Selected quad for the lemma: judgement_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
judgement_n	according_a	court_n	law_n	2,004	5	4.8219	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A75434	An answer to the Lord Digbies speech in the House of Commons; to the bill of attainder of the Earle of Strafford, the 21th. of Aprill. 1641. Written by occasion of the first publishing of that speech of his Lordships. And now printed in regard of the reprinting of that speech.		1641 (1641)	Wing A3420; Thomason E198_3; ESTC R11361	12,154	27

abuse of the sword of Iustice without the use of any other on the Princes part if the Lawes of the land and of the Religion professed in it bind the people from drawing their swords in maintenance of their liberty and shall their obedience to God and the King and their Lawes leave them without hope or means of redresse by the same Lawes or what sufficient redresse and reparation can be made then if the result of a hundred such wicked judgements and Counsels shall be onely a great misdemeanour and a hundred misdemeanors cannot make a felony nor a hundred Felonies amount to a Treason according to the Lord Straffords position maintained publikely at his tryall I wish the Lord Digby had longer ruminated upon his ill digested judgement in this point before he put it over for good I proceed to the next words They are And this designe of force not appearing all his other wicked practises cannot amount so high with me Wherin if by this designe his Lordship meane the particular designe of bringing the Irish Army into England then is the consequence most inconsequent For sure if the Lord Strafford had not he might have had some other designe upon this Kingdome that would have amounted to hight treason in the Lord Digbies eye or if by this design his Lordship intend generally the designe of using force then sure it was made plaine enough to his Lordship at the tryall that the Lord Strafford did more then designe the using of force to the subversion of more then one of the fundamentall Lawes of England and Ireland having actually levied warre upon the Kings liege people to constraine obedience to his illegall summons and orders upon Paper-petitions and to raise moneys upon them against their wills But his Lordship saith Hee can find a more naturall spring from whence to derive those and all his other Crimes then from an intention to bring in Tyranny and to make his owne posterity as well as ours slaves As from revenge from pride from Avarice from passion from insolence of nature Is it possible that so sharpe a wit as the Lord Digbyes that can so quickly espy the mishap of any argument brought forth against the Lord Strafford should not see this misconception of his own in his excuse Shall no man be a Traytor that can find another more naturall spring from whence to derive his treasonable designes and actions then from an intent to commit Treason Then the Lord Strafford would not have beene a Traytor with the Lord Digby though hee had brought the Irish Army into England if that action had originally flowed from one of the foresaid Springs as I beleeve it would have done Then his Lordship may absolve many and I am sure will one of the Gun-powder Traytors whose son hath found so much Princely compassion and favour from his Majestie and the King his Father upon I beleeve a well-grounded opinion that the Fathers designe to have destroyed the King his Master proceeded not from any malicious mind to his sacred person but was derived from his zeale to his Religion a purer spring then any of those his Lordship hath found out to wash the Lord Strafford which certainly have beene the springs of all the fowlest treasons in the world And as for the Lord Straffords respect to his posteritie since the Lord Digby knoweth no man better that we are all deceived with a shew of good in every sinne we are drawne into by him who hee thinketh gave the Lord Strafford the application of his rare abilities And that not only many Ministers of State are easily engaged to bee Instruments of overthrowing the Common-wealth and glory of Kingdomes so they may advance themselves and their Families to riches and honour because that in so doing they imagine they get more in their private fortunes then they lose in their parts of the publike But even the wisest Princes themselves have by this deceit been drawne into the same errour as Philip the second of Spaine and Lewis the eleventh of France For an error it was in them and may bee demonstrated to have been so as farre as Politique matters are capable of demonstration Nay since the Lord Digby avoweth that the consideration of his posteritie did not hold the Lord Strafford himselfe from becomming the grand Apostate to the Common-wealth not only in opinions but by falling from them to practises as high as tyrannicall as any subject ever ventured on and such as made him the most dangerous Minister the most insupportable to free subjects that can bee Charactered I know not why his Lordship should esteeme it so sure a preservative against the Treason he hath suffered for I had almost said justly and so doth his Lordship For he doth not say but the Lord Strafford was worthy to dye and perhaps worthier then many a Traytor He doth not say but his words counsells and actions have beene proved to be such as may direct the King and Parliament to enact that the like shall be Treason for the future but only prayeth God to keepe him from giving judgement of death on any man or of ruine to his innocent posterity upon a Law made a Posteriori So that if his Lordship may be freed from this scruple of Conscience there is hope that hee may change his opinion and be brought a Posteriori to declare his agreeing in judgement with himself and the so much greater part of the House of Commons And that I shall now hope to doe by shewing him a fallacy in the second and last ground of his Argument The fallacy lyeth in this that his Lordship doth divide those things in his consideration which God hath joyned and in doing this will needs be wiser then the State and Lawes hee liveth under which no man ought to be unlesse they thwart the Law of God This hee doth where he faith There is in Parliament a double power of life and death by Bill a Judiciall power and a Legaslative that the measure of the one is what is legally just of the other what is prudentially and politiquely fit for the good and preservation of the whole but these may not be confounded in judgement we may not piece up want of legallity with prudentiall fitnesse And truly if his Lordship had but added these words Except some Case as yet wholly omitted or not yet sufficiently declared come to be judged in Parliament I should have fully assented to his whole discourse in this point But in either of those Cases to deny unto that representative Body the High Court of the Kingdome a liberty to doe any thing not unjust in it selfe though not as yet legally declared to bee just for the preservation of that greater body it represents when according to the sincere and dispassionate judgement of Prudence and Policy it cannot be sufficiently secured by Lawes already made is neither agreeable to the Law of Nature nor of the Land nor of God nor to a rule of

