Selected quad for the lemma: justice_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
justice_n	john_n	lord_n	time_n	8,617	5	5.3406	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A41187	A letter to the Right Honourable Sir John Holt, Kt. Lord Chief Justice of the Kings Bench; occasioned by the noise of a plot; Letter to the Right Honourable, my Lord Chief Justice Holt, occasioned by the noise of a plot.	Ferguson, Robert, d. 1714.	1694 (1694)	Wing F754A; ESTC R217367	28,048	20

A LETTER TO THE Right Honourable Sir JOHN HOLT Kt. Lord Chief Justice of the Kings Bench OCCASIONED By the Noise of a PLOT The Second Edition Corrected LONDON Printed in the Year MDCXCIV A LETTER to the Right Honourable My Lord Chief Justice HOLT occasioned by the Noise of a PLOT MY LORD THE Character which you bear and the Office which you have several Years discharged with so much Credit to the Government Reputation to your Self and Justice to the Nation have render'd You both the Object of all Honest Men's Esteem and the Sanctuary to which they fly and retreat when either through the P●que and Revenge or the Jealousy and Credulity of Ministers of State and their Subordinate Officers they find themselves assaulted ●n their Lives persued as to their Estates or deprived of their Liberties upon the Depositions of a few Necessitous Brib'd and Suborn'd Fellows And seeing it is not possible that any can be illegally Prosecuted unduly Convicted or unjustly Condemned without your coming to suffer both in your Honour which you so sensibly value and to forfeit that Integrity which is accounted natural unto You Pray suffer one who is your most real though unknown Servant to lay such Things with all Humility and Deference before you as may serve to prevent your being surpriz'd and circumvented to do any Thing unworthy of your Self or injurious and destructive to Innocent Men. With what Blushing and Grief do those imbu'd with any degrees of Wisdom and Vertue reflect●on the Ignominy and Guilt brought upon the Nation by Oates and his Complices who ●s they were the first Pack of Witnesses the Kingdom was ever acquainted with that were establish'd under the Encouragement of Salaries Pensions to be Standing Evidence in Capital and Criminal Cases so the dismal Effects of that method of administring Government and executing Laws were soon felt not only by the Advantage which other Miscreants endeavour'd to make of that mischievous Preceden● in setting up to imitate them upon prospect and hope of the like Profit and Reward but through their own growing emboldened to invade the Reputations and attaque the Lives of High and Low in order to merit the encrease as well as the continuance of the Price of Blood upon which they projected to subsist and which one of them hath the Fortune still to enjoy But whether it proceed from the Generosity of the Government or be owing to the Wisdom of it as reckoning it to be serviceable to its Interest I shall not presume to determine Nor will I deny but that those State-Witnesses of the first Muster and Enrollment may be allowed to have sworn truly in some Particulars but it must withal be acknowledged that they perjur'd themselves in many others So that my Lord Chief Justice Scr●ggs who had raised them to the Reputation of being held Credible Persons by giving Faith Himself to their Testimony in some Trials and thereby gaining and reconciling others to do the like was upon observing the impossible as well as improbable Things they grew up into a Confidence of deposing and how they could not only Perjure themselves without Shame or Remorse but with an Air of Assurance and Sincerity forced to detract from and lessen their Credibility in future Trials as much as he had raised it in former Though he could not be unsensible that the best Returns he would meet with from many for this After-Game of Candor Probity and Justice was to have his Discretion and Righteousness reflected upon for the Sentences he had pronounced before upon no other or better Testimony than that of those whom he found it needful at last to render Infamous Nor can it escape your Lordship's Remembrance what Convulsions the Kingdom was thrown into by a Sett of Mercenary Rascab Anno 1681 who wanted nothing but the obtaining Belief to their Testimony against the Earl of Shas●●b●ry to the involving vast numbers of Protestants of all Qualities and Degrees under the Guilt of a Horrid Conspiracy against His t●en M●jesty's Person and Government For the Villains having been Trained up ●o swear Men out of their Lives wi●hout the least regard to their being Guilty or Guil●less all that they minded was whom the influencing Ministers were ready to Start being ready to Halloo and