the Second year of King Henry the Fourth An Assize shall be maintainable against the King 's Patentee of Lands without any title found for the King by Inquisition By an Act of Parliament made in the 4 th year of the Reign of the aforesaid King a special Assize shall be maintainable against a Disseisor by force Riots Routs and unlawful Assemblies are forbid by a Statute made in the 13 th year of the aforesaid King's Reign and the Justices of Peace near adjoyning Impowred to hear and determine the Offences and if they cannot are to certifie the King and his Council thereof By an Act of Parliament made in the second year of the Reign of King Henry the 5 th Commissions are to be from time to time awarded to Inquire of the defaults of the Justices of Peace Justices of the Assize Sheriffs and under-Sheriffs in not suppressing and punishing the same By an Act of Parliament made in the first year of King Richard the Third the Justices of Peace may let Prisoners to mainprize that are Arrested or Imprisoned for light suspition of Felony or by Malice and no Sheriff or other Officer shall seize the Goods of a Prisoner until he be attainted By an Act of Parliament made in the 23 th year of the Reign of King Henry the Eighth A Jury Convicted of giving a false Verdict if it be for any thing demanded above the value of Forty pounds and concerneth not the Jeopardy of a man's life shall forfeit Twenty pounds a piece the one half to the King and the other to the Party that will sue for the same and Five pounds a piece if the thing demanded be under the value of Twenty pounds and every one of them in the one Case and the other make fine and ransom by the discretion of the Judges before whom such false Verdict was given never after be of any Credence nor their Oaths accepted in any Court By an Act of Parliament made in the 32 year of the said King wrongful disseifin shall be no dissent in Law except the Disseisor shall have been five years in quiet Possession without entry or continual Claim of those who have lawful Title thereunto The Barons of the Exchequer are by an Act of Parliament made in the 33 th year of the aforesaid King Authorized by Bills of Equity in the Exchequer Chamber to acquit discharge or moderate all Recognizances Debts Detinues Trespasses Wastes Deceipts Defaults Contempts and Forfeitures Treasons Murders Felonies Rights Titles and Interest as well of Inheritance as Free-hold only excepted according to Equity and good Conscience By an Act of Parliament made in the 5 th and 6 th year of the Reign of King Edward the Sixth Great Penalties were laid upon those that should buy or sell Offices concerning the Administration of Justice or any Offices belonging to the King all Contracts Bonds Promises Covenants and Bargains to be void both as to the Buyer and Seller and the taker of any Gift or Promise to forfeit his Nomination and Interest therein By an Act of Parliament made in the 31 th year of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth Three Proclamations shall be made in every Action Personal where an Exigent is awarded and the Defendant before the allowance of any Writ of Error or Reversal of the Utlary shall be bound to answer the Plaintiff and satisfie the Condemnation By an Act of Parliament made in the 43 th year of the Reign of the aforesaid Queen Every Sheriff Under-Sheriff or other Person making any Warrant for the Summons Arrest or Attaching of any Person or their Goods to appear in any of the Courts of Westminster or procuring it without Original Writ or Process to warrant the same being Convicted thereof shall be Imprisoned without Bail or Mainprize until they shall have paid the party grieved Ten pounds with all his other Damages and Twenty pounds a piece for their Offence to the Queen and for the avoiding of Vexatious Actions where any recovery is had for Debt or Damages for less than Forty shillings or not above no more Costs shall be awarded by the Judge than the Debt or Damages recovered And by the Law Writs of Habeas Corpus una Cum die Causa Captionis are granted by the Courts of King's-Bench or Common Pleas when any are Imprisoned by the King or any other without Cause shewed to be Bailed if the Cause shall not appear to be Just and Legal And if any Man Imprison any of the King's Subjects without just Cause or enter upon or take away any of their Estates against the Tenor of our Magna Charta and Charta Forestae and many of our other excellent Laws and reasonable Customs he may although it be by the King's Command if not legal be punished for the same And our Magna Charta and Liberties are so Bulwarked and Fortified as every man may have reason enough to be assured That the People of England and Wales cannot upon any Emergencies and Violations of Laws want relief or Redress When the Justices in Eyre Instituted by King Henry the Second to ride their Circuits until they were by King Edward the Third changed into those of Assizes who in their Vernal and Autumnal Circuits carrying the King's Justice and Care of it into every Shire and County of England and Wales to prevent as much as might be their Travels and Expences to seek it farther from home did amongst many other Articles and Matters concerning the King and his People give in Charge to the Grand Juries of the several Cities and Counties of their Circuits which were Men of good Estates Knowledge Experience and Concerns Sworn to present what they should be charged to Inquire of and direct them to Inquire and present false Weights and Measures Lands seized into the King's hands which ought not to be seized or being ordered to be restored were not of those that were amerced without reasonable Cause and not according to the Offence or by their Peers without a saving to their Contenement a Merchant without a saving to him his Merchandize and a Villain without saving his Waynage and not by the Oaths of good and lawful Men of the Neighborhood if any Earls and Barons were amerced but by their Peers and after the manner of their Offences and if any Man of the Church be amerced otherwise than according to his Lay-Tenement and after the quantity of his Offence and by the Statute of Marleborough made in the One and fiftieth year of King Henry the Third of all other the breaches of the Laws and Liberties granted by Magna Charta and the Charter of the Forrest and other Articles and Matters to be Inquired of given unto them in Writing and upon their Oaths to answer distinctly what they did know Affirmatively or Negatively When the Judges of the Court of King's Bench who do yet retain the power of Justices in Eyre do in every Easter and
of any of their Kings and Princes at once with an Addition afterwards of another Pardon or Abolition of a lesser size for Offences and Forfeitures since committed and did not only restore unto all the Cities Boroughs and Corporations of England and Wales their forfeited Charters Privileges and Liberties but enlarged and gave unto many of them more than they had before And was so unwilling to Punish those that had done him and his Royal Father Mother Brothers Sisters those almost impossible to be forgotten or forgiven most execrable Villanies as he not only Pardoned but gave them profitable Employments who to their shame cozened him all they could and moulded themselves into a Faction of Repeating as many Impieties as they had been guilty of before and was so over Clement and forgiving as he imployed and did not Punish one that was proved to have said after His Majestie 's escape from the Battel of Worcester That if he had been taken he ought to have been stripped stark Naked led through the Streets with a Bridle thrust through an hole bored in his Nose Whipped at a Carts tail and afterwards Hanged Are not to be very angry or take it ill if they be charged with Partiality or Injustice or as great a Reproach as our Blessed Saviour bestowed upon the over-quick-sighted fault-finding Pharisee who could espy a mote as he thought in another's eye but not see a beam in his own but rather retire into themselves and upon a more strict Examination of their past evil Actions abhor themselves in dust and ashes cover their heads with shame weep repent and resolve to walk retrograde and persist no more in the gain-saying of Corah Datham and Abiram wherein they perished When they who would make every body as much afraid as they themselves do seem to fear an Inclination in His Majesty to an Arbitrary Power which he never did or is willing to exercise can almost every day joyn with others in Complaints of the no few of the Subordinate Magistrates usurping it against the mind and direction of the King and his Laws over their fellow Subjects by their Irregular courses Condemning and many times Imprisoning without Jury Trial legal Hearing or Proceedings And easily discern an yearly Custom of an illegally over-strained Power in the Lord Maiors of London Electing and Drinking unto many or more than needs in the Choice of two to be Sheriffs of London and Middlesex for the ensuing year and imposing and taking great Fines of the Refusers unto whom he needed not to have Drank whereby to gain some Thousands of Pounds yearly for the Fines of such as were unwilling or unfit to bear the Charge or Expence of those Offices and Imprison and Constrain them to pay them which are seldom less than 4 or 500 l. upon every such Refuser As if some fatal and successive Annual or fit of Thirst or kind Drinking was at a certain Time of every year to fall upon the Lord Maiors of that City to Drink more often and unto more than he should do And they that shall happen to be so imposed upon are sure to be out of hopes of getting themselves discharged of Imprisonment for not paying the Fine by Writs of Habeas Corpus and Bail which if the King should do every year in the Choice of Three presented unto him to serve as Sheriffs in all other Counties and Places of England and Wales no other City or Place therein making use of such a kind and loving Device to raise Moneys the Habeas Corpora Bells would Ring in all the Courts of Justice in Westminster-Hall and His Majesty would be troubled with the noise thereof And no small Arbitrary Power in their Courts of Orphants in London by Imprisoning a young Man in Newgate without Bail or Mainprise that had lawfully Married a City Orphant and his Father in like manner for contriving it And we may often hear and observe in the Guilds Fraternities and Companies of Trade and their Mysteries in the City of London an almost unbounded over absolute Power in their By-Laws which should be perused as it is more than a little probable they are not or but very seldom or cursorily by the Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England Lord Treasurer and the two Lord Chief Justices and allowed by them or any three of them to be according to the Law together with their giving of unlawful Oaths imposing of Taxes Quarteridges or Fines and Assessements as they please upon the Poorer sort of the Companies of Trades supernumerating their Livery Men in their Companies in making them to be twice as many as they were wont to be and inforcing them to Pay 20 or 25 l. a Man and be at the Charge of a reverend Gown faced with Furrs of Foynes or Budge and Imprison Men for not obeying them and their grinding superfluous Orders The Exactions and Arbitrary Power of the Church-Officers in the City of London and its overgrown Suburb Parishes in the Renting of Pews and Seats in the Churches making Strangers pay great and double Fees for Tolling the Passing Bell and Ringing of a Peal when there was no such Matters taking great Fees for Burying of the Dead in the Church or Chancel near an Husband Wife Father or Mother Brother or Sister where before they have lain there a quarter of a year or a little time they are sure to be taken up again and flung into a Common Vault to lodge amongst those that were Buried far cheaper conniving at or permitting the Parish Clerks Sextons or Grave-makers to sell the broken and sometimes pillaged Coffins of the Dead to be made fewel for fire or Bake-houses cozening the Living and Dead feasting and fatning themselves upon every small Consultation and Parish meeting for the good as they call it or little Business of the Parish as for the putting out a Bastard or Foundling or poor Parish Child to a Beggar to beg with and trouble the Streets withal at a low weekly rate and take the advantage to themselves of reckoning by a greater which have been the cause of such short Memories in Parish Politicks and Governments as the Accompt of a Legacy of Three hundred Pounds per Annum as they may be now demised in Houses and Tenements in a London Suburb Parish for as many hundred years ago for the Building of the Church yet standing upon its old Ruins is so vanished as it is not at all to be found and a royal Charity of One hundred and Twenty pounds given in the year 1625. by King Charles the Martyr in a Time of Pestilence could never be heard of and the Church wardens or Collectors of a near London Parish have been so over-watched for the good of the Parish and thereby rendred so sleepy or Lethargick as they could not good People as they would be thought to be tell which way One Thousand or Two Thousand pounds have escaped out of the Accompt and the fault
