must answer for their misdemeanors as well as they must for his Next the Ministers his great care is to instil into the People a great aversion for the Loyal Judges and Magistrates but if they warp a little then he admires them for men and lovers of the Liberty of the People But that which next Hanging is most dreadful to him are the Loyal Gentry and their dependents These he knows can neither be wheedled nor frighted generally and therefore all the Forces he provideth are only against these Canaanites who keep the good People out of the Land of Promise or make their lives uneasie in it by denying them liberty of Conscience to be of any Religion or none as occasion serveth besides they have great Estates good meat and drink and some Authority all which belong to the Godly After Liberty of Conscience he places a Lawless Licence to do what he list and take what he please which he calls Property for he would fain have the Hedge broken down that all mens Estates Wives and Daughters might be common to him which is the most beloved Notion he has Reipublicae of a Commonwealth His Study is well stuffed with seditious Pamphlets and intelligences but his Staple Author is the Loviathan which he hath read ten times oftener than the Bible and Practiseth a thousand times more yet he hath a good Parcel of other Commonwealth Authors too and admires nothing in the Greeks and Romans but their hatred to Monarchy and love of Liberty and Popular Governments and were it not for this would be contented all their Books were burnt When all things are well he frights the little Folk with Predictions of what may be or is intended shall be and the less probable the thing is the more easily it is sometimes believed Only the wonder is men should court Fear and fall in love with Jealousie which are uneasie Passions to them but profitable to our Gentleman who to create them in his Followers pretends himself horribly over run with them when indeed his only fear is he should not after so many Cheats put upon the People be believed The Plot and the Duke are his two great Pretences and he wisheth they may never fail till he hath overthrown the Monarchy for then he shall want his best handles to take the People by Priviledge of Parliament is his last retreat and if that fails then he must take Achitophels course and set his house in Order to provide for what follows FINIS Pag. 3. Pro. Dom. Rege dicit quod cum placeat ei Parliament suum tenere pro utilitate Regnà sui de Regali potestate suâ facit summoneri ubi quando c pro voluntate sua Cok. Jurisdict p. 16. * The Three Estates do but Advise as the Privy-Council doth which if the King imbrace it becomes the Kings own Act in the one and the Kings Law in the other for without the Kings Acceptation both the publick and private Advices be but as empty Egg-shells Sir Walter Ralcighs Prerogative of Parliaments pag. 57. Vide Grotium de imp sum potest circa Sacra Cap. 6. Pag. 3. 4. Ed. 3. c. 14. 36 Ed. 3. c. 10. 2 R. 2 Num. 28. Pag. 2. Pag. 2. Pag. 2. Colledges Trial p. 37 57 73. Colledges Trial p. 27 30. Pag. 2. Pag. 3. Pag. 3. Pag. 3. Pag. 3. Pag. 3. Pag. 4. Pag. 4. Declaration Pag. 5. Pag. 4. Pag. 5. Pag. 6. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Cap. 15. â—â—lledge averred that the 〈…〉 of 40. did 〈…〉 what they had just 〈…〉 for and the Parliament 〈…〉 last at Westminster 〈…〉 of the same opinon 〈…〉 83. And to this 〈…〉 a great while 〈…〉 had excused the 〈…〉 from 〈…〉 War and 〈…〉 King which he 〈…〉 Papists did â— du Moulin's Vindication of the sincerity of P. c. p. 58. London 1679. Colledges Trial â— 81 82 83. Pag. 6. Pag. 7. Declaration from Breda April 4. 1660. ☞ Declaration concerning Ecclesiastical Affairs Octob. 25. 1660. ☜ ☜ ☜ There are some seditious Preachers who cannot be content to be dispenced with for their full Obedience to some Laws Established without reproaching and inveighing against those Laws how Established soever who tell their Auditors that the Apostle meant when he bid them stand to their Liberties that they should stand to their Arms c. Lord Chancellors Speech May 8. 1661. Address to the Freemen and Freeholders of the Nation Part. 1. By a Declaration published December 26. 1662. in which are these words We shall make it our special care so far forth as in us lies without invading the freedom of Parliament to incline them to make such an Act c. Friday Feb. 27. 1663 Collection of Messages Addresses c. Pag. 6. ☞ See the first part of the Address to the Freemen c. Pag. 7. The Declaration Pag. 7. Speech Octob. 21. 1680. Pag. 8. Address to the Freemen and Freeholders Part II. pag. 22. * Though his Majesty could not do that without acting contrary to his own judgment strengthened with the Opinion and Advice given by his Royal Grandfather King James of blessed memory to his Eldest Son Price Henry in these words But if God give you not Succession defraud never the nearest by right whatsoever conceit ye have of the person For Kingdoms are ever at Gods disposition and in that case we are but live-rentars lying no more in the Kings nor Peoples hand to dispossess the righteous Heir Basil Doron 62. ult Ed. Pag. 8. Speech Octob. 26. 1662. Speech Deceâ— 26. 1662. Pag. 8. Pag. 8. Speech Mar. 6 1678-9 Pag. 8. Lord Chancellors Speech March 6. 167â—-â— Pag. 9. Speech Mar. 6. 1678-9 Pag. 9. A seasonable Address to both Houses of Parliament pag. 4. Pag. 9. Pag. 10. Pag. 10. Pag. 10. Votes Nov. 13. 1680. Pag. 10. * 16 Car. 2. c. 4. Pag. 10. Friday March 25. 1681. Pag. 10. Historical Collect of the four last Parliaments of Q. Eliz. p. 47. 13 Car. 2. ca. 5. Pag. 10. * By the Bill to disinherit his Royal Highness Pag. 11. Pag. 11. Lord Chancellors Speech May 23. 1678. The words are these The influence such a Peace will have upon our Affairs are fitter for Meditation than Discourse Therefore it will import us to strengthen our selves at home and abroad that it may not be found a cheap or easie thing to put an Affront upon us * Dr. Nalson observes that the like disorders had the same effect in the time of His Majesties Father who he saith by this means lost the opportunity of being able to support his Friends and Allies as also that Honour and Terrour among his Enemies Abroad which the Union and hearty Affections of his Parliament would have rendred great and dreadful but now he became mean and contemptible that Prince who hath not power oâ—â—â— his own Subjects at home being in no probable capacity of doing any great matters abroad Preface to his impartial Collection Pag.
