ad loquendum or as King Henry the 3d. in the 36th Year of his Reign did call the Londoners to Westminster about taking upon them the Cross and attending him in those Wars representing in that particular only their own Estates or Qualities When in a Parliament holden by the Queen and her Councell in his absence in France in the 38th year of his Reign though Mathew Paris and Mr Daniel have given us no intimation of a Parliament then holden wherein do not appear to have been any Commons or House of Commons the Lords gave an aid by themselves the Clergy doing the like as is evidenced by the 2 following Records in these words viz. Rex dilecto fideli suo Willielmo de Oddinggeseles salutem Cum Venerabilis pater B. Cantuariensis Archiepiscopus Episcopi provinc Cant. R. Com. Cornub. frater noster R. Com. Glouc. alii Com. Barones in quindena sci Hillarii jam praetoriti apud London coram dilecta Regina nostra Consilio nostro Commorante in Anglia constituti nobis promiserunt liberaliter benigni facere auxilium decens perutile viz. quidam prelati in propriis personis quidam in pecunia Comites vero Barones in propriis personis suis potenter contra Regem Castelliae qui terram nostram Vasconiae in manu forti in quindena Pasche proxime futur hostiliter est ingressurus vos ex toto corde requirimus quod sicut supradicti Commites Barones nobis promiserunt quod erunt London A die Paschae prox futur in tres septimanas parati bene muniti sine ulla dilatione versus Vasconiam ad nos personaliter movere vos ad dictas diem et locum modo consimili veniatis omni occasione dilatione postpositis ad tendendum versus portesmum cum praefatis Magnatibus ad transfretandi cum eisdem ad nos in Vasconiam et hoc in fide qua nobis tenemini vobis firmiter injungimus sicut honorem nostrum indempnitatem corporis nostri diligitis T. per Reginam 5. die Febr. Et mand est per Henr. 3 Regem in An. 38. regni sui Archiepiscopis et Episcopis totius Angliae quatenus cum festinatione omni convocent omnes Abbates et Priores suae Diocesis cujuscunque sint ordinis inducentes modis omnibus quod nobis in praesenti necessitate subveniant manu lar 〈…〉 lua ne per defectum ipsorum vel aliorum corporis incurramus periculum et terrae nostrae jacturam quod absit quia id verteretur in vestrum ipsorum opprobium sempiternum sic igitur vestra vigilet discretio circa praedictum auxilium tam a vobis deferendum quam a subditis vestris per quirendum quod futuris temporibus vobis ipsis simus non immerito obligati Proviso quod praefatum auxilium habeamus apud Westmonasterium in quindenam Pasche proxime futuram sine defectu hoc sicut nos honorem nostrum nec non indempnitatem corporis nostri diligitis non omitatis Dirigitur etiam litera ista Archiepiscopo Cantuar cum hac clausula quod ordinariam jurisdictionem exercetis vacante sede in Episcopatu Linc. vos requirimus affectuose quatenus officiariis vestris et Archiediacono ejusdem Episcopatus scribatis attente quod tempestive convocent omnes Abbates Priores ejusdem Episcopatus cujuscunque sine ordinis ad certos dies locum abducentes eos nudis omnibus quod in hoc necessitate vestrae concilium nobis faciant subventionem And the failing to perform Military services was afterwards by the Statutes of 6. E. 1. ca. 4. 13. E. 1. ca. 21. made so Penall and fixed upon them as after a Cessavit per Biennium in the performing of their service the King or Chief Lord might by writs ordained to be granted out of the Chancery demand and prosecute to recover the same and such Tenants after Judgments had against them were to be for ever barred to demand or enjoy the same and where either the King demands Escuage of his Tenants or the mean Lords demands Escuage of their Tenants it was to be assessed in Parliament and Proved or disproved by Certificate of the Marshall of the Kings Host who is enabled thereunto by his Roll kept for that purpose When in Parliament the members of the house of Commons either holding Lands in Capite or of mesne Lords by Knights Service were not upon denying to grant Subsidies or Aydes to the King to forfeit or lose their lands according to the aforesaid Acts of Parliament or otherwise And such kind of Courts for lands holden in Capite or by Knights service should not by the most ordinary and mean Capacities be understood to be one and the same with the great Court or Councell of Parliament which many times by the Power and Authority of the King in that his Highest Court corrects and rectifies the defaults of the other Our high Courts of Parliament having the Judges of the Land subordinate to their Prince whether they have lands holden in Capite or no land summoned by his writs to give their Councell and advice as to matters of Law and the ancient customs of the Kingdom wherein the King is attended with his great Ministers or Officers of State as the Lord Chancellor Treasurer Privy Seal great Chamberlain of England Lord Steward and Chamberlain of his houshold and Lord Admirall whether of the degree of Barronage or holding of him in Capite or not with other great solemn formalities becoming the honour and State thereof with which that most honourable assembly is accompanied greatly different from those lesser Courts or Councell of summoning and calling together those that were only proper or obliged to actions of war or to know how their services were performed when our Parliaments being summoned to treat and advise of matters concerning peace and the defence of the Church and de quibusdam arduis only and have sometimes no matters of war consulted thereon Those military Councells anciently summoned for service in war and defence being in a very different form from Parliamentary Councells as for further satisfaction may be manifested by the writs aforesaid And was no more then what every Earl and Baron had in their Courts and Jurisdidictions when they summoned the Tenants holding of them by Knights service to their Courts of honour or their honorary Possessions which were in our records frequently stiled as the honors of Eagle Eye Leicester Hedingham Penerel Arundel c. to which purpose they had their Escheators Feodares and Stewards to preside or officiate therein subordinate unto them when they called their Tenants together either to ayd ride or go along with them in the wars and service of their Prince and Country or to pay them their reliefs or ayds pairfile marier which the Law Interpreteth to be only the elder or to make the eldest Son a Knight or to do their
Petition They pray that the Customs of the Merchants cease and they make their own conduct To which was answered le Roys ' avisera and thereupon will answer in convenable manner Anno 13. E. 3. they pray that a Justice of the one Bench or the other may come twice a year into the Counties beyond Trent To which the King answered as touching this point l' Roys ' avisera Which amounted not to a denyal for the Judges went Circuit thither afterwards Anno 37. E. 3. They pray that none be impeached for making Leases for Life in time of Pestilence nor hereafter for Lands holden in Capite without Licence of Alienation To which the King answered This requires a great deliberation and therefore the King will advise therein with his good Councel how this right may be saved and the Grands and Commons of this Land eased Anno 45. E. 3. they Petition for the free passage of Woolls To which was answered Estoit sur avisement Anno 50. E. 3. They pray that a Fine levied by Infants and Feme Coverts may be reversed within three years after they come to years or their Husbands Death To which the King answered le Roys ' avisera tanque al procheine Parliament de changer le loy devant used And it was the observation of Mr. Noy that faithful and learned Attorney of his late Majesty that in the Raign of King E. 3. in whose time the Answers of le Roys ' avisera first began by reason of his being continually in War beyond the Seas the King or his Councel had no leisure or at least no will to answer so in time s' avisera became as bad as a denyal and no other Answers given to such Petitions shewed that the King was not pleased to grant them The Commons alledging that notwithstanding the Statute made concerning Lands seized into the Kings hands by his Escheators the Lands after Enquest taken and before it can be returned into Chancery are granted to Patentees and before the Tenant can be admitted to traverse the Lands are many times wasted do pray that none be outed by reason of such Enquests until they be returned into the Chancery and the Occupiers warned by Scire facias to answer at a day to come when if they do not appear and traverse and find Sureties to answer the profits and commit no wast if it be found for the King and that if any Patent be granted or any thing done to the contrary the Chancellor do presently repeal the same and restore the Complaint to his possession without warning the Patentee or other occupier as well for the time past as the time to come The Answer unto which was The King willeth and Commands upon great pain that the Escheators hereafter do duly return all their Enquests in the Term and upon the pain heretofore ordained by the Statutes And further it is accorded by the Lords of the Realm if it please the King that before such Enquests be returned into the Chancery the King shall not hereafter make any Patent of such Lands in debate unto any c. And that the King of his abundant grace will abstain one month after such return within which time the party may traverse the Office and that the King will not make any Patent of such Lands unto any Stranger and if after any be made it shall be void But touching that which is demanded of Patentees made hereafter le Roys ' avisera It being observed by that worthy Observator that as he conceived the first part was answered by the Kings Councel and by them reported to the Lords who added the rest of the Answer if it please the King And yet the said Answer is vacated upon the Roll being Crossed all over with a Pen and the reason thereof given in the margent with a contrary hand to that of the Roll which sheweth that it was done after the Parliament was ended and after the said Roll was ingrossed viz. Quia dominus noster Rex noluit istam responsionem affirmare sed verius illam negavit pro magna parte dicens soit usez come devant en temps de ses nobles progenitors Roys d Angle terre out ad estre use Et ideo cancellatur damnatur And there can be no question but this answer in the affirmative was allowed at the least not denyed at the time of the Royal assent and that afterwards when the Statute was to be drawn up the King taking advantage of the words si plest au Roy did deny it and so the Roll was vacated And the Councel which ought to be intended the Kings Privy Councel for the Lords were the Kings great Councel and they or any Committee of them assisted by the Judges whilst the Parliament was in being were at the dissolution or proroguing thereof all gone out of their former power or employ and nothing ought to debar a King from advising with his Privy Councel by whose Advice as the Writs of Summons do import his greater Councel was called to assist them as well as himself in the time of Parliament or after it was ended and whether the one or the other had just cause to advise the King not to grant that Petition for it omitted the finding of Sureties to commit no Wast and to answer the Issues to the King which the Commons offered in their Petition and the Lords if the King so pleased that no Patent be made to any stranger of the Lands in debate which the Commons never desired But the Councel were the willinger to let it pass because it was in the Kings Power to deny it afterwards as he did whereas had it been the practice of those times the Councel would rather have kept back the Answer and not suffered it to have been read at the time of giving the Royal Assent In the fame Parliament after the said Petition was granted and the Assent cancelled as aforesaid the Commons delivered openly in Parliament a great Roll or Schedule and another Bill annexed to the said Roll containing about 41 Articles one of which remains Cancelled and Blotted out And in a Petition do pray the King their Leige Lord and the continual Councellors about him which can be no otherwise understood than of his constant privy Councel that of all the said Articles comprised in the said Roll and Schedule or Bill which are in the file of other Bills in this Parliament good Execution and true Justice be done for the profit of the King our Lord and his whole Realm of England Whereupon after it was said by the Chancellor of England on the Kings behalf to the Knights of the Shires Citizens and Burgesses there present that they sue forth their Writs for their Wages the Praelates and Lords arose and took their leaves of the King their Lord and so departed that present Parliament And after the Parliament ended the Commons delivered unto the Lords two great Bills for
visit to his Tomb. The King thus vanquished by Clemency and hopes to out-reason their detestible Rebellion with all the secresie imaginable retired out of Oxford with a too much over-trusted Groom of his Bed-chamber riding out as the man with Mr. Hudson an Orthodox Loyal Minister their Journey being designed for London where the King was informed that the City Train Bands were to muster the next day after he should reach thither unto whose Protection not of the Scotch Army then quartered at Newcastle upon Tine he intended to place the safety of his Person whilst he should Treat further with his Parliament Rebels who being sufficiently infected with their Parliamentary Rebellious never to be warranted Principles would have given him as little an assistance whereof the Rebels being informed before hand by their Colonel Rainsborough that granted the King his pass and did too well understand who was the treacherous Groom of the Bed-chamber mans Master when the Loyal Party were afraid what was become of the King the Rebels could answer they would shortly hear of him who coming near unto London finding himself disappointed by the Training put off was enforced to coast about betwixt Branford and Highgate and from thence resolve to take his way to the Scotish Army and cast himself into their Protection after that he had before met with so bad an effect of their contrary Loyalty whither being come they as if they had had no manner of Intelligence of it before write their Letters to their Brother Parliament Rebels of their great amazement to see the King come unto them and desire that he may be brought home to his Parliament over which they had such an influence as they almost governed them in honour and safety who fail not to do it in promises but would have him delivered to them and sent to an house of his own at Holmby in the County of Northampton where he should not want a guard of their own whereupon the Scotish Commanders having fallen into a deeper than ordinary consideration how they could with Honour Loyalty and gude Conscience deliver their Native King into the hands of his Enemies and going to voting two great Commanders that in muckle manner had been obliged to their King for many great favours and might have ballanced the Vote with a great deal of facility in the Negative were mightily suspected to have gone privately along with them that they were certain would make up the Majority for delivering of the King up to his Parliament Adversaries but took by all means an especial care for themselves to Vote against the delivering of the King into the hands of those that would love their own ends more than any of his Rights or their Duty and a bargain came so to be made as the King was put into the mercy of the English Parliament and 200000 l. Sterling which amounted unto something more than Judas Iscariots thirty pieces of Silver for betraying Jesus Christ. And as Mickel as the 200000 l. were above the Scotch Marks or 13 d. half-penny english none or very little of it could ever after find the way to the Pockets of the Scotch Plads or blew Caps and he had not been long at Holmby but he was in a Morning betimes fetcht out of his Bed by Cornet Joice a Fanatick Tayler with some Troops of Horse sent by Cromwel and Fairfax into their Army Quarters and tossed from place to place until after 25 Treaties Letters and Messages for Peace they had from Treachery to Treachery and Villany to Villany contrived his execrable Murder The 2d of June 1642. the Lords and Commons in Parliament did offer their humble Petition and Advice having nothing in their thoughts and desires as they pretended next unto the Honour and immediate service of God more than the faithful performance of their Duty to his Majesty and this Kingdom as the most necessary and effectual means thereof to grant and accept the 19 Propositions ensuing viz. 1. That the Lords and others of his Majesties Privy Council and all such great Officers and Ministers of State either at home or abroad or beyond the Seas may be put from your Privy Council and have no Offices or Employments excepting such as shall be approved of by both Houses of Parliament and that the Persons put into their Places and Employment may be approved of by both Houses of Parliament and that Privy Councellors shall take an Oath for the due execution of their Places in such form as shall be agreed upon by both Houses of Parliament 2. That the great Affairs of the Kingdom may not be concluded or transacted by the advice of private men or by any unknown or unsworn Councellors Sir Robert Cotton a great Antiquary with a well furnished Library being often consulted with by King James and that Prince in special matters but that such matters as concern the publick and are proper for the High Court of Parliament which is his Majesties great and supream Court may be debated resolved and transacted only in Parliament which was contrary to the Fundamental Laws and Constitutions of Parliaments in this and all other the Kingdoms of the Christian World whereby the matters and business of Monarchy and the Regal Government were limited and restrained unto arduis non omnibus arduis sed quibusdam and not elsewhere and such as shall presume to do any thing to the contrary shall be reserved to the censure and judgment of Parliament and such other matters as are proper for his Majesties Privy Council shall be debated and concluded by such of the Nobility and others as shall from time to time be chosen for that place by approbation of both Houses of Parliament which would have Incorporated and Associated the House of Commons in Parliament with the House of Lords which never was nor ought to have been otherwise than inferiour unto the House of Peers in Parliament and therefore stiled the lower House of Parliament and that no publick Act concerning the Affairs of the Kingdom as are proper for his Majesties Privy Council may be esteemed of any validity as proceeding from the Royal Authority unless it be done by the Advice and Consent of the Major part of his Council Attested under their hands and that his Council may be limitted to a certain number not exceeding 25 nor under 15. And that if any Privy Councellors place happen to be void in the intervals of Parliament it shall not be supplied without the assent of the Major part of the Council which choice shall be confirmed at the next sitting of Parliament or else to be void 3. That the Lord High Steward of England Lord High Constable of England which by Marriages and Descent had been Incorporated in the Royal Line Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper of the Great Seal Lord Treasurer Lord Privy Seal Earl Marshal Lord Admiral Warden of the Cinque Ports Governour of Ireland the Chancellor of the Exchequer Master of the Wards
