Selected quad for the lemma: england_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
england_n	duke_n	king_n	normandy_n	8,526	5	11.2327	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A46946	A confutation of a late pamphlet intituled, A letter ballancing the necessity of keeping a land-force in time of peace, with the dangers that may follow on it	Johnson, Samuel, 1649-1703.	1698 (1698)	Wing J825; ESTC R24417	24,726	39

might justly make the Realm so very cautious about the next King the Confessor's Norman Retinue which for all their care laid the Foundation of the Norman Invasion For as soon as Duke William heard both at once of the Death of Edward and the Coronation of Harold he assembles the States of Normandy and lays before them his Pretensions to England and sollicites their assistance to recover it shewing them apparent probability of success by infallible Intelligence he had from the State his strong Party therein with the debility and distraction of the People Daniel p. 34. These were Friend-Indians got into the Bowels of the Realm who thus betrayed it to a foreign Invasion In short the Wisdom of the Nation in former Ages by which we subsist at this Day was against the admitting of any Aliens into the Kingdom unless it were Merchants-Strangers for the sake of Commerce and they too were restrained in these two Points besides divers others not to take a House nor stay above 40 days as we find by the London Petition reciting the ancient Usages and the Act made upon it 50 E. 3. Tener hostiel de fair leur demeure outre 40 jours la ou en temps passe nul estranges Marchants nul des cestes points solint user But this is a Subject that deserves a just discourse because the very great care our Ancestors took and the weighty Reasons upon which they proceeded in this Affair cannot be fully seen at a glance nor be truly represented in a few words by the by The empairing of the Natives the discovering the Secrets of the Realm to our Enemies abroad the ill Offices they always did at Court witness the Count of St. Paul's advice to R. 2. which put him upon all the outragious Tyranny of the latter part of his Reign their being the constant Implements of Arbitrary Princes when they could not confide in their own Subjects that is when they would not serve them in their arbitrary Designs nor be made the Instruments of enslaving their native Country these were some of the most obvious and most frequently avowed Reasons against the admission of Strangers or suffering them to be here But then there were others which lay much deeper at the very bottom of the Constitution For every Hundred in a County being subdivided into Decennaries or Tythings and these consisting of Men that were all bound for one another and were mutual Pledges for the good behaviour of each other and every Master of a House answerable for his whole Family it was impossible there should be any room left in England either for Strangers or Vagabonds And this was the Perfection of the English Constitution both in the Saxon and Norman Times which rendered it the most united Nation under Heaven and they were all of them in strictness of Speech conjurati fratres in defensionem regis regni and as much sworn Brothers as if they had been one Mothers Children Now in such a Constitution it was impossible for a Stranger to thrust in his Nose for where could nine Men together be found to answer for Monsieur Whatchum who had neither Friends by Father's side nor Mother's side to be his Hostages with whom they must converse by an Interpreter of whom they could have no hold nor security having no knowledg and who might go and leave his Pledges in the lurch as lightly as he came And therefore the Strangers and Aliens that were so often evacuated could not have made their abode here if they had not crept in as Inmates into great Cities or at Court or in the Church and there it was they swarmed and lived upon the spoils of the Nation Our most judicious Antiquaries cannot mention these Decennaries or associated Neighbourhoods without bewailing the decay of that part of our Constitution as if the Nation had thereby lost all its compacted Strength and were become like a great Wall of loose Stones without Morter and only a multitude of Individuals I am sorry too but do not think the loss of them so fatal For whether the English Temper and Inclination led them to these Guilds and Fraternities or whether the living so long under them produced that Temper or both I am sure it runs in a blood and all Englishmen still retain a reservedness and shyness towards Strangers and cannot be suddainly acquainted they also will engage very far for one another and they take an injury done to another as done to themselves These fruits and advantages of the Decennaries still remain as if they were yet standing And tho the English have now Squabbles and Differences amongst themselves so they had then and a Headborough to compose ●hem yet a common Cause and a common Enemy always reconciles and unites them and as loose as the Stones may seem to be let but an Invasion come and that will find Morter This was the old English Conduct heretofore towards Foreigners but the modern Policy is for the direct contrary a general Naturalization Whenever I hear that word I cannot forbear thinking What is old England now to be planted and peopled Or are we to begin a new Commonwealth with an Asylum in Romulus's way The Nation never yet wanted People to keep the Plough going notwithstanding the great encrease of Tillage and we have more hands for Manufactures than we can find in Employment Our Merchants and Retailers are innumerable and most of our Professions are overstock'd And this glut of Men continues tho one would have expected that the vast Colonies we have sent into America should long since have drained us We have shoals of Seamen to maintain our Dominion there and to enlarge Commerce and tho England be an open Country yet it is so well man'd that it scorns all other Fortifications What then do we want Strangers for unless it be to make a dearth of Provision which is always a greater Tax upon our own People than a Capitation and more unequally laid or else to beat out our own substantial Manufactures with Outlandish frippery and foreign Knacks I have heard indeed that it will raise the price of Land but is the Nation going to sell However raising the price of it will make it only so much the worse for an English Purchaser Others would have a General Naturalization for the sake of the French Refugees who being shut out of their own Country for being Protestants ought by all means to be encouraged to make this their home I think all the World endeavours to make earnings of that poor People and to serve their own little ends upon them Their own Monarch gained several Points by expelling them out of France for thereby he shewed the plenitude of Arbitrary Power which will have all its Slaves believe as they are bidden as well as they do every thing else and can at pleasure make out casts of vast numbers of Natives who had as much right to stay in their own Country as any of those whom they left