Reasons of a King to have the less weight because he graciously offers them to the Judgment of his People Sure I am sometimes God Almighty is pleased to do it who only hath a right to command our absolute submission upon the account of his infinite both Wisdom and Soveraignty So that to suspect the want of of an Apology on no other grounds than a mans willingness to satisfie the World of the justice of a mans Cause and the reasonableness of his Actions is a perverseness to which common Knaves do seldom arrive the Heroes of Villany do not often rise to that pitch of Brutality without the help of Malmsbury Philosophy And I am persuaded that our Author would have spared this Cavil against his Majesties Declaration if he had before-hand considered that in natural consequence he charges not only the King but also the Three Estates with so many deliberate Acts of folly and injustice as there are Acts of Parliament containing the reasons of Enacting so or so If a Princes Actions are indeed unjustifiable if they are opposite to the Inclinations and apparently destructive of the Interests of his Subjects it will be very difficult for the most eloquent or insinuating Declaration to make them in love with such things And if they be none of all these if a Crafty man may but comment upon them and by Ifs and An ds insinuate into the heads of the Common People that he takes them for such it is possible all the Eloquence in the World may not be powerful enough to bring them into their right wits again but yet this may fail too sometimes And therefore they did certainly undertake no easie task in pretending to persuade men who see themselves exposed to the restless malice of their Enemies who observe the languishing condition of the Nation and that nothing but a Parliament can provide remedies for the great Evils which they feel and fear that two several Parliaments upon whom they had placed all their hopes were so suddenly broken out of kindness to them or with any regard to their advantage No I suppose no body was so silly as to undertake such an impossible task but there was another sort of men who had looked better into things and care was to be taken of them to confirm them and a third sort that were not yet well resolved what to think of things and they were to be directed and assisted and it was not impossible the Declaration might have a good effect upon them as indeed it had as for those that had placed all their hopes upon the two last Parliaments and were pleased with all they did there was neither hopes nor design of working that Miracle upon them but they were to be left to time to be cured And in the interim I would advise them to study Colemans Declaration of which my Author saith fine things which I care not to transcribe But should this Declaration be suffered to go abroad any longer under the Royal Name yet it will never be thought to have proceeded from his Majesties Inclination or Judgment but to be gained from him by the Artifices of the same ill men who not being content to have prevailed with him to dissolve two Paliaments only to protect them from Publick Justice do now hope to excuse themselves from being thought the Authors of that Counsel by making him openly to avow it But they have discovered themselves to the Kingdom and have told their Names when they number amongst the great Crimes of the House of Commons their having declared divers Eminent Persons to be Ememies to the King and Kingdom So his Majesties Inclination and Judgment being kindly absolved from the guilt of this Declaration of purpose to abate the Esteem it ought to have And seeing it is not possible to keep it within doors and that some may think the worse of it because there was a sham Declaration found among Colemans Papers as you know there was a sham Plot in the Meal-Tub and yet there may be others that are real The next Inquiry or rather Hue and Cry is after the Authors and those he thinks he hath found by the passage he cites out of the Declaration those Eminent Persons or some of them must needs out of Revenge and Fear be the Authors of this Pestilent Declaration His Reason is this None could be offended at the Proceedings of the Parliaments but they who were obnoxious none could be concerned to vindicate the Dissolution but they who advised it But is my Author sure of that that never a man in the Nation was offended at their proceedings but such as were obnoxious to them I am of another mind and so is all the world now Is it impossible for any man to be concerned to vindicate the Actions of a Prince but they that advise him What pitiful Sophistry this is But were no men obnoxious to the proceedings of these Parliaments but these eminent men May not it be some of those Subjects who were by Arbitrary Orders taken into Custody for matters that had no relation to Priviledges of Parliament They are mentioned before the Eminent Persons tho of a Meaner degree If I be not mistaken some Members too were very disgracefully Expelled the House Might not some of them have a hand in it We are assured a little lower that the Writer was of another Nation from this Gallicism It was a matter extremely sensible to us So that this Gentleman is suspitious it is but a Translation of a French Copy and the rather because Monsieur Barillon the French Embassadour read it to a Gentleman three days before it was communicated to the Privy Council if his intelligence did not deceive him So here is fair Scope left to find or suspect at least other Authors besides the Eminent Persons other Advisers besides those that were obnoxious For I suppose Monsieur Barillon doth not fear a House of Commons And as for this and other Gallicisms that may occur they are not to be wondred at in an Age that generally understands the French Tongue in a Court where almost all the Great men speak it in a Prince who hath lived in France and is descended of a French Mother And the wonder is not so prodigious neither that the French Embassadour should get a transcript of a Paper intended to be published to the whole Nation two or three days before it was read in Council These things make a great noise to ignorant people whilst I am persuaded this Gentleman smiled to think how finely he was deluding them But be these things as they will the Eminent Persons must expect to answer it And our Author thinks they cannot blame him or his Party for hoping one day to see justice done upon such Counsellours And that the Commons had reason for their Vote when they declared those Eminent Persons who manage things at this rate Enemies to the King and Kingdom and Promoters