Secretaries of State two Chief Justices and Chief Baron not being to be ranked with the Peers may always be chosen by the approbation of both Houses of Parliament the House of Commons being never before accompted equal with the House of Peers in Birth Honour Wisdom Education Alliance or Estate and in the Intervals of Parliament by the Assent of the Major part of the Councel in such manner as was before expressed in the choice of Councellors which in a matter of a much less consequence in the Government of the Kings Houshold was so little endured by the Nobility of England in the 10th year of the Raign of King Richard the 2d as it was adjudged an incroachment upon Regal Authority and high Treason and some great Lords suffered in their Persons and Estates for it and others glad to receive their Pardons for being confederate or Privy thereunto 4. That he or they unto whom the Government or Education of his Children shall be committed shall be approved by both Houses of Parliament and in the Intervals of Parliament by the Major part of his Council in such manner as was before expressed in the choice of Councellors and that all such Servants as are now about them against whom both Houses shall have any just exception shall be removed which before they had disclaimed as Mr. Rushworths Historical Collections Printed and allowed by them not long before had informed us 5. That no Marriage shall be concluded or treated for any of his Children with any Forreign Prince or any Person whatsoever abroad or at home without the consent of the Parliament under the penalty of a Praemunire unto such as shall conclude or treat any Marriage as aforesaid which they had as aforesaid disclaimed and the said penalty shall not be pardoned or dispenced with but by the consent of both Houses of Parliament that lower House never having before or since any power of pardoning or dispensation nor that higher without the Sanction or Authority of their Soveraign 6. That the Laws in force against Jesuits Priests Papists and Recusants be put in execution without any Toleration or Dispensation to the contrary and that a course may be enacted by Authority of Parliament to hinder them from making any disturbance in the State or Law by Trusts or otherwise 7. That the Votes of Popish Lords in the House of Lords may be taken away so long as they continue Papists and that his Majesty would consent to such a Bill as shall be drawn for the Education of Children of Papists by Protestants in the Protestant Religion which was to take away the Priviledge of Barons holding by Tenure without conviction for Treason and of Earls Viscounts Marquesses or Dukes which ever since the beginning of the Raign of King Richard the 2d were by that and all succeeding Kings Letters Patents to have vocem locum sedem in Parliamentis 8. That his Majesty would be pleased to consent that such a Reformation be made of the Church Government and Liturgy as both Houses of Parliament shall advise wherein they do intend to have consultation with Divines as is expressed in their Declaration to that purpose and that his Majesty will continue his best assistance unto them for raising of a sufficient maintenance for Preaching Ministers through the Kingdom when there was no want of the Orthodox more Loyal and better sort and that his Majesty would be pleased to give his consent to Laws for the taking away of Superstitions and Innovations and of pluralities and scandalous Ministers which in their accompt were only of the Church of England and Loyal 9. That his Majesty would be pleased to rest satisfied with the course that the Lords and Commons have appointed for the ordering of the Militia until the same shall be further setled by a Bill and that his Majesty would be pleased to recal his Proclamations and Declarations against the Ordinance made by the Lords and Commons concerning it which was to take away the Tenures the Power of the Sword and defence of his People 10. That the Members of either Houses of Parliament as have during the time of this present Parliament been put out of any Places or Offices may either be restored to their Place or Office or otherwise have satisfaction for the same upon the Petition of that House whereof he or they are Members 11. That all Privy Counsellors and Judges may take their Oath the form thereof to be agreed on and setled by Act of Parliament for the maintaining of the Petition of Right which was in many things more than ever they could claim or ever had or could by Law have any Right unto and of certain Statutes made by this Parliament which shall be mentioned by both Houses of Parliament as if they were in all Duty and Loyalty bound to make him a glorious King thought they could never have unking'd him enough and brought him to their murdering ever to be abhorred Tribunal and that an inquiry of all the Breaches and Violations of all those Laws may be given in charge by the Justices of the Kings Bench and by the Justices of Assize in their Circuits and Justices of the Peace at their Sessions to be presented and punished according to Law 12. That all the Judges and Officers placed by approbation of both Houses of Parliament may hold their places quam diu se bene gesserint 13. That the Justice of Parliament may pass upon all Delinquents whether they be within the Kingdom or fled out of it And that all persons cited by either House of Parliament may appear and abide the sentence of Parliament 14. That the general Pardon offered by his Majesty may be granted with such Exceptions as shall be advised by both Houses of Parliament 15. That the Forts and Castles of this Kingdom may be put under the Command and Custody of such persons as his Majesty shall appoint with the approbation of his Parliament and in the Intervals of Parliament with the Major part of the Council in such manner as is before expressed in the choice of Councellors 16. That the extraordinary Guards and Military Forces attending his Majesty may be removed and discharged and that for the future he will raise no such Guards or extraordinary Forces but according to the Law in case of Actual Rebellion or Invasion an Imposition and Vassalage was never put upon any thing that was like a King in Christendom for the Kings of Scotland whilst seperate from England and did homage to our Kings had when there was cause enough of fear and jealousie as now there was none no such unkingly Vassalage put upon him King David had 24000 men for his Guard who every Month came up to Jerusalem and our Saxon King Alured had his Guards by monthly courses 17. That his Majesty would be pleased to enter into a more strict Alliance with the States of the united Provinces and States of the Protestant Religion for the defence and
or Common Freeholder or the Widdows or Feme Soles of any of them resides or is incorporate in that one Knight of a Shire or how much in the other Knight of the Shire when by the Kings Writs there were to be no more than two and by Oliver Cromwels the Usurpers Writs there was as many as six and when in his Time of Villany two English Earls Knights of the Kings Honourable Order of the Garter sate as Members of that which was miscalled the House of Commons in Parliament although it might well deserve the Question of what Nation they were or Riddle my Riddle what is this how much of them were Earls or Commons or what Epiccen or Hermophrodite kind of men they were or whom if not very Rebels they did then and there represent Or whether the Knights and Burgesses of England and Wales as they were admitted into the House of Commons from the 48th and 49th year of the Raign of King Henry 3. until the Raign of King Henry the 7th did or could represent for Ireland Gastoign the Isles and other Dominions of our Kings and sometime Scotland for which until then there were Receivers and Triers of Petitions particularly appointed for those other Dominions and places or who did represent for Wales the Bishoprick of Durham before there were Knights of the Shires and Burgesses allowed by our Kings or for the Town of Newark upon Trent so lately priviledged by his now Majesty or whether they do in one entire and complexed Body represent for all the Commons of England when as the Journals Parliament Rolls and Memoriols can inform us that sometimes the City of London as also other particular places have separately petitioned the King and not at all Times in a generality name and behalf of all the Commons of England Servants Mechanicks and Labourers c. which being no Freeholders or Electors can never be understood to have given any of the Members of the House of Commons any procurations jointly or separately to give any consent or represent for them in Parliament So that whatsoever hath or shall be done or acted in Parliament either for Lease or Copyholders villani Bordarii Mechanicks Labourers Servants c. Neither is or can be obliging to those multitudes otherwise than by the Soveraign power of the King when by the Energy and Vertue of his Royal Assent that which was before but an Embrio comes to be aminated and have as it were a Life and a Soul breathed or put into it by his sanction or giving it the force of a Law by his and no others Act of Parliament further than the advice of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Assent or Approbation of the Commons in Parliament assembled Or how they can by or with any Law Right Reason Construction propriety of Speech or Grammar be said or believed to represent those of the Commons of England whom they have many times accused and take upon them to imprison or punish When our Parliaments have been or should be founded upon the Feudal Laws our Monarchick best of Governments and there could be no Election of Members of the House of Commons to come to Parliament ad faciendum consentiendum iis which the King by the advise of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal should there ordain not in omnibus in all matters for that was the proper care and business of our Kings and Princes and their private Councel by whose advice the Writs of Summons issued out under the Kings great Seal of England to Summon the Lords Spiritual and Temporal to a Parliament to consult not de omnibus or de omnibus arduis but de quibusdam arduis and until the 49th of King Henry 3. when Simon Montforts Rebellious Parliament and his Counterfeit Writs of Election of Members to be a then endeavoured to be constituted House of Commons in Parliament received its first foundation and gave the occasion and encouragement to many Rebellions and Mischiefs afterward and from the 21 and 22 E. 1. until that gave it some rectifyed allowance unto such a kind of Election and Convention of Members in an House of Commons in Parliament to be assembled the so Elected Members of Commons of Parliament could neither meet or assemble until there were Writs of Summons issued out to assemble the Lords Spiritual and Temporal as Peers not unto the King but one unto the other in Parliament for when the Lords Spiritual and Temporal are not to be assembled by the Kings Writs of Summons the Commons cannot be Elected to attend the King and the Lords Spiritual and Temporal for to meet without so much as unto Markets or Fairs or Indulgent allowance of our Kings would be a breach of the Kings Peace which should be so sacred and ever was accompted to be of so great a concernment unto him and his people as when he pardoned any of his offending Subjects against his Laws the ancient forms of our Kings pardons were only without enumerating or particular specification of the Crimes damus concedimus pacem nostram and gives us the reason that all our Parliaments as well relating either to the upper or lower House do specially except Treason Felony or breach of Peace which seemeth certainly to be no other than a necessary Clause added by our Kings in their priviledges of Parliament And otherwise it would be an unread unheard unintelligible mixture of a Supremacy or Soveraignty that a King deriving his Soveraignty only from God and his People and Subjects sworn unto him by their Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and obliged unto him for their Estates and Self-preservation at the same time be invested with a Soveraignty which is to be certainly placed amongst the most puzling Riddles of Madam Sphinx and none of the over-turning Republicans can give us no manner of solution until all the Vulgus or Rabble multitude of the World can be persuaded to be of one mind and for many years continue therein and all impossibles come to be possible And there cannot be a greater absurdity offered to the Common Intellect or understanding of mankind than to endeavour to perswade them that there is a plurality of Soveraigns and that all the Subjects of England do or can represent the King and are his Soveraigns or that he is the Subject or general Servant of so many Millions of people as he is rightfully King of and are sworn unto him by the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy but are conditionally only his Subjects until some fair opportunity to Arraign him at the suit of his own Subjects cut off his head and extirpe him and his Illustrious Family by no other Warrant than to set up the Kingdom of Jesus Christ who never yet gave them any Order or Authority to attempt any such egregious Villany And should not have been so locked up in their Morphaeus commonly erring wandring dreams or imaginations as to think that two or three necessary priviledges only
pour contempt upon our Kings and Princes and not cause them to wander in the Wilderness where there is no way but offer up our daily Prayers unto God to send help to our Jacob in all his many difficulties Elenchus Capitum OR THE CONTENTS Of the Sections or Chapters § 1. THat our Kings of England in their voluntary summoning to their Great Councils and Parliaments some of the more Wise Noble and Better part of their Subjects to give their Advice and Consent in matters touching the publick good and extraordinary concernment did not thereby create or by any Assent express or tacite give unto them an Authority Coordination Equality or share in the Legislative power or were elected by them page 1 § 2. Of the Indignities Troubles and Necessities which were put upon King John in the enforcing of his Charters by the Pope and his then domineering Clergy of England joyned with the Disobedience and Rebellion of some of the Barons encouraged and assisted by them p. 7 § 3. Of the succeeding Iealousies Animosities Troubles and Contests betwixt King John and his over-jealous Barons after the granting of his Charters and his other transactions and agreements with them at their tumultuous meeting at Running Mede with the ill usages which he had before received of them during all the time of his Raign p. 26 § 4. The many Affronts Insolencies and ill Usages suffered by King Henry 3. until the granting of his Magna Charta Charta de Foresta p. 29 § 5. Of the continued unhappy Jealousies Troubles and Discords betwixt the Discontented and Ambitious Barons and King Henry 3. after the granting of his Magna Charta Charta de Foresta p. 36. § 6. That the Exceptions mentioned in the King of France's Award of the Charter granted by King John could not invalidate the whole Award or justify the provisions made at Oxford which was the principal matter referred unto him p. 58 § 7. Of the evil Actions and Proceedings of Symon de Montfort and his Rebellious partners in the name of the King whilst they kept him and his Son Prince Edward and divers of the Loyal Nobility Prisoners from the 14th of May in the 48th year of his Raign until his and their delivery by the more fortunate Battle at Evesham the â—th day of August in the 49th year of his tormented Raign p. 66 § 8. Of the Actions of the Prince after his Escape his success at the Battle of Evesham Release of the King his Father and restoring him to his Rights p. 98 § 9. Of the proceedings of King Henry 3. after his Release and Restauration until his death p. 100 § 10. That these new contrived Writs of Summons made by undue means upon such a disturbed occasion could neither obtain a proper or quiet sitting in Parliament or the pretended ends and purposes of the Framers thereof and that such an hasty and undigested constitution could never be intended to erect a third Estate in the Kingdom equal in power with the King and his great Councel the House of Peers or consistent with the pretended Conservatorships or to be coordinate with the King and his Great Councel of Peers or to be a Curb to any of them or themselves or upon any other design than to procure some money to wade through that their dangerous Success p. 108 § 11. Of the great Power Authority Command and Influence which the Praelates Barons and Nobility of England had in or about the 49th year of the Raign of King Henry 3. when he was a Prisoner to Symon Montfort â—d these Writs of Election of some of the Commons to Parliament were first devised and sent to summon them And the great power and Estate which they afterwards had to create and contain an Influence upon them p. 122 § 12. That the aforesaid Writ of Summons made in that Kings name to elect a certain number of Knights Citizens and Burgesses the probos homines good honest men or Barons of the Cinque Ports to appear for or represent some part of the Commons of England in Parliament being enforced from King Henry 3. in the 48th and 49th year of his Raign when he was a Prisoner to Symon de Montfort Earl of Leicester and under the power of him and his party of Rebellious Barons was never before used in any Wittenagemots Mikel-gemots or great Councels of our Kings or Princes of England p. 147 § 13. That the Majores Barones Regni and Spiritual and Temporal Lords with their Assistants were until the 49th year of the Raign of King Henry 3. and the constrained Writs issued out for the election of Knights Citizens and Burgesses whilst he was a Prisoner in the Camp or Army of his Rebellious Subjects the only great Councels of our Kngs. p. 151 § 14. That these enforced Writs of Summons to the Lords Spiritual and Temporal accompanied with that then newly devised Engine or Writ to Elect Knights Citizens and Burgesses to be present in Parliament were not in the usual and accustomed form for the summoning the Lords Spiritual and Temporal to the Parliament p. 204 § 15. That the Majores Barones or better sort of the Tenants in Capite Iustly and Legally by some of our Ancient Kings and Princes but not by any positive Law that of the enforced Charter from King John at Running Mede being not accounted to be such a Law were distinguished and separated from the Minores or lesser sort of the Tenants in Capite p. 207 § 16. That the General Councels or Courts mentioned before the Rebellious meeting of some of the English Baronage and the constraint put upon King John at Running Mede or before the 49th of Henry 3. were not the Magna Consilia or generale Consilium Colloquium or Communia Consilia now called Parliaments wherein some of the Commons as Tenants in Capite were admitted but only truly and properly Curiae Militum a Court summoning those that hold of the King in Capite to acknowledge Record and perform their Services do their Homage and pay their Releifs c. And the Writ of summons mentied in the Close Rolls of the 15th year of the Raign of King John was not then for the summoning of a great Councel or Parliament but for other purposes viz. Military Aids and Offices p. 218 § 17. That the Comites or Earls have in Parliament or out of Parliament Power to compel their Kings or Soveraign Princes to yield unto their â—onsults Votes or Advices will make them like the Spartan Ephori and amount to no more than a Conclusion without praemisses or any thing of Truth Law or Right Reason to support it p. 229. § 18. Of the methods and courses which King Edward the first held and took in the Reformation and Cure of the former State Diseases and Distempers p. 286. § 19. That the Sheriffs are by the Tenor and Command of the Writs for the Elections of the Knights of the Shires and Burgesses of
the Parliament Cities and Burrough-Towns the only Iudges under the King who are fit and unfit to be Members in the House of Commons in Parliament and that the Freeholders and Burgesses more than by a just and impartial Assent and Information who were the fittest were not to be the Electors p. 371. § 20. Of the small numbers of Knights of the Shires and Burgesses which were Elected and came in the Raign of King Edward the first upon his aforesaid Writs of Election and how their numbers now amounting unto very many more were after encreased by the corruption of Sheriffs and the Ambition of such as desired to be Elected p. 382. § 21. Who made themselves Electors for the chusing of Knights of the Shires to be Members of the House of Commons in Parliament after the 21st year of the Raign of King Edward the first contrary to the Tenor of his aforesaid Writs of Summo 〈…〉 made in the 22 year of his Raign for the Election of Knights of the Shire and Burgesses to come to the Parliaments and great Councils of several of our Kings and Princes afterwards p. 387. § 22. Of the Actions and other Requisites by the Law to be done by those that are or shall be Elected Knights Citizens and Burgesses to attend our King in their great Councils or Parliaments praecedent and praeparatory to their admission therein p. 388. § 23. That the Members of the House of Commons being Elected and come to the Parliament as aforesaid did not by vertue of those Writs of Election sit together with the King and the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in one and the same Room or Place and that if any such thing were as it never was or is likely to be proved it cannot conclude or infer that they were or are co-ordinate or had or have an equal power in their Suffrages and Decisions p. 393. § 24. What the Clause in the Writs for the Election of Knights Citizens and Burgesses to come unto the Parliament ad faciendum consentiendum do properly signifie and were intended by the said Writs of 〈◊〉 to be Members of the House of Cowmons in Parliament p. 398. § 25. Of the many variations and alterations of our Kings Writs of Summons to their great Councels or Parliaments excluding some and taking in others to be assistant in that high and Honourable Court with its Resummons Revisions drawing of Acts of Parliament or Statutes dy the Judges or the Kings learned Councel in the Laws and other Requisites therein necessarily used by the sole and individual authority of our Kings and Princes p. 411. § 26. What is meant by the word Representing or if all or how many of the people of England and Wales are or have been in the Elections of a part of the Commons to come to Parliament Represented p 548. § 27. That no Impeachment by all or any of the Members of the House of Commons in Parliament or of the House of Peers in Parliament hath or ever had any authority to invalidate hinder or take away the power force or effect of any the pardons of our Kings or Princes by their Letters Patents or otherwise for High Treason or Felony Breach of the Peace or any other crime or supposed Delinquency whatsoever p. 573. § 28. Of the protection and priviledge granted unto the Members of the House of Commons in Parliament by our Soveraign Kings and â—rinces during their Attendance and