than go to their Dinner In these three things united lies our Strength for if our Cause and Courage were gone as they will go or stay both together Nos numerus sumus and we should be an easy Prey to the next Invader For the Wolf never cares how many the Sheep are And again tho our Cause and Courage be never so good if it were possible for an Invasion to out-number us they might subdue and be too many for us by their odds And therefore it is worthy of the publick Wisdom of the Nation to take care to preserve it intire in all these Particulars for while the People are in heart to fight and have somewhat to fight for and are enow of them there is no danger of any harm coming to them They can indeed be broken and enslaved no other way but by a Standing Army for while there is no force to over-rule the Law takes place but then they may be drained and diminished in the strength of their Numbers several ways these two especially First by suffering the Natives of England to straggle into foreign and remote Countries from whence in all likelyhood they will never return especially if they have offers of Preferment and those are often our usefullest Men whereby they are lost to the Nation or else into Countries nearer home where they may possibly hereafter take Service and be employed to our prejudice and these are a double loss for every single Man that goes out is two against us The like may be said concerning our Horses which next to our People are of the greatest use in War and yet agreeably to all our other Contradictions we fright the People with Invasions and at the same time transport our Horses daily and mount our Invaders A second way of diminishing the Strength of the Nation as to its numbers is by letting in Foreigners and Aliens amongst us To a Mans first superficial thoughts it may seem quite otherwise and that it is an Addition of Strength but upon a true computation it is a great abatement and for every Foreigner living in England we have an English man the less Because they not only are a dead weight to the Nation and cannot be relied upon for any assistance but perhaps they may be Enemies for who can vouch for Inhabitants unknown And then so many Thousands as they are so many Thousands we must strike off from our seven Millions to ballance them The old Romans had that Notion of a Stranger that he was an Enemy and by the Name Hostis indifferently expressed them both and indeed who can know them asunder And if they be Enemies they are certainly the most dangerous as being already within us Neither is it the first time that Strangers in England have been the Nest-Eggs of a Foreign Invasion The Saxon Aid that Vortigern and his silly Thanes let in sent afterwards for so many more of their Country-men as served to conquer the Nation The Normans likewise that were here in England in the Confessors time were a great help and encouragement and inlet to the following Norman Invasion For tho the Kingdom expresly ordered when they first sent for him over as having dearly paid for the admission of Strangers That he should not bring any number of Normans along with him mandantes ei ut securè cum Paucis Normannis veniret paruit autem Edwardus cum paucis in Angliam veniens c. yet so many found the way hither afterwards as filled the best places both in Court and Church as we learn by Ingulphus Abbot of Croyland who very well knew So that Duke William had a settled Correspondence and a Party ready formed long before he came I know there are many amongst us that can find out great Security in their being of this or that Country this or that Religion so in new-New-England they have a distinction of Friend-Indians and Enemy-Indians but very often that distinction is lost and they prove all one But these Men have a yet farther reach for they will have neither Friend-Indians nor Enemy-Indians nor Indians at all but know how to make them all their own and very good Englishmen by a General Act of Naturalization which is just such a Fetch as the winning of Persons disaffected to a Government by giving them the greatest Places of Trust which only enables them to do the more Mischief This Project is so contrary to our Constitution that he who has the Original Magna Charta with K. Iohn's Seal to it may find there if he pleases to look into it this Original English Right That all Strangers shall be amoved out of the Kingdom Accordingly the Practice was ever both before and since to keep Strangers out of the Kingdom or when ever they got in and encreased to any number to expel them and set them a fatal Day for their departure by which time they all slunk away and vanished like so many Phantasms or Apparitions for so the old Historians pleasantly express it as if the Nation took great Contentment in it And indeed they thought them always such a Grievance that when they could not otherwise find means to send them home as when they were the Queens Kindred or otherwise countenanced by the Court the Barons with Sword in hand would see it done At other times they bought them off when they could not otherwise be fairly rid of them of which we have this following remarkable Instance Hanelec Prince of Denmark married an Heiress to one of the Saxon Heptarchs and thereby the Danes got Footing in England which caused all the Danish Outrages till Knute But when Knute was possessed of the whole Kingdom after the Death of Edmond Ironside To have England see that now he was hers he sends away his Navy and Stipendiary Soldiers home to their Countries and puts himself wholly upon this People taking the way of Mildness a better means for his Establishment than Force but the Land paid for the remuneration of his People and this Evacuation of Strangers 83000 Pounds of Silver which it rather consented to do at once than to have them a daily burthen to pester the State for ever These are the words of our Historian Daniel p. 19. Our ancient Historians add that this was done Rogatu Baronum at the Request of the Parliament which is plain by their paying the Money Notwithstanding this there were so many Danes got into the Kingdom in these 3 Danish Reigns which lasted but 26 Years as served to lord it over the Natives so Brompton p. 934. expresses their contemptuous Usage of the English If a Dane met an Englishman upon a Bridg the Englishman durst not stir a foot till the Dane had quite passed the Bridg and moreover unless the English had made the Danes an Obeysance they were sure to be soundly beaten But this at the Death of Hardiknute put an end to the Danish Line and occasioned the total expulsion of them for ever And this