no expectance of more then a single testimony fortified with circumstances some time before his Lordship gave over his former fervor Or if it should bee admitted that there is no improbality of such an unwilfull mistake in Mr. Secretary Vane then it cannot be denyed but that an other Counsellor of that Iunto might as easily have committed the same or the like errour in his notes and allowing me this I shall then beseech his Lordship without prejudice to Mr. Secretary to give himselfe a good reason why that ground of his accusation that spurre of his prosecution that basis of his Iudgement of the Earle of Strafford as unto Treason should be quite vanisht away to his understanding so soone as hee knew the notes were Sir Henry Vanes which till that instant had beene in such force of beliefe with him that had it remained in the same hee should not have beene tender in the Lord Straffords condemnation For in the scales of my weake Iudgement there is no such difference in the weight of two Counsellors notes especially those which proved to be Mr. Secretary Vanes having beene at last though slowly confirmed by his memory upon oath without helpe of his paper whereas those of some other Counsellors might have proved inferior in those two great credentiall circumstances for ought his Lordship had then heard or had reason to imagine For it will not helpe his Lordship to say that hee hath expressed himselfe in those wary termes that to his understanding that ground is quite vanisht away as unto Treason toward the legall proofe whereof a single witnesse is no better then none because no notes could have supplyed the defect of another witnesse and all the rest of the Iunto had already upon their oathes remembred nothing of this matter Before his Lordship changed his judgement and for ought hee could know might have continued to doe so not withstanding the production of any of their notes which they upon their re-examination might also have evaded as his Lordship would these of Mr. Secretaries So that upon the whole matter had this particular of the Irish Army beene the sole charge and proved no otherwise then his Lordship imagined it would have beene that is to say by Sir Henry Vanes single testimony without his notes and some other Counsellors nores without his testimony I cannot see how his Lordship could judiciously have condemned the Lord Strafford of treason with innocence according to his plinciples And as for a diffusing of a complexion of treason over all if that particular had beene sufficiently witnessed or becomming a With to bind all the scattered and lesser branches as it were into a faggot of Treason Sure the antecedent words are so much more powerfull to that effect as they are more comprehensive and they were clearly deposed by my Lord the Earle of Northumberland as well as by Sir Henry Vane though no other of the Iunto remembred any thing of them neither which doth take off much of the strangenesse of Mr. Secretaries single testimony and I beleeve hath bin the ground whereupon many a tender conscience hath passed that Bill wherein his Lordship was more scrupulous then I canyetfind sufficient cause for For I crave leave to aske his Lordship this Question whether if some miscreant had been tampering with others to take away the life of the King and this had beene evidenced by two witnesses whereof one had deposed that hee advised the doing of it by poyson as the surest and safest way the other denying those words upon oath should notwithstanding have sworn clearely that hee heard him perswade the killing of the King and giving reasons for the necessity and lawfulnesse thereof and his Lordship had beene one of the Iury whether hee would have made any more bones of condemning that villany then if they had both agreed in a tale touching the matter of poyson And if his Lordship could have swallowed that difference in their depositions well enough it may then be a matter worthy of his further enquiry from what quarter that Gnat came which stuck so fast with his Lordship in a case fully paralell There resting as little doubt in one that his Majesty might lawfully have imployed the Irish Army to reduce this kingdome if he might and was to have done every thing that power would admit for the raising of monies otherwise after the Parliament had not supplyed him as there would have rested in another whether he might have poysoned the King after he had been satisfied that he might have killed him The Lord Strafford saw very well that the knot of the With was in this part of that desperate advise of his and the Lord Digby may remember the poor shift he made to loose it by explaining himselfe thus His Majesty was to doe every thing that power would admit that is every thing that power would lawfully admit to the doing wherof I suppose his Majesty needed not to be loosed and absolved from all rules of government And so for those other words in the end of the 22. Article that his Majesty should first try the Parliament here and if that did not supply him according to his occasions he might then use his prerogative as he pleased to leavy what he needed that he should be acquitted both of God and man if he tooke some other courses though it were against the will of his subjects And the declaration he made in open counsell mentioned in the end of the 21 Article That he would serve his Majesty in any other way in case the Parliament did not supply him that is lawfull way and lawfull courses said the Lord Strafford now he found the point of these mischievous words turned upon himselfe And yet there was a time when no man urged with more vehemencie that no such Prerogative courses to raise monies could be lawfull and I am sure no lawfull courses at any time would have beene against the wills of any of his Majesties subjects This was all that the mighty wit of the Lord Strafford could devise in avoydance of the stabbing guilt of that most treacherous and wicked Counsell of his But the Lord Digby helpeth him with many better guards First by professing that he can have no notion of any bodies intent to subvert the Lawes treasonably but by force What a wide doore hath his Lordship in few words set open to wicked Iudges and Counsellors to trample the publike liberty of Kingdomes and States under foot and then to escape without punishment or with lesse then can restraine them or secure others from their lewd practises May not their concurrence and constancy in giving such wicked judgements counsels upon all emergent occasions be as sure evidences of their intents to subvert the Lawes as the readinesse of sword-men to abet and maintaine them therein May not a free mighty Monarchy be thus in an age or two quietly converted into a most slavish and impotent tyrannie by the pen and