have a mind to Imitate such a self-ruining madness the dire Events and many heavy and remediless Calamities which fell upon the over-sparing and cautious Constantinopolitans who denying their Emperor a necessary and fitting Aid to defend them as well as himself made the Turks Master of all Greece so renowned heretofore for Learning and that City and the Riches of it a twentieth or a very small part whereof might have disappointed all the Tyranny Bondage and Slavery which they have ever since been under and are according to Humane Judgement like to continue to the end of the World in no better a Condition And now that Hannibal is ad Portas Dangers on all sides encompassing and crowding in upon us we should neither forsake our selves and good old England which will surely be worth the saving nor so much mistake that which was ever accompted to be Reason Wisdom and Forecast as to undervalue the prospect and the cares of Prevention laugh at them as Pedantick Fopperies or the dotage of a Decrepit World and like Jonas displeasing his God fall asleep in the midst of a Tempest But rather make hast to return to our selves and set before us the Wisdom and Examples of our Ancestors and Predecessors who in the care of themselves and of the Private and Publick not separate but joyned together as well as of their Kings and Soveraigns would not be deterred by any Statemisfortunes or Irregularities or tempted by their Jealousies or Fears to suffer themselves as the Members and smaller parts of the Body to languish and be destroyed by neglecting the Head and the Security and Safety thereof or by not paying their Duty and Reverence to their Kings hate and ruine themselves which in all their Discontents and Murmurings against their Kings and Government the Anxieties or Commotions of their Minds and Passions or the Dispairs which had sometimes seized upon them they did so much seek to avoid as they did not refuse them Aids in all their Wars and Troubles Domestick and Foreign King Henry the Second who after a very great and general Act of resumption of the Aliened Crown Revenue some whereof had been granted by himself had discontented many of his great Nobility when all his Sons had Rebelled Warred and taken Arms against him wanted not a supply by Escuage from his Subjects of England to reduce them to Obedience and make his Wars in France King Richard the First being unfortunately in his Return Incognito from his warlike and glorious Expedition to Jerusalem made Prisoner by an unworthy Surprize of the Duke of Austria and the German Emperor enforced as some of our Historians have reported for his Deliverance to invest the former of them with the Superiority of his Kingdom of England by the delivering of his Hat unto him which the Emperor in the presence of divers of the Nobility of Germany and England returned unto him to hold the Kingdom of him by the Annual Tribute of Fifty thousand pound Sterling and his Brother John Usurping the Crown in his absence and Plotting with the Emperor and the King of France his mortal Enemy to continue him a Prisoner during his Life both Laiety and Clergy notwithstanding that he had by the perswasion of the Clergy more than of the Laiety been ingaged in that very Expensive War did so strain themselves to redeem the Person of their King the Kingdom and People at that time being secure enough from Foreign Invasions as they raised and paid One hundred and fifty thousand Marks in pure Silver of Cologn weight then a very great Sum of Money by Twenty Shillings imposed upon every Knights Fee the fourth part of the Revenue of the Laiety and the like of the Clergy a tenth of their Goods all or most the Chalices and Treasure of the Church being then also not a little sold to make up the Sum So as William Petit or Newbrigensis who wrote his Book in that time saith Ferè exmunita pecuniis Anglia videretur England seemed to be almost emptied of all her Money and the like courses were held for raising that then great Sum of Money in all his Dominions beyond the Seas King John likewise having resum'd much of his Crown-Lands Murdered as was suspected his Nephew Arthur the right Heir to the Crown and thereby forfeited the Dutchy of Normandy to the King of France of whom he held it and in those many Troubles and Distresses which were cast upon him by his unruly Baronage constrained to acknowledge to hold his Kingdoms of England and Dominion of Ireland of the Pope and his Successors in Fee-Farm under the yearly Rent of One thousand Marks per Annum Charged his Earls and Barons with the Losses which he had sustained in France Fined and made them pay a seventh part of all their Goods had Two marks and a half granted unto him by the Parliament out of every Knight's Feé and within a year after a thirteenth part of all the Moveables and other Goods as well of the Clergy as of the Laiety King Henry the Third his Son resum'd all the Lands alien'd from the Crown had so great Troubles entail'd upon him by the Contests of his boisterous Baronage with his Father as Lewis the French King's Son was called in by some of them received their Homage and had London and a great part of the Kingdom delivered up and put into his Possession but upon better Consideration was afterwards sent home again by those that Invited him and the Barons of England having so little accorded with their Native King as several Battels were fought betwixt them in one of which the King himself was taken Prisoner and in another released by the Valour of the Prince his Son the managers of that Rebellion Slain and their multitude of Partizans reduced to Obedience being a great part of the Kingdom by their Compounding with his Commissioners at Kenelworth to give him Seven years Purchase of the yearly value of their Lands which amounted to a very great Sum of Money for a Pardon for their Offences and a Redemption of their Estates the Subjects and People of this Nation did howsoever in order to their own Preservation besides the fifteenth part of all their Goods for his Grants of Magna Charta and Charta Forestae not deny him their Aids of Scutage Fifteenths and Tenths there being scarce a year wherein there was not a Parliament and seldom any Parliament without a Tax King Edward the First notwithstanding his Writs of Quo Warranto brought against all the Nobility Great Men Gentry and others of England Cities and Burroughs Claiming Liberties and Priviledges wherein he did put them strictly to prove them either by Grant or Prescription seized and confiscated the Estates of the Earls of Gloucester Hereford and Norfolk Men of great Might and Power for their refusing to go and serve him in his Wars beyond the Seas the Earl of Hereford being Constable and the Earl of Norfolk Earl Marshal of
Commissionated Judges and Officers but will amongst themselves use Arbitrary Power cheat oppress and devour one another and can but do what he can and pray to God to give them grace to observe them and may in that Case say as a King of Israel in another Case did to the Woman in the great Famine of Samaria crying out unto him as he passed upon the Wall Help my Lord O King and he said If the Lord do not help thee whence shall I help thee And until they shall have brought themselves to a better Temper it will not also be a thing unlikely but that I having said so much to allay their Fears and Jealousies may be tenter-hooked by some of their Suspitions bundled up amongst their no few or unusual mistakes and made to be either a Papist or Court Parasite but when they shall have searched the Devils Registeries and examined pryed peeped into and Inspected all my Actions from my youth upwards must whether they have a mind unto it or not give me leave to tell them and prove what you do know as well as my self that I am no Papist no Court Parasite nor Flatterer of any Man and that they will not be a little mistaken if they shall think that I am not a very Loyal Subject of my King Dutiful Son of the Church of England or not averse to an Arbitrary Power or that I can be any thing else then a Lover of the Truth my King the Church of England and my Countrey and being also an honourer of your self in your doing the like shall desire always to continue under the Character thereof and June 17th 1681. Your most Affectionate Friend and Servant FINIS Errata in the Authors absence PAge 16 line 5. for and aâ— read you are very solicitous for the Church p. 9. line 28. read put p. 10. line 31. read discent p. 40. line ult dele was read did dele as she et p. 41. dâ—le she made et read make Rushworth's Collection Rushworth's Historical Collections 9 H. 3. ca. 29. 9 H. 3. 14. Ca. 8. 10. 11. 20 H. 3. 3. 3. E. 1. ca. 6. 9. 25 E. 1. ca. 5. 6. Ca. 25. Ca. 5. 28 E. 1. 1. Ca. 5. 6. 34 E. 1. 2. Statute de Tallaglo non Concedendo fact ' tempore E. 1. 1 E. 3. 6. 2 E. 3. 8. 2 E. 3. 5 E. 3. 12. 25 E. 3. ca. 2. 25 E. 3. rot Parl. Ca. 4. 5 R. 2. ca. 7. Ca. 5. 5 R. 2. ca. 7. 5 R. 2. ca. 9. 12 R. 2. ca. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2. ca. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2 H. 4. 8. 4 H. 4. 8. 13 H. 4. 7. 2 H. 5. 8. 1. R. 3. ca. 2. â—3 H. 8. 3. 32 H. 8. 33. 33 H. 8. 39. 31 Eliz. 3. 43 Eliz. 6. Star of Marieborough Printed to be in 51 H. 3. ca. 5. but appeareth in the Record to have been only made in Anno 47 H. 3. and without the Preamble published by Mr. Pulton as in 51 H. 3. Bract. lib. 3. de Corona ca. 1. Fleta lib. 1. ca. 19. 20. 13 E. 1. 〈◊〉 14. Oaths of the Judges 18 E. 3. Petition of Right Anno 3 Car. Primi Oliver Cromwel's Instrument of Government 19 H. 7. ca. 7. 1 Sam. 12. 3. â—vascon 〈◊〉 E. 1. 〈◊〉 Alman 〈◊〉 E. 3. 〈◊〉 Concill 〈◊〉 H. 6th Warrant Sub. Privat Sigil 9 Eliz. Rushworth's Historical Collections 156. 158. Gulielmus Newbrigensis Rot ' Parl. 〈◊〉 R. 2. m. 60. Rot ' Parl. 14. R. 2. m. 15. Rot ' Parl. 15. R. 2. m. 12. Sir Richard Baker's Chronicle Journals of the four last Parliaments of Q. Elizabeth Collected by Heywood Townsend a Member thereof Rot ' Parl. 7 R. 2. m. 5. 19. 8 R. 2. Rot ' Parl. * Epistle of Jud◠〈◊〉 8. and 10. 2 Reg. ca. 6.
