Secondly I 'll shew that this their confounded principle of perfect Confusion is not only against the Fundamental Law of the Land but against the sense of every Law that ever was made in it Every preamble of an Act and that of every Proviso there runs with A Be it Enacted by the Kings most Excellent Majesty It is no Stat. if the King assent not 12. H. 7. 20. H. 8. by and with the CONSENT of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons in the present Parliament Assembled And then let any sober person Judge where lies the Soveraignty would it be suffer'd to be thus exprest were they not satisfy'd they were not all Soveraigns or if they were ought it not according to this Rebel and Republican run We the King Lords and Commons Enact but I 'll let him know how and what the Libertine would again have that Enacting part of an Act of Parliament to be tho the Politick Knave fear'd it was too soon yet to declare plainly for an Usurpation viz. Be it Enacted and ordained An Act. March 1657. Vid. Act of Oblivion 51 by his Highness the Lord Protector Or the Parliament of England having had good Experience of the Affection of the people to this present Government by their ready Assistance in the defence there of against Charles Stewart Son of the Late Tyrant and his Forces invading this Nation do Enact c. That our Kings in the time of the Saxons Danes and some part of the Normans had more absolute Power over their Subjects than some of their Successors since himself can't deny the Charter of Liberties being made but in the Reign of Henry the Third and when the People had less of Priviledges the Kings must be supposed to have had more of Praerogative therefore we shall examine only what and where the Supremacy is at present and where the Laws of the Land not the Will of the Prince do place it In the Parliament that was held at York in Edward the Seconds time The Rebellious Barons that 15. Ed. 2. had violently extorted what Concessions they pleas'd from the Crown in His like those in the three foregoing Reigns when they seal'd almost each Confirmation of their Charter in Blood were all censured and condemn'd and the encroaching Ordinances they made in those Times all repeal'd Because says the Statute The Kings Royal Power Great Stat. Roll. 26. H. 3. to Ed. 3. 1. Ric. 3. Exact Abridg fol. 112. was restrain'd against the Greatness of his Seigniory Royal contrary to the State of the Crown and that by Subjects Provisions over the Power Royal of the Ancestors of our Lord the King Troubles and Wars came upon the Realm I look upon this as an absolute Acknowledgment of a Royal Power which is sure the same with his Soveraign sufficiently distinguisht here from the Parliaments or the Peoples co-ordinate Supremacy for those condemn'd Ordinances were lookt upon as Usurpations upon the Kings Supremacy which they call the Power Royal of his Ancestors and not as our Author would have too of the Sovereign power of Lords and Commons At the Convention of the three Estates first of Richard the Third where 1. R. 3. the Parliament call themselves so themselves expound also what is meant by it And say it is the Lords Spiritual Temporal and Commons of this Land assembled in present Parliament so that we have here the whole three States besides the King owning themselves such without assuming to themselves a Soveraign power recognizing the Right of Richard and acknowledging him the Sovereign And tho I shall for ever condemn as well as all Ages will their allowing his Usurpation a Right which was an absolute wrong yet this is an undeniable Argument that then they did not make their King Co-ordinate with themselves made themselves declared themselves three States without him and acknowledged their King the Sovereign and Supream That Act that punisht appeals to Rome with a premunire in Henry the Eighâ—h's time gives this Reason why 24. H. 8. none should be made to the Pope nor out of the Kingdom because the King alone was only the supream head in it It tells us expressly That England is an Empire that the King the Supream Head has the Dignity and Royal Estate of the Emperial Crown unto whom a body Politick divided into Terms and Names of Spirituality and Temporality been bounden owe next to God humble Obedience c. Who has furnisht him with Plenary Entire Power Preheminence Authority Prerogative and Jurisdiction Here his Body Politick is devided into Spiritual and Temporal here he is called the supreme Head and here I think is a full Recognition of his sole Sovereignty And 't is strange that what a Parliament did in Opposition to Popery should be so zealously contradicted by such Sycophants that pretend so much to oppose it In the next place he tells us of an error he lay under that he thought our