Selected quad for the lemma: kingdom_n
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A96999
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The remonstrance of the Commons of England, to the House of Commons assembled in Parliament Preferred to them by the hands of the speaker.
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Walker, Henry, fl. 1643.
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1643
(1643)
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Wing W382E; ESTC R225914
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7,953
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8
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of God let the abuses be taken away but not the uses also 5. For the rectifying of matters amisse in Church Discipline and some things in Doctrine also as is pretended an Assembly of Divines is propounded to be convocated and consulted with The matter is right but the manner is surely amisse and so we are likely to lose the benefit of the substance for the errours in the circumstance which is That in this intended Convocation the Divines are not nominated by Divines who can best judge of their abilities which is the legall way the greatest part of those who are named are known or justly suspected to be persons ill disposed to the Peace of the Church and addicted too much to Innovation you your selves being all Lay-men are to be the onely Iudges of what shall be propounded and what determined the Divines but your assistants and the King is totally to be excluded from having any voice or hand in it And as it is propounded this is to be a perpetuall Convocation if the Houses of Parliament so please 6. Vnder the colour of freedome of Preaching seditious Sermons are preached daily even in the hearing of many of your selves who traduce the Kings Sacred on slander His Goverment and in expresse termes encourage the maintaining and continuing of this unnaturall and unchristian civill Warre and yet none are punished for it which makes us feare that this is and long hath beene made by some to be the principall engine to kindle this fire of Hell to the just scandall of all good men and slander of our Religion this doctrine comming so close to that of the Jesuits 7 And divers worthy learned and painefull Preachers have been committed to prison by you for delivering their consciences freely and religiously preaching of obedience to their Soveraigne these things we observe unto you as tending namely against the maintaining and propagation of the true Protestant Religion Touching that part which concerneth the maintaining of the Lawes we shall observe also some things unto you wherein your owne practice differs much from your professions a preposterous way to perswade us or any other by-standers 1 Ye assume that power to your selves that ye by a bare vote without an act of Parliament may expound or alter a knowne Law whereas the Commons house formerly assumed to themselves no such power but in order towards the making of a new Law nor did the House of Peeres challenge any such thing But they haveing the power Judicature as Judges they proceeded according to the Rules of the knowne Lawes and upon their honours are answerable for the justnesse of their Iudgment as other Courts are upon their oathes 2 Ye make your owne orders and ordinances to be as Lawes and compel them to be observed and with a stricter hand which may bind the Members of your house in their priviledges but have not nor ever had the force of Lawes until by both houses and the Kings Consent they were confirmed 3 And for your owne observation of the Lawes of the Land ye make your selves to be so farre above the reach of them that by your orders and ordinances ye enjoyne the Iudges and Ministers of Iustice to forbear contrary to their oathes to proceed in their ordinary course where ye please 4 Ye make an Ordinance to put the Militia of the Kingdom in such hands as ye please and shall confide in and this without the King and expresly against his Command 5 Ye Possesse your selves of the Navie Royall and appoint Admiralls and other Officers by Sea without the King and use those shipps against the King himselfe 6 Ye take the Kings Castles Forts and Ports the places of great strength in the Kingdome and keepe them against the King himselfe Hull and Portsmouth and VVindsor Castle and these three last actions appeare to us to have beene done by Designe for 7 The pretence at first was for the preservation of the Kingdome against some forreign Enemy but when none appeared in many moneths and we now beleeve none such in truth ever were a warre for the Parliament against the King himselfe was raised for the preservation of the King 8 And those which refuse to joyne in this warre with you or to contribute unto it which giving or lending of money horse armes c. ye proscribe as Malignants and persons ill-affected to the Common-wealth although we see not how it can be lesse then Treason against the K. to joyn with you therin 9. But to all those who are your Commanders or Officers of your Armie ye give large and even profuse entertainments and rewards but out of our purses who give you little thanks for it Thus much may suffice to give a taste how the laws