Ursa Major Minor OR A Sober and Impartial ENQUIRY Into those Pretended Fears and Jealousies OF Popery and Arbitrary Power WITH Some Things offered to Consideration touching His MAJESTIE' 's League made with the King of FRANCE upon Occasion of his Wars with Holland and the United Provinces IN A LETTER Written to a Learned FRIEND LONDON Printed for H. S. MDCLXXXI SIR IF a very long and sad for many years together often repeated Experience with the sence of very many National and Universal needless Miseries which are so certainly to be believed as all the People of the Nation the wickedly-gaining Party by it only excepted may safely make Affidavit of it were able to obtain any thing or prevail with us not one but every man should think that it was and would be a duty Incumbent upon every English-man and true Lover of his King and Countrey for there be too many Counterfeits who do not well understand either the one or the other to abhor and fly as the affrighted Greek and Relator of the Strength and Gigantine Cruelties of the monstrous Polyphemus did with a Fugite ô Fugite from the Phantasms of those ungrounded Fears and Jealousies which usher'd in and fomented that Subversion of our Religion Laws and Liberties especially when it is not yet gone out of memory how many Dismal and ever to be lamented Effects and Calamities the inflamed and affrighted Vulgar and too hasty and inconsiderate Factious part of the People in the Years 1641 and 1642. with the Fancies of Popery and Arbitrary Power and Dangers rushing in upon us viz. a Plague-Plaister supposed to have been Attempted to be delivered to their great Champion Mr. John Pym to Infect and Destroy him Horses kept and trained under Ground the Lord Digby in his Coach and six Horses upon his ordinary occasions appearing at Kingston upon Thames in a Warlike manner with many other dressed up Bugbears not enough to affright old Women and young Children have brought upon us and that a Bloody and Costly War Murder of their King and fellow Subjects Rapine and Spoil of each other the washing over in Blood and almost Destruction of Three Kingdoms and the Ruine of Church and State have been the Products of them And when all was done could not assign any other Ground or Cause for it than Rebellion that Sin of Witchcraft and the Relish and Content which was found in the violation of all the Commandments in the second Table of the dreadfully by God himself pronounced Decalogue and as much as they could of the first and by yielding up their Discretions to the first Summons of their Fears of Imaginary apparitions of Dangers have made themselves to be well deserving or fit for the Reproach or Castigation which St. Paul used to a far less intoxicated People O ye foolish Galatians who hath bewitched you Though your Learning long Conversation and large acquaintance with history together with your curious recherches and retrospection into the Affairs of the World and Ages past a great Insight into the Politiques and a strict watch and observation kept upon the Causes Effects and Events of Actions of State and as many of the Reasons and Intrigues thereof as are proper and do usually come to publick View may sufficiently fortifie you against those kind of Impressions which have bespoken and taken up so much room in the Minds of such as are less Cognisant or do too much accustome themselves to make their Designs to be the only measure of their own Errors in Judgment which are not seldom built upon guess or contraries yet lest your great care and vigilance in all the Concernments of the Protestant Religion and the Property and just Rights of the Subjects should raise in you more than ordinary Apprehensions and carrying you down the Rapid stream of those great mistakings bereave you of that Happiness which hitherto hath attended the Temper and Tranquillity of your Mind and make you a Prisoner to those Fears and false Alarms which your more Sedate Thoughts will I assure my self tell you are not to be numb'red amongst those quoe in virum Constantem cadere possint which can ever be able to disturb the quiet and repose of a Man who from the mountains of Time hath looked further than yesterday and by the Rules of Prudence Policy and former Examples may with more certainty than Astrology ever afforded foresee what is likely to happen I have adventured here inclosed to send you my Thoughts and Sentiments which I hope will not want your Candid Reception especially when they shall but bring before you and your judicious Censure the Considerations that there will be enough surely to satisfie and quiet the most timerous or melancholick Persons who too often trouble themselves with their own Imaginations that the increase of Popery since the Statutes of the first and 23 th of Queen Eliz. and 3 d of King James in the year 1638. when Liberty Pretence of Religion and Conscience began to run out of their Wits and never stayed until they came to an Open and Horrid Rebellion hath been so little although the Popish Party have gained too many great Advantages by that and our many Divisions in Matters of Religion and Church Government and our late National Debaucheries and Atheism which do carry too many into the Delusions of Popery As it may if a strict accompt were taken probably enough ascertain us that there hath been rather a Decrease than an Increase of it And that if Commissions which will be no way inconsistent with the Rules and reason of Law and good Government were granted by His Majesty unto Orthodox Loyal Discreet Sober and Unbyassed Persons in every County and City of England and Wales to Inquire and Certifie how many Papists there are therein Resident the Result and Conclusion will assure His Majesty and His great Council of Parliament that there is not above Five in every Hundred of the Nation if so many that are guilty of direct Popery or Infected with it and in Scotland not many more unless that small Number should happen something to be increased by the late addition of the Jesuited Masquerade counterfeit Protestants And their increase in Riches or Estate not like to be much when they that shall be Convict and have no Lands or real Estate are by the Statutes of 29 Eliz. to forfeit and pay 20 l. every Month. And they that have Lands and real Estate are to pay 2 parts the whole in the 3 parts to be divided by the Statute of 3 Jac. ca. 4. And if that should not impoverish their Estates and make them less terrible than the Anakims it would nevertheless be effected by the Maintenance Necessities and corroding of their Priests and Jesuits with the multitude of Papal Exactions and Contributions to foreign Colleges and Religious Houses Pensions Censes Peter-pence Procurations Suits for Provisions Expeditions of Bulls Appeals Rescripts Dispensations Licenses Grants Relaxations Writs of Perinde
valent Rehabilitations Abolitions and other sorts and natures of Breves and Instruments enumerated in the Statute of 25 H. 8. ca. 21. And there said to be Infinite with their many times costly Masses Indulgencies Releases and Purgatory favours by which the common kind of Papists are sure in their Contributions and Taxes charged upon them by their wellgaining Superiours or Conductors the wrong way to have themselves and their Families kept and continued poor and low enough without the least of danger of Surfeits or overmuch Satieties especially when they are to live after the excessive Rates of Houshold Provisions and Expences for Food and Raiment now more than formerly exacted to the shame and disgrade of the Protestant Religion by a mighty and insupportable excess of Pride Usury Brocage and Cheating to maintain it Neither are their Numbers or Increase considering their strict Observations of Lent very many Publick Penances Vigils and Fasts and Private Mortisications like to be as dreadful as that of the Children of Israel in Aegypt to the Aegyptians Or of the Moors that had 800 years together Conquered and Overpowred Spain when the numerous Posterity of them were in the memory of Man Banished and sent home again into Affrick upon so severe and short a warning as they were constrained to abandon and leave behind them all their Lands and Possessions and carry only such moveables as a rigorous and short prefixion could allow them Or to cause them to be Transplanted as many of the Irish were by Cromwell in his Hypocritical Zealous and unmerciful Policy from their other more comfortable Provinces in Ireland as Ulster Lymerick and the English Pale into Connaught the worser part of that Kingdom And that there is no foundation to support those Panick Fears which have so greatly and more then needs tormented the Minds of too many of the either over-credulously fearful or over-medling part of the People and being only more supposed than demonstrated to be a Grievance and lying heavy upon some kind of Spirits will be as necessary to be taken out of their Minds and as well becoming a State Policy and the Care of the Soveraign as it was of our King Henry the Third who in the turbulent Commotions of his Barons and their Adherents and the Distresses which were put upon him found it to be no Mountebank's Medicine to Cure and asswage the Distempers of the all-discerning and giddy Multitude by granting out his Commissions into every County to inquire of their Grievances or causes of discontents so as not to excuse or Patronize any one Sort or Sect whatsoever in their maintaining the Unchristian and Damnable Doctrine of Killing or Deposing Princes for Male-Administration of Justice or those that dissent from our truly Loyal and Religious Church of England It may be a thing capable of wonder and fit to be put as a Question to the more Intelligent How it should happen that Fears and Jealousies should so disturb the Minds of such as endeavour to affright themselves and others with the Attempts and Dangerous Doctrines of the Popish Party and the same persons nevertheless to be so calm and silent in the fast-rooted unrepented and offered in publick to be justified groundless ungodly and disloyal Opinions of too many of those that would be called Protestants and accompted Zealots in the Practice and Promotion of it That a King is accomptable to the People for breach of Trust may be deposed and is but Co-ordinate with both his Houses of Parliament and as not content with that which can never be proved to be due unto them would mount a great deal higher and pretend that there is a Soveraignty in the People and that the King is but an Artificial Man set up or appointed by them And suffer a Seditious Book called The Obligation of Humane Laws to be publickly Sold and never complained of when it doth all it can to prove That every man how simple or illiterate soever he be is to be a Judge whether the Law or a Command of his Prince or Superior be good or bad and direct or apply his Obedience unto it accordingly As if they had never heard or read of the folly and dire Effects of Rebellion and Sedition in that of the Spencers in the Reign of King Edward the Second That Allegiance was only due to the Crown and not unto the Person of the Prince being exploded by two Acts of Parliament and the Promoters Condemned of Treason and his Inforced resignation of his Crown to his Son King Edward the Third by the Faction of his Queen and Mortimer and the deposing of King Richard the Second by an over-power of the Army of Henry of Lancaster and his Party occasioned by affrighting him into a seeming voluntary Surrender disallowed and detested by Succeeding Ages Or may we not rather commend and imitate the better temper of the Subjects of this Kingdom before the 23 d year of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth when in the beginning of her Happy and ever to be praised Government they never started at her Indulgence to the Popish Party or took it ill that she kept an Embassador at Rome and was offered to have the English Liturgy and Reformation established by the Pope's Authority if she would but acknowledge his Supremacy gave Aid to Don Antonio a distressed Popish Prince towards the Recovery of the Kingdom of Portugal and so much assisted Mary Queen of Scotland a Papist and Mother to our King James who if she had survived her was by Inheritance to have been Queen of England against the Presbyterian and Congregational Rebellious Party in Scotland as they called her the Whore of Babylon and publickly Preached that she was an Atheist and of no Religion Or can we do less than deem the English Nation in the Reign of King James to be happy in their enjoyment of so great a Tranquility as to be free from any Suspitions of the Increase of Popery when he was wrongfully accused by Elphiston to have written a little before his coming to the Crown of England a seeming friendly Letter to the Pope and that the Pope had after he came into England sent a Cardinal to Seduce him into the Snares of that Religion wherein although upon reason of State he had given his Royal Protection unto Preston and Warrington two Secular Priests against the Practices of some Jesuits which Abbot Arch-Bishop of Canterbury a professed enemy to Popery did allow as a thing not evilly done his afterwards Learned Books and Writings against that Church might have abundantly manifested the folly of such who should but have imagined that he had any Inclination or good Will unto it For it cannot be unknown to you that until the 16 th year and the after succeeding years of the Reign of that peaceable and wise Prince when his Son-in-Law Frederick Prince Elector and Count Palatine of the Rhine had as unhappily as rashly and unjustly taken upon him to be Elected King of