of them We should question his Majesties Wisdom did we not believe him to have understood that never Parliament had greater Opportunites of doing good to Himself and his People He could not but be sensible of the dangers and of the necessities of his Kingdom and therefore could not without exceeding great trouble be prevailed upon for the sake of a few desperate men whom he thought himself concerned to love now only because he had loved them too well and trusted them too much before not only to disappoint the Hopes and Expectations of his own People but of almost all Europe His Majesty did indeed do his part so far in giving opportunities of proving for our good as the calling of Parliaments do amount to and it is to be imputed to the Ministers only that the success of them did not answer his and our Expectations Thus far my Author is recited verbatim that it may appear I do him no wrong By which discourse of his taking for the present no notice of his reflection on his Majesty for a person whose Promises were not real it is agreed that the two last Parliaments had great opportunities of doing good to his Majesty and his People and my Author goes further and adds the Hopes and Expectation of almost all Europe to them That his Majesty called these Parliaments he owns That one of them sat a competent time for that purpose cannot be denied viz. from Thursday October 21. 1680. till Monday the tenth day of January following which deducting the time spent in the Trial of Viscount Stafford was in some mens opinions sufficient to have dispatched much more business than was then done And yet it doth not appear that his Majesty was enclined to have prorogued them then if he had not been highly provoked by them What my Author means by those few desperate men that prevailed upon his Majesty so much against his Will to part with that Parliament I cannot guess except they be the Eminent Persons which were declared Enemies to the King and Kingdom which if they were they are neither so few nor such desperate men as to be laid aside barely upon a Vote of the House of Commons without any Order or Process of Law any hearing of their Defence or any proof so much as offered against them And I believe the meanest of them is equal to this Gentleman as scornfully as he speaks of them But then in the last place whether or no the dissolution be to be imputed to the Ministers or to the Parliament i. e. the House of Commons will appear best in the examination of his discourse and of the Declaration It is certain saith my Author it cannot be imputed to any of the proceedings of either of those Parliaments which were composed of men of as good sence and quality as any in the Nation and proceeded with as great moderation and managed their debates with as much temper as ever was known in any Parliament If all this is as certainly true as it is confidently asserted then is it but a folly to dispute any further about it But because his Majesty in his Declaration hath said some things that seem to look another way my Reader may if he please suspend his belief of this particular too till his Majesties Allegations and this Gentlemans defence are examined and then he will be better able to pass his Judgment If they seemed to go too far in any thing his Majesties Speeches or Declarations had misled them by some of which they had been invited to enter into every one of those debates to which so much exception hath been since taken Did he not frequently recommend the prosecution of the Plot to them with a strict and impartial inquiry Did he not tell them That he neither thought himself nor them safe till that matter was gone through with Yes doubtless his Majesty did all this but then where is any exception taken against any thing of this Nature they have done Did he not in his Speech April 30 1679. assure them that it was his constant care to secure our Religion for the future in all events and that in all things which concerned the Publick Security He would not follow their Zeal but lead it But Sir did not his Majesty then also let you know that he excepted one thing in which he would neither lead nor follow their Zeal which was the altering the descent of the Crown in the right Line or defeating the Succession which his Majesty commanded to be further explained by the Lord Chancellour in such manner that it appeared to the whole Nation that his Majesty was resolved to do any thing for the freeing his People from their fears of Popery but what might tend to the disinheriting the Duke of York or any other Lawful Successor Now you Sir may remember that nothing but this would satisfie the Commons in either of the two last Parliaments in which they were not misled by any of his Majesties Speeches or declarations much less by this which was made of purpose to prevent the Bill before it was moved in the House of Commons Has he not often wished that he might be enabled to exercise a power of Dispensation in reference to those Protestants who through tenderness of misguided Conscience did not conform to the Ceremonies Discipline and Government of the Church and promised that he would make it his special care to encline the wisdom of the Parliament to concur with him in making an Act to that purpose And did not that very Parliament draw up a long Address to his Majesty containing the reasons why they could not concur with him in that point And is not this one good proof that his Majesty was not unmindful of his Declaration at Breda but was kept from doing what he was otherwise enclined enough to not by a few desperate men but by the Parliament And least the malice of ill men i. e. the Dissenters might object that these gracious inclinations of his continued no longer than while there was a possibility of giving the Papists equal benefit of a Toleration Has not his Majesty since the discovery of the Plot since there was no hopes of getting so much as a connivance for them in his Speech of March 6. 1678-9 express'd his zeal not only for the Protestant Religion in general but for an Vnion amongst all sorts of Protestants His Majesties words here are not truly recited but are these I meet you here with the most earnest desire that man can have to unite the minds of all my Subjects both to me and to one another and I resolve it shall be your faults if the success be not suitable to my desires c. And a little after Besides that end of Vnion which I aim at and which I wish could be extended to Protestants abroad as well as at home I propose by this last great step I have made the
the King had need be on his guard for he was in great danger of running the same risque with his Father when it was likewise inquired what interest amongst the People two great Peers had who have since the Plot been great Pillars of the Protestant Religion tho neither was ever reputed to have any were Ministers and Advisers in 1670 and 71. very good Friends to France and Popery Enemies to the Triple Alliance and to Holland c. It was also said That 300000 l. a year bestowed in Scotland and England among the Factious and Discontented would better serve the Interest of France than any Bargain they could drive with the Ministers Thus far that noble Pen hath discovered who are the French Pensioners and Reason speaks the same thing For if it be the Interest of France to divide England it is their Interest too to do it as cheap as they can and there is no doubt to be made of it but 10000 l. a year divided amongst the London Holders-forth and the Walling fordians on no other condition but that they should declaim stoutly against the King the Court the Ministers France and Popery things which no money could make them forbear speaking against would more effectually engage them to go on in that course than all the treasures of France would the King and Ministers to procure the Ruine of England and the settlement of Popery things which Nature and Education have taught them to abhor And by this means England as they might easily foresee would be so divided that if a Civil War did not follow yet at least there would be no fear of its being in a condition to look abroad and succour its Neighbours To these men is owing all that Contempt that hath fallen upon our English Parliaments both at home and beyond the Seas who by putting the House of Commons upon those things that would disgust the King and all the Gentry in the Nation have done as much as they could to make them first feared and then hated by almost one half of the Subjects and tends as directly to the ruine of that ancient and excellent Constitution as the disorders of the Tribunes of the People did to the ruine of the Liberty of the Romans But alas if we look into the Speech made at the opening of the Parliament we shall find no mention of any new Ally except the Spaniard whose Affairs at that time through