Employments in their great Councils of Parliament according to the Tenor and purport of their Commissions p. 607. § 29. Neither they claim or ever were invested by any Charter or Grant of any of our Kings or Princes or otherwise of any such Priviledge or Liberty nor was or is in England any Law or Usage or Custom that a Parliament sitting cannot be Prorogued or Dissolved as long as any Petition therein exhibited remaineth unanswered or not determined p. 633. § 30. That in those Affairs peculiar only to so great and venerable an Assembly which should not be trivial or proper to lower and lesser Iurisdictions assigned for the determining of lesser matters for the publick ease and benefit our Kings and Princes have a greater burden and care upon them as Gods Vicegerents besides that of Parliaments to manage and take care of the Kingdom for the benefit and good of themselves and their people p. 637. § 31. That our Great Councils or Parliaments except anciently at the three great Festivals viz. Christmas Easter and Pentecost being ex more summoned and called upon extraordinary emergent occasions could not either at those grand and chargeable Festivals or upon necessities of State or Publick Weal and preservation ex natura rei continue long but necessarily required Prorogations Adjournments Dissolutions or endings p. 641. § 32. That Parliaments or Great Councels de quibusdam arduis concerning the defence of the Kingdom and Church of Enggland neither were or can be fixed to be once in every year or oftner they being always understood and believed to be by the Laws and Ancient and reasonable Customs of England ad libitum Regis who by our Laws Right Reason and all our Records and Annals is and should be the only Watchman of our Israel and the only Iudge of the necessity times and occasion of Summoning Parliaments p. 650. § 33. That all or any of the Members of the House of Commons in Parliament are not properly or by their original constitution intended or otherwise entituled or properly truly justly lawfully seized or to be stiled or termed Estates neither are to be so understood or believed to be and being to be no otherwise than subject to a Temporary Election and by the Authority of their Kings Writs paid their Wages and Charges by those that sent and elected them can have no Iust or Legal Right thereunto p. 656 § 34. A Series or accompt of the many Seditions Rebellions and Discords that have successively happened since the beginning of the Raign of King Henry 2. to our succeeding Kings and Princes until this present Age wherein we now live by mistaken and never to be warranted principles p. 717. A Vindication of the Antient and Present Establish'd Government of the Kingdom of ENGLAND under our Kings and Monarchs appointed by GOD from the Opinion and Claim of those that without any Warrant or ground of Law or Right Reason the Laws of God and Man Nature and Nations and the Records thereof would have it to be Originally deriv'd from the People Co-ordinate with the Houses of Peers and Commons in Parliament or by their Election SECT I. That our KINGS of ENGLAND in their voluntary Summoning to their Great Councels and PARLIAMENTS some of the more Wise Noble and better part of their Subjects to give their Advice and Consent in Matters touching the Publick Good and Extraordinary Concernment did not thereby Create Or by any Assent Express or Tacite give unto Them an Authority Co-ordination Equality or Share in the Legislative
Pope sending his Legate with a large power to exact money for himself his Agent was disgracefully returned with an answer That the Kingdom was poor the Church in debt and it was of a dangerous consequence to the State to be exposed to the will of the Pope and therefore seeing a General Councel was shortly to be held at Lyons if the Church would be relieved it were fit to be done by a general consent of that Councel And the Emperour Frederick at the same time by his Letters to the King which were openly read desiring as he had often before That the Pope might have no supplies ou of England for that therewith he did oppress him by seizing upon his Castles and Cities appertaining to the Empire notwithstanding his often submissions desire of Peace and offers to refer the cause to the arbitration of the Kings of England and France and the Baronage of both Kingdoms and entreating that he might not receive a detriment whence as a Brother and Friend he expected a favour added that if the King would be advised by him he would by power free the Kingdom from that unjust Tribute which Pope Innocent III. and other Popes had laid upon it Which pleasing the Assembly the business took up so much time as the design of a share in the Government something like if not worse then a Co-ordination meeting with no concessions or effect they only granted an Aid to the King for the Marriage of his Daughter 20 s. of every Knights Fee not without much ado and repetition of all his former Aids although at the same or much about that time they could not be ignorant that he had by his Writ commanded Hugh Gifford and William le Brun that upon Friday next after the Epiphany they should cause to be fed in the Hall at Windsor ad bonum focum omnes pueros pauperes egenos quos invenire poterint ita quod aula impleatur si tot inveniantur The Charters were again ratified which confirmation is printed in the perclose or latter-end of those in the 9th year of that persecuted Prince after a proposal of Conservators and election of Judges and Lord Chancellors rejected which was urged and much insisted upon After which and his return from an expedition with great charges into Scotland a Parliament was summoned where he moved for an Aid against an Insurrection in Wales and for money to supply his wants and pay his Debts which were so great as he could not stir out of his Chamber for the clamour of those to whom he ow'd money for Wine Wax and other necessaries of House-keeping which wrought so little as to his face they denied to grant him any thing and enquiry being made what Revenues the Romans and Italians had in England they found them to have been annually 60000 Marks which being notified to the General Councel at Lyons the Pope was so vexed therewith as he was said to have uttered these words The King begins to Frederize it is fit that we make an end with the Emperour that we might crush these pety Kings for the Dragon once destroyed these lesser Snakes will soon be trodden down In the 32d year of his Reign a Parliament being convoked he was upon requiring another aid sharply reproved for his breach of promises and it was alledged that his Judges were sent in Circuit under pretence of Justice to fleece the people that his needless expences amounted to above 800000 l. and advising him to recal the old Lands of the Crown and pull them from his Favourites enriched with the Treasure of the Kingdom told him of his Oath made at his Coronation Complained that the Chief-Justiciar Chancellor and Treasurer were not made by the Common-Councel of the Kingdom according as there were in the time of his Magnificent Predecessors although they could not at the same time deny him that Right which was justly due unto him that he had by his Writs commanded the said William de Haverhul and Edward of Westminster quod singulis diebus à die natalis domini usque ad diem circumcisionis computatis illis duobus diebus impleri faciant magnam aulam Regis de pauperibus and in the same year by his Writ commanded William de Haverhul his Treasurer and Edward Fidz-Odo to feed upon the day of Edward the Confessor pauperes in magna aula Westmonasterium sicut fieri consueverunt ipsis Monachis Pittanciam eodem die sicut consueverunt faciant The King promised redress but nothing was effected so that after sundry meetings and much debate the Parliament was prorogued until Midsummer following and at the next Session he tells them that they were not to impose a servile condition upon him or deny him that which every one of them might do to use whom they pleased as Counsel Every Master of a Family might place or displace what Servants he pleased Servants were not to judge their Masters nor Subjects their Prince or hold them to their conditions and that he that should so encline to their pleasures should not be their King but as their Servant And being constrained to furnish his wants with the sale of his Plate and Jewels his Crown of Gold and Edward the Confessor's Shrine and with great loss received money for them enquired who had bought them whereunto answer being made that the City of London had bought them That City said he is an inexhaustible Gulf if Octavius ' s Treasure were to be sold they would surely buy it Howsoever being besides constrained to borrow 20000 l. of the City of London he wrote to every Noble-man and Prelate apart to borrow money but got little the Abbot of Ramsay lent him 100 l. but the Abbot of Burgh could not spare him so much although the King told him It was more Alms to give unto him than to a beggar that went from door to door The Lords in the 4th year of his Reign assembled again at London and pressed him with his promises that the Chief-Justiciar Chancellor and Treasurer should be constituted by the general Councel of the Kingdom but by reason of the absence of the Earl of Cornwal nothing was done therein The King demanding aid of his Prelates and Nobility assembled in Parliament they by agreement amongst themselves stoutly denied it which greatly troubling him he shewed them the Note or Roll what moneys some few Abbots had lent unto him with an Ecce how little it was with which not being able to remove their fixed resolutions he with some anger expostulating told them Ero nè perjurus juravi sacramento intransgressibili transfretans jura mea in brachio extento à Rege Francorum reposcam quod sine capioso thesauro qui à vestra liberalitate procedere debet nequaquam valeo and that not prevailing called aliquos sibi familiares affatus eos dit quid perniciosius exemplum aliis praebetis vos qui Comites Barones Milites strenui estis
complaint of the Gascoigns who were under the Government of the Prince that their Wines were taken away by the King's Officers without due satisfaction and the Prince thereupon addressing himself to his Father in their behalf and the Officers in excuse of themselves informing the King that the Prince took upon him to do Justice therein when it belonged not to him the King was put in a great rage and said Behold my Son and my Brother are bent to afflict me as my Grand-father King Henry II. was And being put to his shifts to supply his necessities came himself into his Exchequer and with his own mouth pronounced and made Orders for the better bringing in of his Revenues Farms and Amerciaments under severe penalties that every Sheriff which appeared not yearly there in the Octaves of St. Michael with his money as well of his Farms and Amerciaments as other dues for the first day should be amerced five Marks for the second ten for the third fifteen and for the fourth should be redeemed at the King's pleasure all Cities and Freedoms to be amerced in the same manner and the fourth day making default were to lose their Freedoms the Sheriffs amerced five Marks for not distraining upon every man that having 20 l. Lands per annum came not to be made Knight unless he had before been freed by the King And by examinations of measures of Ale and Wine Bushels and Weights got some small sums of money and about the time of Richard Earl of Cornwal's going to Germany where he was by the privity and approbation of the Councel of State in England elected King of the Romans called a Parliament where bringing his Son Edmond clad in an Apuleian-habit he said Behold my Son Edmond whom God hath called to the dignity of Regal Excellency how fitting and worthy is he of your favour and how inhumane were it in so important a necessity to deny him counsel and aid and shewed them how by the advice and benignity of the Pope and the Church of England he had for the obtaining of the Kingdom of Sicily bound himself under the penalty or covenant of losing the Kingdom of England in the sum of 150000 Marks and had obtained the Tenth of the Clergy of all their Benefices for three years according to the new rates without deduction of expences besides their first-fruits for three years whereupon after many excuses of poverty they promised upon the usual condition of confirmation of Magna Charta to give him 32000 Marks But that not satisfying The next year another Parliament was holden at London where he pressing them again for money to pay his debts the Lords told him plainly They would not yield to give him any thing and if he unadvisedly bought the Kingdom of â—icilly and was deceived in it he was to blame himself therein And repeating their old grievances the breach of his promise contempt of the power of the Church and the Charter which he had solemnly sworn to observe with the insolency of Strangers especially of William de Valence who most reproachfully had given the lye to the Earl of Leicester for which he could not upon complaint to the King have right done him how they abounded in Riches and himself so poor as he could not repress an Insurrection of the Welsh The King thereupon promised by his Oath taken upon the Tomb of St. Edward to reform all his errours But the Lords in regard the business was difficult got the Parliament to be adjourned to Oxford and in the mean time the Earls of Gloucester Hereford the Earl Marshal Bigod Spencer and other great men confederated and provided by strength to effect their desires The King driven into necessities did the better to appease those often-complain'd-of grievances when his own were burthen enough by his Writs or Commissions sent into every County of England appoint quatuor milites qui considerarent quot quantis gravaminibus simpliciores à fortioribus opprimuntur inquirent diligenter de singulis querelis injuriis à quocunque factis vel à quibuscunque illatis à multis retroactis temporibus omnia requisita sub sigillis suis se cùm Baronagio ad tempus sibi per breve praefixum certificent which by any Record or History do not appear saith Sir Henry Spelman to have been ever certified And to obtain money procured the Abbot of Westminster to get his Convent to joyn with him as his surety in a Bond for 300 marks sent Simon Paslieu his trusty Councellor with Letters to other Monasteries to do the like but they refused And the Prince participating in the wants of his Father was for want of money constrained to mortgage the Towns of Stanford Benham and other Lands to William de Valence So that upon the aforesaid adjournment and meeting of the Parliament at Oxford in the 42d year of his Reign brake out those great discontents which had been so long in gathering whither the Lords brought with them great numbers of their Tenants by Knights-Service which were many followers dependants and adhaerents upon a pretence of aiding the King and going against the Welsh where after they had secured the Ports to prevent Foreign aids and the Gates of the City of London with their oaths and hands given to each other not to desist until they had obtain their ends began to expostulate their former Liberties and require the performance according to the Oaths and Orders formerly made the Chief-Iusticiar Chancellor and Treasurer to be ordained by publick choice the twenty four Conservators of the Kingdom to be confirmed twelve by the election of the Lords and twelve by the King with whatsoever else might be advantageous for their own security Whereupon the King seeing their strength and in what manner they required those things did swear again solemnly to the confirmation of them and caused the Prince to take the same Oath Of which Treasonable Contrivances Matthew of Westminster an ancient English Historian of good credit hath recorded his opinion in these words Haec de provisionibus imò de proditionibus Oxon dicta sufficiant And here yet they would not rest the King's Brethren the Poictovins and all other strangers were to be presently removed the Kingdom cleared of them and all the Peers of the Land sworn to see it done The Earl of Cornwal's eldest Son refusing to take the Oath without leave of his Father was plainly told That if his Father would not consent with the Baronage in that Case he should not hold a Furrow of Land in England In the end the King's Brethren and their followers were despoiled of all their fortunes and banished by order under his own hand with a charge not to pass with any Money Arms or Ornaments other than such as the Earls of Hereford and Surrey should allow and appoint with an injunction to the City of Bristol or any other Ports not to permit any strangers or Kinsmen of
praefato Rege Franciae redire versus Terram Sanctam in subsidium ejusdem prout MÃ gis noveritis convenire Teste Rege apud Westm ' 6 o die Februarii And tired with the many Troubles with which the Rebellious and unquiet Spirits of too many of his Subjects had from his Infancy never ceased to torment him exchanged his earthly Habitation for a better before his Son could hear of his Death or return to take possession of his Kingdom and Inheritance And although he against his Will left behind him the first Original or Draught of a Constitution or Design of an House or Convocation now called an House of Commons in Parliament which can claim no better an Extraction then it's Birth and first Procreation from a Force and Duress of Imprisonment put by a Rebellious Army upon their vanquished Soveraign whilst he was in dread of the life of Himself and his Son and his Brother and his Son for more than a year and a quarter and led about and made to say and do and yeild unto every thing which they would have him That afflicted Prince did not after the battle of Evesham during all the Time of his Raign which continued about Eight years after make use of that kind of Writs of Summons or of that Form for the Election of Knights Citizens and Burgesses to let in the Tide of the Vulgar with their Ignorance upon his highest and greatest Councel And those new-contrived Writs of Summons could not in all probability obtain a quiet Sitting or accommodate the pretended Ends and Purposes of the Framers thereof neither be intended to erect a third Estate nor agree with the constrained Conservatorships or other their Designs otherwise than to maintain those Rebellious Barons in the Powers that they had usurped SECT X. That those new contrived Writs of Summons made by undue Means upon such a disturbed Occasion could neither obtain a proper or quiet Sitting in Parliament or the pretended Ends and Purposes of the Framers thereof and that such an hasty and indigested Constitution could never be intended to erect a third Estate in the Kingdom equal in power with the KING and his great Councel the House of Peers or consistent with the pretended Conservatorships or to be co-ordinate with the KING and his great Councel of Peers or to be a curb to any of them or themselves or upon any other design then to procure some Money to wade through that their dangerous Success IN regard that very many of the Counties and a great part of England as most of the Northern much of Wales and the Marches thereof under the Influence and Power of Valence Earl of Pembroke Mortimer Clare Earl of Gloucester Clifford Le Strange and other Welsh Lords Marchers and of John Balioll and other of the Northern Barons joyned to the Power and Influence of Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester after his forsaking of Montfort neither could or were like to come unto that so packed Parliament for Richard Earl of Cornewall had very many Borough Towns in that County Wales and its thirteen Shires and the largely priviledged Earldom of Chester sent no Knights or Burgesses to sit in the House of Commons in Parliament either then or before or since until by an Act of Parliament made in the later end of the Raign of King Henry the Eighth they were Authorised to be Elected for that Purpose Warren Earl of Surrey and Sussex was not in those Counties destitute of many Ferrers Earl of Darby falling off from Montfort could not but in the large extent of his Estate drew away very many of their well-Wishers Followers Friends Allies Tenants or Dependants and such as held of them by Knights Service and in Soccage or Burgage and many Knights Citizens and Burgesses to be so elected except those in London and Westminster if any did then appear to have been chosen as not dareing to come to that kind of New Parliament without a Convoy Although the Power of the Earl of Oxford one of their Associates in the County of Essex was then very great whilst they were almost daily and hourly haunted and tormented in their minds and Estates with Jealousies Fears and Dangers and the often sad and dolorous tidings of Devastations Slaughters Plunders and Sequestrations that misused King himself not being able to have any of his Servants or Subjects that he had sent for to come unto him without a Convoy to defend them from Spoil and Pillage And the exactest Search that hath been or can be made cannot find any formal or certain Sitting of a Parliament any Writs or Indentures returned any Session Act or thing done in that so newly framed Parliament when the minds of the Rebels themselves were so tormented and distracted with Fears and Cares to preserve themselves and their Royal Booty as they could neither be safe in keeping of him or restoring him to his Liberty for that the abused Lyon patient for a while against his Will once let loose might remember past Injuries and tear them in Peices and no Act or Memorial can be seen of any more than the Petition of two of the Knights Elected for the County of York and their Allowance of Wages where the Rebellious Party seemed to be most powerful no Burgesses of the many Towns and Boroughs in that large County at all it seems then Appearing or Petitioning by a Tax or Levy made upon that County which created the first President or Custom of giving Wages unto Knights of the Shires no other Knights of the Shires or Burgesses of Townes if there were or had been any Elected then demanding the like Allowance and that which was allowed the said Yorkshire Knights was partly for Expences supposed in their helping to guard the maritime parts to keep out Strangers or the Kings own Subjects in his several Provinces of France from coming from the parts beyond the Seas to assist him no Journal or Record of any Petitions made or Grievances exhibited Conferences Debates Decisions Acts Orders or Ordinances and that one that was made was only to engage and cozen as many as they could of the Bishops and Clergy into their own Design And therein none of the Commons or men of that Election do seem at all to trouble their Heads or be named as Actors or Consenters therein for it is expresly said to be provided Per Commun assentement du Roy des Prelaz des Contes des Barons de la tere a fermete en tesmoinaunce le Roy les hauz Hommes de la tere ont mis leur Seus neither doth there appear to to have been any Prorogation or Adiournment thereof And there was like to have been no small want of Money when Symon de Montfort and his Partners especially after the Earl of Gloucester's Sullennes and Departure from them to maintain and keep together so instable a People and so great a number for the guard of their Royal Prisoners and their own