Michaelmas Term by a Select Grand Jury of the County of Middlesex cause an enquiry to be made although it were to be wished it might be after the antient manner by Articles delivered unto them in Writing to be distinctly answered unto Offences committed against the King and his Crown and Dignity of all Confederacies Champerties Maintenance Trespasses Extortions and Grievances done to the King's Subjects by any Arch-Bishops Bishops Dukes Earls Barons Servants Officers Coroners and Ministers of the King or by any other whatsoever of breach of the Peace denying of Bail on those who ought to be Bailed and of all manner of Oppressions and Grievances of the People When the numerous Justices of Peace in every County being as too many of them Baronets Serjeants and Men of Law Knights Elquires and Gentlemen of good Quality Families Estates and Education are Sworn and imployed not only to be Guardians and Conservators of the Peace of the King and his People to suppress Felonies Riots and the lower and most Common sort of Exorbitancies and Misdemeanors but to take Care of the Execution of many Laws and Statutes committed to their Trust and with the Method and Order appointed by our Laws and Ancient and reasonable Customs of presenting an Inquiry of Grievances by our many Court-Leets Sheriffs Tournes and County Courts Subordinate one under the other to the Superiour Courts of Westminster and they unto their Supream Authority the King It will be the Peoples own fault and neglect of their own Concernments if any Grievances or Oppression pass undiscernable uncomplained of or unpunished or if any Arbitrary Power or Extravagances do invade or break in upon the Nation who by the fence and care of our Laws and many times Confirmed Liberties which for more than 500 years last past have been building repairing and polishing to a perfection more than the Hebrew Greek or Roman Laws did ever attain unto the Laws which God himself made for that peculiar people only excepted And may if by our Sins and Provocations of God Almighty the Inspector of our unparallel'd Misdeeds and Punisher of them when his wrath shall be kindled and have no longer patience the Walls of our Happiness shall not be demolished our Liberties put to the Sword and our Laws led into Captivity be as safe as Humane Prudence and Laws can possibly make them More especially when our Courts of Justice at Westminster-Hall are governed by Judges and Men of great Wisdom and Integrity Sworn to observe the Laws and Judge according to their Direction and our Lawyers at the Bars freely permitted with fitting reference rightly to inform and plead their Clients Cases And the King 's high Court of Chancery the Officina Justiriae under the Teste me ipso of the Watchman under God of our Israel Superintending over them giveth Writs remedial to all that ask for them with helps for extraordinary Emergencies or to allay the Severity of Laws and makes it its business to punish and forbid Frauds and Oppressions The Masters of Chancery Annually stipended by the King formare Brevia originalia remedialia and to be Assistants subordinately to that High and Honourable Court in matters of Accompt and References The Rule of Chancery being ever since the Statute of Westm ' the second made in the 13 th year of the Reign of King Edward the First quod nullus recedat à Cancellaria sine remedio Concordent Clerici and the Officers and Clerks of the Chancery thereunto appointed are from time to time to do their utmost endeavours to provide Remedies for all that Complain Nè Justitia deficeret Conquerentibus And as to lesser Matters of Complaints and often Emergencies Pensioneth by good yearly Salaries 4 Learned and venerable Men of worth called Masters of Requests or Supplicationum libellorum who by turns and courses each Master being deputed to his Month have their audience Twice or oftener in that Time of the King to give Answers to their Petitions And the King in matters wherein any of his Rights and what appertaineth unto him are concerned gives his People leave by Petition or monstrans du droit Traverses oustre les mames c. to obtain what they can prove to be due unto them and where any of his Letters Patents are grievous and against the Law suffers them to be repealed by Writs of Scire facias brought against the Patentees And if any of the People should be so unhappy in the Intrigues or Difficulties of their Cases as they cannot be relieved by any of those provided Remedies from any supposed Arbitrary Power of their Prince or any Illegal oppressing Actions of one Subject against another they have the Liberty of Appeals from the Inferior Courts of Justice to the Superior and in Matters concerning breach of the Peace and of Misdemeanors within the Cognisance of the Justices of Peace may appeal from them to the Justices of Assize and from them to the King and his Chancellor or Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England and if not by any of those ways to be relieved are in Cases not concerning Free-hold not debarred their Appeals to the King and his Privy Council where they are the King himself being very often present judiciously and deliberately heard upon all the Pleas and Arguments which the Councel Learned in the Law on both sides can make one against the other And Remedies also against all the Assaults of Grievances are not difficult to be come at in the Ecclesiastical Courts and Courts of Admiralty where when the Subjects Complaints cannot be remedied they do easily obtain the King's Commission of Delegates to other Judges and if that do not answer their Expectations may have a Commission of Adjuncts to other Judges to be added unto them And in these or other Courts where the Potency of the one part and the Poverty of the other hath disabled the weaker from attending the formalities of Justice or croud of many other Causes he may have a Commission ob lites dirimendas granted by the King out of his High Court of Chancery to some good and wise men to endeavor as much as they can a more speedy Remedy The Dermier Resort last Appeal ultimum refugium of the People in their seeking for Justice being so necessarily Inherent in the Crown as none but they that wear it can justly claim any Right unto it but have always been enjoyed not only by our British Saxon and Danish Kings before the Norman Conquest but all our Kings which Succeeded them And if there they find no help are like enough if therebe cause of Justice in their Complaints not to fail of Relief by Petition to the King when he is assisted with the advice of his Lords and Commons in Parliament All which with many other Laws and reasonable Customs Priviledges and Liberties like so many Cittadels Block-houses Out-works and Strong Castles and Forts which divers of our ancient and reasonable Customs and Acts of Parliament
have in the making of other Laws from time to time been careful upon all occasions to erect and build to help to guard and protect their Liberties Rights and Priviledges together with the very great care which the Judges restraining all non obstantes of Acts of Parliament and Regal Dispensations unto what the Law allows or to the King 's particular Concernments do take in all their Judgments and Decisions Expositions Applications and Interpretations of Laws to assist and support the just Rights and Proprieties of the Subjects in their Lands and Estates and not in the least to prejudice them in their Common Assurances by Fines and Common Recoveries The Severity used by divers of our Kings in the Punishment of Briberies Extortions or Byassed and Illegal flattering Opinions of Judges The Oaths of the Lords and others of the King 's Privy Council who are usually the Greatest Noble and most concerned Men of Estate and Interest of the Nation Oath of the Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England well and truly to serve the King and his People and to do right to all manner of People according to the Law and Usages of the Realm Oaths of the Judges to do equal Law and execution of Right to all the King's Subjects rich and poor without having regard to any Person to deny no man Common Right by the King's Letters nor none other Mans nor for none other Cause Oaths of the King's Serjeants at Law well and truly to serve him and his People and as duly and hastily speed such Matters as any Man shall have against the King in the Law as they may lawfully do without delay or tarrying the Party for his lawful Process The Oaths of other Serjeants at Law well and truly to serve the King and his People and truly Counsel them Oaths of the Justices of Peace to do equal right to the Poor as to the Rich after the Laws and Customs of the Realm and Statutes thereof made Oaths of the Sheriffs to do right to Poor as well as Rich in all that belongeth to their Office to disturb no Man's Right nor to do wrong to any Man And the Oaths of the Escheators Clerks of the Chancery and Coroners with the Oaths of the Officers of Courts Under-Sheriffs and Bailiffs well and to execute Justice All which several Degrees of Men in the Nation would be as unwilling as any others to have the Lives Liberties and Estates of themselves and their Posterities or dearest Relations sacrificed to a lawless and unlimitted Power of their Kings and Princes And the Oaths of our Kings at their several Coronations to conserve the Liberties of the People and observe all the good Laws made by their Royal Progenitors and Predecessors with the Impossibility that ever the Lords and Commons in Parliament Assembled will consent to the abrogating of any of the aforesaid Laws and reasonable Customs be felones de se or deliver up themselves and their Posterities to the absolute Will and Pleasure of their Succeeding Kings and Princes may abundantly evidence how safely and securely the Property and Liberties of the People until Rebellion foolishly fancied Fears and Jealousies with their Discords distrust and plundering of one another shall put them under such another yoke as Oliver Cromwell had cheated them into may rest and are like inviolably to continue for ever protected against any the Incroachments of Arbitrary Power whilst they live under their King 's ancient Government Of which His late Majesty was so careful and so willing to dislodge all manner of Jealousies out of the Minds of his Subjects as he did in the Third year of his Reign give his Royal Assent as they call'd it unto their Petition of Right and made it an Act of Parliament wherein he not only Confirmed their Magna Charta and Charta Forestoe but the Act of Parliament assented unto by King Edward the First De Tallagio non Concedendo The Act of Parliament made in the First year of the Reign of King Edward the Third cap. 6. The Act of Parliament made in the 25 th year of the Reign of the aforesaid King That no Man should be compelled to make any Loans to the King against his will The Statutes of the 28 E. 3. ca. 3. 37 E. 3. ca. 18. 38 E. 3. ca. 9. 42 E. 3. ca. 3. 11 R. 2. ca. 9. 