the defects of their own Government and the Treachery of our Ministers were reduced to so desperate a state that he might well be a burthen to us but there was little to be hoped from a Friendship with him unless by the name of a League to recommend our Ministers to a New Parliament and cozen Country Gentlemen of their Money Before I can answer this I ought to Transcribe so much of his Majesties Speech as concerns this business which is as followeth My Lords and Gentlemen The several Prorogations I have made have been very advantageous to our Neighbours and very useful to me for I have employed that time in making and perfecting an Alliance with the Crown of Spain suitable to that which I had before with the States of the United Provinces and they also had with Spain consisting of mutual obligations of Succour and Defence I have all the reason in the world to believe that what was so much desired by former Parliaments must needs be very grateful to you now For tho some perhaps may wish these Measures had been taken sooner yet no man can with reason think it is now too late for they who desire to make these Alliances and they who desire to break them shew themselves of another opinion And as these are the best Measures that could be taken for the safety of England and repose of Christendom so they cannot fail to attain their End and to spread and improve themselves further if our Divisions at home do not render our Friendship less considerable abroad Now all the Gentlemans Craft lay in the word New there is no mention of any New Ally No but there is mention of an old one double Confederated both with Spain and England to the same purpose and these three States being thus United as his Majesty truly tells them would in a little time draw in more if our Divisions did not prevent it Our Divisions had that effect and made the King a true Prophet against his will and now all the blame is to be thrown upon the Ministers that is in reality upon the King Nay our Ministers poor unfortunate men must bear the reproach of Ruining not only England but Spain too by their Treachery but yet our kind Author doth not lay all that burthen upon their shoulders but confesseth that their ill Governing had a part in it but however it came to pass Spain was in so desperate a state then that it might be a burthen to England but no ways beneficial And yet before the end of this very Paragraph he is in a dreadful fear that Spain should joyn with his Majesties Successor and for the introduction of Popery make a War upon the People with all his Forces by Sea and Land At this rambling rate does our Gentleman talk It cannot be denied but that the Affairs of Spain were very ill managed at that time but then that was owing to the Minority of their King the Factions in their Court the Contests betwixt Don John and the Queen-Mother their Regent and their two Parties and it is not improbable the French King might have some few Pensioners in Spain as well as England but yet that once most potent Kingdom was not sunk to so low an Ebb of Fortune as to be only a burthen to its Allies tho it had need of them and ought by all the rules of Policy to have been so much the more carefully secured and supported by them especially by England And therefore our Country Gentlemen who were too wise to be cozened of their money by the crafty Ministers will I hope not lay it to their charge too that the Affairs of Spain have ever since visibly declined and the French King hath taken near as much from his Neighbours during the Peace upon pretence of Dependencies by Process as he got in all the War by his Sword and potent Armies For this seems in great part at least not so much owing to the Treachery of our Ministers as to the Tenacity and thriftiness of these Country Gentlemen that were so shie of being cozened of their Money But upon the perusal of the League it appears by the 3 4 and 5. Articles that it was like to create us troubles enough for it engages us indefinitely to enter into all the quarrels of the Spaniards tho they hapned in the West Indies or the Philippine Islands or were drawn upon himself by his own injustice or causeless provocations Whether my Author have been any more faithful in his account of this League than
he was of the Kings Speech I cannot say because it is not in my power to examine those Articles But his mentioning our obligation to assist Spain in the West-Indies and Philippine Islands where it is impossible against the Duke of Brandenburg and the King of Portugal where it would be unjust and against his Protestant Subjects opprest by him as they were by his Grandfather Philip are such things would make a man suspect his sincerity a little and the rather because his Majesty tells us The League was suitable to that which he had before with the States of the Vnited Provinces and they also had with Spain consisting of mutual obligations of Succour and Defence Now the account my Author gives of it is in part so impossible and in the rest so improbable that no Mortal in his right Wits can believe that Spain should desire or England grant any such things And therefore if he had at all expected to have been believed he ought to have Transcribed those three Articles for a proof of what he had said And whereas he tells us it engages us indefinitely to enter into all the quarrels of the Spaniards That if true will bear a fair Construction and will no more oblige us to those things he mentions if they be not express'd nay I think I may say if they be in plain terms than it will to help the King of Spain to destroy our selves in case he should happen to have a quarrel with us hereafter For no League can bind any further than as it is just and possible But that which concerns us yet nearer saith my Author in this League is that this obligation of Assistance was mutual so that if a Disturbance should happen hereafter in England upon any attempt to change our Religion or our Government tho it was in the time of his Majesties Successors The most Catholick King is obliged by this League which we are still to believe was entered into for the security of the Protestant Religion and the good of the Nation to give aid to so pious a design and to make War upon their Majesties the People with all his Forces both by Land and Sea And therefore it was no wonder that the Ministers were not forward in shewing this League to the Parliament who would have soon observed all these inconveniences and have seen how little such a League could contribute to the preserving the General Peace or to the securing of Flanders since the French King may within one months time possess himself of it and we by our League are not obliged to send our Succours till three months after the Invasion so that they would upon the whole matter have been inclined to suspect that the main end of this League was only to serve for a handsom pretence to raise an Army in England and if the People here should grow discontented at it and any little disorders should ensue The Spaniard is thereby obliged to send over Forces to suppress them This is fraught with such rare new Politicks and he has taken such care to make Rebellion safe whether it happens in his Majesties time or in his Successors especially if it were in order to the preservation of our Religion and Government and wo be to the man that begins one on any other pretence that I thought sit to transcribe it intire But Sir whatever the Spaniard hath promised or the Ministers intended against the People must needs come to nothing for you know that his Affairs were lately through the defects of his own Government and the Treachery of our Ministers reduced to so desperate a state that he might well be a Burthen