persue them to Scaffolds and Gibbets if they might be but plen●ifully paid and rewarded for it And having Breakfasted on those of one Party they wer● prepared to Sup on them of another For being habituated to Blood it was indifferent to them whom they murderously destroyed and all that obtained a Room in their Thoughts was the being assured before-hand in whose Slaughter they should make the better Meal Yea it was but for any to out-bid those that train'd them up and the Cannibals were ready to fly upon them that bred them to devour upon the first Prospect they had of doing it with Impunity and of finding their Interest in 't Which upon observing what had befallen others I wish some at this Time may take warning by Only permit me to tell you that the Interposition and Influence which some of King Charles's Ministers had both in forging and forming that pretended PLOT in 81 and in Suborning Miscreants to support the belief of it by Falshood and Perjury was that which gave Provocation and Encouragement to the design'd Insurrection in 1682. For when Men can't find Safety in their Innocency they will seek to obtain it by their Swords And if the Laws be not sufficient to cover and protect them they will be tempted to try what Back and Breast can do Nor is it unworthy of your Lordship's Reflection that though several Persons of Quality and Vertue had the Misfortune to suffer for what they had then contrived and were ready to execute yet the Justice of their Endeavours hath been abundantly vindicated ●y the R●peal of their A●tainders since this Revolution And the Combination in which they were embarqued upon the Motive and Necessity o● being through the Subornation of Wit●ess●s against them deprived of all other mean● of Safe●y ha●h had the Comm●ndation of this Government in the many H●nours and 〈◊〉 bestowed not only upon the Friends and Relati●●● but on the Surviving Complices of those that perish'd Nor is your Lordship's Memory so weak and unfaithful but that it will furnish you with Memoirs of the Barbarous Infamy which a certain Zealous and Credulous Gen●leman endeavoured upon weak and trivial Suggestions to have fastned upon the late King Charles the Duke of York and diver● other Persons of the First Figure and Quality by charging and accusing them of being conscious and accessory to the murder of the Earl of Essex And 't is not without Shame and Detestation that Men of Discretion and Probity reflect upon and call over the groundless and malicious Rumours upon which the whole Court especially his then Royal Highness were impudently slander'd the Nation strangely alarm'd and the Peace of the City and Kingdom attempted to have

have been some probability in it as being practicable and of the like whereof the Records of former Times have furnished us with Instances and Examples But for a poor Creature ●o be thought capable of enrolling Troops and commencing War against a Prince encompassed with a large disciplin'd Army and that in the Honey-Month of his Government when the Nation generally was fond of him may be reckoned among the last of Incredibles and seems obtruded upon the Faith of the Kingdom meerly to expose our Credulity And I have often observed that your Subo●ned Fellows do either out of too much Haughtiness or too little Sense make the same sport at the Majesty of Courts of Judicature and at the Understandings of the ●ell of Mankind that they do with the Lives of those they are hired to murder In a word all that with the least shadow of Truth can be conceived of what the Man was accused of is that he had been charitable to those he apprehended in greater Distres● than himself which administred occasion to the ungrateful Wretches that received it to gain a Reward from those at the Helm of Affairs through their stiling and swearing it Levy and Subsistence Money And as for cross the Kentish A●torney who was Tried and Co●demned for going aboard the French Fleet when they lay upon the Coast it is known that he was as passionate and violent a Williamite as was in the Kingdom and that he went thither meerly out of Curiosity conceiving it no Crime nor apprehending any danger by it and not upon a disloyal and treacherous account For what better Testimony could be given of the poor Man's Zeal and Affection for the Government than praying with that Heartiness that he did for the Preservation and prosperous Reign of William and Mary at the time and place of his Execution when and where none without being highly uncharitable can imagine that he would dissemble And were the Jacobites capable of taking tha● Pleasure in the Ruin of innocent Men which your scandalous W●igs and too many of your bigotted Phanaticks seem to do his Execution