17 R. 2. ca. 6. and 1 R. 3. ca. 2. Charged all his Officers and Ministers to serve him according to the Laws and Statutes of the Realm as they tendered the Honour of his Majesty and the Prosperity of the Kingdom Banished as he hoped for ever all their Fears of the Infringing of their Liberties and given cause of Content to them and that Parliament to such a satiety such a fulness and nè plus ultra as unless they would have been Consortes Imperii and require to have a share in his Regality and Government there was no more to be asked or requested of him or granted by him Imprisoned shortly after in the Tower of London John Earl of Clare and the greatly Learned Selden for but having Copies in their Custody of some Florentine and Foreign Laws and Customs proposed by Sir Robert Dudley a Titular Duke of Tuscany to be imitated by him here in England as a means to raise Money by Impositions laid upon the People and caused his Attorney General to exhibit a Bill against them in the Star-Chamber for Disquieting his Subjects with Fears and Jealousies And was so ready from time to time to Condescend to their Infirmities and give Satisfaction to them in all their Concerns and Scruples as he suffered those two great Cases of the Habeas Corpus and the Ship Money wherein his necessary Prerogative for the good of himself and his People was not a little concerned to be publickly and solemnly argued in the Course and Method of the Laws in foro Contradictorio before the Judges and shewed no displeasure afterwards but much kindness unto Justice Hutton and Justice Croke who in the Case of the Ship Money had in their Arguments and Opinions delivered thereupon against him in the Exchequer Chamber dissented from all the rest and greater number of the Judges And His now Royal Majesty treading the good old Paths of Queen Elizabeth his Grandfather King James and his Royal Father doth in all Matters of difficulty in the absence of Parliaments where the Laws and Justice of the Nation are likely to be more than ordinarily concerned consult and advise with the Judges hath not long ago Superseded one of them for some harsh usage and discontent given to the Countrey in his Circuits and takes all the care he can to choose and make Judges and his Learned Council at the Law out of the most able honest experienced and eminent practisers of it and hath but lately in several of his Speeches in Parliament declared and promised that he would give his consent unto any good Laws
whereof was by his own Confession an Irish Popish Priest and by the Assistance of their over-pow'ring Army voted down suppressed and shut up the House of Peers as useless and dangerous inforced themselves into a Republick and the Nation who by the Laws of God and the King and their Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy were bound as well as themselves to the contrary to Ingage never more to admit of a King and House of Lords and in some of their Answers to their Brethren of Scotland who urged and taxed them with some of their Promises concerning His late Majesty said that they hoped they would not make their Promises to be Obligations And in their Declaration Printed and Published to give Satisfaction to all the World that would believe them of the Reasons of their Actions and turning themselves into a Common-wealth endeavoured to assert that in all Promises a Tacite Condition and Proviso was ever to be understood as annexed unto them So always that they did not prejudice or inconvenience the Party promising And forgetting that they had prosecuted the late Earl of Strafford and caused him to be put to Death upon a pretence of his Subversion of Laws which he never did but they themselves really and frequently did Murdered their King Banished His now Majesty the Prince and the rest of his Children and used their utmost endeavors to Extirpate all the Royal Progeny scorned and abused the Laws tumbled tossed and ploughed up the Liberties Proprieties and Estates of the Loyal Party and made some Ignotos and invisible they themselves never knew and who were less to be understood than King Oberon and his Fairy Queen to be stiled the Keepers of the Liberties of England voted the Courts of Chancery King's-Bench Common Pleas and Exchequer to be dissolved and ordered the Records thereof to be destroyed and thrown into the River of Thames and were not all that while in dread of any Arbitrary Power and a Standing Army when to the great Charge of the People they could not think themselves safe without it But tamely suffered Oliver Cromwel their Man of Sin and greatest of Hypocrites to put a trick upon them and teach them the Truth and Doctrine of Divine Retalliation by dissolving the Reliques of the over-long Parliament pulling out the remaining Members with Soldiers and Musquettiers and shutting up the Doors of that House of Commons and could for the Preservation of their ill-gotten Estates like Isachar bow down unto the burden and be well content to believe it to be no violation of the Privileges of Parliament no Arbitrary Power or Introduction to it nor any Destruction of the Liberties of the People and suffer him upon the 16 th of December 1653. in the presence of the Commanders and Officers of his Army attended by the miscalled Lords Commissioners of the pretended great Seal of England Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London divers of the over awed Judges of the Land and many other Persons said to be of Quality to declare himself by an Instrument in Writing of his own framing Protector of the Common-wealth of England Scotland and Ireland Disannul and Abrogate the antient form of Parliaments constitute a New and Ordain that the Persons Elected to be Members for ever afterwards should be approved by the major part of his Council and the succeeding Protectors who were most of them Major Generals and Commanders in his Standing Army of Oppressors That an yearly Revenue should be raised settled and established for the maintaining of Ten Thousand Horse and Dragoons and Twenty Thousand Foot in England Scotland and Ireland for the Defence and Security thereof and a Convenient Number of Ships for guarding of the Seas besides Two hundred thousand Pounds per Annum for defraying the other necessary Charges and Expences of the Government Which Revenues were to be raised by the Customs and such other ways and means as should be agreed upon by him and his Council That the Lands Tenements Rents Royalties Jurisdictions and Hereditaments which remained unsold and undisposed by Acts or Ordinances of Parliament belonging to the Common-Wealth except the Forests and Chases and the Honors and Mannors appertaining thereunto the Lands of the Rebels in Ireland and the four Counties of Dublin Cork Kildare and Caterlaugh the Lands forfeited by the People of Scotland in the late Wars and the Lands of Papists and Delinquents in England who had not then Compounded should together with the Debts Fines Issues Amerciaments Penalties and Profits certain and casual due to the Keepers of the Liberties of England by Authority of Parliament be vested in the Lord Protector and his Successors Lord Protectors of the aforesaid Nations not to be aliened but by consent of Parliament which made him no less an yearly Revenue as some of his own Party did calculate it then Eighteen hundred Thousand Pounds sterling per Annum That for the preventing of Disorders and Dangers which might fall out both at Sea and Land he should have Power until the meeting of the first Parliament which was to be once in every Three years to raise Money for the purposes aforesaid And to make Laws and Ordinances for the Peace and welfare of these Nations which should be binding and in force until order should be taken in Parliament concerning the same That the exercise of the Chief Magistrate and the Administration of the Government over the said Countries and Dominions should be in the Lord Protector assisted with a Council not exceeding Twenty one or less than Thirteen That he should in the Intervals of Parliament dispose and order the Militia and Forces of the Three Nations for the Peace and good thereof with the advice and consent of the major part of his Council That the Number of 60 Elected and chosen or approved as aforesaid being easie enough to be tempted by Preferment or over-awed by a standing Army should be deemed a Parliament for the Three Kingdoms of England Scotland and Ireland That he and every successive Lord Protector should take an Oath that he would not Violate or Infringe the matters and things contained in that Instrument of Government And when afterwards to prevent the Juries Scruples of Conscience and unwillingness to give their Verdicts against the Law and the King 's Loyal Party as he would have them erected in Westminster-Hall his High Court of Justice or Shambles as some of the People not unfitly termed it adorned with Red and Blood-demonstrating Colours to Try and Condemn such Innocent Persons as he should call Offenders not according to the Law but the unbounded rules of his vulgar Reason of State guided by a standing Army of 30000 Horse and Foot baffled and disgraced the Laws and reasonable Customs of England maimed and cut off as much as he could of it as Adonizedek did the Thumbs and Toes of his Captive Kings altered and destroyed all he could the form and rationality of the Proceedings thereof and caused the Writs and
must be charged more upon the want of Honesty than Arithmetick And may be found as greatly mistaken in their no seldom Parish Annual Legacies Communion Charities or otherwise and in their Taxes or yearly Collections for the Poor which in some out-Parishes near London have amounted unto Two thousand pounds per Annum and many times several Hundred pounds per Annum in lesser Parishes and yet the Poor pester the Streets and complain of their Parish-starving Weekly Allowances when Houses of Forty pounds per Annum therein are by a constant yearly Tax burdened with Sixteen shillings per Annum to be quarterly paid towards the relief of the Poor though many Charities and the yearly improved Rents of Lands assigned thereunto ought to have lessened it or by their taxing or laying heavy burdens upon such as shall disoblige them or withdraw their Custom from their Shops Taverns or Ale-houses or to ease a Friend or any that can make a perswading Application unto them or to charge one man more heavily than he should be to ease another that might better bear it will adventure to convert the Monies given for the setting up or seeking young Tradesmen to their own use or of their own Children Son-in-Laws or Kindred and making their Wives Jointures of Lands given to Charitable uses which they cannot tell how to be ill done in regard of that often misguiding and misapplied saying That Charity beginneth at home take Five shillings at a time out of the Dish or Bason of the Money given to the Poor at the receiving of the Sacrament to satisfie a wicked Church-warden for his Attendance and as much sometimes in the gathering of Money or Benevolence for the Lecturer who might have saved that Money if he had Preached them into better Consciences as when after a long attendance they are to pay a charitable guift for the Marriage of poor Maid-servants or to such of that sort as have served one Master or Mistress in that Parish for such a number of years do think the Devil will not be friends with them if by some lye or pretence as that the Rents of the Lands are fallen a Tenant broke or insolvent they do not drive them to take a pittance or scarce half of what is due and howsoever must give a Release or Receipt for the whole to the end that all may be reckoned when a great deal less was paid And do think that they have as great an Authority under colour of Publick good not at all or but little intended to grind and do what they please and with as much Extravagancy in many of their illegal orders and doings within the small compass of their little Dominions as if all the rest of the Parish were only of the Tribe of Issachar And every City Borough and Corporation in England and Wales will not think themselves furnished with Arbitrary Power sufficient by their Charters unless by their By-Laws and subordinate Rules of Government they can have some out leaps and incursions and inforce their Inhabitants to an obedience of their many times unjustifiable Orders Fines and Assessements The Companies of Trade in London whose Charters and Incorporations were granted for the better ordering and governing of an honest and regular way of Trading with a conscionable and