to us but there was little to be hoped for from a friendship with him and therefore as little in hast to be feared from his Forces too if he should be so Popishly inclined as to think it a Pious design to help the King to bring in Arbitrary Government by the handsom pretence of an Army raised for his assistance or that and Popery too in the time of his Majesties Successor to which this Gentleman knows no man better the People have no Maw tho the Ministers have a filthy inclination and therefore cunningly took care by their Treachery to reduce his Affairs whose help they chiefly relied on into that desperate condition we lately see them in Well but for all that he may recover some part of his ancient Power yes who doubts that to hurt us but not to help us And now no man can blame the Ministers that they were not forward in shewing this League to the Parliament who would doubtless have forthwith Addressed to the King against them and ushered it in with a Vote that they were all of them Promoters of Popery and Spanish Counsels and Enemies to the King and Kingdom By this League in seems the King was not obliged to send over any Succours till three months after an Invasion tho it is as plain as the Nose on a mans face that the French King may in one months time possess himself of Flanders He may however take longer time if he please for any care was taken here to prevent it so that if his Majesty had taken a little too long a time to send in his Aids which all things considered few men will think he did yet they that should have backed him in it have taken a longer time and therefore ought not to complain The next thing saith my Author recommended to them was the further Examination of the Plot and every one who have observed what has passed for more than two years together cannot doubt but that this was sincerely desired by such as are most in credit with his Majesty And then surely the Parliament deserved not to be censured upon this account since the Examination of so many new Witnesses the Trial of the Lord Stafford the great preparations for the trial of the rest of the Lords and their diligent inquiry into the Horrid Irish Treasons shew that the Parliament wanted no diligence to pursue his Majesties good intentions in that affair Now Sir If they had but suspended the Bill for disinheriting the Duke of York and their Votes that followed upon the throwing it out in the Lords House and could but have held their hands from sending for their fellow-Subjects into Custody till they had dispatched this great Affair tried all the other Lords in the Tower it is thought by wiser men than I they might have had time enough to have gone through with this business but some body tells us the Plot was to be kept on foot else they would be defeated It was to be used like the Holy War always a doing never done withal till it made way for some other designs that would not go merrily without the noise of a Plot to drive them When his Majesty desired from the Parliament their Advice and assistance concerning the Preservation of Tangier the Commons did
relating to the Commons respect either the King or the Lords or the rest of the Subjects which are not Members of their House or the Members of their own House Our Enquiry is only in this point concerning those that relate to those Subjects that are not Members of either House whether they may be imprisoned by Vote of the Commons for matters that have no relation to Priviledge of Parliament In the latter end of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth it was a question whether the Commons could imprison those that were not Members of their own House for matters that had a certain and apparent relation to the known Priviledges of Parliament as for Arresting them or their Servants in time of Parliament which hath been since gained and is no longer Contested by any body but is a strong Argument that they had not then that power the Author claims and for which he brings the Precedents which are indeed of a later date except one and that was in the Minority of Edward the Sixth Anciently if any man were impeached in Parliament there was a Writ directed to the Sheriff to summon him to appear and Answer as my Lord Coke acquaints us and sets down the form of the Writ and upon the return of this Writ the Attachment it is likely went out of the House of Lords but of this Power of the Commons that great man speaks not one word which is a good Argument they had it not and indeed the latter instances are all after his time It is not consonant to reason that any Subject of England should be imprisoned upon a bare suggestion without the Oath of the Accuser Now the Commons have no power to give an Oath in this case and therefore it seems reasonable that they should not imprison any man who is not a Member of their House much less whomsoever they please The House of Commons is not a Court of Judicature except in matters of Priviledge and Elections but all persons accused in Parliament must be tried by the Lords therefore it is contrary to the Law of England that any man should be imprisoned by the Commons who * as the Grand Jury of the Nation are his Accusers It is said that a man taken into Custody by Order of the Commons is taken in Execution but it is contrary to the eternal Laws of Nature and all Nations that a man should be taken in Execution before he have made his Defence and a legal Sentence be passed upon him by Legal Process and proof It is destructive of the Liberty of the Subject that any man should be so taken by them into Custody because he is without all remedy and if the thing happen to prove iujurious and oppressive as it did in the Case of John Wilson and Roger Beckwith Esquires two Torkshire Justices of the Peace who were notoriously injured by it For these reasons which I submit to wiser men than my self I am humbly of opinion that no man ought to be taken into Custody by the Order or Vote of the Commons that is not a Member of their House except it be for matters relating to the Priviledges of Parliament and that such Priviledges as are commonly known for if they may call what they please a Priviledge of a Parliament it will in the Event be the same thing as an unlimited power As to all his Instances they do not deserve any consideration except the first and that no man as he relates it can tell by whom the Commitment was made without the Record which I cannot come at and the latter were the Acts of Popular Parliaments which laid the foundations of our late troubles by such proceedings My Author in the next place comes to justifie the Votes against the Ministers and lays down this as his foundation The Commons in Parliament have used two ways of delivering their Country from pernicious and powerful Favourites The one is in a Parliamentary Course of Justice by impeaching them which is used when they judge it needful to make them publick examples by Capital or other high punishments for the terror of others The other is by immediate Address to the King to remove them as unfaithful or unprofitable Servants Their Lives their Liberties or Estates are never endangered but when they are proceeded against in the former of these ways Then legal evidence of their guilt is necessary then there must be a proper time allowed for their defence In the other way the Parliament act as the Kings great Council and when either House observes that affairs are ill administred that the Advice of Parliaments is rejected or slighted the Course of Justice perverted our Councils betrayed Grievances multiplied and the Government weakly and disorderly managed of all which our Laws have made it impossible for the King to be guilty they necessarily must and always