Commonalty had not formally assembled in Parliament before Henry the Thirds time but of that now is fully Page 103. convinc'd by the Labours of some learned Lawyers whom he names and lets them know too how much they are obliged to him for the Honor But I suppose he reads but one sort of Books and that such as suit with his Humor and Sedition and of that Nature he can meet with Variety for I dare avow that within the space of six years all that ever was or can be said against the best of Governnent our own all that was or ever will be rak't up for justifying a Rebellion and restoring a Republick from falsifyed Roll and Record from perverted History and Matter of Fact by Pens virulent and Factious with all the Art and Industry and whatever thought could invent for its Ruine and Destruction has been Printed and Publisht such an Universal Conspiration of Men of several Faculties each assisting with what was his Excellency his Talent in Treason which seemed to be the Task-Master of the Town and Monopolizer of Trades But our Politician might return to his old Opinion again did he but consult other Authors I believe as learned Antiquarians I am sure more Loyal Subjects who can shew him that the Saxons Councils call'd the Witena Gemotes had in them no Commons That the Conqueror call'd none of them to his great Councils none in those of his two Sons that succeeded nor none in any of the Parliaments down to Henry the Third my Lord Coke tells us of the Coke first Institutes Lib. 2d C. 10. T. Burgage Names this Parliament had before the Conquest as Sinoth Michel or Witena Gemote which he says implyed the Great Court or Meeting of the King and all his Wise Men And also sometimes of the King with his Council of his Bishops Nobles and the Wisest of the People and unless from the wisest of the People and all his Wise Men they can make up an House of Commons I am sure
have wisht a Fellow that had the Misfortune which he call'd Happiness to carry War and Confusion wherever he went We had several Protestants of our own Nation fled from a real Persecution of ou◠Zealous Queen to * Vid. Troubles at Frankfort Edit Ann. Dom. 1642. Frankfort a Town in Germany and there lived quietly with submission toward the Supream Magistrate till this Geneva Gentleman no sooner arrived but he sets all i◠Combustiom is accused of High Treason toward the Emperor for comparing him in Print ‖ Sanderson's History of King James p. 15. in some of Mr. Sidney's Similitudes to a Tarquin Nero Caligula for which he was forc'd to fly the Town and Post away to what could only bear with as well as breed such Vermin the Lake or their Commonwealth of Italy About the Year 1558 the Queen Regent of Scotland when the Reformation was but in the beginning as a special Act of Favour for so it must be call'd because then not only contrary to her own Religion but the Law of the Land allow'd the Congregators which were Conventiclers then too as well as now because the general Worship establisht was not theirs the Bible in their own Language But they no way contented with an Act of Grace from the Crown and Instigated by this Incendiary this Scandal of the Reformation Knox that had taught them they might Demand with their Swords what was deny'd them by Law fell a reviling her even for such a signal favour and when she sent for some of the more furious of the Faction they came all attended with a multitude of Favourites and Force that for her Preservation she was compell'd to Command them to depart And the best of Governors might well fear the worst from such an audacious Assembly but this was so much the more offensive to them only because they were Commanded to offend her less that they throng'd into her Privy Chamber threatned her with their Arms till she was constrained to pleasure them against Law And as they then menac'd a Force so they afterward made it good with as much violence for away they went pulling down Monasteries and * St. Andrew's Scone Sterling Edenburg c. Spotswood pag. 123 124. Churches and seconding their Sedition with what could only succeed it Sacrilege that is from Traytors to their Soveraign to be Rebels to their God And this by that Sanctified Beast that invited them to debase themselves to Brutes to be divested of Humanity was call'd a Purging of the Temple as if our Saviour Christ had countenanced an Extirpation of the Religion of some Christians But though the Queen at last granted them the free and publick exercise of their Religion though at last she only begg'd the private use of her own that was by such Seditious Subjects thought a boon too great to be begg'd by their Soveraign they Protest against it Preach against it Print against it and Assault her House of Worship break the Wax Candles with the