reasonable gain not to spoil and falsifie the Manufactures of the Kingdom and enhaunce the Price thereof are not to suffer Tricks to be plaid with it to deceive and abuse the People The Drapers cannot produce a Charter or an Allowance from God or Man to cause their Cloth to be stretched or Tenter'd to make 16 yards 20 and when a new created Trade called a Cloth-drawer shall have hid and cunningly dearn'd up the holes or cracks in it by a device of Hot-pressing it so slick and smooth it as it shall feel and look rather like Silk than Cloth sell it for 20 25 or 30 s. per yard which if it were not so misused and made to be almost old before the Taylor can have shapt it into a Shute of Apparel would be worth but 16 or 18 s. per yard And it is more than an Arbitrary lawless Power for a Goldsmith to melt down as much heavy Money as he can come at into silver Plate and sell Tobacco and Powder-Boxes Staff handles Pomels of Swords Cup-handles and most of the smaller pieces of Plate in the Kingdom of drossy Silver not half the value of Sterling and prove them to be toucht or markt for Sterling when it will not be worth half the Money they do sell it for fill Rings by an Imperceptible hole with powder of Copper and make the Buyer pay for pure Gold when it is for a great part no such matter Insomuch as a great part of the Plate of the Nation is now so much abased as it is not half the value it should be It is a more than Arbitrary and illegal Power in the Vintners who besides the great Adulteration of the Wines beyond the Seas before they come hither will have the assistance of the Wine-Coopers to unwholsom them with Arsenick in the Sack and many other unhealthful mixtures in their other Wines and by that and the Vintner and his Drawer's Deputy-Conjurations can to please the humour of the Customers fit him out of half a dozen small Vessels or Bottles and laugh as they say in their sleeves and perhaps the Drawer may get a Sixpence into the Bargain for drawing it so specially to think how neatly they are cozened howsoever the rate must be what they shall set tho' the King and his Privy Council do often put a price upon their Wines yet if the more honest Drinkers will not pay the Vintner's own exacted Rate for that which is good they must take the bad enough to poison a Dog And if some fall Sick upon it as many have lately done and dye by no great quantity moderately drank of it that shall never disturb the Conscience of the Vintner who thinks it for the Publick good that he in a short time hath from a poor Tavern-Boy made himself worth 20000 l. or 30000 l. and his Wife the Mistress of a Pearl Neck-lace not Counterfeit as his Wines were of a great value And makes no doubt but although he Repent and come into the Vineyard of the Almighty at a late or but the eleventh hour he shall not go without his Peny and if he purchase an Hospital or some other charitable Uses and leave it in trust with as honest an one as himself it will do the business The Brewers cannot believe their Trade can subsist without the aid of an unjustifiable Arbitrary Power who though they be allowed by the King and excused for the Excise of three Barrels of Beer in every score and steals as much as they can notwithstanding of the duty of the Excise from the King and his Officers and the Housekeeper pays the Excise for all that he takes of him Yet from his Beer though Mault
England by Inheritance And their mutual Rancors and Displeasures with the grand Contests of them and their Parties to procure the Statutes of Articuli super Chartas de Tallagio non Concedendo were not healed without the Aids and Subsidies of his People The mis-government and mis-leading of King Edward the Second by his several Favorites Peirce Gaveston and the Spencers did not hinder him from the Supplies of his People King Edward the Third after a fifteenth of the Temporalty a twentieth part of the Goods of the Cities and Burroughs and a tenth of the Clergy granted unto him by Parliament in the Eighth year of his Reign having consumed much Treasure in his Wars made for the Kingdom of France which he claimed as his Inheritance wherein the English Nation more than for the Grandeur and Honour of their Prince were not much concerned but were jealous until an Act or Declaration of the King in Parliament was procured to the contrary that the Conquest of France might have caused England to have been afterwards dependant upon that greater Crown and Kingdom was notwithstanding the seizure and taking into his hands the Goods and Estates of three Orders of Monks viz. The Lombards Cluniacks and Cistertians and all the Treasure committed to the Custody of the Churches through England for the Holy War forced to revoke divers Assignations made for Payment of Moneys though he had received Three Millions of Crowns of Gold for the Ransom of John King of France whom his Son the Black Prince had taken Prisoner and was not put to lose any of his Honour Friends Estate or Interest for want of the necessary Assistance of his Subjects who for the maintenance of those and other his Wars were howsoever well content to give him half of the Laieties Wool and a whole of the Clergies and at another time the ninth Sheaf the ninth Fleece and ninth Lamb for two years and after many other Taxes and Aids granted in several Parliaments of his Reign and a Commission sent into every Shire to enquire of the value of every man's Estate The Treasure of the Nation being much exhausted found the People so willing to undergo that and other Burdens which those successful Wars had brought upon them as the Ladies and Gentlewomen did willingly Sacrifice their Jewels to the Payment of his Souldiers That Unfortunate Prince Richard the Second his Grandchild tossed and perplexed with the Greatness Ambition and Factions of his Uncles and the subtil underminings of John of Gaunt Duke of Lancaster the most powerful of them fatally continued and pursued by Henry of Bullingbrook his Son Duke of Hereford was not in all those his Distresses so unhappy but that although the Commons in Parliament had by their Petitions unto him complained That for want of good Redress about his Person and in his Houshold and Courts the Commons were daily pilled and nothing defended against the Enemy and that it would shortly undo him and the whole Estate yet they were so mindful of their Soveraign and themselves as they not only afforded him very great Aids and Assistances but in the Fourteenth year of his Reign the Lords and Commons in Parliament did Pray That The Prerogative of the King and his Crown might be kept and all things done or attempted to the contrary might be redressed and that he might be as free as any of his Royal Progenitors were And in the Fifteenth year of his Reign did in Parliament require him That He would as largely enjoy his Prerogative as any of his Progenitors notwithstanding any Statute and namely the Statute of Gloucester in the time of King Edward the Third the which Statute they utterly repealed out of their tender affection to the King King Henry the Fourth Fifth and Sixth although well understood to have been Kings de facto not de jure for so not seldom have been the Pleadings at the Law of their Acts of Parliament and although the later of those Kings being Crowned King of France in his Infancy and in Possession of that Kingdom was by his Meek and Pious rather than Prudent Government a great part of the Cause of the Bloody Contests betwixt the Two Houses of York and Lancaster which ruined very many of the Nobility and Gentry by taking their several Parties and were by their Discords the loss of all the Kingdom of France but Calice And that Richard Duke of York had in Parliament so claimed and wrestled for the Crown as he was declared Protector of the Kingdom of England enjoyed notwithstanding the care and good will of their Subjects upon all occasions either at home or abroad in times of Peace or War by their Contributions of Subsidies King Edward the Fourth in the brunt and hottest of the long continued bloody Contentions of the two great Houses and Families of York and Lancaster after nine Battels won by himself attested by his Surcoat of Arms which he wore therein hung up as a Trophy in the Cathedral Church of St. George at Windsor and his many struglings with King Henry the Sixth and his Party in losing and gaining the Crown again War with France and compelling the crafty Lewis the 11 th the King thereof to demand a Peace and consent to pay him 75000 Crowns towards his War Expences and a Tribute of 50000 Crowns yearly during the life of King Edward notwithstanding that he had in the second year of his Reign sate in a Michaelmas Term three days together in his Court of Kings Bench and gathered great Sums of Money of the People of England by his Privy Seal towards his Wars with the Scots and in the Seventh year of his Reign resumed by Act of Parliament all the Grants which he had made since he took Possession of the Realm raised great Sums of Money by Benevolences and Penal Laws had in the Eighth year of his Reign granted him by Act of Parliament two fifteens and a Demy and in the Thirteenth year of his Reign a Subsidy towards his Wars with France when the Actions Courage and Wisdom of Parliaments were so incertain as there was in the space of half a year one Parliament Proclaiming King Edward an Usurper and King Henry a Lawful King and another Proclaiming King Edward a Lawful King and King Henry an Usurper King Henry the Seventh although that he sometimes declared That he held the Crown as won in Battel by Conquest of King Richard the Third and at other times by his better Title from the House of York and his Marriage with the Lady Elizabeth the Daughter of King Edward the Fourth and avaritiously took all the ways possible for the enriching of his Treasury had divers great Aids and Subsidies granted unto him by Parliament King Henry the Eighth notwithstanding that he had after many great Subsidies and Aids both as to the Money and manner of Collecting it granted unto him his Heirs and Successors by several Parliaments and the first Fruits and Tenths of
all Ecclesiastical Promotions and Benefices overturned the then established Religion of the Kingdom seized and took into his Possession the great yearly Revenue of 600 Abbies Priories and Nunneries most of the Hospitals and Colleges which had been given to Religious Uses with Anathema's with as many other dreadful Curses and Imprecations as the Minds of Men could imagine to fall upon the Violaters thereof amounting in the then yearly value unto something more than One hundred and Ninety thousand Pounds sterling per Annum being at a then low and undervalued rate scarce the 20 th Peny of the now since improved yearly value excluded the Founders from their Reversions and Legal Rights thereof when the uses unto which they were first ordained should be altered or otherwise applied Confiscated the very many rich Shrines Chalices Plates Copes Jewels Pearls Precious Stones Gold and Silver not only found in those Religious Houses but in all the Cathedrals and Churches in England the Riches of all which could amount to no less than many Millions of Money Sterling more if not equal unto the vast and admired Reserves and Treasures of the Venetian Republick or that of many Popes Provisions reported to have been laid up in the Castle of St. John de Angelo at Rome in case of any Invasion or War of the Turks and unhappily wasted expended and gave away not only a great part of those immense Riches and Land Revenue but all the Eighteen hundred thousand Pounds sterling which were left him in his Father's Treasury debased some of his Gold Coin and made it Currant for a greater value than in truth it would yield And the better to gentle and pacifie the People who stood amazed at it promised and undertook that they should never more be troubled with Aids or Subsidies Was notwithstanding when afterwards the Publick Occasions required Aids or Supplies neither foreclosed by his Promise or denied the assistance of his People But the Lords and Commons in Parliament did in the 35 th year of his Reign assent to an Act of Parliament for the remitting unto him all such Sums of Money as he had borrowed of them or any other by way of Impress or Loan by his Privy Seals sithence the First day of January in the 33 th year of his Reign and if he had paid to any Person any some of Money