have charged those who had the Administration of affairs and the Kings Ears as the Authors of these mischiefs and have from time to time applied themselves to him by Addresses for their removal from his presence and Councils So here are all the Ministers of State that are or ever shall be exposed to the mercy of the House of Commons if proof can be brought against them then have at all Life Liberty and Estate must go for it but if none can be had then it is but voting them Enemies to the King and Kingdom and Addressing to have them removed from his Majesties Presence and Councils for ever and the work is done without allowing the liberty to answer for themselves And the reason that he gives for it is a pleasant one because the King cannot be guilty therefore they must But may not a House of Commons be mistaken and punish a man for what he never did may not one man give the Advice and another suffer for it at this rate of proceedings But this is an old Custom What then it is an unjust one There may be many things plain and evident beyond the testimony of any Witness which yet can never be proved in a legal way This is true but I hope he will not infer from hence that any man shall be punished for those things without testimony I always thought all these cases were reserved to the Tribunal of God Almighty And I believe this Gentleman would be loth to be tried by his own rule The Parliament may be busied in such great Affairs as will not suffer them to parsue every Offender through a long process Then they may let him alone or leave him to the Common Law but to condemn him unheard for want of leisure is such a piece of justice as no man would be willing to submit to in his own Case There may be many reasons why a man should be turned out of Service which perhaps would not extend to subject him to punishment That there may be reasons why a man should be turned out of Service
is undeniable but then those reasons ought to be alledged and proved for the turning a man out of Service is certainly in many cases a great punishment tho not equal to hanging The People themselves are highly concerned in the great Ministers of State who are Servants to the Kingdom as well as to the King and the Commons whose business it is to present all Grievances as they are most likely to observe soonest the folly and treachery of those publick Servants the greatest of all Grievances so this representation ought to have no little weight with the Prince Here is the true reason as long as the Ministers look upon themselves as the Kings Servants they will adhere to the Crown but if they be taught once that they are Servants to the People too then because it is difficult to serve two Masters they will be more distracted and act more timorously especially if according to the modern distinction the Country-Party get the Ascendent of the Court-Party in a Parliament Queen Elizabeth told the Commons by the Lord Keeper that she misliked that such irreverence towards Privy-Counsellors who were not to be accounted as Common Knights and Burgesses of the House that are Counsellors but during the Parliament whereas the other are standing Counsellors and for their Wisdom and great Service are called to the Council of State They were not then thought to be such publick Servants as might be treated at any rate sent to the Tower or to carry up a Bill to the Lords against which they had given their Vote as if it were to triumph over them But Henry IV. a wise and a brave Prince in the Fifth year of his Reign turned out four of his Servants only because the Commons desired they might be removed But then this Prince had no Title and therefore was not in a capacity to dispute any thing with them and in this very Parliament too they gave him so extraordinary a Tax and so troublesom to the Subject that they would not suffer any Record of it to be left in the Treasury and he was obliged to grant them this extraordinary favour in recompence of it He had but newly in Battel conquered one Rebellion wherein Mortimers Title was at the bottom and was ingaged then in a War with France And he had reason to fear a general Defection of the Nation King Richard being reported to be alive And he was then in great want of Money so that for such a Prince so beset to grant any thing was far from a wonder but ought no more to be drawn into Example than that Tax they then gave him and least of all now when things are in a very different posture But then all these Ministers are censured for doing that which was approved by two of the three Estates The Resolve was this That all persons who advised his Majesty in his last Message to this House to insist upon an opinion against the Bill for Excluding the Duke of York have given pernicious Counsel to his Majesty and are promoters of Popery and Enemies to the King and Kingdom Now this Bill was before this thrown out by the House of Lords and therefore there was no reason to Vote the Ministers Enemies to the King and Kingdom for doing that which was approved by two of the three Estates in Parliament But they ought not to have appealed to the People against their own Representatives Why not The unfortunate Reigns of Henry III. Edward II. Richard II. and Henry VI. ought to serve as Land-marks to warn succeeding Kings from preserring secret Councils to the wisdom of their Parliaments And so ought the Example of his Majesties Father to warn both his Majesty and the whole Nation how they suffer the Ministers of State to be trodden under foot by Factious men and the Prerogatives of the Crown to be swallowed up by pretended Priviledges of Parliament for all these things have once already made way for the Ruine of the Monarchy as that did for the enslaving of the People The next thing my Author falls upon is the business of the Revenue but here I cannot imagine what he would have he makes a long Harangue against Alienation of the Revenues of the Crown and about the reasonableness of Resumptions of those that had been alienated And tells us No Country did ever believe the Prince how absolute soever in other things had power to sell or give away the Revenue of the Kingdom and leave his Successor a Beggar That the haughty French Monarch as much power as he pretends to is not ashamed to own that he wanted power to make such Alienations and that Kings had that happy inability that they could do nothing contrary to the Laws of their Country This and much more my Author hath upon this occasion learnedly but very impertinently written about these two Votes believing his Reader could not distinguish betwixt an Alienation and an Anticipation But the best way to have this clearly understood is to insert the Votes of the Commons which are as followeth Resolved That whosoever shall hereafter lend or cause to be lent by way of Advance any money upon the Branches of the Kings Revenue arising by Customs Excise or Hearth-money shall be adjudged to hinder the sitting of Parliaments and shall be responsible for the same in Parliament Resolved That whosoever shall accept or buy any Tally of Anticipation upon any part of the Kings Revenue or whoseever shall pay such Tally hereafter to be struck shall be adjudged to hinder the sitting of Parliaments and shall be responsible therefore in Parliament Now what Advancing money upon the Revenues and accepting Tallys of Anticipation have to do with Alienation of it I cannot devise For certainly it is one thing to advance a Fine and take a Farm so much the cheaper for three four or seven years and another thing to purchase the same to a man and his Heirs for ever And it is one thing to receive an Order to take such a Sum of Money of the Tenant out of the next half years Rent and a quite other thing to purchase the Feesimple of an Estate which is an Alienation The Revenues of the Crown of England are in their own nature appropriated to Publick Service and therefore cannot without injustice be diverted or Anticipated May not an Anticipation be as well imployed upon the Publick Service as a growing Revenue when it is become due Does Anticipation signifie mispending or diverting from a Publick to a private use Is it impossible the Publick should at any time need a greater Sum of money than the Revenue will afford and may not a Prince in such a case Anticipate and afterward get it up again by his good Husbandry No for Either the Publick Revenue is sufficient to answer the necessary occasions of the Government and then there is no colour for Anticipations or else by some extraordinary Accident the King
