of Orange and all his Friends as Guilty of High-Treason to be cut in pieces In the last place the Prince of Orange does Demand That to prevent the descent of the French Portsinouth might be put into the hands of a Person who might be trusted both by the Prince and by the King It was one of the most just and most necessary precautions in the World It is unknown to none that King James had Intelligence with the French with a design by their Assistance utterly to subvert Religion Liberty and Property The World was sufficiently informed that after the Report was spread of the Prince's Expedition it was several times deliberated upon in Council if they should receive the French Forces It was known that the Papists did mightily Press King James to consent thereunto and that the said King did only refuse it by reason of the fear he had of a general revolt of the Kingdom Had he not been very prudent to leave in the said King's hand during the sitting of the Parliament the Principal Port of the Kingdom that was open to receive Strangers with whom it is very well known that he had conspired for the Ruin of the Prince and of the Kingdom It was very impertinently said by a certain Foreign Scribler speaking of the Prince his Principality of Orange as a Title had not justified his raising of an Army to reduce the King of England with in due limits Was it not extreamly needful to give this Publie Advertisement and this very advantagious precaution in this Matter Without it there would have been some sort of Folks without all doubt who would have said why had not William of Nassan a Right to dispute the Crown of England with King James seeing he was already Prince of Orange before Does not the Principality of Orange give a very good Title to the English Crown This Author wanted an occasion to make a Defence by the by for the King of France for the ill Services he has done his present Majesty in that Principality and therefore he was obliged to bring in the Principality of Orange in this place only for this end that he might have the occasion to say that William Henry of Nassau was justly deprived of his Principality because it belonged to the House of Longueville which descended from that of Chaalons whereas the House of Nassau had only kept it by meer Vsurpation The French Court was resolved too late to do Justice in this Affair to the House of Longueville Henry IV Lewis XIII and Lewis XIV himself were very backward in rendering to their Subjects and to their Servants that which appertained to them and in accomodating the differences that have been depending amongst them The truth is if this pittiful Scribler had been Wise he would not have touched upon this Point and would not have recalled into Men's Minds such Ideas which cannot take place without causing Horror and a just Indignation To restore to the House of Longueville a Possession that so justly belonged to them it was not necessary to lay it desolate as they did to demolish and raze the Castles to level the
Walls with the ground to Plunder the Town several times to quarter an Army at discretion in a small subjected Country and which never made any Resistance to Imprison the principal Inhabitants of that small State and to commit against them the utmost Violences It is not to Orange only that his Majesty has found Pretenders In Burgundy in the Franch county and every where else where King William had Possessions and Lands there were not wanting Houses of Longueville in favour of which the Lands of a Prince were seised with which the Usurpers had nothing to do and by such base Artifices as have begot the hearty Concern of all Princes they opposed William of Nassau on all occasions when he could not defend himself without ever declaring War against him These are Instances of a base and unworthy Revenge for two Kings to take For the English King was in League with Lewis to Abandon his Son-in-Law to Rapin and Desolation This is one of the Obligations that the Son-in-Law has to his Father-in Law and for which public Fame bears him upon her Wings for a stupendous Example of Ingratitude The Prince has already sustained damage enough in his Principality of Orange and Lands of Burgundy by his Father-in-Law's good Offices But I cannot say but he will demand new Costs and Charges at the Hands of the most Christian King We shall see if he can hold out to be as easily Victorious over William III. King of England as he laid desolate the Possessions of William of Nassau BURGER of the Hague for so the Prince was called at Paris This Burger of the Hague begins now to strike Terror in the Grand Seignior of Versailles who has been so terrible to many and I am very apt to think that his fear will not prove to be in vain and that the mighty Mounsieur shall not escape so The same Author tells us that we must shew standing Laws that allow a Son as the next Heir to the Crown to make himself his Father-in-Laws Judge to invade his Kingdom with a Fleet of five hundred Ships Indeed this Orator would not have done amiss to have spared his Breath to have reserved his Rhetoric and his Eloquence to Answer the Demands that William of Nassau in all likelihood will make ' ere it be long to Lewis XIV for if it should so happen that he prove the stronger one day he has very good reason to call him to an account and ask him by what Laws he invaded and retained Lorain and possessed himself of Strasburg in the time of Peace by what Laws he laid the principality of Orange Desolate and treated the same as a place subjected to him by an absolute Conquest why he reduced the Palatinate and the Towns and Villages on the Rhine to Ashes treating it as a Country destined by the most Savage Proscription to perpetual Desolation and why he seizes the Possessions of every one and keeps Faith with none This insolent Author repeats the Case of the De Wits and imputes the Misfortunes that befel them and others to King William whom he alledges to have managed the Multitude for the accomplishment of his Designs But was it during the Years of his Minority or after they were past that he gained the Multitude Did he Court that small People Did he require any thing of them Did he complain to them of the wrongs that had been done to him Was there one Man of that People to whom he was personally known or with whom he had the least Conversation imaginable As for the then deposed Magistrates if they were Established by Law they were laid aside by Law This is done by the order of the States of Holland who are the Sovereign Governours of the Province This was to put a stop to the Rage of the People who being reduced to the brink of Destruction seized on the Magistrates right or wrong There were no other means left of dispelling that Mist but by changing the Governours And to be short this business was not carried on by a suddain Enterprise but was managed with a great deal of Prudence All the Magistrates who were rejected were Enemies to the Prince who being invested with the Office of General Stadtholder and placed at the Helm of the Government was obliged to put in such Magistrates as were on his own side otherwise they had torn the Commonwealth by their contrary Methods and the State would have been thereby infested with such Divisions that would have exposed it to unavoidable Ruine As for the Elections in their Cities The Prince in managing them used no force made no use of the settled Army he Besieg'd no Town Imprison'd no Person by his own Authority When there was a design of puting into Offices such Persons as could not have that Correspondence with him that was necessary amongst the Governours of a Common-wealth He only made use of the Authority of the States and of the Court of Judicatory according to the Laws and Rights by which he held his Office and his Character great were The Cries and Lamentations saith the same Author for the Ships that were destroyed which he had disposed of without the Consent of the City of Amsterdam to which they did belong He means the Fleet that was cast away returning from the Sound in the Month of November Anno. 1683. this Man has impudence enough to impute to the Prince the Shipwrack of all the Vessels that have been lost by Stormy Weather since the Year 1672. and to think him answerable for all the Works of Heaven If the City of Amsterdam had not advised the sending out of that Fleet his Consent could not have been necessary When the charge of a Naval Force is computed and agreed upon by the States it may be disposed of by the Admirals and the Admiralities according to their own Prudence with the Suffrages of the major part of the Counsel for the good of the Common-wealth provided they do not engage in a War without their consent If there was no good understanding at that time betwixt the City of Amsterdam and the Prince that was the result of the Intrigues of France which by a Diabolical Artifice sowed Divisions in the Cities and Members of the States The violent Suspitions he goes on though he frequently gave of making himself the Master of those whose Minister he only was He never gave cause to such violent Suspitions but it was the Instruments of the French King who raised them for they were continually imployed to diffuse Jealousies through the State against the Prince There was none of his most innocent Actions that they did not misrepresent In their Judgment it was Criminal for him to maintain his own Rights against those who had a design to Invade them They had made so great a Progress before the Year 1672. by this Conduct and by the Jealousies they had kindled in Men's Minds against the House of Orange that there was no Defence left against their