which he had borrowed by Sale of Land or otherwise the same Person his Heirs Executors or Administrators should repay it again to the King and if any Person had sold his Privy Seal to another the Seller should repay the Money to the Buyer thereof And for a further Supply did in the last year of his Reign grant unto him one Subsidy with two Fifteenths and Tenths by the Temporalty and one Subsidy by the Clergy Whose Successors and Posterity have ever since not refused to Subscribe to those Laws of God Nature and Nations That Children are obliged to assist both their Political and Natural Parents The contrary whereof would be against the Rules of Humanity and Mankind Judge Hutton a greater Friend unto the Law then Ragioni di Stato Reason of State or Government declaring in his Argument in the Exchequer Chamber against the Ship-Money in the latter end of the Reign of King Charles the Martyr That an Act of Parliament that a King should have no aid or help of his Subjects would be void and of none effect King Edward the Sixth after the many Seditions and Troubles which assaulted his Infant Government and excellent endowments of Virtue and Piety by the Wars with Scotland quarrellings of the Protector and Admiral his Uncles on the Mother's side and the Plots of Dudley Duke of Northumberland was although he had taken into his hands all the Lands Houses and Tenements formerly given under dire Imprecations and Curses for the quiet and welfare as the People then thought of the Souls of their Ancestors Children Friends and Benefactors departed out of this World and gone into the next together with the Colleges given to Superstitious Uses free Chappels Fraternities and Guilds with all their Lands Goods and Estates seizure of Church Goods in Cathedrals and Parish Churches and such as had been imbezil'd with Jewels Gold and Silver Chalices ready Money Copes and other Vestments reserving to every Church one Chalice and one Covering for the Communion Table was not grudged in the last year of his short Reign one Subsidy with two Fifteens and Tenths granted by the Temporalty and a Subsidy by the Clergy Queen Mary being a profess'd Catholick renversed the Protestant Religion put many to Death Banished and Persecuted all the Eminent Professors thereof Married Philip the Second King of Spain and thereby endangering if she had any Issue by him to have brought England under the Laws and Yoke of his Spanish Dominions with the Bloody and Cruel Inquisition to boot began to restore the Lands of the Abbies and Monasteries and intended to relinquish all her right therein Lost Calice which had been in the English Possession ever since the Conquering of it from the French by King Edward the Third Made severe Laws against the Protestants Abrogated all those that were made against the Catholicks shook and tottered the Estates of many of the Protestants great Nobility in their Lands which had belonged to their Monasteries and Religious Houses and of many Thousands of considerable Families of the Kingdom who had those kind of Lands either given them by King Henry the Eighth or King Edward the Sixth or had Purchased them of others who might well have foreseen their not Enjoyment of them if she had but a little longer continued her Reign to perfect the entire returning to the Church of Rome of her self and as many of the People as she should be able to force into it was not in her short Reign without the Aids and Assistance of the People when the Publick Affairs called for them Richard the Third though for his Cruelties and ill obtaining of the Crown he merited not the Title of a King after his stabbing King Henry the Sixth whereof he died in the Life-time of King Edward the 4 th and after his Death procuring himself to be made Protector of the Kingdom during the Minority of King Edward the Fifth his Nephew whose Guards when he had made to be dismissed and enticed him and his Brother into the Tower of London upon a counterfeit pretence of Safety and Honour he procur'd to be Murthered Did the like to his own Elder Brother the Duke of Clarence whom he contrived to be drowned in a But of Malmsey made himself King and in the setling of his wrongful Title and wicked Usurpation made some good Laws was notwithstanding in the Second year of his Reign besides the great Confiscations of divers of the Nobility and other great Men not refused an Aid or Imposition Queen Elizabeth Inheriting the Courage of her Father King Henry the Eighth and the Wisdom and Prudence of her
gave them a Caution for the future to believe that whatsoever is subject to a publick Exposition cannot be good And the Parliaments in her long and glorious Reign were so unwilling to give any disturbance to her Great and Renowned Actions for the defence and good of her Self and her People and all the Protestant Concernments in Christendom As in the First year of her Reign a Parliament granted her Two shillings eight pence in the Pound of Goods and Four shillings of Lands to be paid in several Payments In her Sixth year one Subsidy was granted by the Clergy and another by the Laiety together with two Fifteenths and Tenths in the Thirteenth year of her Reign towards the Charges of Suppressing the Northern Rebellion a Subsidy of Six shillings in the pound by the Clergy and by the Temporalty two Fifteens and a Subsidy of Two shillings and eight pence in the Pound in her Six and twentieth year had granted her by the Clergy two whole Subsidies and by the Laiety three besides Six Fifteenths and Tenths with a Proviso that that great Contribution should not be drawn into Example in her Fortieth year had granted by the Clergy three entire Subsidies and as many by the Laiety with Six Fifteens and Tenths and in the 42 th year of her Reign to furnish Money for the Irish Wars had Commissions granted to confirm the Crown Lands of Ireland to the Possessors o◠defective Titles And all little enough when in the same year Sir Walter Raleigh a Member of the House of Commons declared unto them That the Moneys lent unto 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yet unpaid her Jewels and much of her Lands sold and she had spared Money out of her own Purse and her Apparel for her Peoples sake And yet when in the Eighth year of her Reign the Parliament had offered unto her four Subsidies upon Condition that she would declare her Successor she magnanimously refused it and remitted the fourth Subsidy saying It was all one whether the Money was in her own or in her Subjects Coffers Our King James being born and bred in the Kingdom of Scotland where their Laws are mingled with some Neighbour English Customs drawn out of our Glanvil brought thither by their King James the First who lived some time here in England and afterwards so much Compounded and over-born by the Civil Law brought out of France long after by King James the Fifth which with some part of their Common Law makes them to be so overmuch Civil and Canon and a Miscellany of them as they are very much different from ours had so great an affection to the Civil Laws and those of his own Countrey before he had understood the Excellency of ours that shortly after his coming to the Crown of England he earnestly recommended to the Parliament of England not only an Union of both the Kingdoms and the Subjects thereof but of their Laws also And so much savoured the Civil Laws as he complained in a Speech to the Parliament of the Contempt of them allowed or was much taken with the Comedy of Ignoramus and Dulman which was purposely framed to expose the Professors of our Common Laws to a Derision of the People and render them guilty of an Ignorance of good Letters and Learning which all of them witness our great Selden and some other of his Coaevals could not justly be charged with and suffered it to be Acted before him at Cambridge with great Applause and to be afterwards Printed and Published without any murmur or jealousie of the English Nation that he endeavoured to introduce an Arbitrary Power who manifested no unwillingness to give him Subsidies and Aids in Foreign as well as Domestick Affairs when he had occasion to require them All which the Cares and doings of our Ancestors for the Publick and Common good joined with their Duty and Allegiance to their Soveraign Kings and Princes may afford us convincing Reasons and Arguments out of concluding Premisses that the Weal and Woe of Kings and their People are like those of Hippocrates's Twins partaking each with other and that the Fear of God Honour of the King Self-Preservation and Oaths and Duty of Allegiance will be more than enough to enjoyn every good Christian and Subject where the welfare of the King and Publick are concerned to be as willing to help the King as he would himself And it cannot be deemed to be either unadvisedly or ill done by our English Fore-fathers or Predecessors in the House of Commons in Parliament in the Seventh year of the Reign of King Richard the Second when being required of the King to give their Advice concerning a Peace to be made with the King of France And the Chancellor then said That the King of himself could well do it yet for good will he would not without their Knowledge or Consent And it could not be Concluded without a Personal Interview of the King of France which for his Honour required great Charges whereof he Charged them of their Allegiance to consult and give him Answer unto which they answering That it becomed not them to Intermeddle their Council therein And therefore referred the whole Order thereof unto the King and his Council And being urged again to answer whether they desired Peace or War for one of them they must choose They answered Peace But when they understood that the King of France desired that the King should hold Guyen of him by Homage and Service they knew not what to say only they hoped that the King meant not to hold of the French Calice and other Territories gotten of them by the Sword whereunto when the King replied That otherwise Peace could not be granted and therefore willed them to Choose They in the end rather desired Peace But Peace not ensuing or being to be had and the King by his Chancellor the next year after in Parliament informing them how that the King was Invironed with the French Spanish Flemmings and the Scots who were Confederate and had made great Preparations to destroy him and his People which was like to ensue unless some means were used to resist it That the King Intended to hazard his own Person to whatsoever Peril which might justly encourage all Estates willingly to offer themselves and what they had to such defence And declared unto them the falshood and treachery of the French in their Treaty of Peace at Calice when they finding the English inclined to it had departed from their Offers The Lords and Commons when they found the Honour of the King and Safety of the Nation so deeply Ingaged granted unto the King two Fifteenths Conditionally that a Moiety of the Fifteenth granted in the last Parliament be part of it and so as if the King go not in Person or that Peace be made the last Fifteenth might Cease Can the sullen rude and ungodly Dutch the most of whose Religion is Trade and all that can be gained by it to maintain their Incroachments
