Selected quad for the lemma: england_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
england_n	edward_n	king_n	year_n	23,738	5	5.6713	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A39783	A discourse of government with relation to militia's	Fletcher, Andrew, 1655-1716.	1698 (1698)	Wing F1295; ESTC R6686	23,004	68

Gentlemen And that King declares in the Act of Parliament by which they are established that he will not burden his People by any Tax or Imposition for their Maintenance Henry the Seventh King of England seems to have perceived sooner and understood better the Alteration before-mentioned than any Prince of his time and obtained several Laws to favour and facilitate it But his Successors were altogether improper to second him For Henry the Eighth was an unthinking Prince The Reigns of Edward the Sixth and Queen Mary were short and Queen Elizabeth loved her People too well to attempt it King James who succeeded her was a stranger in England and of no Interest abroad King Charles I. did indeed endeavour to make himself Absolute tho somewhat preposterously for he attempted to seize the Purse before he was Master of the Sword But very wise Men have been of Opinion that if he had been possessed of as numerous Guards as those which were afterwards raised and constantly kept up by King Charles the Second he might easily have succeeded in his Enterprize For we see that in those Struggles which the Country Party had with King Charles the Second and in those Endeavours they used to bring about that Revolution which was afterwards compassed by a Foreign Power the chief and insuperable Difficulty they met with was from those Guards And tho King James the Second had provoked these Nations to the last degree and made his own Game as hard as possible not only by invading our Civil Liberties but likewise by endeavouring to change the Established Religion for another which the People abhorred whereby he lost their Affections and even those of a great part of his Army Yet notwithstanding all this mismanagement Britain stood in need of a Foreign Force to save it and how dangerous a Remedy that is the Histories of all Ages can witness 'T is true this Circumstance was favourable that a Prince who had married the next Heir to these Kingdoms was at the Head of our Deliverance yet did it engage us in a long and expensive War And now that we are much impoverished and England by means of her former Riches and present Poverty fallen into all the Corruptions which those great Enemies of Vertue Want and Excess of Riches can produce that there are such numbers of Mercenary Forces on foot at home and abroad that the greatest part of the Officers have no other way to subsist that they are commanded by a wise and active King who has at his Disposal the formidable Land and Sea Forces of a Neighbouring Nation the great Rival of our Trade A King who by Blood Relation other particular Ties and common Interest has the House of Austria most of the Princes of Germany and Potentates of the North for his Friends and Allies who can whatever Interest he join with do what he thinks fit in Europe I say if a Mercenary Standing Army be kept up the first of that kind except those of the Vsarper Cromwel and the late King James that Britain has seen for thirteen hundred Years I desire to know where the Security of the British Liberties lies unless in the good Will and Pleasure of the King I desire to know what real Security can be had against Standing Armies of Mercenaries backed by the Corruption of both Nations the Tendency of the way of Living the Genius of the Age and the Example of the World Having shown the difference between the past and present Government of Britain how precarious our Liberties are and how from having the best security for them we are in hazard of having none at all 't is to be hoped that those who are for a Standing Army and losing no occasion of advancing and extending the Prerogative from a mistaken Opinion that they establish the antient Government of these Nations will see what sort of Patriots they are But we are told that only Standing Mercenary Forces can defend Britain from the perpetual Standing Armies of France However frivolous this Assertion be as indeed no good Argument can be brought to support it either from Reason or Experience as shall be proved hereafter yet allowing it to be good what Security can the Nations have that these Standing Forces shall not at some time or other be made use of to suppress the Liberties of the People tho not in this King's time to whom we owe their Preservation For I hope there is no Man so weak to think that keeping up the Army for a year or for any longer time than the Parliaments of both Nations shall have engaged the publick Faith to make good all Deficiencies of Funds granted for their Maintenance is not the keeping them up for ever 'T is a pitiful shift in the Vndertakers for a Standing Army to say We are not for a Standing Army We are only for an Army from year to year or till the Militia be made useful For Britain cannot be in any hazard from France at least till that Kingdom so much exhausted by War and Persecution shall have a breathing space to recover Before that time our Militias will be in order and in the mean time the Fleet. Besides no Prince ever surrendred so great Countries and so many strong Places I shall not say in order to make a new War but as these Men will have it to continue the same The French King is old and diseased and was never willing to hazard much by any bold Attempt If he or the Dauphin upon his Decease may be suspected of any farther Design it must be upon the Spanish Monarchy in case of the death of that King And if it be objected that we shall stand in need of an Army in such a Conjuncture I answer that our Part in that or in any other foreign War will be best managed by Sea as shall be shown hereafter Let us then see if Mercenary Armies be not exactly calculated to enslave a Nation Which I think may be easily proved if we consider that such Troops are generally composed of Men who make a Trade of War and having little or no Patrimony or spent what they once had enter into that Employment in hopes of its Continuance during Life not at all thinking how to make themselves capable of any other By which means heavy and perpetual Taxes must be entail'd for ever upon the People for their Subsistence and since all their Relations stand engaged to support their Interest let all Men judg if this will not prove a very united and formidable Party in a Nation But the Vndertakers must pardon me if I tell them that no well-constituted Government ever suffered any such Men in it whose Interest leads them to imbroil the State in War and are a useless and insupportable Burden in time of Peace Venice or Holland are neither of them examples to prove the contrary for had not their situation been different from that of other Countries their Liberty had not continued to this time