causes may be assigned according to the several fancies and imaginations of men of our late miserable distractions they cannot be so reasonably imputed to any one cause as to the extreme poverty of the Crown the want of power could never have appeared if it had not been for the want of money But since that the rising greatness of our Neighbours have mounted the Expences of the Crown above that growing Revenue that was then setled and the Republical Party as his Majesty stiles them promise themselves the happiness of bringing about another Revolution by the same means the last was in his Majesties days if it be possible but however at his Death And therefore if the Crown thus beset shall at any time make use of Anticipations to relieve it self they only ought to be responsible for it who have or shall make it necessary For surely no Prince would borrow when he might have it freely given upon reasonable terms unless he took a pride in counting the number of his Creditors And therefore saith my Author it has ever been esteemed a Crime in Counsellors who persuaded the King to Anticipate his Revenue and a Crime in those who furnish'd money upon such Anticipations in an extraordinary way however extraordinary the occasion might be For this cause it was that the Parliament in the 35 of Henry VIII did not only discharge all these Debts which the King had contracted but Enacted that those Lenders who had been before paid again by the King should refund all those Sums into the Exchequer as judging it reasonable punishment to make them forfeit the Money they lent since they have gone about to introduce so dangerous a precedent It is bad Logick that raiseth general Conclusions from particular instances and it will appear so in this that we have in hand which because I cannot so well and creditably do it my self I will make appear by transcribing a passage out of my Lord Coke tho it be somewhat long Advice concerning new and plausible Projects and Oâ—â—ers in Parliament When any plausible project is made in Parliament to draw the Lords and Commons to assent to any Act especially in matters of weight and importance if both Houses do give upon the matter projected and promised their Consent it shall be most necessary they being trusted for the Commonwealth to have the matter projected and promised which moved the House to consent to be established in the same Act lest the benefit of the Act be taken and the matter projected and promised never performed and so the Houses of Parliament perform not the trust reposed in them as it fell out taking one example from many in the Reign of Henry VIII On the Kings behalf the Members of both Houses were informed in Parliament that no King or Kingdom was safe but where the King had three Abilities First To live of his own and be able to defend his Kingdom upon any sudden Invasion or Insurrection Secondly To aid his Confederates otherwise they would never assist him Thirdly To reward his well deserving Servants Now the Projâ—ct was that if the Parliament would give unto him all the Abbies Priories Friories Nunneries and other Monasteries that for ever in time then to come he would take order that the same should not be converted to private use but first That his Exchequer for the purposes aforesaid should be inrich'd Secondly the Kingdom strengthened by a continual maintainance of Forty thousand well trained Souldiers with skilful Captains and Commanders Thirdly For the benefit and ease of the Subject who never afterwards as was projected in any time to come should be charged with Subsidies Fifteenths Loans or other common aids Fourthly Lest the Honour of the Realm should receive any Diminution of Honour by the dissolution of the said Monasteries there being twenty nine Lords of Parliament of the Abbots and Priors that held of the King per Baroniam that the King would create a number of Nobles which we omit The said Monasteries were given to the King by authority of divers Acts of Parliament but no provision was therein made for the said Project or any part thereof only ad faciendam populum these Possessions were given to the King his Heirs and Successors to do and use therewith his and their own wills to the pleasure of Almighty God and the honour and profit of Almighty God Now observe the Catastrophe in the same Parliament of 32 Henry VIII when the great and opulent Priory of St. Johns of Jerusalem was given to the King he demanded and had a Subsidy both of the Clergy and Laity and the like he had in 34 Henry VIII and in 37 Henry VIII he had another Subsidy And since the dissolution of the said Monasteries he exacted divers Loans and against Law received the same Now let my Reader judge if it be reasonable to make what the Parliament did in the 25 of Henry VIII a standing Rule for all succeeding times when it is morally impossible that ever any King of England should have such a Treasure and Revenue as they had given this King within less than seven years and a Subsidy but the very year before besides If we had such Parliaments now and it were possible to give the King such Supplies as they did I would freely give my Vote to have the next Lender Hanged The true way to put the King out of a possibility of supporting the Government is to let him waste in one year that money which ought to bear the charge of the Government for seven But Sir to put you out of pain for that this would necessitate the sitting of Parliaments and the yielding to whatsoever they could desire So this tho true was not the reason of the Vote but directly contrary to it but the King knows the Consequence of that too well to need any restraint in that particular for he knows as well as you that this is the direct method to destroy not only the Credit of the Crown at home and abroad but the Monarchy it self If the King resolves never to pay the money that he borrows what faith will be given to the Royal Promises and the honour of the Nation will suffer in that of the Prince And if it be put upon the People to repay it this would be a way to impose a necessity of giving Taxes without end whether they would or no. Omitting the undutifulness of these suppositions it is very remarkable that the great Anticipations upon the Revenue were made in the time of the last Dutch War when they who now so much clamour against them were Ministers and they who now are such and bear all the blame were not in a capacity to hinder it Whether they had any such intentions as these in it they best know but I am sure one of them made it out powerfully that there was all the reason in the world that the Parliament should pay off