Disasters both in Church and State have been great Additions and Kindle Coles which have made not only many that have some Learning and are ex meliori luto better born and bred but the Mechanick and Illiterate part of the People to take themselves to be a kind of State-Menders and to make their small Capacities the rule and measure of their foolish Prognosticks and are as like to hit the white or mark as he that stands without the Doors of an House a mile off it and undertakes of himself without the help or Information of the Inhabitants to know what is every day and night hour or minute thereof done within the House or as some Mountebank Physitian who without the Aid or Sight of the Patient or any Inquiry into the Symptoms Indications or Progress of the Disease should promise a never-failing Cure of his Sickness or Distemper and may as little deserve his Fee as a Lawyer who should adventure to give his Opinion or direct his Client how to proceed in his Action or Suit without any knowledge at all of the Fact So as those State Almanack-makers by such an Extravagant and incertain Ephemeris would do well to be more modest and cautious in their Opinions and not to expose the Honour of their King and Soveraign to the foolish and ill-digested Censures of themselves and others and make themselves the Conduit-Pipes to convey their Follies to the more Ignorant part of the People who although by God's mercy to a causeless murmuring Nation from the Winter to the Spring from the Spring to the Summer from the Summer to the Autumn and from the Seed time to the Harvest when the Valleys sing and the Earth is loaden with the Increase thereof and so all along not for one but many years together they might understand how often they have sinned against the Divine Mercy and Providence by their Complaints of the weather too hot too cold too wet too windy too dry so as scarce one day in every ten of the year can get an universal liking or good word of the ways of God's Providence and should when they have found themselves every year so often and so greatly mistaken be once ashamed and forsake that unquietness of Spirit will not withstanding not only continue those their mis-doings and humours in the Case of God Almighty as a Custom or Privilege belonging to their Farms and Husbandry but in the height of all their Peace without which their Plenty would be blasted so very much traduce scandalize and mislike the Royal Cares of their King and God's Vicegerent and be so unjust and unreasonable in their Complaints and fault findings as though they sit under their own Vines eat the fat of the flock lye down upon their beds of Ivory sing to the Harp rise up to play enjoy a Peace and Plenty to a Surfeit and the Envy of all their Neighbours and may Weekly read and hear of the Miseries and Sufferings of many Neighbour Nations by Wars and Invasions of one another yet they must never be contented but be every day and very often in every day finding fault with the Government As if the Government of the King and the Government of the King of Kings as to the weather were always to be blamed Whilst they ought rather to be so careful of themselves and their Posterities as to abominate those foolish ways of censuring Authority and to take heed that God do not Punish us for our unthankfulness and abusing his so many and all sorts of Mercies under a Prince Who besides all his other Royal Cares and Concessions added unto those of his famous great Ancestors and Predecessors Kings and Queens of this Realm for the Preservation of his Peoples Liberties and Properties did no longer ago than in the 31 th year of his Reign for the better securing of the Liberties of his Subjects in their Persons and prevention of Imprisonments by sending them in Custody to some of the Islands consented unto an Act of Parliament under great Severities Forfeitures and Penalties to be inflicted upon such as should Imprison or Detain any Man after an Habeas Corpus brought as well in the Vacations as Terms And so far extended it as upon the Committing of any Man Prisoner by himself or the Lords of his Privy Council Lord Chamberlain or other great Officers of his Houshold they are allowed to be Bailed by the King's Justices of his Superiour Courts of Justice although when they themselves shall as they do often Commit or Imprison any man by their Delegated and Derivative Power from the King only they are not at all obliged to discharge any such Offenders upon Writs of Habeas Corpus And by that and those multitudes of former Provisions which our Kings and their Laws have made for the good and safety of their People from all the incursions of Arbitrary Power should not forget that there is not so much as an Imaginary fear or danger that any Subject of England can be injured by any Arbitrary Power or otherwise for which a present and sudden Remedy may not be quickly had or provided and that it is now a received Maxim in our Common Law That the King can do no wrong and that id potest quod de Jure potest So that there are very few unless such as would have the King to be as liable which our Laws did always forbid to Coertions Arrests or Punishments as the most ordinary or meanest of his Subjects are or ought to be or can be so ignorant in the course or Proceedings of our Laws but may understand That if he should cause any to beat or do any Injury or Trespass to any of his Subjects the Parties or Agents are by his and our own Laws to be responsible for it And believe that King James who had reason to understand Government and Affairs of State better than such kind of People did not err or say amiss in his Answer in the 19 th year of his Reign to a Petition to the House of Commons in Parliament when he declared unto them That None could have Wisdom to Judge of things of that Nature but such as are duely acquainted with the particulars of Treaties and of the variable and fixed Connexions of the Affairs of State together with the knowledge of the Secret ways ends and intentions of Princes in their several Negotiations otherwise a small mistaking of Matters of that Nature might produce more and worse effects than can be Imagined And remember that if Impossibilities could be possible and every one that foolishly fancies himself to be able could be able to manage or Judge of State Affairs yet we have no Laws that do allow every Man Coblers and Illiterate men not excepted to be a Statesman And that St. Jude reprehending those that despised Dominions and speak evil of Dignities gives us the Original from whence it comes for that they speak evil of those things they know not And
Pleadings form and frame thereof to be translated and only used in the English Language on purpose and with a design to Abrogate them and make way for a new Fabrick and Engine of Laws for the establishing of his intended absolute manner of Arbitrary Government encouraged and Pensioned Mr. White a profest Papist and Mr. Hobbs Men of great Learning which might have been better Imployed to Write and Publish Books to vindicate and justifie the necessity of an Absolute Power in Supreme Magistracy and others to Write and Publish their unsound Opinions that Copyhold Estates were a Badge of the Norman Slaveries that the eldest Sons or only Daughters in every Family had no right to any more than a double Portion of their Father's real Estate that University-Learning was needless with a purpose to Confiscate their Revenues and Payment of Tythes unlawful permitted Servants to betray and sequester their Masters Tenants their Landlords Wives their Husbands and Children their Parents only because they were unwilling to be Perjured in their new Oaths and Ingagements or wretchedly willing to forsake their Loyalty and the Laws of God and the Kingdom suffered his illiterate Commanders to threaten to pull the Gowns from off the Lawyers Backs and Publickly to declare That it would never be well until their Gowns were like the Colours taken from their Subdued Scots Brethren hung up in Westminster-Hall made his Major Generals Governors in several Provinces who abusing and domineering over the Laws Imprisoned men without Cause and suffered the Nobility of England to stand bare and uncovered before them and to be Arrested and Drag'd in the Streets by Bailiffs and Catchpoles for Debt when they had nothing left to pay them Prohibited ejected Orthodox Ministers to bring Actions at Law for recovery of their Rights and all others to demand or seek to recover at Law their Debts or other Rights by any Actions or Suits in Law or Equity unless they took the aforesaid Engagement against the King and House of Lords tired and almost starved with tricks and delays the poor deprived Ministers Wives and Children of their fifth part of the Profits of their Husbands and Fathers Benefices which they seemed to allow unto them gave a considerable yearly Salary duly paid to Lilly the fooling and cozening Astrologer to foretel in his State as well as weather Almanacks good or bad Events to Lacquy after his accursed Designs and positively assert by his pretended intimacy with the Stars that in such a year before His Majestie 's happy Restauration Prince Rupert who God be thanked is yet living was certainly to be Hanged Constituted a House composed of his Army Commanders and some other of his Nymrods and Deputy-oppressors many whereof had been formerly well instructed in the Arts of Coblers Draymen and Bodies-making c. and instead of an House of Peers called it the Other House And when Mr. Coney a London Merchant being Imprisoned against the Law without a Cause shewn had brought his Habeas Corpus to be Bailed sent Mr. Maynard Mr. Twisden and Mr. Wadham Wyndham his Lawyers Prisoners to the Tower of London for Pleading for him and the Liberties of the People and called our Magna Charta Magna farta Prohibited all Lawyers to Plead for any of the Sequestred Orthodox Ministry that would not crouch under and kiss the Rod of their Persecution Many notwithstanding of those better now than they were before Informed Members of that over long and unhappy Parliament and continued to be Members of Parliament through all the Changes from thence to Oliver and from Oliver to his Son Dick seemed not then to be out of love with those new Authorities or over turning Rota's of Government Laws and Liberties And too many of the gaining and Phanatick Party who might have foreseen the dismal Apprehensions of an approaching Arbitrary Power had in the days of Oliver and his Son Mr. Richard so little a dread or were not so much afraid of it when they had reason to have been a great deal more as they being no small Gainers by it rejoyced in it thought themselves happily placed in the blessed Land of Canaan and Conducted into it by the hand of Heaven and Singing a Magnificat to Oliver and a Requiem to themselves and their chosen Posterity could be at no rest until they had obtained Declarations out of many Counties and Cities subscribed by the most considerable Men of their Rebellious and Sacrilegious Party and caused them to be Printed and delivered unto his Counterfeit Highness with Solemn Addresses upon their Knees and other actions of Veneration by some of their most active Accomplices wherein they stiled Oliver Moses and Joshua made up his Praises with almost Blasphemy and prayed for the continuance of his Care for their Protection and as they called it the Publick Good and were after his Death as busie with the like Adoration several solemn Declarations Addresses and Thanksgivings to his Son Richard's ridiculous parcel of Highness Wherefore they who were then so willing to bow their Necks under the hard galling Iron yoke which a Long Parliament by Colour of a false Authority assistance of a standing Army and a Rebel Brewer had put upon them And to take Arms against their own Happiness and betray their own good Laws Liberties Privileges and Customs to Usurpers which were so unparallel'd as the Devil with a pair of Spectacles cannot upon the most malicious and exactest search find any Nation under Heaven so happy and blessed as England hath been in the security of their Liberties Properties and Privileges since the beginning of the Reign of King Henry the First thorough the Reigns of all our Succeeding Kings who upon the least appearance or complaints of Grievances either as to particulars or generals rarò contingentibus or but feared or likely to happen never denied good Laws and Remedies to their People as all our Law-Books Year-Books Reports of Cases Adjudged Parliament Rolls and Books of Statutes will abundantly testifie may with shame and horror of so foul and grand ingratitude recall to their remembrance that they that were the Disciples of the late Wars and Usurpations and gainers by the Ruin and Misery of this and two other Kingdoms by their Arts and Power of cheating and haring their fellow Subjects out of their Loyalty Religion Estates Laws and Liberties Could be well contented to receive of His Majesty after his Return from his Distresses not only a Pardon unto all but a few excepted of their great and many Offences and Misdeeds after that he had by several Acts of Parliament Unfornicated or Unadulterated the Wives and Husbands and Legitimated the Children of those that were mis-married and taken away the Errors of their Illegal Proceedings and Judgments and Recoveries had at Law in the time of their many years abominable Rebellion but the greatest acquital of Money Arrears and Forfeitures due unto him amounting unto many Millions Sterling that ever any People of England had and received