and that long after both by the Feudal and common Laws of this Kingdom the Lords Spiritual and Temporal were in Parliament to Assess a proportionable Escuage upon such of their Tenants who held any Capite Lands and did not go with them in Person to serve their King and Country and were not to be their own Assessors but submit unto what they should in those great Councels subordinate to their King 's determine and as they anciently were used to do when Taxes were laid upon Knights Fees when the Common People that were to pay them were not all present or any for them Or never to intend to introduce such a Party of the Common People into a Co-ordination or Fellowship with them in a Subordination to their Soveraign which might as they did afterwards entice them to encroach and believe that a License of Petitioning for Redress of any Grievances which might happen and a Liberty to give an Approbation and Obedience to what should be there ordained by the King by the Advice of his Lords Spiritual and Temporal for the publick Good should be in or unto them or their Successors an Authority or original Power to controul what their Kings by the Counsel of their Lords Spiritual and Temporal should there find necessary to Enact when they could not forget that even in the time of the Imprisonment of King Henry the Third they did in his Letters Rescripts Writs and Edicts written and sent about the Kingdom in his Name amounting to no fewer than Sixteen mention that his said Orders Acts and Commands were done by the Counsel and Advice Procerum Magnatum suorum and in some of them his Prelates Barons hautes hommes but nothing at all of the Commons And that Rebellious part of the Baronage might the easier be led into that they never meant when they had some reason to think or assure themselves that such an Election of Members or the parts of the common People would much advance the fixing and setling their Designes when they could not but acknowledge that they owed much of their Liberties and happiness under their Kings and Princes unto them and their Ancestors as in particular unto an Earl of Oxford in procuring of the King Three Hundreds in the County of Essex to be diaforrested and might be glad to entail and perpetuate their Assistances Dependencies Hospitalities Priviledges and Favours upon their Posterity and after Generations and rather return a submissive Compliance unto them well accepted than to endeavour to prejudice or in the least to make themselves equal unto them or Mastors of them but would be content to be ruled by them and not endeavour to govern or domineer over them With which doth accord that well founded Opinion and Answer of that excellent Prince and very Martyr King Charles the First our late gracious and pious Soveraign in his Answer to the haughty and undutiful Nineteen Propositions sent unto Him by the rebellious and misled Parliament the Second Day of June One Thousand Six Hundred Forty Two That the House of Commons was never intended for any share in the Government or the Choosing of them that should Govern and were not likely in those early and troublesome times to get any Root or Foundation for such an unwarrantable Pretence And might have believed that the Prelates and Baronage of England had heretofore Power and Influence sufficient to have kept them in a better Order both towards them and their Sovereign SECT II. Of the great Power Authority Command and Influence which the Prelates Barons and Nobility of England had in or about the Forty-Ninth Year of the Raign of King Henry the Third when he was a Prisoner to Symon de Monfort and those Writs of Election of some of the Commons to Parliament were first devised and sâ—nt to Summon them And the great Power and Estates which they afterwards had to create and continue an Influence upon them WHen the then Prelates by the Papal great and exorbitant Power over the Bodies and Souls of the People of England as well high as low rich or poor their Power of certifying Illegitimations Bastardy or Ne unques loyalment accouplis en Matrimony with their Fulminations Excommunications Curses Interdictions Confessions Absolutions Pardons and Dispensations Denial of Christian burial Affrights of Purgatory undenyable Commands over the inferiour Clergy and they over the People together with the great Authority which their Episcopal Function and Dignity inseparably conjoynt with their Temporal Baronies had given unto them in the Parliaments of England the greatest and highest Councels and Assembly of the Nation were in the time of King Henry the Third's Imprisonment so much allured and drawn by some of their factious and naughty Incitements to Symon de Montfort's Party by a kind of Ordinance and Agreement before mentioned of the then over-ruling-Power of the rebellious Victors as there was an undertaking to preserve from Plunder and Spoil all the Lands and Estates of the Holy-Church affirm their Authorities and all that they should have reasonable Order for amends should be performed and full Power granted unto them by the King or Generality of the Earls Barons and great Men of the Land to provide things profitable for the bettering the Estate of the Holy-Church to the Honor of God And with their temporal Baronies unto which many Mannors of a great Extent and yearly Value were annext and some other Barons holding of them and had their many Milites for service of War and Multitudes of Tenants by Tenure Lease and Copy-holding of them And the regular and monastick part of the Clergy of England many of whose Abbots and Priors were admitted to sit amongst the Peers in Parliament were so envied for their great Revenues and Estates as the Commons in a Parliament in the Raign of King Henry the Fourth wherein Lawyers were prohibited to be elected Members and therefore stiled indoctum Parliamentum did petition the King to confiscate and take into his own Revenue all their Lands which they had calculated to be sufficient to maintain One Hundred and Fifty Earls no small Estate in those times being enough to satisfy the honourable Yearly expences of one Earl and his numerous Retinue after the rate of their then living One Thousand Five Hundred Knights Six Thousand Two Hundred Esquires and erect Two Hundred Hospitals for the Relief of maimed Souldiers And in that new Frame of a great Council or Parliament wherein a part of the Commons of England were to be Assembled which can find no other Original than the Fate of that unhappy King in the battle of Lewis as the close Roll of the Forty Eight of that King will tell us there were no fewer of the then well-wishing Clergy to Symon de Mortfort Summoned unto that new modelled Parliament than One Arch-Bishop Fourteen Bishops Thirty-Five Abbots Two Priors their good Friends and Confederates and for Companies sake in such an hopeful and popular
Raign of King Richard the Second when the Dukes Earls and Barons were Created by Letters Patents of our Kings the Names of the Barons to be Summoned in Parliament were Written from the King 's own Mouth at his Direction and Command and in that agreeth with Mr. Elsing who saith It was ad libitum Regis for surely none but the King can Summon a Parliament and that was the reason that Henry the Fourth having taken King Richard the Second his Leige and Lord Prisoner the 20th day of August in the 21st Year of his Raign did cause the Writ of Summons for the Parliament wherein he obtained the Crown to bear Date the 19th day of the same Month for the Warrant was Per ipsum Regem Concilium and himself to be Summoned by the Name of Henry Duke of Lancaster SECT XIII That the Majores Barones regni and Spiritual and Temporal Lords with their Assistants were until the 49th Year of the Raign of King Henry the Third and the constrained Writs issued out for the Election of Knights Citizens and Burgesses whilst he was a Prisoner in the Camp or Army of his Rebellious Subjects the only great Councel of our Kings FOr the Barons of England viz. the Lords Spiritual and Temporal with some other wise and selected Men which our Kings did anciently and upon Occasions call into that Assembly were the Great Council of the Kingdom and before and from the Conquest until a great part of the Raign of King Henry the Third in whose dayes saith Mr. Elsing it is thought the Writs for Election of Knights and Burgesses were framed made the Great Councel of the Kingdom and under the name of Barons not only the Earls but the Bishops also were comprehended for the Conqueror Summoned the Bishops to those great Councels as Barons and in the Writ of Summons made as aforesaid in the Captivity and Troubles of King Henry the Third we find the Bishops and Lords with some Abbots and Pryors to be the Councellors and the Commons only called to do perform and consent unto what should be ordained And Mr. Selden and Sir Henry Spelman have by divers Instances and warrantable Proofs declared unto us That the Bishops and Lords only were admitted into the Wittenagemots or great Councels which were wont in and after the Raigns of the Saxon Kings to be kept at the three great Festivals in the Year viz. Easter Whitsontide and Christmass when the Earls and Barons came to pay their Respects and Reverence to their Soveraign and give an Account of what was done or necessary to be known or done in their several Provinces and Charges and what was fit to be Consulted thereupon and were then accustomed to meet and Assist their Kings and Soveraigns with their Advice and Counsel Which was so constantly true as Antecessores Comitis Arundel solebant tenere manerium de Bylsington in com' Kanc. quod valet per Annum 30. l. per Serjeantiam essendi Pincernam Domini Regis in die Pentecostes Ela Comitissa Warwick tenuit manerium de Hoke Norton in com Oxon quod est de Baronia de Oyley de Domino Rege in capite per Serjeantiam scindendi coram domino Rege die Natalis Domini habere Cultellum domini Regis de quo scindit Roger de Britolio Farl of Heresord being in Armes and open Rebellion against King William the Conqueror taken Prisoner and Condemned to perpetual Imprisonment wherein though he frequently used many scornsul and contumelious words towards the King yet he was pleased at the Celebration of Faster in a solemn manner as then was usual to send to the said Earl Roger then in Prison his Royal Robes who so disdained the Favour that he forth with caused a great Fire to be made and the Mantle the inner Surcoate of Silk and the upper Garment lined with precious Furs to be Burnt which being made known to the King he became displeased and said Certainly he is a very proud Man who hath thus abused me but by the Brightness of God he shall never come out of Prison as long as I live which was fulfilled In Anno 1078 William Rufus tenuit curiam in natali domini apud London Rex Anglorum Willielmus cognomento Rufus gloriose curiam suam tenuit ad Natale apud Gloverniam ad Pascham apud Wintoniam apud Londonias ad Pentecosten Et hic Concessus Ordinum regni saith Sir John Spelman Sive totius regni Repraesentatio quod intelligere convenit ab Alfredo certis quidem vicibus ijs ordinariis non quasi ejusdem formae celebritatis esset cujus hodierna Comitia quae Parliamentum vulgò dicuntur sed ut quantum est in Anglia terrarum tunc aut unum omninò Regis erat aut Comitun ejus atque Baronum qui sub illis agros colerent eos Clientelari atque precario jure possederint ut qui toti ab nutu dominorum penderent ità quicquid ab isto tempore ab Rege Comitibus ejus atque Baronibus constitutum est toto regno sancitum erat velut ab ijs transactum quibus in caeteros suprema absoluta potestas esset adeoque reliquorum seu clientium mancipiorum jura includeret Episcopos quod attinet hi magnis hisce Concilijs nunquam non intersuerunt suisque suffragijs leges sanxerunt nam praetereà illud quod ob seculares fundos Barones vel ob ipsum sacerdotis honorem sacrosancti censebantur eâ infuper sapientiâ plerumque praestabant ut non tantùm suffi agia Procerum aequiparârint sed actis omnibus venerationem atque pondus addiderint ab hoc Regis instituto manavit uti videtur mos ille posteris Saxonibus non inusitatus ut concilia Episcoporum atque Magnatum tèr quotannis celebrarentur nempe ad Domini Natales Pascha atque Pentecosten ad consultandum de arduis regni negotijs neque id uno semper eodemque loco sed ubicunque res posceret licet ferè ubi Rex cum Aulicis ageret praesens And in our Parliaments as well Modern as Ancient had a deliberative Power as the most Learned Selden hath informed us in advising their Kings in Matters of State and giving their Assent in the making of Laws and a judicial subordinate Power to their Kings in giving of Judgment in Suits or Complaints brought before them in the House of Lords or that Magna Curia Universitas regni as Bracton stiles it and whither in his time Causes were for difficulty adjourned from the other Courts of the Kingdom unto which no Remedies could otherwise be given and saith Mr. Elsing All Judgments are given by the Lords as aforesaid and not by the Commons And that very ancient long experimented and well approved Custom appeareth not to have been discontinued or forgotten when in the Parliament holden in the first Year of the Raign of King Henry the
Christianity in this our British Isle whither with divers good Authors we believe that King Lucius who is said to lie buried at Winchester did in the year 156 after the Birth of our Redeemer or in the year 185 186 or 187. write his Letter to Pope Eleutherius to transmit unto him the Roman Laws it is allowed by Sir Henry Spelman to have been written Rege Proceribus Regni Britanniae and that Faganus and Dervianus two Doctors being sent by Eleutherius to King Lucius Baptized him cum regulis populum Baptizant Clerum ordidinant 3. Metropolitanos 28. Episcopos instituunt Rex Ambrosius Aurelius ut memoriale Procerum Britanniae quos Hengistus Saxonesque sui complices nefanda proditione in monte Ambrosij qui nunc vulgò Stohenge dicitur trucidaverant 480. Consul ' Barones aeternum fieret praegrandes Lapides qui ibidem in borum memoriam usque in praesens positi sunt ab Hybernia cum magna manu Germano suo Uther illuc transmisso deportari fecit qui câ—â—n allati fuissent congregati sunt in monte Ambrosij edicto Regis magnates eum Clero cum magno honore dictorum nobilium sepulturam prepararent In the Charter of King Aethelbert confirming his Grant of the Land given to the Church of St. Pancrase in the Year 605. It is mentioned to have been done consensu venerabilis Augustini Archiepiscopi ac Principum suorum Et Decreta judiciorum ordinavit juxta exempla Romanorum concilio sapientum and when Edwin King of Northumberland was perswaded to be a Christian it is said that he consulted cum principibus conciliariis suis. Anno Dominicae incarnationis Aethelbertus Rex in fide roboratus Catholica unà cum beata regina filioque ipsorumque Eadbaldo ac Reverendissimo praesule Augustino caeterisque Optimatibus terrae solemnitatem natalis Domini celebravit Cantuariae convocato igitur ibidem communi concilio tà m Cleri quà m populi In Anno Domini 673. a Parliamentary Councel was holden at Hertford presentibus Episcopis ac Regibus Magnatibus universis but not any Knights Citizens Burgesses or Commons as we read of saith Mr. Pryn. A great Councel or Parliament was held at Becanfeld where Wythred King of Kent was present Anno 694. In like manner where none but the Peers were present The like Anno 710. at Worcester but without any Commons The like in the Councel at Cliff Anno 747. holden by Ethelbaldus King of Mercia omnibus Regni sui principibus ducibus being present but not one Knight or Burgess mentioned The like in Anno 787. at Colchuth coram Offa Rege suis magnatibus convenerunt omnes principes tà m Ecclesiastici quà m seculares Anno Domini 793. King Offa held a Councel at Verulam wherein the King suorum Magnatum acquiescens concilio took a journey to Rome Anno 794. after his return Celebrated two Councels the one at Colchyth where were present nine Kings twenty-five Bishops twenty Dukes but no House of Commons the other at Verolam Congregato apud Verolamium Episcoporum Optimatum concilio About the year 796. Cynewolf King of West Sex held a Councel where he wrote to Lullus Bishop of Mentz touching matters of Religion unà cum Episcopis suis nec non cum caterva Satraparum Anno 800. Kenulf King of Mercia called to the Councel at Clovesha omnes Regni sui Episcopos Duces Abbates cujuscunque dignitatis viros where there was no mention of any Commons Anno 816. at the Councel of Colechyth Caenulf King of Mercia was present cum suis principibus ducibus optimatibus but not a Syllable of Knights or Burgesses present About the year 822. in the Councel of Cloveshâ— where Beornulf King of Mercia Wilfred Archbishop Omniumque dignltatum optimates Ecclesiasticarum Secularium were present but no Knights of Counties or Burgesses Anno 824. another Councel was held by the same King at the same place assidentibus Episcopis Abbatibus Principibus Merciorum universis but no Commons for ought appears the King Archbishops Bishops and Dukes Subscribing their Names to the decrees there made About the same time a Councel called Pan-Anglicum or for all England was holden at London Praesentibus Egberto Rege West Saxonum Withlasio Rege Merciorum utroque Archiepiscopo caeterisque Angliae Magnatibus who Subscribed it Anno Domini 838. a Concilium Pan-Anglicum was holden at Kingston where King Egbert and his Son Ethelwolph were present cum Episcopis Optimatibus but not a word mentioned of the Commons Assent or Dissent Anno 850. A Councel was holden at Beningdon Praelatis proceribus Regni Merciae under King Bertulf when Lands were Setled and Confirmed by them to the Abbey of Crowland without the Assent or Mention of any Commons Anno Domini 851. In a Councel held at Kingsbury under King Bertulf Praesentibus Ceolnotho Archiepiscopo Doroberniae caeterisque Regni Merciae Episcopis Magnatibus without Knights or Burgesses Anno 855. There was a Councel or Parliament of all England held at Winchester where Ethelulf King of West-Sex Beorred King of Mercia and Edmond King of East-Sex were present together with the Arch-Bishops of Canterbury and York Caeterisque Angliae Episcopis Magnatibus wherein King Ethelwolf Omnium praelatorum principum suorum gratuito concilio without any Knights or Burgesses gave the Tithes of all the Lands and Goods within his Dominions a matter of no small Concernment to all his Subjects in their Estates and Proprieties to God and the Church which hath continued ever since in Force through all England Betwixt the Year 871. which was the beginning of King Alureds Raign and the end of which was in Anno Christi Domini 900. that excellent and prudent Prince Collected and Corrected divers Laws made by the Saxon Kings his Predecessors omitting others consulto sapientum Prudentissimorume suis consiliis usus edicit eorum observationem which was probably so done in a great Councel or Councels which were afterwards called Parliaments which in that so generally an unlearned age cannot be understood to be less than the Magnates of the Kingdom Bishops and Barons And the like is to be said of the Prudentum concilium given to Edoard who began his Reign in Anno 900. and ended it in Anno 924 and as much is to be believed of the Councel or Parliament of King Aethelstan who began his Raign in Anno 924 and ended it in the year 940. who besides what is mentioned in the making of his Laws that he did it prudenti Ulfheline Archiepiscopi aliorumque Episcoporum suorum concilio did about the year of our Lord 930. by his Charter give divers Lands to the Abby of Malmesbury in one of which Charters or Grants there was a Postscript or Subscription in these words Sciant sapientes Regionis Nostrae non has prefatas terras me injustè rapuisse rapinas Deo dedisse
