Selected quad for the lemma: england_n
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A70102
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A brief justification of the Prince of Orange's descent into England, and of the kingdoms late recourse to arms with a modest disquisition of what may become the wisdom and justice of the ensuing convention in their disposal of the crown.
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Ferguson, Robert, d. 1714.
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1689
(1689)
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Wing F733; ESTC R228036
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25,801
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42
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the concurrence of the Two Houses of Parliament Dispose Settle and Entail the Crown as shall be thought most needful and convenient For this see Rastal's second Vol. 13 Eliz cap. 1. where the words of the Statute are as follows Be it Enacted that if any person shall in any wise hold and affirm or maintain that our Sovereign Lady Elizabeth the Queens Majesty that now is with and by the Authority of the Parliament of England is not able to make Laws and Statutes of sufficient Force and Validity to Limit and Bind the Crown of this Realm and the Descent Limitation Inheritance and Government thereof or that this present Statute or any other Statute to be made by the Authority of the Parliament of England with the Royal Assent is not or shall not or ought not to be for ever of good and sufficient force and validity to Bind Limit Restrain and Govern all persons their Rights and Titles that in any wise may or might claim any interest or possibility in or to the Crown of England in Possession Remainder Inheritance Succession or otherwise howsoever that every such person so Holding Affirming or Maintaining during the Life of the Queens Majesty shall be judged a high Traytor and suffer and forfeit as in cases of High-Treason is accustomed And that every person so holding affirming or maintaining after the decease of our said Soveraign Lady shall forfeit all his Goods and Chattels Nor was the Power and Authority of Parliament for conveying and disposing of the Crown ever questioned or gainsaid till a few Mercinary People about ten years ago endeavoured to obtrude upon us a pretended Divine and unalterable Right to the Sucâ—ession which was the more irrational strange and to be wondered at seeing all the Race of the Stewarts after Robert the first had no other Title to the Crown of Scotland but what they derived from an Act of Parliament in prejudice and preclusion of these of the Ligitimate and right Line For the said Robert having had three Sons and one Daughter by a Concubine named Elizabeth More whom he afterwards married to one Gifford himself at the same time taking into Marriage Eufemia the Daughter of the Earl of Ross by whom he had Issue Walter and David Earls of Athol and Strathern and Eufemia that was afterwards married to James Douglass Son to the Earl of Douglass The forementioned Robert did not only upon the Death of his Wife Eufemia and of Gifford the Husband of Elizabeth More take into Wedlock his former Concubine Elizabeth More but obtained by an Act of Parliament that the Children whom he had begotten upon her in Concubinate should be Entitled unto the Crown and that his Lawful and Legitimate Children by his Wife Eufemia should be precluded and debarred And it was heretofore the more surprising unto me to find the Pensionaries and Advocates of the late Duke of York plead for a Divine and unchangeable Right of Succession seeing all the claim that the Scots Race had to the Throne of England through their being descended from the eldest Daughter of Henry the Seventh was from and by an Act of Parliament which vested the said Henry in the Crown of this Realm For tho' the fore-mentioned Henry by reason of his Marriage to Elizabeth Daughter to Edward the Fourth of the House of York had a Legal Title to the Crown of England by the Common Law yet he was so far from insisting upon and allowing it that he chose to hold and possess the Crown in the force and vertue of an Act of Parliament For as his Title by the House of Lancaster was both originally unlawful and had particular flaws and defects in it so all the claim he could pretend unto that way was in the Right of his Mother who as she outlived his advancement to the Throne several years and so she was never admitted to the Royal Authority nor suffered to sway the Scepter But that which is more peculiarly my Province at present is to enquire what Power and Right the Peers and Commons of England have in and over the Crown for the Conveying Disposing and setling of it in case of a Devolution through the Thrones becoming by one means or another empty and vacant And as to this we stand provided with many and signal Presidents of the Crowns having been Conferred and Bestowed as the General Councils and Parliaments of the Kingdom judged most conduceable to the publick Safety and Benefit but still keeping within the Sphear and Circle of the Royal Family and Line The Saxon times afford several Instances and Examples in proof and confirmation hereof if it were either needful to recount them or if the brevity to which I am bound up and obliged would allow me to represent them in their full and due light and to adorn them with the circumstances that do belong unto and enforce them But all the Presidents I shall produce from thence shall be those of Alfred and Edward the Confessor of which the latter was last and the other the first Universal Saxon Monarch Horn assureth us in his Mirrour that the People of England after great Wars Tribulations and Troubles suffered for a long time by reason of their multiplicity of Kings did at last Elect and Choose one King to Reign over them whom they made to Swear that he should not only Govern them by Law but that he should be obedient to suffer Right as well as others of his people should be Accordingly Alfred acknowledgeth in his Will subjoyned unto his Life by Menevensis that he owed his Crown to the Bounty of his Princes and of the Elders of his People Principes cum Senioribus populi misericorditer ac benignè dederunt And for Edward the Confessor he could have no Right to the Crown save by the Grant and Gift of the People seeing the Claim by Descent and Common Law was in his Nephew Edward the Son of Edmond Ironside Accordingly all our Historians lodge the Confessors whole Title to the Soveaignty in his being Electus in Regem ab omni populo The power which the people of England had in the Disposal of the Crown during the time of Saxons is confirmed unto us by that Noble Record which Sir Henry Spelman hath cited Concil Vol. 1. pag. 291. For we do there find how that in a Parliament held at Calcuth An. 787. it was Ordained and Enacted in illo conventu pananglico ad quem convenerunt omnes Principes tam Ecclesiastici quam seculares unà cum populo Terrae That Kings should be Elected by the Parliament ut Eligantur à Sacerdotibus Senioribus populi and that being chosen they should have Prudent Councellers Fearing God Confiliarios prudentes Deum timentes And this Right over the Crown and about the disposal of it which our Ancestors challenged and exercised all the time of the Saxons they have maintained and exerted with no less courage and vigour in every Age since the coming in of