was a thing wherein they would have thought themselve● extreamly gratified And they will at all times reckon your Severities of that kind if not Favours they take Pleasure in at least Actions which will neither provoke their Resentment nor Indignation Nor is it unworthy of your Observa●ion that the unhappy Man was halloo'd and persued to Death by Persons who valu'd themselves heretofore for being in a Faction of which few are Loyal to Monarchs out of Principle but solely for Interest and of whom there are t●o many who out of Devotion to their Idol of a Republick will be ready to sacrifice and give up to Scaffolds and Gibbets all that are addicted to Kingship whosoever be the King As for Mr. Ashton's Ca●e the Severity he met with hath been already represented in Print without any Reply hitherto given in Vindication of the Justice of the Nation to what is there declared and laid open And it is sufficiently known by all of any Conversation at White-Hall and about the Town that he was not so much condemned for what was produced against him at the Bar as for what was concealed being unfi●●o be discovered For the Papers concerning the Legitimacy of the Prince of Wales which he was carrying over to King James first for his P●rusal and then for his Approbation in order to have presented them to the Parliament was that which influenced more to his Destruction than all besides whereof he was accu●ed which in the Opinion of very wise and impartial Men were but trifling and insignificant Things and which as they did not deserve so hard a Fate so they would never have prevailed upon an unprejudic'd Jury to have found him guilty without a very strange and laboured Misleading And pardon me my Lord if I bewail the Suppression of the forementioned Papers and take the liberty to tell you that the refusing the Nation the favour of seeing them renders it very much suspected That the last Invasion was not in all things alledged as the Motives to it founded in that Justice and Honour which we were made to believe But to wave that I shall only presume to subjoin that though the Providences and Judgments of God are inscrutable yet it ought not to be let pass without Observation That the only Judge at that time on the Bench who treated him with uncivil as well as uncomely Malice and who by his whole Behaviour seemed to have an unquenchable Thirst after his Blood died soon after wallowing in his own Nor is it to be imagined what recommended that Person to the Bench after his having promoted and hastened the Execution of so many in the West Anno 1685 unless it was that having given so signal a Testimony of his inhuman and implacable Cruelty to those of the same Party and Interest of which he pretended to be he was thereupon taken and held for a Person that would be no less barb●rous to all such of another Faction as should have the Misfortune to fall within the Circle of his Power and Rage For it is most certain that though Jefferies underwent the Clamour and bore the blame of those Executions yet most of the Guilt lay upon Pollex●en of whom I have been speaking And for Anderton who is the last that since the Revolution hath been Executed for High-Treason of this kind there needeth no more to shew both the Perjury of the Witnesses that swore against him and the Severity and hastiness of his Conviction and Cond●mnation than that a Person arraigned and condemned since at the same place hath openly confessed and avowed that he Printed and Published the Book for which poor Anderton was Cast and Executed Nor is it for the Credit of those that sa●e as Judges or were upon the Jury that so infamous a Fellow as Stephens was the principal Witness at the Trial and the Person upon whose Testimony especially the arraigned was cast For besides his being universally known for a Rascal that will be purchased to perpe●rate any Villainy provided he may find Impunity in doing it his whole Behaviour at that time when he gave his Evidence was so e●cessively Rude and ●ancorous towards the Prisoner as might give any indifferent M●n a just c●use to believe that he was provoked by Malice or swayed by Command and encouraged by Reward to what he did My Lord I do not design by this brief Recollection of these Trials to detract from your Prudence and Moderation and much less ●o charge you with Injustice as to the Portion and Share you had in them but the whole I propose is humbly to represent that there seems to have been a Bl●m●ableness somewhere and particularly that as Juries are generally too credulous in such Cases and many times prepossessed and prejudiced upon the Motive of Party and Faction so the Witnesses are oftentimes too Mercenary and Revengeful to be easily believed And