faceret And that greatly learned man could not but acknowledge that there were afterwards resumptions of Crown-Lands in the Reign of King Henry the 2. the alienation of some of the Crown-Lands severely charged upon King Richard the 2d Anno. 33. H 6. by an Act of Parliament and in the reign of King Edward the 4th at the request and upon the Petition of the Commons and were much more needfull then those that had been before in the Reign of King Henry the 2. made Leoline Prince of Wales to come and do him Homage and Baliel King of Scotland attending in our Pâ—rliament to arise from his State placed by the Kings and Stand at the Bar of the House of Peers whilst a cause was pleaded against him And it might not be improbable that that League betwixt that King and the aforesaid Christian Princes might be entred not amongst the Common Rolls and records of England but of Gascoigne where it was most proper and that some Vestigia of his great Actions might be there found of it as well as that of the 22th Year of his Reign of a Summons of divers English Barons to come to his great Councell or Parliament in England and it could not be unknown to that great man of learning that as Authors and Writers have learned and Writ one out of another so have many Wrote that singly and alone which many of the Contemporaries have either not been Informed of or did not think fit to Mention the dreadfull plagues of Egipt and the most remarkable that ever were in so short a Time inflicted by God upon any Nation of the Earth since the universall Deluge destroying all but the Righteous Noah his Family the several Kinds of Creatures perserved with him the passage of Moses thorough the Red-Sea in his conduct of the People of Israel into the land of Canaan were not to be thrown out of the belief of Christians all others Venerating the Sacred Scriptures because Plato or Pythagoras travailing into Egypt in the inquest of learning have given us no particular accompts thereof and it will ever be as truly said as it hath been that Bernardus non videt omnia the ancient institution rites ceremonies of the most Honourable Garter is not to be suspected because our Law and Statute books have not made such Discoveries Recherches or a worthy and most elaborate Record thereof as the learned and Judicious Mr Elias Ashmole hath lately done or our Glauviles Book de legibus Consuetudinibus Angliae is not to fall under the question whether he was the Lord Chief Justice of England that Wrote it because there hath not been so much heed taken of him as ought to be by our Common-Law Year-Books or Memorialls of Cases adjudged in our Courts of Justice and later Law Books when the learned Pancirollo in his Book de deperditis Ac etiam de novis repertis and the exquisitely learned Salmuthius in his Comment or Annotations thereupon or the learned Pasquier in his Recherches and our ever to be honored Mr Selden in his rescuing from the Injuries of Time those many before hidden truths which he in his history of Tithes Jauus Anglorum Analett Brittanniae Titles of honor de Synedriis Judeorum uâ—or Jus naturae Gentium Historia Ead mei cum multis aliis and those very many discoveries of learning and Truth which the world must ever confess ought to be attributed to his walking in unknown paths nullius ante trita pede have very Justly escaped any such suspicions and that long and Eminent Treaty for Peace at Nimiguen for divers Years last past managed by most of the Monarchs of Europe and their concerns wherein the care and mediation of our King in the charge of his Plenipotentiaries have not wanted gratefull Testimonialls of the many very much concerned Kings and Princes in the putting a stop to the Warrs effusion of Blood and devastation of so great a part of Christendom is not or ought to be placed amongst the non liquets or Doubtings of after Ages because which by some Incuria or neglect of our Recording of it amongst our Archives which the more is to be pittied is not much unlikely to happen it is not to be met with amongst our Records or Historians When the so much Deservedly admired speculations and Experiments of the excelently Learned Sr Francis Bacon Lord Verulam in his Philosophy more then Aristotle and many others had made those Discoveries of des Cartes Depths and Investigations of our Sr Kenelme Digby into the most abstruse parts of Learning and that great addition now every where allowed to be true to that most necessary and usefull Art or Faculty of Physick of the circulation of the Blood in the Bodies of men first Discovered and made apparent by our late Learned Doctor Harvey though the Egiptian Arabian and Grecian Doctors and the greatly Famed Galen and Hypocrates had in all their labors knowledge and Practice not so much as taken notice of it were never the worse but rather much the better that former ages and men in the length of Art and the short Curriculum of their lives often intermitted with Sickness and the Cares and Troubles of the World had no sooner communicated it neither ought the Truth and value of our allways highly to be esteemed Seldens Labours in the vindication of our Kings Sovereignty in our Brittish Seas suffer any abate because no Englishman before had undertaken it or of his learned Observations and Comments upon Sr John Fortescues Book de laudibus Legum Angliae because he did not mention or had Discovered that that over-tossed and turmoiled worthy and learned Chancellor was after the Expulsion of the 3 Henrys 4. 5. 6th of the House of Lancaster under the later of whom he had Faithfully served from the Inheritance of the Crown of England by King Edward the Fourth with his better Title enforced publickly to beg his Pardon and with much ado and by Writing and delivering unto him a Book contradicting the Title of those former Kings and asserting that of his own which appeareth in that Act of Parliament in the 13th Year of that King for the Reversall of his Attainder And those disturbers and misuses of our Fundamental Laws might do well to sit down and consider that our uncontrolled every where in England venerable Littleton can certify us that if a man hold Land of his Lord by Fealty only for all manner of service it behoveth that he ought to do some service to his Lord for if the Tenant ought to do no manner of service to his Lord or his Heirs then by long Continuance of time it would grow out of memory whether the Land were holden of the Lord or his Heirs and thereupon the Lord may loose his Escheat of the Land or some other Forfeiture so it is reason that the Lord and his Heirs have some service done unto them to prove
commandeth that such things be no more done from henceforth And if any Officer of Fee doth it his Office shall be taken into the Kings hands It is provided and agreed that the King of his Office shall from henceforth grant attaints upon Enquest in Plea of Land or Freehold In the several limitations of prescription in severall Writs which might be to many very prejudicial it was in like manner provided that in a Writ of right none should presume to declare of the seisin of his Ancestor further or beyond the time of King Richard the 1st Writs of Partition and Novell Desseisin of the first voyage of King Henry Father of the King into Gascoigne Writs of Mort d' Auncestor of Cosinage Ayel et Nuper obiit of the Coronation of the sâ—id King Henry and not before That one plea shall be decided by the Justices of the King's Bench before another be commenced it is provided also and commanded by the King In an Act touching the Tenants plea in a Writ of Dower and at what time Assizes shall be taken it was declared that forasmuch as the King hath ordained those things unto the honor of God and Holy Church and for the Common-Wealth and remedy of such as be grieved he would not that at any other time it should turn into prejudice of himself or of his Crown but that such right as appertains unto him should be saved in all points and forasmuch as it is great Charity to do right unto all men at all times when need should be it was provided by the assent of the Praelates that Assizes of Novell Disseisin Mortd auncestor and Darrein presentment should be taken in Advent Septuagesima and Lent even as well as Enquests may be taken and that at the Speciall request of the King made unto the Bishops In the 4th Year of his Reign caused an Eatenta Maneriorum or Survey as to his particular Royal Revenue much like unto that of William the Conquerors of his Castles Houses Buildings Demesne-Lands Copyhold Commons Parks Forests Woods Asserts Tenants Cottages Pleas and Perquisites of the Counties Churches and the values thereof and of Heriots Fairs Markets Escheats Customs Rents Services Fishings Freeholders Woods Rents of Assize Tenures in Soccage or by Knights-Service Forreign Works and Customes Perquisites of Courts Fines and all other Casualties Declared by a Statute de Officio Coronatoris the Duties of a Coroner and enquiries to be made by them In the matter of Bigamy published and declared certain constitutions before him and his Councel and commanded them to be stedfastly Observed in the presence of certain Reverend Fathers Bishops of England and others of the Kings Councel to which the Justices as all the Kings Councel did agree Cap. 1. In what Cases aid shall be granted of the King in what not it is said that it is agreed by the Justices and other Learned men of the Kings Councel of the Realm which heretofore have had the rule and practise of Judgments that where a Feoffment was made by the King with a Deed thereupon if another person by a like Feoffment and Deed be bound to Warranty the Justices could not heretofore have proceeded any further neither yet do proceed without the Kings Command And it seemeth also they could not proceed in other cases wherefore they shall not surcease by occasion of any Grant Confirmation or Surrender but after advertisement made thereof to the King they shall proceed without delay Ca. 4. Concerning purprestures upon the Kings Lands to be reseised If any do complain of such Reseisins he shall be heard as right requireth 6. E. 1. In an Act concerning a man killing another in his own defence or by misfortune it is said the King commanded In Ca. 10. that the husband and wife being impleaded shall not fourch by Essoin that act of Parliament is said to be the Statute of the King In the same year an Exposition and alteration of the Statute of Gloucester in divers articles and points was made by the King and his Justices by the Kings Letters-Patents dated at Gloucester In the foregoing statutes or Articles whereof videlicet ca. 1. it is said to have been provided in ca. 3. Established the like in Ca. 4. in 5. and 6. provided and the like in the 8. and the offenders shall be greivously amerced to the King In the Statute of Gloucester ca. 14. where it is ordained that a Citizen of London shall recover in an Assize damages with the land it is said the King of his speciall grace granteth and the Barons of the Exchequer and Treasuâ—er shall be commanded And in severall statutes and Articles there made did afterwards by the advice of his Justices make in some of them divers expositions alterations and additions in several materiall parts or Points 7. E. 1. by his Writ directed to the Justices of his Bench Signified that it was accorded that at the next Parliament by the councell and assent of the Prelats Earls and Barons provision should be made that none should come to Parliaments Treaties or Assemblies with force and arms and in the next Parliament after the said Treaty the Prelates Earles Barons and the Commonalty of the Realm Comprised in the Votes and suffrages of the Prelats Earls and Barons there assembled to take order of that business have said that to the King it belongeth and on his part it is through his Royall Seigneury Strictly to defend by force of armour and all other force against his peace at all times when it shall please him and to punish those which shall do contrary according to the Laws and Usages of the Realm and hereunto they are bound to aid him as their Sovcreign Lord at all seasons as need should be and commanded the same to be read before him in his Bench and there enrolled In the Statute of Mortmaine made in the same Year that no Lands should be aliened in Mortmaine upon pain of the forfeiture thereof it is mentioned that the King for the profit of his Realm minding to provide a convenient remedy by the advice of his Prelates Earls Barons and others of his Subjects being of his Councel hath provided and ordained c. 10. E. 1. in the Statute of the Exchecquer touching the recovery of the Kings Debts the King by his Writ directed to the Treasurer Barons and Chamberlains of the Exchecquer for the Indempnity of him and his People Willed and Provided Anno. 1â— E. 1. in the Statute of Acton Burnell made for recovery of Debts the King for himself and by his Councel hath Ordained and Established In the Statute of Entails that the Will of the Donor should in all things be performed Ca. 1. which was of a grand Concern to all the Nobility Gentry and Freeholders of England in their Dignities Families Lands and Estates and the transmitting them to Posterity it is said wherefore our Lord the King perceiving how necessary and expedient it should be
the Commonalty of great Yarmouth the which Bills with the Indorsements thereupon made by the Lords were also on the Filace Divers Bills are there mentioned to be delivered and some mentioned to have been answered as happily all were saith that diligent Observator by the Lords of his Majesties Councel after the Parliament ended And therefore no marvel if all the Answers were not read on the last day of the Parliament when some of them were not made until after the Parliament ended and there is a Petition directed to the thrice redoubted Lord the King in these words following viz. Supplie vos Leiges the Praelates Dukes Earls Barons Commons Citizens Burgesses and Merchants of the Realm of England For Magna Charta to be confirmed unto them and for a general pardon setting down the Articles thereof whereof many were granted and many qualified as the King and his Councel pleased to answer the same And it was not the use and practise of those times to keep back any Answer that was justly displeasing to the King and his Councel much less any other For in Anno 11. H. 4. The Commons petition that none of the Kings Officers may receive any gift c. To which the King answered le Roy le veult In the same year a Petition of the Commons concerning Attorneys was granted by the King and both the Petitions and Answers were ingrossed in the Parliament Roll together with the rest which shews plainly that they were Read on the last day of the Parliament for the Royal Assent Yet notwithstanding the Kings Councel so misliked them that when the Clerk attended with the Roll of that Parliament for the drawing up of that Statute as the manner was those two Petitions and Answers were not thought good to be inserted in the Statute and therefore they did write in the Margent of the said Roll against the same these words Respectuatur per Dominum Principem Concilium which is written with another hand si non antea le Roy le veult answered to a Petition of the Commons without a Statute made there is only an Ordinance The Commons complain of Commissions granted to enquire of divers Articles in Eyre generally which have not been heretofore granted without Assent of Parliament and of the proceedings of the Justices therein contrary to the Law in assessing Fines without regard to the Quality of the Trespass To which was answered The King is pleased that the Commissions be examined in his presence In the 21th year of the Reign of King E. 3. the Commons pray that their Petitions for the Common profit and for amendment to have of mischiefs may be answered and indorsed in Parliament before the Commons so as they may know the Indorsement and thereby have Remedy according to the Ordinance of Parliament In the 37th year of the Raign of King E. 3. the Chancellor demanded of the Commons the last day of the Parliament after the Answers given to the Petitioners were Read if they would have the things so accorded mys par void ' Ordinance ou de Statute qui disoient qui bone est le matere les choses par voydes Ordinances nemy per Statut issint est fait And yet those were no otherwise drawn up into an Ordinance than only by entring the Petitions and Answers in a Parliement Roll. In the 9th year of his Raign the Articles of the Clergy being answered they procured the same Articles and Answers to be exemplified in such sort as they were entred in the Roll of Parliament which is lost without penning the same in any other form and were afterwards published under the great Seal of England with an Observari volumus In the Raign of the same King it was accorded that no Grand of the Land or other of what Estate or degree soever do make prizes or carriages for the houses of the King Queen or their Children and that by Warrant shall make payment thereof and it was ordained by Statute that that Accord be cryed and published in Westminster Hall And our Lord the King and his Councel willeth the same accord be cryed where it behoveth So as where they prayed the publishing thereof at Westminster Hall only the King and his Councel added the publishing thereof in London and elsewhere And the close Rolls of that year do declare that it was published in all the shires of England When an Ordinance had its first motion and being in the House of Lords in Parliament and agreed on and was drawn in the form of an Act of Parliament it was afterwards to receive the Assent of the Commons in Parliament In divers Parliaments when the Commons Petitioned for a Novel Ley which the Lords were willing enough to yield unto and the King to grant yet for that the King intended not to make any Statute that Parliament those Petitions have been deferred to another time and divers others which did not demand a new Law were granted and reputed for good Ordinances or Acts of Parliament As when in 21 E. 3. The Commons prayed that in Writs of Debt or Trespass if the Plaintiff recover damages against the Defendant that he have Execution of the Lands which the Defendant had the day in which the Writ was purchased Unto which the King answered This cannot be done without a Statute whereupon the King will advise with his good Councel and further do that which shall seem best for his people In the same year the Commons do shew that whereas before these times it hath been used that if Lands had been given to a man and his Wife and the Heirs of their Bodies issuing and the one dies no Issue having been had betwixt them the other may commit Wast without being impeached thereof that it may please our Lord the King to ordain thereof Remedy and that in such case a Writ of Wast be ordained To which the King answered Demurge entre les autres Articles dont novel ley est demandez Eodem Anno Shew the Commons that whereas a Writ of Possession doth not lye of Tenements deviseable though they be not devised to the great damage of all the Commons that it would please our Lord the King and his good Councel to ordain by Statute that Writs of Possession my lye and hold place as well of Tenements deviseable in case where they are not devised as of others and that there be saved to the Tenants their Answers in case that they be devised Whereunto the King answered Let it remain amongst the other Articles whereof a New Law is demanded In the 22d year of the Raign of the same King they do pray that for that many are disinherited by non Claim although they have good Right and namely those who are not learned in the Law that non Claim be gone and utterly taken away To which the King answered This would be to make a New Law which thing cannot