are and how they are likely to be maintained in the course we are now in And for the Liberty of our persons and propriety of our Estates we shall say a little in the next place and by a few particulars judge what we may hope for therein 1. Ye take the Kings treasure ye intercept his revenue possesse his houses of accesse and all these for his own service and if any attend him or assist him they are condemned as Malignants Popish evill Counsellers and Enemies to the State 2. Ye have by messages endeavoured to perswade our Brethren of Scotland to join in your Rebellion against your Soveraign and this was not done by some private men alone but ordered by the Votes of your House 3. Ye condemn the Rebels in Ireland and that very justly for their horrid rebellion there and yet your selves do greater and more horrid acts of of barbarous hostility against the King even in his own person in England and when ye have been charged with it ye would excuse it by saying that it was not your fault but the fault of the King himself and of the Counsellours and Cavaliers about him that he went himself in person into the battle which he did with that magnanimity and Kingly courage as will adde to his honour and your shame whilst the world endureth Thus your action is become odious to God and man and your excuse for it ridiculous 4. And as if ye had shaken off all subjection and your selves become a State independant ye have treated by your Agents with forreign States Such usurpation upon Soveraigntie was never attempted in this Kingdom 5. Ye command your own orders ordinances and Declarations to be printed and published cum privilegio But if any thing come from the King which may truly inform and disabuse the people ye forbid those to be published and commit them to prison who do it 6. The monies advanced by gift or adventure or act of Parliament and souldiers prepared for Ireland to reduce the Rebels there ye have from time to time diverted to maintain this unnaturall warre in England so ye do visibly lose the Kingdome of Ireland that ye may be the better enabled to lose the Kingdome of England also 7.
Ye have shewed your se ves so averse from peace that ye have voted there shall be no cessarion of Arms lest by a free treatie a peace might ensue This is your carriage towards the King himself And lest ye might be accused to be juster to the subject then ye are towards your Soveraign these things ye have done to the subject also 1. Ye have made an Ordinance that the twentieth part of mens estates must be payed towards the maintainance of this Rebellion and ye appoint those who shall value that twentieth part and why by the same reason ye take not the tenth part or the one half we see not and for the levying of it ye ordain your Collectors shall distrein for the sum assessed and sell the distresse and if no distresse can be found the persons of these notable offendors are to be imprisoned and they and their families banished from their habitations 2 But lest this should not have the colour of Law sufficient to blind the world ye have lately made an ordinance for the Inhabitants of the Counties of Northampton Rutland Derby c. to pay and be assessed by Assessors named in your Act in imitation of the Statute lately made for the 40000l. and this as is probable shall in convenient time be extended to the whole Kingdom so ye first cast your selves into a necessity to get mony by making an impious war upon your Soveraign and then out of that necessity ye compell your fellow-Subjects who abominate the war to maintain it 3. And ye have yet a shorter and a surer way where ye understand there is any money plate or goods to be had ye send a party of Horse or Dragooners to fetch it out of an enemies Country because the owners are good Subjects to the King or you suspect them to be so and that alone is crime sufficient to apprehend them to judge them and to take execution upon them and all this without the Ceremony of Law by your absolute and omnipotent power which cannot erre 4. You discharge Apprentices and Servants from their Masters services without consent of their Masters and Dames and either perswade them or compell them to serve in your Army against the King This is indeed the Liberty of the Subject 5. Ye have imprisoned many for petitioning unto you as if that alone were a crime if the matter of the perition do not flatter you in your present courses 6. And others ye have imprisoned some for petitioning and some for intending to petition to the King as those Gentlemen of Hertfordshire and Westminster And yet God be praised the way is open to petition to him in Heaven and he will hear us in his good time Lastly for your priviledges of Parliaments 1. Ye forbid us to dispute them ye alone are as ye say the Judges of them but in former ages those also might be and have been judged by the lawes of the Kingdom onely of offences committed by your own Members against your House of these you are the proper Judges and of the elections of your Members 2. Yet these we conceive under your good favours are to be thus confined that every member of your House hath and ought to have as free liberty as any of them to deliver his opinion upon every emergent occasion and not to be committed as some