Windows of her Chappel force their Queen Regent to fly to Dunbar and then as fairly Depos'd her for being fled though at the same time they profest against her Deposition And if we 'll believe a Loyal and Learned * Sanderson p. 31. Author they proceeded so far in their petulant piece of Reformation that they Religiously Reform'd the very Petticoats of the Queen and the Ladies of the Court which they look'd upon as too fine for the plainness or simplicity of the Kirk How near our present Pretenders that have taken Arms for the Protestant Religion will tread in the steps of their Reforming Predecessors must be Collected from the Precedents they give us of their being but Implacable Republicans especially when we have nothing now to be Reform'd unless what they deny'd to the Grandmother of our present Soveraign that their King himself shall not be indulg'd to exercise by himself the Religion he professes at the same time he Protests to defend all his Subjects in the establish'd Profession of theirs The Actions of the late Rebel Scot of the last Age they say squinted like their Argyle that headed them working one way when they profest to design another and they might have had as much reason to distrust the Promises of his late Declaration the Sincerity of his Son that succeeded him even in a Rebellion In the Year 1565 when the Queen of Scots was married to Henry Stewart Lord Darnly The Rebel-Lords instigated from the Preachings and Principles of this Knox the Ferguson of his Age who rail'd at the Government and reflected upon the King be took themselves to Arms and brake into open Rebellion Lord Darnly upon this Match being proclaim'd King marcht against the Rebels who fled into England and though through Intercession this Rebellious Business was Reconcil'd yet within two Years after the King was barbarously Butcher'd and Dispatcht but by whom because their Historians do not agree in it can be only best determined by Conjecture and must probably lye at their Doors that could Rebel against their Sovereign in an open War and then sure as likely to set upon Him in a secret Assassination especially when their Principles instructed them in both and their Preachers had made the Murder of their King an Oblation to their God And besides when they rebell'd also against Bothwell the Queens second Husband too as well as the first whom they forc'd to fly into Denmark seiz'd on the forsaken Queen secur'd her in an * Isle of Lochlevin Island compell'd her to resign her Crown and if we 'll credit an Authentick * Sanders History of K. James pag. 52. Historian were not so well satisfied with her Resignation of her Sovereignty but that they consulted too to deprive her of her Life and very likely to have prevented her loving Cousin Elizabeth in England Upon the same Principles the same Seditious Daemocraticks proceeded against her Son and Successor that was afterward our own Sovereign K. James then a young Prince about 12 Years old whom they †Vid. Spotwoods Hist p. 323 324. seiz'd at Ruthen carried in Triumph and Constraint to Edenburgh from which he was forc'd to contrive an Escape which he made by the Means of Collonel Stewart a Captain of his Guards but shortly afterward * An. 1503. incited by the Seditious Insinuations of their Geneva Principles brought them home fresh hot and reeking with Blood and Rebellion by one Melvill that had come from thence but a few years before to supply not only Knox's stock of treasonable Positions but to succeed him in his Place of an implacable Incendiary his Predecessor expiring a Year or two before he came over by this Factious Fellow 's and his Associates Seducements did I say shortly after the Earl of Gowry conspire against the King and break out into an open Rebellion which he deservedly suffered for with the loss of his Head Then is this succeeded by Bothwells Rebellion who had contriv'd
against whose more dangerous Sedition there was lately made special Provision by a particular ‖ Act for Regulating Corporations where they particularly swear they abhor the Trayterous Proposition of raising Arms by His Majesties Authority against His Person Oath Lastly to conclude the Confutation of this sad silly sort of Sophistry this Seditious Nonsense 't is shrowdly to be suspected that from the same sort of Sophisters fallacious Inferences was first insinuated that prejudicial Opinion I call it so because it looks like a Doctrine of some concerned party That Societies were not punishable in the next World for the Villanies they had committed in this That is the Members were not to suffer there for what they had acted in Relation to such a BODY here this Religious Absurdity has been Publisht by some Seditious Pens from the Press I wish I could say not imposed