the King to have the Answers to their Petitions in writing in manner of a Patent under the great Seal of England for every County City and good Town one Patent for the comfort of the People which the King granted by the advice of the Praelates and Grands most of which were the Judges Officers of State and Privy Councellors of the King which Patent was sealed and entred in the Patent Roll under which was written la Charter ensealer pour les Communs After which the King summoned three Parliaments in 20 21 and 22. But no Statute was made in either of them The next Statute was made in Anno 25 E. 3. in which year the King had two Parliaments and Statutes made but mention nothing by whom they were made only the Commons do pray that the Petitions reasonably prayed by the Commons be granted confirmed and sealed before the departure of the Parliament And in the same Parliament n. 43. The Commons praying that the Statute made the last Parliament touching Reservations be published and put in Execution Unto which the King answered Let the Statute be viewed and recited before the Councel and if need be in any point let it be better declared and amended as the Statute of the King and the Realm be kept By which it appeareth that the Councel penned the Statutes Anno 27. E. 3. The King summoned a great Councel whither many Commons were sent and it was agreed that the Ordinances of the said Councel should be recited in the next Parliament Anno 28. E. 3. n. 16. The Commons prayed that the Ordinances of the Staple and all the other Ordinances made at the last great Councel which they have seen with great deliberation be affirmed in this Parliament and held for a Statute to endure for ever Unto which the King and Lords agreed with one mind so always that if any thing be to be put out let it be done in Parliament when need shall be and not in any other manner And accordingly there is an Addition at the end of the first Chapter against Provisors as in the Statute Roll and Print but not in rot Concilii Anno 27. nor yet in the Parliament Roll de Anno 28. E. 3. That whole Addition seeming to be added by the Councel alone and yet shewed to the Parliament for their consent before the said Statute was published And it is observable by that of 27 E. 3. n. 43. and this of 28 E. 3. n. 16. That the Statutes were most usually made long after the Parliament ended although in the Parliaments of 14 15. and 18 E. 3. they were engrossed and sealed in the time of Parliament sedente curia Statutes were made when some of our Kings were beyond Sea which happened often in the Raigns of E. 3. and H. 5. Anno 25. E. 1. a Parliament was held at London when the King was in Flanders by his Son Edward and the Statute made therein was put into the form of a Charter or Patent Anno 13. E. 3. were two Parliaments whilst the King was beyond the Seas but no Petitions or Statutes in either Anno 14. E. 3. a Parliament was holden in the Kings absence beyond the Seas by his Son Edward Duke of Cornwal Guardian of England but no Petition of the Commons nor Statute Anno 23. E. 3. a Parliament was held in the Kings absence by Lyonell the Kings Son Guardian of England and divers Petitions of the Commons were then answered but no Statute made thereof Anno 51. E. 3. the King could not be present at the beginning of the Parliament but granted a Commission to Richard Prince of Wales to begin the same Et ad faciendum ea quae pro nobis et per nos facienda fuerint And yet the Lords went to the King lying sick at Sheene the day before the Parliament ended where he gave his Royal Assent unto the Answers made unto the Petitions and commanded them to be read the next day in full Parliament but yet no Statute was made thereon notwithstanding the Commission for the Commission was but for matters to be done in Parliament as the words Ibidem facienda fuerint do import Anno 8. H 5. a Parliament was held in England by Humfrey Duke of Gloucester the King being then beyond the Seas wherein the Commons petitioned n. 16. That whereas it had been told them by divers Lords in this Parliament that the Petitions to be delivered to the Duke of Gloucester Guardian of England shall not be ingrossed before they be first sent beyond the Seas to our Soveraign Lord the King to have therein his Royal Assent and Advice wherefore may it please the said Lord Duke to ordain by authority of this present arliament That all the Petitions delivered by the Commons to the said Duke in the Parliament be answered and determined within this Realm of England during the said Parliament and if any Petition remain not answered and determined during the said Parliament that they be held for void and of none effect and that this Ordinance be of force and hold place in every Parliament to be held in the Realm in time to come To which was answered Soit avise per le Roy. Howsoever it may be conceived that all the Petitions with the Answers were sent to the King for his Advice and Assent which of them should be in the Statute and which not for in that Statute consisting of three Chapters which was made that year there are only two of the answers to their Petitions determined that is made into the said Statute viz. pet n. 4. in the 2d cap. and pet n. 7. in the 3 cap. The Commons did not Petition for any thing contained in the 5th cap. neither is there any thing recorded thereof in that Parliament Roll although one other of the Commons Petitions n. 15. for Women Aliens the Widows of Englishmen to have Dower was granted absolutely and the Petition n. 8. against Retail of sweet Wines altogether and the Petition n. 9. That Gascoign Wine should not be sold for above 6 d. the Gallon were granted with be it as is desired if it please the King Yet neitheir of these Petitions are in the Statute The usual time for making the Statutes was after the the end of every Parliament yea after the Parliament Roll was engrossed Anno 3. R. 2. The Temporal Lords met in the great Councel after the Parliament was ended where the Clerk read unto them the Enrolment of the Ordinance in that Parliament touching the power of the Justices of the Peace At which time it is probable the Statute was made and that Ordinance quite altered Anno 11 H. 4. n. 28. and 63. The Petitions and their Answers agreed on in Parliament are entred in the Roll with the rest which past into the Statute of that year and in the margent was written with another hand Respectuatur per dominum Principem concilium and neither of those are in the
vain Fears such as in constantem virum cadere non possunt should not be permitted to affright our better to be imployed Imaginations unless we had a mind to be as wise as a small and pleasant Courtier of King Henry the Eighths who would never endure to pass in a Boat under London-Bridge lest it should fall upon his Head because it might once happen to do so Our Magna Charta's and all our Laws which ordain no man to be condemned or punished without Tryal by his Peers do allow it where it is by Confession Outlawry c and no Verdict Did never think it fit that Publick Dangers such as Treason should tarry where Justice may as well be done otherwise without any precise Formalities to be used therein For although it may be best done by the advice of the Kings greatest Council the Parliament there is no Law or reasonable Custom of England either by Act of Parliament or without that restrains the King to do it only in the time of Parliament When the Returns Law-Days and Terms appointed and fixt have ever given place to our Kings Commissions of Oyer and Terminer Inquiries c. upon special and emergent occasions And notwithstanding it will be always adviseable that Kings should be assisted by their greatest Council when it may be had yet there is no Law or Act of Parliament extant or any right reason or consideration to bind Him from making use of His ordinary Council in a Case of great and importunate necessity For Cases of Treason Felony and Trespass being excepted out of Parliament first and last granted and indulged Priviledges by our and their Kings and Princes there can be no solid Reason or cogent Argument to perswade any man that the King cannot for the preservation of Himself and His People in the absence or interval of Parliaments punish and try Offenders in Cases of Treason without which there can be no Justice Protection or Government if the Power of the King and Supream Magistrate shall be tyed up by such or the like as may happen Obstructions So that until the Honourable House of Commons can produce some or any Law Agreement Pact Concession Liberty or Priviledge to Sit and Counsel the King whether he will or no as long as any of their Petitions remain unanswered which they never yet could or can those grand Impostors and Figments of the Modus tenendi Parliamenta and the supposed Mirror of Justice being as they ought to be rejected when the Parliament Records will witness that many Petitions have for want of time most of the ancient Parliaments not expending much of it been adjourned to be determined in other Courts as in the Case of Staunton in 14 E. 3. and days have been limited to the Commons for the exhibiting of their Petitions the Petitions of the Corbets depended all the Raigns of King Edward the First and Second until the eleventh year of Edward the Third which was about sixty six years and divers Petitions not dispatched have in the Raign of King Richard the Second been by the King referred to the Chancellor and sometimes with a direction to call to his assistance the Justices and the Kings Serjeants at Law and the Commons themselves have at other times prayed to have their Petitions determined by the Councel of the King or by the Lord Chancellor And there will be reason to believe that in Cases of urgent necessity for publick safety the King is and ought to be at liberty to try and punish great and dangerous Offenders without His Great Council of Parliament The Petitions in Parliament touching the pardoning of Richard Lyons John Peachie Alice Peirce c and a long process of William Montacute Earl of Salisbury were renewed and repeated again in the Parliament of the first of Richard the Second because the Parliament was ended before they could be answered Anno 1. of King Richard the Second John Lord of Gomenez formerly committed to the Tower for delivering up of the Town of Ardes in that Kings time of which he took upon him the safe keeping in the time of King Edward the Third and his excuse being disproved the Lords gave Judgment that he should dye but in regard he was a Gentleman and a Baronet and had otherwise well served should be beheaded but Judgment was howsoever respited until the King should be thereof fully informed and was thereupon returned again to the Tower King Henry the Second did not tarry for the assembling a Parliament to try Henry de Essex his Standard-bearer whom he disherited for throwing it down and aftrighting his Host or disheartning it 16 E. 2 Henry de bello monte a Baron refusing to come to Parliament upon Summons was by the King Lords and Council and the Judges and Barons of the Exchequer then assisting committed for his contempt to Prison Anno 3 E. 3. the Bishop of Winchester was indicted in the Kings-Bench for departing from the Parliament at Salisbury Neither did Henry the Eight forbear the beheading of His great Vicar General Cromwell upon none or a very small evidenced Treason until a Parliament should be Assembled The Duke of Somerset was Indicted of Treason and Felony the scond of December Anno 3. 4. Edwardi 6. sitting the Parliament which began the fourth day of November in the third year of His Raign and ended the first day of February in the fourth was acquitted by his Peers for Treason but found guilty of Felony for which neglecting to demand his Clergy he was put to Death In the Raign of King Philip and Queen Mary thirty nine of the House of Commons in Parliament whereof the famous Lawyer Edmond Plowden was oneâ— were Indicted in the Court of Kings-Bench for being absent without License from the Parliament Queen Elizabeth Charged and Tryed for Treason and Executed Mary Queen of Scots her Feudatory without the Advice of Parliament and did the like with Robert Earl of Essex her special Favourite for in such Cases of publick and general Dangers the shortest delays have not seldom proved to be fatally mischievous And howsoever it was in the Case of Stratford Archbishop of Canterbury in the fifteenth year of the Raign of King Edward the Third declared that the Peers de la terre ne doivent estre arestez ne mesnez en Jugement Si non en Parlement par leur Pairres yet when there is no Parliament though by the Law their Persons may not then also be Arrested at a common persons Suit they may by other ways be brought to Judgment in any other Court And Charges put in by the Commons in the House of Peers against any of the Peers have been dissolved with it For Sir Edward Coke hath declared it to be according to the Law and reasonable Customs of England followed by the modern practice that the giving any Judgment in Parliament doth not make it a Session and that such Bills as passed in either or
Parliament and that learned and pacifique Prince having been much tempted thereunto in his great want of Money by an offer of 200000 l. per annum which was more than the whole profits of the Excise upon Ale Beer Cider Coffee c. All the Salaries Cheats Charges and Allowances Filchings Lurches and False Accompis deducted could or did amount unto that kind of Revenue being since his late Majesties death to be no more than a moyety thereof And these Tenures in Capite were so inherent in the Crown of England as divers of the learned Judges of England in their Arguments in the Exchequer-Chamber in the Raign of King Charles the Martyr made no Scruple to assert that the Tenures in Capite were of so high a nature that they could not be taken away by any Act of Parliament And to take away from our Kings and Princes the love and honour of the people as well as they had done the Tenures in Capite the Nerves and Sinews of our Monarchick Government it was the especial work and design of those Enemies of our former happiness to take away also the Honour of his Crown and Hospitality and could not think they had done all their work until they had thrown the Pourveyance into the bargain of the Tenures in Capite which nothing but the value of the Kingdom it self could make an Equivalent recompence or purchase and the unhappy contrivers thereof might have put a better value upon it when in Michaelmas Term in the third year of the Raign of King James the first all the Judges of England did certify that it was a Praerogative of the King at the Common Law and that all the Statutes which have been made to correct abuses in the Purveyances took not away the Purveyances but confirmed them Et qui tollit Iniquitatem firmat proprietatem confirmat usum And all those mischiefs done by one that unhappily might have taken more heed of an Assembly which some flatteringly called the Collected Wisdom of the Nation when he could not well esteem them so to be when by Fudling Drinking Bribing and all the base Cheats imaginable they had procured themselves to be made Members of that much miscalled Parliament And yet after his late Majesties miraculous restoration being advanced unto great preferments and at the last a Grand Minister of State did so think well of his own doings as he publickly at the Table of Sir Harbottle Grimston Master of the Rolls in Chancery-Lane in the hearing of many worthy persons Sir Nicholas Strode John Hern Esquire and others one of them yet living ready to testify it what a most especial Service he had done for the King and Kingdom when he was a Member in Parliament and known to be the Kings Sollicitor General by a motion without any the Kings privity or direction to dissolve and destroy the Tenures in Capite and accept a Recompence for them which Serjeant Glyn a former Grand Rebel to his Majesty and after his Restauration crept in as the most of them did and got to be Members of Parliament was ready to assist by the offer of a Recompence by an Excise upon Ale Beer Sider and Coffee a Limb of that Dutch Devil which they had made use of in their Rebellion and time of his late Majesties and now Majesties persecution At which the Company standing amazed and Sir Nicholas Strode said that he should never have fought for the late blessed Martyr or come to his setting up his Standard at Nottingham if he could have foreseen it the most of the Nation at that time and almost ever since verily believing that it had been the folly and evil doing of Sir Edward Hyde the late Lord Chancellor afterwards Earl of Clarendon and therefore was sufficiently railed upon Cursed and Banned for it and yet he was so Faultless and Innocent therein as it can be witnessed by the now Earl of Clarendon his Son Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and Lord privy Seal in the Kingdom of England that this overbold presumptuous motion of a Servant and Councel at Law of that unfortunate weather-beaten Prince not being at all informed how or by whom the project came to be first hatched or moved his late Majesty calling together his privy Councel and advising upon that most unhappy proposition wherein the Rebel Parliament in February 1647. had made some Vote Act or Ordinance against the aforesaid Tenures under the notion of the Court of Wards being but two years before his Royal Fathers Murther and Oliver Cromwel had made some Act of his Worships miscalled Parliament some few years after as it behoved for the destruction of those Tenures in Capite when he intended as much as he could to take away the Kingship and Monarchy until he could make himself fit to govern a foolish besotted rebellious people they having before not at all made any mention or request to have the said Court of Wards put down or the Tenures in Capite by their High and mighty 19 Propositions nor were any complaints of grievances made thereby nor in all our Parliament Records or Journals or Historians since or before the Raigns of King Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror doth there appear to have been any Petitions in Parliament against them neither in that as it were intended deposing Remonstrance of the 15th of December 1641. wherein nothing was omitted that might injure or calumniate per fas aut nefas the Kings Authority or Government there appears to have been nothing against either the Tenures in Capite or Court of Wards And it can be proved that the Royal Martyr during his imprisonment in the Isle of Wight had designed that if ever he came again to his Rights he would upon all his Crown or Chequer Leases reserve some military Services notwithstanding all which his late Majesties great want of present Money and some setled Revenue perswaded him to hearken more than otherwise his own great Judgment would have done The Earl of Radnor was much against their dissolution alledging that the constitution it self was good and was not in it self to be cast away by any Male-administration Sir Geffery Palmer was very much for the preservation of the Tenures and so were many other and the Lord Chancellor Clarendon very much and so greatly as he called to the said Sollicitor General and said will you also put down the Pourveyances saying with some passion by God we seem to be against the late Commonwealth and yet are acting for it And his late Majesty was so unwillingly drawn to be in Love with that ever to be deplored Parliament contrivance to decapitate the Monarchy and not only that but Ireland and render all the Inferiour part thereof to be in a paralitique or dead palsical over-benummed in its Members as before that Act passed he sent for one Mr. Darnel an ancient and experienced Clerk and Attorney in the Court of Wards and Liveries to propose some expedient for the Regulation of
upon their Soveraign at his Court at the three great Feasts of the year viz. Christmas Easter and Whitsontide as the excellently Learned Sir John Spelman hath informed us where the Bishops might give an accompt as in so many Parliaments which needed no Summons Prorogations or Adjournments for it was not to be doubted but that almost every man might understand when those Grand Feasts or Solemnities began or ended what had been done or was to be done in their several Diocesses and the Earls within their several Counties and Provinces of which Anciently they had a Subordinate Government and were to render accompts thereof When though not praecisely the very same in number as to the Festivals of the year wherein our Old King Alfred and many of our succeeding Kings and Princes used to be yearly attended by their Bishops Earls and Nobility whereby they might the better often understand the Circumvolutions and various Accidents in their Kingdom in every year might have some resemblance with that of the great Charles or Charlemain the hugely as Eginard who was his principal Secretary witnesseth powerful valiant and vertuous King of France which Kings Daughter Bertha our Saxon King Ethelbert is said to have married and at her Instance upon the preaching of Augustine the Monk to have converted himself and all his Subjects to the Christian Faith and Religion and celebrated with great Solemnity and Magnificence the great Festivals of Christmas and Easter which with the addition of another being the Feast of Pentiost was never omitted to be sumptuously kept by all our succeeding Kings until the latter end of the Raign of our K. H. the 3d. The French with great Solemnity holding their Parl. or great Coun at their 2 great Festivals of Christmas Easter Unless any other great Affairs caused them to summon those their great Councels at other times which coming after the Raign of 〈…〉 H. 3. to be 10 laid aside by reason of their many voyages into Normandy long lasting often Wars with France or Scotland troubles discords at home as Parliaments especially when after the 48th year of the Raign of King Henry the third the attendance upon Parliaments was much more troublesom to the Commons in Parliament after their admissions into that great assembly though they had their charges and expences in going tarrying and returning allowed them by King Edward the first which was first begun 〈◊〉 mon Montfort and his rebellious partners only in 〈◊〉 H. 3. When the King was their Prisoner in the 〈◊〉 two Knights of the Shire for the County of York wh 〈…〉 those that were afterwards permitted to be present by 〈◊〉 Edward 1. in the 22 year of his Raign and in the Raign of our succeeding Kings did esteem it to be a damage to to them in their other employments affairs and loss of time better becoming their capacities until the impressions and effassinations of Pride Fear Flattery Ambition and Self-Interest had within a small time after their aforesaid admission into Parliament incited or inticed them to be packt by Roger Mortimer Earl of March in the Raign of King E. 2. to Grant Aids to help to advance his wicked and accursed purposes as is expressed in one of the Articles and Charges against the said Earl in the 4th year of the Raign of King E. 3. or to set up for a Trade or Factory for themselves or their Friends or such as they could purchase as a lamentable experience hath of late years told us And we find no such Doings or Factorings before that or 49. of King Henry the 3d. For King Athelstone held a Parliament at Exeter and the succeeding Saxon and Danish Kings Summoned and held their Parliaments at several places and Dissolved and Met again as their occasions and the more weighty and extraordinary Affairs of the Kingdom required The Norman Conquerour and William Rufus and Henry the 1. other than at their aforesaid Grand Festivals did neither restrain themselves to certain times or places either as to the Summoning Continuing Proroguing or Adjourning of their more than common or ordinary business which requiring short Councels and an hasty Prosecution or putting into Actions what their deliberate Advices had resolved upon could necessarily produce no long continuances but were not seldom without Prorogations or Adjournments as Mr. Pryn and all our Ancient and Contemporary Writers and Historians have plentifully testified In the 9th year of the Raign of King Henry the 2d A Parliament was called at Westminster where by reason of the frowardness of the Archbishop Becket and his Suffragan Bishops the King was displeased and the Parliament ended In the 20th year of the Raign of that King he called a general Assembly of the Bishops and Nobility at Clarendon where John of Oxford the Kings Clerk was President of that Councel and a charge was given for the King that they should call to memory the Laws Ecclesiastical of his Grandfather King Henry the 1st and to reduce them to writing which was done the Archbishop and Bishops putting their Seals thereunto and taking much against the Arch-bishops will their Oaths to observe them In the 33th year of his Raign a Councel of Bishops Abbots Earls Barons both of the Clergy and Laity was holden at Gaynington sub Elemosinae titulo vitium rapacitatis included therein saith Walsingham requiring Aid towards the Wars of Jerusalem the Kings of England and France resolving to go thither in Person the King of England taking upon him and wearing the white Cross. A Parliament was called at Nottingham by King Richard the first after his return from his Captivity which continued but four days a Parliament in 7. Johannis a great Councel or Parliament was holden at London and Adjourned to Reading whither the King not coming at the day appointed it was three days after Adjourned to Wallingford In the Raign of King Henry the 3d. His Great Councels or Parliaments were many times Prorogued or Adjourned in whose Raign the Popes Nuncio Summoning the Praelates of England to give an Aid to the Pope they excused themselves and alledged that the King was sick and the Arch-bishops and Bishops were absent and that sine iis respondere non possunt nec debent whereupon the Nuncio endeavouring to adjourn that Convocation they refused to come again after Summons without the Kings License in 6 H. 3. a Parliament 7. a Parliament in 8. a 3. Anno 10. a 4th Anno 11. a 5th a Parliament in 16. another in 17. Anno 19. a Parliament Anno 21. a Parliament Anno 22. a Parliament Anno 25. a Parliament Anno 28. 