same Trusts Besides that the employing such men would not be sutable to the Design of breeding the Men of Quality and Estate to command as well as the others to obey To obviate these Difficulties and because the want of a good Model of Militia and a right Method for training people in time of Peace so as they need not apprehend any War tho never so sudden is at this day the bane of the Liberty of Europe I shall propose one accommodated to the invincible Difficulty of bringing Men of Quality and Estate or men of any Rank who have passed the time of Youth to the use of Arms and new because tho we have many excellent Models of Militia delivered to us by antient Authors with respect to the use of them in time of War yet they give us but little information concerning the Methods by which they trained their whole People for War in time of Peace so that if the Model which I shall propose have not the Authority of the Antients to recommend it yet perhaps by a severe Discipline and a right method of disposing the minds of men as well as forming their bodies for military and vertuous Actions it may have some resemblance of their excellent Institutions What I would offer is that four Camps be formed one in Scotland and three in England into which all the young men of the respective Countries should enter on the first day of the two and twentieth Year of their Age and remain there the space of two Years if they be of Fortunes sufficient to maintain themselves but if they are not then to remain a Year only at the Expence of the Publick In this Camp they should be taught the use of all sorts of Arms with the necessary Evolutions as also Wrestling Leaping Swimming and the like Exercises He whose condition would permit him to buy and maintain a Horse should be obliged so to do and be taught to vault to ride and to manage his own Horse This Camp should seldom remain above eight days in one place but remove from Heath to Heath not only upon the account of cleanliness and health but to teach the Youth to fortify a Camp to march and to accustom them respect being always had to those of a weak Constitution to carry as much in their march as ever any Roman Souldier did that is to say Their Tents Provision Arms Armour their Vtensils and the Palizadoes of their Camp They should be taught to Forage and be obliged to use the Countrymen with all justice in their Bargains for that and all other things they stand in need of from them The Food of every man within the Camp should be the same for Bread they should have only Wheat which they are to be obliged to grind with Hand-mills they should have some Salt and a certain number of Beeves allowed them at certain times of the Year Their Drink should be Water sometimes tempered with a proportion of Brandy and at other times with Vinegar Their Clothes should be plain coarse and of a fashion sitted in every thing for the Fatigue of a Camp For all these things those who could should pay and those who could not should be defray'd by the Publick as has been said The Camp should be sometimes divided into two parts which should remove from each other many miles and should break up again at the same time in order to meet upon some mountainous marishy woody or in a word cross ground that not only their diligence patience and suffering in marches but their skill in seizing of Grounds posting bodies of Horse and Foot and advancing towards each other their chusing a Camp and drawing out of it in order to a Battel might be seen as well as what Orders of Battel they would form upon the variety of different Grounds The Persons of Quality or Estate should likewise be instructed in Fortification Gunnery and all things belonging to the Duty of an Ingenier And Forts should be sometimes built by the whole Camp where all the Arts of attacking and defending Places should be practised The Youth having been taught to read at Schools should be obliged to read at spare hours some excellent Histories but chiefly those in which Military Actions are best described with the Books that have been best written concerning the Military Art Speeches exhorting to military and vertuous Actions should be often composed and pronounced publickly by such of the Youth as were by Education and natural Talents qualified for it There being none but Military Men allowed within the Camp and no Churchmen being of that number such of the Youth as may be fit to exhort the rest to all Christian and Moral Duties chiefly to Humility Modesty Charity and the pardoning of private Injuries should be chosen to do it every Sunday and the rest of that day spent in reading Books and in conversation directed to the same end And all this under so severe and rigorous Orders attended with so exact an execution by Reward and Punishment that no Officer within the Camp should have the power of pardoning the one or withholding the other The Rewards should be all honorary and contrived to sute the Nature of the different good Qualities and Degrees in which any of the Youth had shown either his Modesty Obedience Patience in suffering Temperance Diligence Address Invention Judgment Temper or Valour The Punishments should be much more rigorous than those inflicted for the same Crimes by the Law of the Land And there should be Punishments for some things not liable to any by the common Law immodest and insolent Words or Actions Gaming and the like No Woman should be suffered to come within the Camp and the Crimes of abusing their own Bodies any manner of way punished with death All these things to be judged by their own Councils of War and those Councils to have for rule certain Articles drawn up and approved by the respective Parliaments The Officers and Masters for instructing and teaching the Youth in all the exercises above-mentioned should upon the first establishment of such a Camp be the most expert men in those Disciplines and brought by incouragements from all places of Europe due care being taken that they should not infect the youth with foreign Manners But afterwards they ought to consist of such Men of quality or fortune as should be chosen for that end out of those who had formerly past two years in the Camp and since that time had improved themselves in the Wars who upon their return should be obliged to serve two years in that Station As for the numbers of those Officers or Masters their several duties that of the Camp-Master-General and of the Commissaries the times and manner of Exercise with divers other particulars of less consideration and yet necessary to be determined in order to put such a design in execution for brevity's sake I omit them as easy to be resolved But certainly it were no hard matter