upon Loyal ones too both from that and the Pulpit for Errors especially when coloured with the bait of Interest tho first hatcht by the Brooders of all bad Principles till well examined may delude the very best I know it may be returned with some seeming Reason that Crimes committed here as a Member of a body politick can't well in Justice be laid to the Charge of any particular Person hereafter for upon the dissolution of the natural one the Relation to such a Community ceasing the Guilt and Crime contracted should dye too But the Judge of Heaven has declared he won't be mockt tho they thought those of the Land might How contentedly would some of the Regicides have given up the Ghost could they have pleaded to the Almighty their Innocence of the Royal Blood from the shedding it in Parliament But tho National Sins may require reasonably the sufferings of a Nation and no more than what for this very Sin our own has since suffered therefore to suggest the single Individual the singular Sinner shall escape with Impunity hereafter because not punisht here or that because several of them suffered here for that Martyrs Blood and the Treasons of an Vniversal Body seem'd to be punisht in as general Conflagration that therefore the Criminals have superseded their sufferings in Hell and may now dare Heaven for my part seems an Opinion as ridiculous as the Popish Purgatory and their being saved by a fantastick Fire 'T is almost an Irreligious excuse for all manner of Crimes and Immoralities the Constitutions Circumstances of Men being so various that I dare avow scarce any Villany but may be committed by Communities or the Politick Relation of the private Person to some publick Society In short such Law and such Divinity would make the worst of Rebels that is incorporated ones fear Hell no more than they would the Hangman and baffle the Devil as well as the Gibbet And I may well here so warmly condemn these sort of damnable Doctrines when they were so hotly maintained by the rankest of our Rebels and Republicans and this very Daemon this Devil of Sedition can only countenance his Rebellious Positions with the making use of His Majesties Authority for the Ratification of his Proposals that is the Destruction of his own Person For 't is a great Truth I wish I could not say an experimented one that the granting them these Regalia would not only be an Act to bereave him of his Crown and Dignity but would pass his very Person into the Donative a yielding up of his last Breath the making himself his own Executioner as well as a Betrayer of his Trust This Project is only the pernicious Principle improved the late Rebels falsely assumed His Authority for the Fighting against His Person but the prevailing upon him for these Destructive Grants would make Him truly Fight against Himself In all the Reigns of the three following Henries their Soveraign's Supremacy was still asserted and that over Parliaments too tho one of them was but an Usurper on the Crown and then I am sure as great an one upon their Privileges and tho themselves had placed the First in the Throne themselves also acknowledged * 1 H. 4. the Regality of the Crown of England to be Subject to none but God To the ‖ 2 H. 5. Cap. 6. Second they acknowledged that to Him only belonged the Management of Foreign Affairs with Foreign Princes To the †32. H. 6. 13. Plowden 334. Third that he could constitute County Palatines and grant any Regal Rights per Letters Patents And these were Matters and Affairs themselves then declared they could not pretend to tho this Gentleman would now have them or their Counsel manage all In Edward the Fourth and the Fifth's time 't was always received Law then made and should I hope hold still that State Affairs were to be manag'd by the Prince for it was then allowed for * 22. Ed. 4. Law That if all the Common People of England should break a League by agreement with any Foreign Nation it shall still be reputed firm and unviolated if without his consent And in his very ‖ 1 Edw. 5. fol. 2. Sons that Succeeded resolved by all the Judges and Serjeants that he was the only Person in the Kingdom that could do no wrong which sufficiently declares him above all them that could and then who so fit for all absolute Power in all publick Administrations than whom the very Law presumes always to do Right and whom Reason tells us must be most impartially concerned for the publick good having no dependance upon any Superiors from whom an Apprehension of Fear or hopes of Favour might prevail upon to degenerate into that servile and sordid Complyance to prefer his own private Interest before the publick good Whatever Presumption the Law had of it then I am sure they have a Prince that justifies the Supposition now