2 Parliaments Anno 35. a Parliament 36. a Parliament 37. a Parliament in 38. another being called in Easter Term which by reason of the absence of some Lords who pretended they were not Summoned according to Magna Charta was Prorogued to Michaelmas following Anno 42. another Parliament at London
the Kings Brother and Chancellor of England in the behalf of the King Lords and Commons declaring the cause of calling the Parliament and taking for his Theme Multitudo Sapientum learnedly resembled the Government of the Realm to the Body of a man the Right-hand to the Church the Left-hand to the Temporalty and the other Members to the Commonalty of all which Members and Estates the King not deeming himself to be one was willing to have Councel The Archbishop of Canterbury Chancellor of England by the Kings commandment declaring the cause of the Summoning the Parliament and taking for his Theme Regem honorificate shewed them that on necessity every Member of mans Body would seek comfort of the Head as the Chief and applyed the same to the honouring of the King as the Head And in that his Oration mentioning the Lords Spiritual and Temporal Knights Citizens and Burgesses giveth them no Title of Estates but the Kings Leiges In the presence of John Duke of Bedford Brother of the King Lieutenant and Warden of England and the Lords and Commons the Bishop of Durham by his commandment declared that the King willed that the Church and all Estates should enjoy their Liberties which could not include the King It was ordained that all Estates should enjoy their Liberties without the words Concessimus which could not comprehend the King who granted it to them but not to himself The Chancellor at the first assembling of the Parliament declared that the King willeth that all Estates should enjoy their Liberties which must be intended to others that were his Subjects and not to himself that was none of them The Archbishop of York Chancellor of England declaring the cause of Summoning the Parliament said the King willeth that all Estates should enjoy their Liberties in which certainly he well knew that the Person willing or granting was not any of the Persons or Estates to whom he willed and granted that they should enjoy their Liberties The Duke of Gloucester being made Guardian or Keeper of England by the King sitting in the Chair the Archbishop of York being sick William Linwood Doctor of Laws declaring the cause of summoning the Parliaâ—ent said that the King willed that every Estate should enjoy their due Liberties which properly enough might be extensively taken to Military men and Soldiers the Gentry Agricolis opificibus all sorts of Trades Labourers Servants Apprentices Free-holders Copy-holders Lease-holders single Women and Children Tenants at Will and which never were themselves Estates but the several sorts and degrees thereof wherein if any Law Reason or Sense could make the King to be comprehended an inextricable problem or question would everlastingly remain unresolved who it was that so willed or granted The King sitting in his Chair of State John Bishop of Bath and Wells Chancellor of England in the presence of the Bishops Lords and Commons by the Kings Commandment declared the causes of summoning the Parliament taking for his Theme or Text the words sussipiant montes Pacem Colles Justitiam divided it into three parts according to the three Estates by the Hills he understood Bishops and Lords and Magistrates by little Hills Knights Esquires and Merchants by the People Husbandmen Artificers and Labourers By the which third Estates by sundry Authorities and Examples he learnedly proved that a Triple Political vertue ought to be in them viz. In the first Unity Peace and Concord In the second Equity Consideration Upright Justice without maintenance In the third due Obeysance to the King his Laws and Magistrates without grudging and gave them further to understand the King would have them to enjoy all their Liberties Of which third Estates the Chancellor in all probability neither the King or they that heard him did take or believe the King himself to be any part The 15th day of August the Plague beginning to increase the Chancellor by the Kings Commandment in the presence of the 3 Estates the Clerks Translator or Abridger being unwilling to relinquish their Novelty or Errors of which the commonest capacity or sense can never interpret the King to be one Prorogued the Parliament until the Quindena of St. Michael The Bishop of Bath and Wells Chancellor of England in the presence of the King Lords and Commons declaring the cause of the Summons of Parliament said that the King willed that all Estates should enjoy thâ—â— Liberties which might intitle the King to be the Party willing or granting but not any of the Parties who were to take benefit thereby It was enacted by the whole Estates which may be understood to be the King Lords Spiritual and that the Lords of the Kings Councel none of theirs should take such order for the Petition of the Town of Plymouth as to them should seem best Letters Patents being granted by the King to John Cardinal and Archbishop of Canterbury of divers Mannors and Lands parcel of the Dutchy of Lancaster under the Seal of the Dutchy were confirmed by the whole Estates for the performance of the last Will and Testament of King H. 5. though it was severed from the Crown and was no part of the concernment thereof nor had any relation to the Publick or any Parliamentory Affairs the King himself that granted the Letters Patents could not be interpreted to be one of those whole Estates which were said to have confirmed them By the whole Estates were confirmed King Henry the 6th Letters Patents of the Erection and Donation of Eton Colledge and also of Kings Colledge in Cambridge with the Lands thereunto belonging which might well conclude the King although he being the Donor could not be believed to be any part of the whole Estates who by their approbation are said to have confirmed his Letters Patents The Chancellor in the name of all the Lords in the presence of the King protested that the Peace which the King had taken with the French King was of his own making and will and not by any of the Lords procurations the which was enacted And it was enacted that a Statute made in the time of King H. 5. that no Peace should be taken with the French King that then was called the Dolphin of France without the assent of the three Estates of both Realms should be utterly revoked and that no Person for giving Counsel to the Peace of France be at any time to come impeached therefore which may demonstrate that neither the Dolphin of France nor the King of England were then accompted to be any part of the several 3. Estates of the said Kingdoms The King by his Chancellor declared that he willed that all Estates should enjoy their Liberties it cannot be with any probability supposed that either he or his Chancellor intended that himself was one of the said Estates The Archbishop of Canterbury Chancellor of England in the presence of the King gave thanks in his behalf to the 3. Estates wherein no
themselves they with a parcel of conscience not of God did treat with the particular Lenders of the Money to King James and for ten l. or a very little in every hundred comed and took up their Privy Seals but were unwilling to trouble the King with the thoughtâ—s thereof to the damage of him and disherision of the Crown of England and being taken notice of and complained of a Commission was granted unto the Lord ottington Sir Henry Vane and Sir Charles Harbord the Kings Surveyor to enquire thereof and certify the King thereof wherein they were so kind hearted and the matters so managed as noâ—hing more was heard thereof but the City of London continueth in possession of the said Manors and Lands or have spent the same in assisting the late horrid Rebellion against him and together with it the CityOrphans Mony for which it hath been reported they are willing to pay them by composition after the rate of 6d per. ponnd caused a Bill to be exhibited by his Attorney General in his Court of Starr Chamber against John Earl of Clare and Mr. Selden for having only in their Custody two Books or Manuscripts directed unto him by Sir Robert Dudley an Englishman living in Florence and stiling himself a Titular Duke of that Countrey endeavouring to instruct him in the method of raising Money by a Tax upon all the Paper and Parchment to be used in England caused Sir Giles Allington to be fined in the High Commission Court for Incest and the Lord Audley Earl of Castlehaven to be arraigned in the Court of Kings Bench for Sodomy whereupon after Tryal by his Peers he was Condemned and Beheaded suffered a great Arcanum Imperii in his Praerogative in taxing or requiring an Aid of Ship Money or for setting out a Navy of Ships when the Kingdom was in danger to be disputed in the Exchecquer Chamber by Lawyers and Judges which King Henry the fourth of France by a constant Rule in State Policy would never yeild to have done imitated by Queen Elizabeth who in some of her Charters or Letters Patents as unto Martin Forbisher a great Sea-Captain declared de qua disputari nolumus upon the case or question of 10 s. charged upon Mr. Hamdens Estate in Buckinghamshire of 4000 l. p. Annum wherein all that could be raked out of or by the Records of this Kingdom was put together by Mr. Oliver St. John and Mr. Robert Holborn theformer being after made Cheif Justice of the Court of Common Pleas by Hambden and the Rebel party and the later taking Arms for the King faithfully adhered unto him whereupon that cause coming to be heard all that could be argued for the not paying or paying of it of twelve Judges that carefully considered the Arguments and gave their opinions there were ten concurred in giving Judgment for the King and only two viz. Justice Hatton and Justice Crooke who having before under their hands concurred with all the other and suffered their subscriptions to be publickly inrolled in their several Courts at Westminster could find the way to be over-instrumental in setting our Troy Town all in Flames whilst that pious Prince being overburdened with his own more than common necessities did not omit any part of the Office of a Parens Patriae but taking more care for his People than for himself too many of whom proved basely and wickedly ingrateful called to accompt Lionel Cranfield whom he had made Earl of Middlesex and Lord Treasurer of England fined him in vast sums of money ordered him during his life never more to sit in the House of Peers in Parliament received a considerable part of his Fine and acquitted him of the residue And being desirous as his Father was to unite the Kingdom of Scotland in their Reformed Religion as the more happy Church of England was both as unto Episcopacy and its Liturgy that attempt so failed his expectation as a mutiny hapned in the Cathedral Church of Edenburgh and an old Wife sitting upon a Stool or Crock crying out that she smelt a Pape at her Arse threw it at the Ministers Head whereupon a great mutiny began and after that an Insurrection which to pacify the King raised a gallant Army of Gentry and Nobility with all manner of warlike provision and marched unto the Borders but found them so ill provided for defence as they appeared despicable yet the almost numberless Treacheries fatally encompassing that pious King persuading him not to beat or vanquish them when he might so easily have done it he returned home disbanding his Army and a close Favourite of Scotland was after sent to pacify them but left them far more unruly than before shortly after which Philip Nye a Factious Minister that should have been of the Church of England but was not with some other as wicked Persons were from England delegated to Scotland to make a Coâ—enant of Brotherly Rebellion against the King and accordingly the Scots being well assured that their Confederates in England would not hurt them marched into England with a ragged Army with Petitions to the King and Declarations of Brotherly Love unto too many of their Confederates seised by the cowardise or carelesness of the Inhabitants the Town of Newcastle upon Tine notwithstanding a small Army ill ordered was sent to defend it better than they did so as the Scotch Petitioning Army quartering there and in the Northern parts the King hastening thitherwards with Forces was persuaded to summon at Rippon a great Council of many of his Nobility whither too many of them that came being more affected to the Scotch Army that came like the Gibeonites with old Shoes and mouldy Bread were allowed to be free-quartered and a Parliament suddenly to be summoned at London whereby to raise money for the discharge of their Quarters Army charges in the mean time the Scotch their Commissioners with their Apostle Alexander Henderson have license to visit London where they are lamented feasted and visited and almost adored as much as St. Paul was amongst the Macedonians or the Brethren who cryed up their holy Covenant and Religion to be the best the Church of England with her Ceremonies Common Prayers and Potage not to be compared unto it the Parliament would help all and the Scots Commissioners were so popular and in request as they seemed for that time to govern both the City of London and Parliament and by their peace pride and plenty had generated Sedition and Faction and that combustible matter in England burst into a Fire which could not be quenched the Kings Privy Council could not please the five Members nor Kimboltons Ambition and Envy be satisfied without being made a great Officer of State but proved after to be a general of some associated Counties against the King God might be worshipped with a thriving Conscience and the people taken care for by plundering Sequestration Decimation Killing Slaying or Impoverishing the Common Wealth or Weal Publick Pym
respectively which had their Original contradistinct Powers and Customs to judge and determine such Errours and Offences in Words or Actions that shall be committed by any of their Members in the handling or debating any matter depending which was contradicted by Queen Elizabeth when she charged the Members of the House of Commons in Parliament not to intermeddle in matters of Church or State or receive any Bills of that nature and severely punished some Members that attempted to do otherwise Yet they complained in their so strange a claim of those their never to be found Priviledges that they were to their great grievance broken by the Kings endeavouring to put a Salvo Jury to their Bill or Act of Parliament forbiding the pressing of Souldiers at that instant when there was so great an occasion for the Wars in Ireland and went much higher than the great Earls the Constable and Earl Marshal of England and Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester did when in a Parliament of King Edward the first they denyed him his accustomed Salvo Jure where he or his Privy Councel or Councel at Law adjudged it necessary And therefore humbly intreated his Majesty by his Royal Power and Authority whereof it may 〈◊〉 they would leave him as little as possibly they couldâ— to protect them in those and all other their Priviledges of Parliament And for the time to come would not interrupt the same and that they may not suffer in his Majesties favour when he should be so greatly obliged unto his Subjects as to restore again to his knowledge and Judgment after the end of such a Parliament never before known in England or any other Nation of the Christian World such a kind of Priviledge neither being possible to be found or heard of on Earth or amongst the Antipodes or in the discovery which Gonzagua's Geese made of the Countrey of the Moon where the Servants are reported to govern the Masters and the Children their Parents And that his Majesty would be pleased to nominate those that have been his Advisers that they may receive such condign Judgment as may appertain unto Justice And this his most faithful Councel shall advise and desire as that which will not only be a comfort to themselves but of great advantage to his Majesty by procuring such a confidence between him and his People as may be a Foundation of honour safety and happiness to his Person and Throne And probably had never adventured to fly so high a pitch if some of the Lords and Commons in Parliament had not upon the Scotch petitioning Rebellion and entring into England borrowed 150000 l. upon their several personal securities to pay their quarters whilst they were here which Parliament Manacles of their King would have amounted to more than the aforesaid Sir Edward Cokes figment of a modus tenendi Parliamentum used as he beleived in Edward the Confessors time And in the absence of Parliaments might have the Name and Title of King until they should make an occasion to Print a Remonstrance against him or arraign him And as a Prologue to their intended Remonstrance the next day they seeming not a little to congratulate his safe coming from Scotland did beseech him to give more Life and Power to the faithful Councel of his Parliament and being necessitated to make a Declaration of their grievances and the corruption of some of his Bishops especially such as are in a near trust and employment about him and were divers of them of his Privy Councel and about the Prince his Son and have thereby a dangerous operation in his Councel and Government in this time of a preparation for War betwixt his Kingdoms of Scotland and Ireland which was then but procured and fomented by confederacy Insurrection of the Papists and Bloody Affairs in Ireland for prevention whereof they have ingaged themselves and their Estates in the sum of 150000 l. Sterling or thereabouts for the necessary supply of his Majesty in his dangerous Affairs therefore they prayed 1. That he would concur with the desires of his Parliament for the depriving the Bishops of their Votes in Parliament which was the one half of that grand Fundamental of the Laws and Government of England in the House of Peers in Parliament and abridge their immoderate power usurped over the Clergy to the hazard and prejudice of the Laws Liberty and Religion of his Subjects and the taking away oppression in Church Government and Discipline punishing such Loyal Subjects as join together in Fundamental Truths against the Papists and by the oppressions of unnecessary Ceremonies 2. Remove from his Councel all the promoters thereof and to imploy such persons in his great Affairs and trust as his Parliament may conside in which was to govern him both in times of Parliament and without when he hath at his Coronation taken his Oath to govern according to his Laws not any of the Peoples 3 That he would not alienate any of the forfeited Irish Lands which begot good bargains for some of the ungodly contrivers when they after purchased their Rebel perjured Soldiers arrears for xvj d. per pound Which being fulfilled they his most great and faithful Councel upon these conditions â—â—all by the blessing of God as they would have it cheerfully undergo the expence of the War and apply themselves to such other means and Councels as shall support him and make him glorious both at home and abroad In order whereunto the contrary way they did the 15th day of December 1641. notwithstanding his earnest request unto them print and publish it wherein besides some of their own or their instigators unquiet Spirits ambitious or evil designs to misuse and Govern their Soveraign plainly appearing may be seen and the many greivances of their own making in the oppressing of each other and undertaking to determine of matters and Mysteries of State and the Arcana's and necessities of State of which they could not possibly without necessary Praecognita's be competent Judgâ—s they made a great addition to that prologue to their subsequent Rebellion and abominable consequence of the murder of that excellently pious Prince insomuch is it may be over and over again a wonder to be ranked amongst the greatest in what untrodden or dark inaccessible Caverns of the Earth these unknown and never accustomed Priviledges of the Parliaments of England could lurk or lye hidden when in all the Conservatorships of liberties devised at Running Mede forced upon King John the â—ovisions made at Oxford in the Raign of King Henry the 3d. neither any thing in the Raigns of King Edward the 2d 3. 4. and Richard 2d Henry 4 5 6. Richard the 3d the Usurper Henry the 7th King Henry 8. E. 6. Queen Mary Queen Elizabeth and and King James had never such shackles desired or claimed to be put upon any of them unto which those Parliament Remonstrants were the more incouraged by that oppressed Princes having his three Kingdoms