the Norman Race William the First who is unjustly stiled the Conqueror as having subdued none but Harold and those that abetted him did no otherwise obtain the Crown nor ascend the English Throne save in the vertue of an unanimous and free Choice and Submission of the Peers and Body of the People Convenientibus Francis Anglis illisque omnibus concedentibus Coronam Angliae Dominationem suscepit saith the Anonimous Author subjoyned to Sylas Tailor's History of Gavelkind A Clero populo susceptus ab omnibus Rex acclamatus say Matth. Paris and Florilegus Ab omnibus proceribus Rex est Electus says Walsingham Vniversi Hilari consensu eum sibi in Regem Dominum coronari consonuerunt saith Will Pictav when it had been proposed unto them whether they would receive and admit him or not Nor did the said William only obtain the Crown by the Peoples Choice but he was made to Swear before his Coronation that he should Govern the People justly keep and observe unto them all their old Laws and consent unto the having such farther Laws Enacted as should be found needful for the Preservation and Prosperity of the Realm Se velle cunctum populum juste Regere rectam legem statuere tenere says one antiquas bonas leges inviolabiter observare says another As for William the Third and Henry the First who are the two next in the Roll and List of our Kings it is undeniable that they became possessed of the Crown by the meer Gift and Choice of the People For being advanced to the Throne in prejudice of and to the preclusion of Robert their Elder Brother they could have no other pretence clam or right unto it but what they derived from the People and were indebted for unto Parliamentary Power and Authority Our Writers do not only give us an account of their several Elections and of the Oaths by which they became bound unto the Kingdom but of the previous Conditions Promises and Tearms by which the people were influenced and prevailed upon to raise them unto and honour them with the Regal Dignity For William Rusus having promised Si Rex foret say Eadmer and Brompton se justitiam aequitatem misericordiam per totum Regnum in omni negatio servaturum That if he could be chosen and admitted King by the English he would in all things keep and observe Justice Equity and Mercy throughout the whole Kingdom he was thereupon in Regem Electus Consecratus first Elected and then Consecrated King. And as Matth. Paris tells us He was in a great Council or Assembly of the Nobility and Wise Men of the Kingdom Volentibus omnium animis with the cheerful consent of them all in Regem acceptus accepted for and admitted to be King. And for Henry the First the same Author informs us how that having called a general Council of the Nobles and People to meet at London he promised unto them provided he might be chosen King Emendationem Legum c. A reformation of those rigorous Laws which his Father and Brother had obtruded on the Kingdom and that he would frame just Laws grounded on those of Edward the Confessor and that he would likewise not only remit the Taxes which had been unduely exacted of the Subject but punish such persons as had been the Authors of them and that thereupon the whole Assembly unanimously chose him and appointed him to be Consecrated King. And as he intirely owed his Crown to the Election and Grant of the People so he as freely acknowledged it in his Charter see Hagulst where he says Sciatis me consilio Baronum Regni Angliae ejusdem Regni Regem Coronatum esse Know ye that I am Crowned King of England by the Common Council of the Barons of the said Kingdom But least any should wonder why Robert was all this while Excluded while his two younger Brothers were preferred before him and exalted to the Throne it may not be amiss to take notice of the reason of it as it is assigned by Knighton namely because the said Robert semper contrarius adeo innaturalis extiterat Baronibus Regni Angliae had been always harsh unnatural and averse to the Barons of England 'T were an easie matter to go through all the succeeding Kings to the very entrance of the Scots Race and to shew how the People of England have in all Ages exercised a Right and Power in the Disposal of the Crown but this is enough for an Essay and may serve without an enumeration of more Examples to awaken the Peers and the Representatives of the Commons of England to claim and exert that Power at this conjuncture which from the first original of the Government has belonged inseparably unto them That which now remains to be Treated of is what becomes honest men to desire and what all men have reason at this time to expect from the Wisdom and Justice of the approaching Convention in relation to the bestowing conveying and setling of the Imperial Crown of this Realm And that the Considerations which are to be here offered with all Humility as well as Modesty may both stand in the clearer light and have the greater efficacy upon the Minds of those for whom they are designed I shall briefly premise these things 1 That in the circumstances wherein we are through the Kings having withdrawn himself and forsaken the Government the Crown cannot be said to go by Descent and in the way of Inheritance but the Disposal of it falls to the Body of the People of England in their Representatives by way of Cess and Devolution There being no Death Resignation nor Demise of the fore-going Regent there can be no Heir nor any Plea for the Descent of the Crown to a person under that notion Though there may be all the Reason and Justice imaginable for granting and conveying it to the person that in another case would have been so yet there is neither Common nor Statute Law in the vertue of which it can be now said to descend Proximity in Blood may render a person fit to be taken notice of by them who are to Dispose it and Royal Qualities and Vertues may make one deserve and merit it to that degree that it would be the highest injury to the Nation and to the People themselves to bestow it elsewhere but yet for all this nothing doth Legally Entitle unto it but the Will Donation and Gift of the People 2. That in the present case nothing can determine limit or restrain those in whom the disposal of the Crown is become lodged but their own Will guided and regulated by the Measures of what is most conducible to the publick good Many things may serve to indicate and direct where it will be most for the safety and honour of the Kingdom to have it Setled but it is meerly the pleasure of the great Council and of the Representative of the Nation that can authoritatively fix it Former