and then the most ungrateful Paradox and against Sense it self for our Seditious Souls to suggest and insinuate his Real Intentions for their Good to be nothing but Design and Plot upon them for Ill. An ORDER of Council with such Sycophants is turned into a trick of Court And their Kings Proclamations are obeyed only because they cannot conveniently resist as if the whole Board was packt only to please a designing Prince But base Villains your selves know that his aims have ever been for the publick Peace and Prosperity even at the same time your dangerous disorders have made it almost inconsistant with his own safety and security You see your Soveraign Sit and Act in a Sphere and that only He where Favour cannot charm or Fear frown into Compliance And who can be supposed then besides him less prejudic'd or more concerned for your good Would you have your Gentlemen of the Shop and Yard take their Measures of the State too We have experimented already that those made the very Government a Trade also and by those your very Properties and Lives too would be bought and sold we too lately saw some Symptoms of that state
is a solecism in Sense to imagin that Plebeians can concur in conferring that on others which themselves have not the least Tincture of A Title of Honor Or that any thing besides somewhat that is Soveraign can really communicate it to a Subject And we have seen when it was Usurpt what a sort of singular good Lordships and precious Peers were put upon us The Thebans would not so much as admit a Merchant into their Government till they deserted their calling for ten Years while the meanest Mechanicks were made Members of our House and a Tinker of the Army's just taken from his Tool The Bishop of Ely was accused only in Richard the First 's Time for putting in pitiful Officers into publick places of Trust and 't is but a little since a Parliament intrusted our Lives and Fortunes in the vilest Hands And lastly this very Libel Lashes one of our * Rich. 2d Plat. pag. 116. Kings for the preferring Worthless Persons and makes it even a forfeiture of the power of the Sword at the same time that he contends for the People in this point who were never yet known to prefer any other An Italian State as Tumultuous as our own took upon them once to create a new Nobility but assoon as the popular Faction or if you please the Convention of the People had set themselves for the Preservation of their Liberties to make Lords why truly the Election was like to be of such senseless Scoundrels you may suppose a Barksted or an Hewson some mender of Shooes or a maker of Bodkins But so sensible were those Seditious Souls that they were like to set up their Servants that they wisely resolved to retain their old Masters And I think were not some of us so wicked we should all be so wise too since we saw our own distracted Nation was never at rest Till our Rulers were restored to us as at the FIRST and our Councellors as at the BEGINNING And last of all only let me take the Liberty in this last and dismal scene of Sedition to represent but a bloody prospect of that Harmonious concurrence there is between all sorts of Rebellious Principles tho projected by Persons of different Persuasions Persons that differ in Manners and Customes of their Countries Rebels remote from one another in Time Rebels as remotely allyed in the Lands wherein they live As if the Sea it self could not separate such Seditious Subjects In their Principles and Practices that had defiled their Land with such a mutual Conspiration in the Murdering of their Soveraigns and let in an Inundation of Blood upon the Subjects and this Bloody Correspondency between the practice of primitive Rebels as well as modern between the Proceedings of Foreign Rebellions as well as our Domestick must result from the Reasons any sort of Subjects have to resist their Soveraign which we shall see were at all times with all sorts still the same that is just none at all and that appears in that People of such several sorts were all forc'd to pitch upon the same Pretences for the Justifying their Treasons And to make use of the same Cavil and Calumny against their Princes when they saw they could never ground any real Accusation And lastly to promote the same Projects and Propositions almost in a Literal Transcript for the levelling the raising the Foundations of their several Monarchies and making themselves the Masters of the Crown or rather this Seditious Harmony of all Rebels proceeds from their having ever been animated and instructed by the self same Agent of Hell the primitive Prince of Faction the Devil and this parity of pernicious Principles Practices and Propositions will appear in the perfect parallel that there is between the