180. Dugdale's Baronage tit Mortimer 141 in margine c Ro. claus 22. E. 1. m. 4. in dorso d Pryns Animadversions upon Sir Edward Cokes 4 part of the Institutes p 2. and in his Register or Survery of Parliamentary writs 304. e Spelmaus Glossar ' tit Parliament f Neubrigensis g Mat. Paris 41. H. 3. p 1283. Selden tit honor 716 and 719. h Dors. Ro. Claus. 2. E. 1. Dors. claus 50 E. 3. part 2. m. 6. i Elsings ancient and present Manner of holding Parliaments ca. 2. p. 22. 23 and 24. k Hist. Eadmeri l Spelmani concilia Ecclefiastic 347. m Placita Coron 21. E. 1. Ro. 27. Kanic Placita Coron 13. E. 1. Ro. 80. n Dugdale ' s Baronage 1 Tem. 27. o Johannes Spelman filius Henrici Spelmani eraditissimus in vita Alfredi Regis lib. 2. 115. 116. Mat. Paris 1453. p Selden tit Honor 3 part ca. 5. 632. Sect. 6. Hist Eadmeri q Bracton delegibus con suetudinibus Angliae Elsings ancient and present manner of holding Par liaments in England 22â— r 1. H. Ro. Parl. m. 79. s Seldens Tables of Honor. t Spelmans Glossar in verbo Baro. u Seldens tit ' honour 639. 2 part ca. 5. Sect. 28. w LL Longobard l. 3. tit 8. l. 4. Conrad imper in Knilenbrogio x Spelman in verbo Pares Foedus Aelfredi cum Guthrun LL Henrici 1. ca. 31. 33. 57. y Scholia Jacobi Spiegel in lib. 2. Ligurini Guntheri 301. 302 Limâ—oeus de jure publici imperii Romano Germanici 1 Tom. ca. 9. Sect. 49. 51. 52. Spelman glossar ' in verbis Baro Pares Parliament a Harmanus Conringius de imper ' German ' 14. 15. Elsingss ancient and p 〈…〉 lent manner of holding Parliaments in England 16 17. al 〈…〉 b Selden tit Honour 795. part 2. ca. 5. Sect. 8. c Mat. Paris 200. d Selden tit Honor. 795. part 2. ca. 5. Sect. 20. e Fabian Philips tenenda non tollenda f L'Oyseau des Off 〈…〉 〈◊〉 aux ca. 2. 231. 232. g Martinus Magerus a Schomberg de armata militia 15. 316. 8â—4 idem ibidem 13. 268. 999. idem ibidem 221. 222. 596 idem ibidem 13. 245. 598. LL. Edward 〈◊〉 Heretochiâ—â— â—â—7 h Spelmane gloffar 216. tit Feodum sive feudum Gerardus Niger Obertus de Oâ—â—o de Feudis Herbert van Beaumont de origine feudi Hollandioe Frisiaeque Occidentalis 2. 3. 4 Paurmester de jurisdictione imperii Rom ' 40. 41 42 43 44 45. Craig de feudis Cuiacius lib. 8. Coldendorp Vulteius Wesenbachius 17. E. 2. i Spelmans glossar 217. Joannes Joachimus a Rusdorff Resentâ—al in Synops ' Feud in prefat ' ad lett Feltman de feudis in Epist. Feltman de Feudis Sect 2. Ca ' and 9. Feltman in teat de feudis 127. 25. 26. Feltman Tract de feudis p. 14 Capit. 8. 9. Idem pag 125 ca. 16. Ibm. p. 133. ca. 6. p 134. ca. 7. Littletons Tenures and Coke in his Comment thereupon ca. 1. tit Homage Sect. 85. Littletons Tenures tit ' Escuage Cokes 1 part Institutes tit Fee simple Ca. 11. Sect. 1. S. H. 7. 11 19. E. 3. 35 24. E. 3. 65 66 44. E. 3. 5. 48. E. 3. 2. Spelmans glosar Le grand Custum de Normandie in additione Du Fresne gloffar Tom. 1. p. 147. in verbo Alodiaiii Jo. Koppen in Rangensdorff in decisionibus question Illustrium in Germania Vincent and York Catalogue of Nobility tit Norfolk Schwedâ—râ—s part special ' ca. 5. de Electoribus Germ ' Imperii Forsterus de Advocatis Livy Plutarichs lives 12. Car. 2. k Spelman's Glossar ' l Fabian Philips tenenda non tollenda Justinian's Institutes 7. E. 1. m Fresne in verbo Pares LL. Alâ—man tit 9â— capitl car ' m. lib. 3. ca. 71. 72. Apud Marenlsum lib. 1. formul 32. n Paur Meister de jurisdict Imperij Rom. 45. tit de legibus Conrad Forcat in com de seudis o Du Fresne Tom. 3. 13â— p Du Fresne Gloffar tom 1. 492. 49â— q Du Fresne Idem 138. in Tom. 3. r Charta Regis Edwardi Confestoris Ecclesiae S. Petri Wellmon 25 Râ—gni sui Anno Domini 1066. E. 1. H. 9. ca. 10. s Ro. Parl. 2â— t Elsiag's Ancient and Modern manner of holding Parliaments ca. 1. p. 46. and 47. u Elsing ca. 2. 51. w Sigonius de antiquo jâ—re Civium Rom. lib. 2. ca. 2. x Concilia Spelman 32. 34. y Spelmaâ—l concilia 60 z Spelmanni concilia 119. Selden tit honour 632. Bede Hist Eccles lib. 2. ca ' 5. a Pryns 1st part of an historical collection of the antient Parliaments of Eng land 6. Spelmanni concilia 441. b Spelâ—an Concil c Pryns Part of historical collections of the antient Parliaments of England LL Saxonis d Pryns historical collections of the Antient Parliaments of England Secunda Charâ—â— E. Confessor S. Petri Westmonaster in Concil collect per H. Spelman e Sir Robert Filmers Freeholders grand Enquest Seldeni ad Eadmerum notae spicilegium 167 LL Gulielmi Conquest in Hist. Ecclesiastgentis Anglorum ex Beda LL Saxonis per Abrahamum VVhelocum f Seldeni ad Eadmerum notae spicilegium 198 199. h Mat. Paris 16. i Selden tit honor k Mat. Paris 60. 64 68. l Mat. Paris 51. 5. LLH 1. ca. 2. m Ordericus vitalis lib. 13. 930. n Mat. Paris 100. o Mat. Paris p Hovedeni Anpales parte posteriore 566 and 567. q Prrte 1st part of a brief Register of Parliamentary writs r Mat. Paris 98. 154. 158. 166. s Hoveden 376. 378. 413. t Mat. Paris 154. Mat. Paris 156. u Mat. Paris 158. w Idem 172 173. x Hoveden 417. y Hoveden 417. z Mat. Paris 173. a Mat. Paris 199. 200 204. 206. b Ro. claus 6. Johanni m. 2. 〈◊〉 c Ro. claus 6 Johannis m. 3 in dors d Mat. Paris 298 299. e Mat. Paris 304. Idem ibidem 310. 316. g Mat. Paris 316. h Mat. Pariâ— 316. and 318. i Mat. Paris 324. Mat. Paris 328. 336. 〈◊〉 Mat. Paris 421. Mat. Paris 336. l Mat. Paris 333. 429. 435. Idem 363. m Idem 372. n Mat. Paris Idem 421. 422 Mat. Paris 421. 422. 468. p Mat. Paris â—79 Mat. Paris 639. r Mat. Paris 681. s Idem 89â— Idem 325. P. 324. 32â— 693. Mat. Paris 709. 720. 7â—7 730. Mat Paris 709. Idem 749. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈…〉 Idem â—â—5 326 t Mat. Paris 881. u Ibedem 887. Mat. Paris 911. 913. 939. 946. 963. 964. 965. 968. Mat. Paris 971. u Mat Paris 974. w Mat. Paris 978. 981. 〈◊〉 x Mat. Paris 983. 984 985 986 987. Mat. Paris in vita Henrici 3. y Continua 〈…〉 Mat. Paris 980. 99â— 991 992 〈◊〉 z Mat. Paris a Mat. Paris b Mat. Paris c Mat. Paris 1002. Glossat ' Du Fresne in verbo seu tit Baro 485. 486. Isidor ' de orig ' verborum Angustini Serm. 48 ad fratres in eremo
and testify that the Land is holden of them and that without taking away the Fealty and repealing the Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy the Duty and Oaths of the Subjects remained as they did whilst they held their Land in Capite and by Knight Service Which probably as may sadly be lamented could never have hapned if the later men of the Law in England had not by the space of something more then Forty Years last past leaped over as it may be feared they have overmuch done the successive learned labours and Books in a long process of Time in the Reign of our Regnant Kings and Princes divers Judges and Sages of our Laws Recording from Time to Time Cases Judgments Decrees and Dicisions maturely and Deliberately adjudged therein But too much neglected those guidings better guides and faithfull Directors the Civill and Feudall Laws and suffred their Studies and practice to be imployed and incouraged in the Factious Seâ—iâ—ious Rebellious principles of those Times by following the gross Mistakes of Sr Edward Coke in his Discontent malevolence and Ill will unto the necessary and legall Regalities of the Crown and Idolizing as he did those grand parcells of forgery and Imposture entitled the Mirrour of Justice and the Modus tenendi Parliamentum and their neglecting the readings of Glanvile Bracton and Britton and other good Authors And the Civil Law was the Parent and Mother of many of the maximes and principles of that which is now called our Common Law And those men of the Law who without Books subsistence or Estates when they went beyond the Seas with their Sovereign and had not there the opportunities of the Knowledge or help of the Records of the Kingdom that might have been their best Instructers were for the most part but Young Gentlemen Born and Bred in the times of our Distempered Parliaments as those were that Tarried here who walked along with the Rebellion too much adhered unto them and came Weather-beaten again with his Majesty had understood as they might have done the Originall Foundation and Continuance of our Monarchick Government But King Edward the 1. who had passed over and overcome so many Hardships Difficulties Misfortunes and Storms of State was so unwilling to be afraid of a part of his Unquiet Baronage or to Humour the popularity and ignorance of any of the Common People or to be in fear of them or of any their Factious or Seditious Machinations making what hast his affairs would permit to return into England where his father having by his Death escaped the restless conflicts of a long and troublesome Reign and his Exequies and Ceremonies of buriall performed Róbertus Kilwarby Cantuariensis Archiepiscopus Gilbertus de Claro Comes Gloverinae a man that had been in Armes and opposite enough against his father and himself in the former convulsions of State and John Warren Earl of Surrey saith Samuel Daniel went up to the High Altar cum aliis Praelatis ac Regni proceribus Londiniis apud novnm Templum convenerunt Edwardum absentem Dominum suum Ligeam recognoverunt paternique Successorem honoris ordinaverunt assensu Reginae non Populi and before his return into England John Earl Warren and Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester in the Abby Church of Westminster sware unto him Fealty without asking leave of the People and proclaimed him King although they knew not whether he were Living or Dead caused a new great Seal to be made and appointed six Commissioners for the Custody of his Treasure and Peace whilst he remained in Palastine where by an Assassin feigning to Deliver Letters unto him he received 3 Dangerous Wounds with a poysoned knife then said and believed to have been cured by the Love of his Lady that Paragon of Wives and Women who sucked the Poyson out of the Wound when others refused the adventure and after 3 Years Travail from the time of his setting forth many conflicts and Disappointments of his aids and Ends left Acon well fortified and manned and returned homewards in which as he travailed he was Royally feasted by the Pope and princes of Italy whence he came towards Burgundy where he was at the foot of the Alpes met by Divers of the English Nobility and being Challenged to a Tournament by the Earl of Chalboun a man of extraordinary Renown Successfully hazarded his Person to manifest his valour thence came again into England with the great advantages of his Wisdom Courage and Reputation assisted by the memory of the fortunate Battle at Evesham and his Actions in the East SECT XVIII Of the Methods and Courses which King Edward the 1. held and took in the Reformation and Cure of the Former State Diseases and Distempers KIng Edward the 1st was together with his Queen Crowned at Westminster by Robert Archbishop of Canterbury Alexander King of Scotland and John Duke of Britanny attending that Solemnity which being finished he shortly after forced Leoline Prince of Wales who had taken part with Montfort against his Father King Henry the third to do him Homage and after a Revolt imprisoned and beheaded him did the like to his brother David and United Wales as a Province to England made the Statute of Snowden considered and perused their Laws allowed some repealed others collected some and added new as he well might there do for the Prince or King which Governed Wales had always used so to do and appointed one to give his assent to the Election of Bishops and Abbots And when The Pope demanded 8 yeares arreares for the rent or tribute of the Kingdoms of England and Ireland enforced from King John did by his letter answer that his Parliament was dissolved before it came and that sine Praelatis et Proceribus communicato concilio sanctitati suae super praemissa non potuit respondere et Jurejurando in coronatione suam praestito fuit obstrictus quod jura Regni sui servabit illibata nec aliquod quod diadema tangat Regni ejusdem no such clause or promise being in the Coronation Oath ut nihil absque illorum requisito concilio faceret Sent to Franciscus Accursius Docto of laws resident at Bononia in Italy the son of the famous Accursius the Civil lawyer to come with his wife family into England by his writ to the Sheriff of Oxfordshire commanded him to deliver unto the said Doctor Accursius the King 's manor house and castle of Oxford then no mean place for him and his wife to Inhabit Did so imitate the wisdom and providence of the Roman and Caesarean laws as Augustus Caesar and other of the Succeeding Emperours had done as he gave unto men learned in the laws which was more for the peoples good then in their suits and actions at law to court and live under the protection and humours of their popular Patroni's libertatem respondendi to give councell and advice to their clients in their concernments at law and
direct and plead their causes and was with us in England the originall of our Serjeants at law and pleaders mentioned in the Statute made in the 3d year of his Reign with great penalties to be inflicted upon them for any falshoods or deceits which should be committed by them which in the 3d year of the Reign of King Edward the 2d came to be so much in use and reputation much more since augmented by the grace and permission of our Kings and Princes into an eminent State and degree as they are only to be made and constituted by the King's writs appointed for the people to help them to Justice in their causes or actions either as to Prosecute for their Rights or defend them from wrongs and oppressions and intimate and shew unto Judges what the laws do require to be done according to Justice and equity and must needs be gratefull to the people who were so thereby freed from maintenance champerty and quarrels too frequently haunting the courts of Justice as it was enough for an advocate or Lawyer in discharging himself from actions brought against him for Champerty or maintenance to plead that he is Homo legis and was retained by his Client Although the word Narrator or Narratores pleaders have been found to have been used in the later end of the Reign of King Henry the 3. which might either proceed from the Civill or Caesarean Laws whereof the Lawyers of those Times would have been ashamed to have been such profest Enemies as some of ours are pleased to be because they do not or cannot afford to understand their excellencies or from the use or misapplication of some newly Devised Verba Novata by some rash or inconsiderable Authors or Writers unto some long before by gone and past ages such as Hint Sham c. not at all in those Times made use of or understood which have produced great Digladiations and Disputes both amongst Writers and Readers and made many that otherwise would not or should not go to Cuffs in the Dark for little or nothing And to satisfy his Subjects in the grand concernments of their Laws and Liberties Lives and Estates and to cause them to be fully kept and Executed sent his Writs to his Justice of Chester and the Sheriffs of all the Counties of England in these Words viz. Cum propter communem utilitatem totius Regni nostri meliorationem populi nostri relevationem de Communi concilio Praelatorum Magnatum Regni ejusdem no Knights or Citizens and Burgesses for the Commonalty being then present or believed to have been necessary quasdam provisiones quaedam Statuta cum magua diligentia ordinari postmodum sigillo nostro signari fecerimus tam a nobis quam a ministris nostris quibuscunque quam ab ipsis Praelatis Magnatibus nostris ac tota communitate Regni praedicti then understood to be included in the advice of the Prelates and Nobility ad perpetuam memoriam rei gestae inviolabiliter observand vobis mandamus in fide dilectione quibus nobis tenemini firmiter injungentes quod provisiones Statuta illa in pleno Com. Cestr. in singulis Hundredis ejusdem comitatuus Civitatibus Burgis Villis Mercatoriis locis aliis ubi expedire videritis legi publice solempnitor proclamari ea in omnibus singulis articulis suis ab omnibus de baelliva vestra futuris temporibus juxta tenorem corundem firmiter inviolabiliter observari provisionibus Statutis illis sic proclamatis ea in singmlis locis infra ballivam vestram ubi expediri videritis distinct aperte conscribi ea fidelibus nostris locorum illorum sic Scripta sine dilatione liberari vobis ac ballivis fidebus nostris habere cum eis indigueritis ostendenda quatuor vel duobus militibus de fidelioribus discretioribus militibus Comitatus praedicti de assensu totius communitatis tradâ— faciatis those Knights only and no Citizens or Burgesses trusted therein ad Securitatem dictae communitatis Cusiodiend it a vos habeatis in hoc mandato nostro exequendo ne nobis seu aliis per vos vel vestros seu vobis per defectum vestrum vel vestrorum imputari possit vel debeat quod ea quae in dictis provisionibus Statutis continentur vel corum aliquae in balliva vestra minus plene observentur hoc vobis universitati Comitatus praedictitenore presentium significamus T. R. apud Westm. 28 die Mar. consimiles literae diriguntur singulisVice comitibus per Angliam which needed not to have been said there if there had then been an House of Commons in Parliament or any such comprehension or representation of Commons by Commons in Parliament as the Authors of their supposed Sovereignty have fondly imagined And at the instance of John de Cobham altering the tenure of some of his Lands in Gavel-kind did it by his Charter in these Words ad Regis celsitudinis potestatem pertinet officium ut partium suarum leges consuetudines quas justas utiles censuerit ratas habeat observari faciat inconcussas illas autem quae regni robur diminuer potius quam augere conservare abolere convenit aut saltem in melius commutare Directed his Writ to Roger de Seyton and other his Justices Itinerant at the Tower of London in these Words viz. Rex dilectis fidelibus suis Magistro de Seyton Sociis suis Justiciariis Itinerantibus apud Turrim London Salâ—tem Sciatis quod per dominum H. Regem patrem nostrum nos ac Consilium nec non alios fideles suos qui cum eodem patre nostro convenerant apud Marleberge provisum fuit quod si coram quibuscumque Justiciariis Itinerantibus appellum vel querimonia fieret de roberia pace fructa vel homicidio aut aliis commissis tempore guerrae nuper suborte versus eos qui fuerunt contra eundem patrem nostrum vel alios aut dc hujusmodi commissis presentationes fierent sicut ad Capitula Coronae fieri solent nullus ea occasione amitteret vitam vel membra aut penam perpetui Carceris incurreret set alio modo de dampius amissis vel ablatis transgressionibus fieret Judicia castigatio secundum discretionem Justiciariorum dicti patris nostri insuper diligenter attenderent observarent ea que continentur in dicto de Kenilleworth Et habeant Justiciarii in singulis Itineribus suis transcriptum dicti prefati Ita quod de his quae per alios Justiciarios ipsâ—â—s patris aostri ad hoc assignatos termina fuissent seu terminari deberent nichil facerent Justiciarii dicti patris nostri Itinerantes sine speciali mandato suo si forte sibi idem pater noster aliquid injungeret sciendum quod tempus guerrae