have been or put out of the House as others have been for speaking freely against the sense of the House or rather of some members thereof 3 The Priviledges of your House were never challenged til now to extend to any Member which shall comit Treason or Felony bur ye have now declared that no Member of the House nor any others imployed by you in this horrid Rebellion should be questioned for Treason but in Parl. or at the least by leave of the House 4. Ye have made a close Committee as you call it wherein a very few Members of your House onely are privy to your Councels and what those few consult upon is summarily reported to the House and that taken upon trust by an implicite faith of all the rest 5 Many of the present Members of your House have had their elections questioned but if they incline to those propositions which ye lay downe to your selves to uphold your Tyrannicall and usurped Goverment you are so busied in the great affaires of State that in two yeares space for so long longer ye have continued this Parl. already ye have no leisure to determine those questions lest you should loose such a one from your party 6. Sometimes when a matter of importance hath beene in debate they have put it to the question and upon the question it hath beene determined and the same question againe resumed at another time better prepared for the purpose and determined quite contrary this we are well assured was not the Priviledge of former Parliaments when many of us were Members thereof We do beleeve ye have many just priviledges for the freedome of your persons for freedome of speech but we never did beleeve that ye had a Priviledge to take the Scepter into your hands to levy a Warre against your King and to compell others to joyne with you in so execrable an act We wish from our hearts that all these Observations were but fables and fictions as we have met with many from you to amuse us but they are all undeniably true our conditions therefore are most miserable when thus instead of of maintaining the true protestant Religion the Lawes of the Land the just Liberty and propriety of the Subject and just priviledges of Parliament they are all of them radically and fundamentally destroyed and that by you whose duties and professions are daily to the contrary And if any thing can be added to our misery it is this that we cannot see through the time when this intolerable yoke of slavery which ye put upon your fellow subjects shall have an end seeing by the art of a few yee have contrived an Act whereby ye have perfidiously over-reached both the King and people to make this Parliament to be perpetuall at your pleasurses that so your arbitrary power and tyranny over the Kingdome might be perpetuated Yet one thing more may be added to our unhappinesse Fuisse foelices We were lately a happy people and are now on a sudden reduced to such a depth of unhappinesse that we are made a spectacle to the whole world and the very object of their scorne For We are before we were aware of it cast in a Warre a Civill Warre an irreligious and barbarous Warre against our Soveraigne our naturall Liege Lord. VVe are put into an inevitable way of poverty By being wasted in all quarters and corners of the Kingdome one by another By loosing our commerce at home it being intercepted by the Armies and almost no debts paid occasioned specially by the priviledges of your Members and such as ye priviledg By loosing our trade abroade it being cast into the hands of strangers VVe loose our season for tillage and husbandry which must of necessity introduce a Famine and Famine doth but usher in a Pestilence And Warre Famine and Pestilence are the three great and fearefull Judgements of God upon a Nation Nothing can redeeme us out of these calamities but a speedy Peace and to prepare it a Cessation of Armes And then by good Lawes as ye have already happily begun to amend what is or hath beene amisse without plucking up the foundations of Goverment We beseech you therefore at the last to lay aside your affections and in your judgments to provide for us and for your selves and for the honour of our Religion the peace of our consciences the preservation of our lives estates and for the salvation of our poore soules to have pity upon us bind up our bleeding wounds cure the distractions of the the time and make up the breaches betweene the King aad people occasioned onely by a mis-understanding And if these our Petitions or Complaints or Remonstrances call them what you will may prevaile with you we doubt not but that the King of His grace and goodnesse will be intreated to bury all your by-past-actions in an act of oblivion that neither the presentage nor the ages to come may to the shame of this Nation have cause to remember what have happened here in this last and worst age of the world But if all this and all which in your great iudgments yee can adde unto it shall not move you We doe and shall protest to all the world that wirh the hazard of our lives and fortunes and all we can call our own we shall endeavor to vindicate our selves from these inhumane courses Sed meliora speramus VVe hope for better things And we shall incessantly pray to God to perfect our hopes by blessing your Counsels FINIS