Proceedings of our old Rebellious Barons in England And the later Rebellion of the late Leaguers in France and the clear conformity of the Proposals of our Parliament and the polticks of this Plato to both I 'll place them in their turn as they succeeded in their time and let them that would prescribe to Treason be proud of the Precedency For the First the Barons being greedy of Rule the Commons of Liberty as a learned Author and * Antiquary le ts us Barons Cotton's view of Henry 3d. know some of the popular Lords began with the plausible pretext of the Peoples Liberty when to suppress these Troubles and supply the Kings Extremities a Parliament is call'd but such an one as prov'd much to the liking of the Lords and as little meant to relieve their King much less to redress the People The Clamor was of Encroachment upon their Liberty To silence that the Charter is several times confirmed But they finding what a power the Kings Necessities put in their Hands were resolved to supply him with so little that it might well keep their King from being Great they * M. Paris pag. 807. force him to the very sale of his Lands and Jewels for Bread and to turn out of his Palace because not able to sustain himself in it they seised upon Dover his Castle and the Kingdoms Key which was Treason for that account to deliver to a Foreigner and than a Fortiori for a Subject to take made Head against their Soveraign called in French to subdue him Which when they had done in which Actions none more Zealous than the Loyal Londers for his Destruction what was the Event Why our Historians tell us and what are still the unfortunate Effects of a prosperous Rebellion Murder and Sacrilege and Sword And the Victorious Barons Lorded it like so many †Baker p. 86. Tyrants too till Providence in a more signal Victory restored their Lawful King and the Subject's Liberty As the Baron's Wars began in King John's Time but broke out in a more Leaguers perfect Rebellion in his Son Henry's so were the seeds of this Civil Dissention sown in the Reign of Charles the Ninth and were fully ripened in the Reign of his Son and that a 3d. Henry too The Nobles here were disgusted and soon made the Commons so too A Parliament there too was thought to remedy those Discontents and that as our Henry's encreas'd the Distemper they told the French too of their Taxes and Impositions and accus'd their King of Misgovernment for imposing them as our Lords combin'd so these Leagued for the redressing of Grievances and were first Aggressors in seising Verdun and Tull two Towns in France as those did Dover and Hull in England * See their History written in Italian by D'avila in Lat. by Thuanus in French by D' Aubigni in English a Translation by Mr. Drydâ—â— their Henry was forc'd to flie from Paris his Principal City His Metropolitan also of Sedition and that by Tumult too And what did it terminate in but in the Murder of their King too The calling in of the Spaniard that was like to inslave the People to a Foreign Yoke and at last weary of the Usurpt Dominion
runs all in the sole Wil of the King Charter it self their Act of Liberty they so much Labour in that not the meanest Subject can be Try'd or Judg'd unless it be by his Peers Equals much less so mighty a Monarch that has none and a Fortiori then with lesser Reason by those that are his own Subjects so far from being his Peers or Equals that they are together his Inferiors which has made me think many times these preposterous Asserters of so much Nonsense these Seditious Defenders of those Liberties they never understood did apprehend by the word Pares in the Law not the common Acceptation of it in the Latin but only the abused Application of it of our own English only to our House of Lords And conclude the King might be Judg'd by those we commonly call PEERS because they sit in that Honorable House and at the same to be Judg'd according to Magna Charta that all Judgements be per pares But does not each Dunce and every Dolt understand that the very Letter of the Law looks after this only that every Person be tryed at the least by those that are of his own Condition and that in the Legal Acceptation of the Word every Commoner of the Lower House nay every one of their Electors is as much a Peer as the greatest Person of the House of Lords In short they must put some such silly Seditious Exposition upon the plainest Letter when they pretend to Judge their King or else from the very Law of their own Liberty they labor in allow that their King has no Judges In that Act against Appeals that was enacted in the time of Henry the 8th 24. H. 8. c. 12. the very Parliament upon whom the People and even these Republicans so much depend tells us even in the very Letter of that Law That it is Manifest from Authentick History and Chronicle That the Realm of England is an Empire That its Crown is an Imperial one That therefore their King is furnish'd by the goodness of Almighty God with an intire Power and Prerogative to render and yield Justice to all manner of Folk in all Causes and Contentions This by solemn Act is declared of their King this Excludes the People from Judging of themselves much more their Soveraigns This the Resolution of a popular Parliament they would make even the Supream and this by them resolved even in Opposition to that Popery these Panick Fools so much and so vainly fear Do not the Books the best Declarations of the Law let us understand that which they against the Resolutions of all the Law it self would so foolishly maintain that it was resolved in Edward the 4th's time That the King cannot be said to do any wrong and then surely can't be Judg'd by his very People for doing it when impossible to be done and was not this the Sense of †Vid. 1. Ed. 5. fol. 2. all the Judges and Serjeants of the time to whose Opinion it was submitted was it not upon the same Reason a Resolution of Si Le Roy moy disseisit pur ceo que Le Roy en le ley ne poit moy disseisir il né serrá appell disseisor mes jeo sue mis a petition à Roy. 4. Ed. 4. 25. 13. the Law in Edward the 4th's time that because the Soveraign could not be said to injure any Subject therefore the Law never looks upon him as a disseisor a disposesser of any Man 's Right and all the remedy it will allow you is only Plaint and Petition Does not my Lord Coke himself that in several places is none of the greatest Assertor of the Right of the Soveraign fairly tell us * Coke Comon West 1. 2. Inst p. 158. least it should be vainly fear'd they should reflect upon the King 's own Misgovernment all the fault should rest upon the Officers and Ministers of his Justice Does it not appear from the ‖ Stat. to pursue suggestious 37. E. 3. c. 18. 38. Ed. 3. c. 9. Statutes of Edward the third that notwithstanding the strict Provision of the Charter for the Tryal by Peers that the King was still look'd upon as a Judge with his Council and Officers to receive Plaints and decide Suggestions and tho that and the subsequent of the next year provide against false ones yet it confirms still the power of the King to hear and determine them whether false or true Have they not heretofore answered touching Freehold even before their King and Council and a Parliament Parl. Glocester 2. Ric. 2. only Petition'd their Soveraign with all Submission that the Subject might not be summon'd for the future by a Chancery Writ or Privy Seal to such an Appearance but this they 'll say was the result of the Soveraigns Usurpations upon the Laws of the Land of a King Richard the 2d That did deserve to be deposed Brief History of Succession p. 7. as well as the Articles of his Depositions to be read †Plato Rediviv p. 116. 234. a King that forfeited the executive Power of his Militia for prefering worthless People and was himself of little worth or as the most Licentious and Lewdest Libel of a longer date has it †a King that found Fuel for his Lust in all Lewd and uncivil Courses Now tho March Needham Merc. Polit n. 65. Sept 4. 1651. we have the Authority of the best of our Historians for the good Qualities of this Excellent tho but an unhappy Prince and who could never have fell so unfortunately had his Subjects served him more faithfully tho Mr. Hollinshed Hollinshed 3d. Vol. Chron. F. 508. N. 50. tells us never any Prince was more unthankfully used never Commons in greater wealth never Nobles more cherish'd or the Church less wrong'd and as Mr. How has it in Beauty Bounty How 's Annals p. 277. and Liberality he surpassed all his Predecessors and Baker the best among our Moderns says there were aparent in him a great many good Inclinations that he was only abused in his Youth but if he had been Guilty afterward in his riper Age of some proceedings these Republicans had reason to reproach I am sure he was Innocent of those foolish Innuendo's those false and frivolous Accusations for which they rejected him viz. for unworthiness and insufficiency Vid. Trussel in vit R. 2. when he never appear'd in all his Reign more worthy of the Government than at the very time they deposed him for being unworthy to Govern But whatever were the vices of that Prince with which our virulent Antimonarchists would blast and blemish his Memory yet we see from the President that is cited the Sense of his Subjects Parl. Glocest did not then savor so much of Sedition as insolently to demand it for their Privilege and Birth-right which without doubt they might have pretended to call so as much as any of those the Commons have since several times so