regard to the Laws established This the Author could not deny nor defend and therefore he changeth the terms into a power of Repealing Laws with which the Commons were never charged Now a power of Suspending and a power of Recpealing are vastly different Every Pardon is a suspension of the Execution of the Law in relation to the Party pardoned and so is every Dispensation and when the King put forth the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience there was no design of repealing but only of suspending the Execution of the Penal Laws pro tempore so that if the Commons designed this Vote or Declaration of theirs should have any other effect than to shew their good will to the Dissenters it must extend tho not to a Repeal yet to a suspension of the Execution of the Penal Laws against them which is all the Declaration charged the Commons with and so the Dissenters understood it and have since pleaded this Vote in Bar to the Execution of those Laws against them tho they acknowledge they are not Repealed thereby Every impartial man will own that the Commons had reason for this opinion of theirs Suppose they had reason for it this will not give them a legal Power The King hath good reason to do many things which yet if he should offer at they would clamour against him as an Usurper of an Arbtrary Power for reason gives no man any Author to act except he hath a lawful power to back his reason with There may be great reason to repeat an Act of Parliament and yet in all the Judges in Westminster should thereupon declare it to be either suspended or repealed I know what we should hear of it quickly Well but let us hear their Reasons They had with great anxiety observed that the present design of the Papists was not against any one sort of Pretestants but Vniversal and 〈◊〉 extirpating the Reformed Religion That this might be the ultimate design of the Plot is not much to be doubted but it was immediately bent only against the Religion established and accodingly therwere Successors appointed to all the Bishops and 〈◊〉 Clergy but none to Mr. Baxter Dr. Owen and the rest of that Fry that ever I heard of So that this reason concludes not in favour of the Dissenters but of the Regular Clergy who as they were in most danger ought to have been most taken care of But this Vote left them in the same danger it found them of being destroyed by the Papists and let loose the Dissenters upon them too to encrease that danger 2. They saw what advantages these Enemies made of our Divisions and how cunningly they diverted us from persecuting them by fomenting our Jealousies of one another Did they not Sir observe too how the Dissenters took the occasion of the Plot and of the general hatred against Popery to ruine the Loyal and Conformable Clergy How they presently engrossed the Title of Protestant and endeavoured to make the Rabble believe that all but the Bobtail Holders forth and their Followers were Papists in Masquerade Tories Tantivimen c. If they did not observe these things others did And also that all of a sudden all the Jesuits assumed the shapes of Nonconformists and railed stoutly against Bishops Ceremonies Humane Impositions and Arbitrary Government They knew there was no Possibility of escaping the vengeance of the Church of England men but by setting the Dissenters upon them and they needed no Spur. So this was a good Argument to have taught the Dissenters more modesty but since they had not that it was a strong Argument to have suppress'd them vigorously as the only Auxiliaries of the Papists against the Church and the great hinderers of the prosecution of the Plot. 3. They saw the strength and nearness of the King of France and judged of his inclinations by his usage of his own Protestant Subjects 4. They considered the number and the bloudy Principles of the Irish And 5. That Scotland was already delivered into the hands of a Prince the known head of the Papists in these Kingdoms and the occasion of their Plots and Insolencies as more than one Parliament had declared It should have been worded thus as they had declared in more than one Parliament for these were the same men in several Parliaments who made these several Declarations Now I cannot conceive wherein the force of these three Arguments lies the French King was powerful and hated Protestants therefore the Church of England must be prepared for ruine by giving as many as pleased a free liberty to separate from her and procure her destruction The Irish Papists had ill designs just ripe for execution therefore the English Nonconformists were to be tolerated that they might get strength and be able to rise at the same time to ascertain the destruction of the Church But the fifth Reason is much better Scotland was in the hands of the Duke How came he by it What did he invade it by force and violence against his Majesties Will If he did then let us make a mighty Combination against him But if it were delivered to him by the proper Owner who may govern it by whom he please what occasion is there for the Dissenters service here 6. They could not but take notice into what hands the most considerable Trusts both Civil and Military were put 7. And that notwithstanding all Addresses and all Proclamations for a strict execution of the Penal Laws against Papists yet their Faction so far prevailed that they were eluded and only the Dissenting Protestants smarted under the rage of them That they took very good notice who were imployed in Civil and Military Trusts appears by the Address of December 21. 1680. not many days before this Vote where they tell the King That several Deputy Lieutenants and Justices of the Peace fitly qualified for those imployments have been of late displaced and others put in their room who are men of Arbitrary Principles and Countenancers of Papists and Popery These they would have had turned out and others put in who are men of Integrity and known affection to the Protestant Religion and may be moreover men of Ability of Estates and Interest in their Country His Majesty knew what they meant but did not think fit to change his choice and the truth is they gave him no great encouragement by their own carriage to have any more to do with these able wealthy popular men And therefore it seems this was one reason that moved them to Vote the Protestant Dissenters free from Penal Laws either to keep them out of the hands of these evil Trustees both Civil and Military or else to make a Party out of them not only against the Duke of York but also against these Countenancers of Papists and Popery that is against his Majesties Officers both Civil and Military As if because the French King notwithstanding his great Power and Aversion to the Protestant Religion
could not hurt the Church of England therefore the Dissenters were to be caressed and cherished that they in a small time might be in a capacity to do it And now if these were not good reasons for the Vote let any impartial man that is any but a Church of England man judge In the midst of such Circumstances was there not cause to think an Union of all Protestants necessary and could they have any just grounds to believe that the Dissenters whilst they lay under the pressures of severe Laws should with such Alacrity and Courage as was requisite undertake the defence of a Country where they were so ill treated Whether this question relates to the French King and the Papists or the Duke and the Civil and Military Officers may be a question and therefore it must be so answered As to the first there was all the reason in the world that they should joyn heartily with the Government against the Papists and French for they could not hope to mend their condition by falling into their hands who they knew would treat them with other manner of severities than those they met with from the Laws if they did not know this any of the French Protestants that fled over 〈◊〉 England might have informed them sufficiently Nâ—w of evils the least is to be chosen and tho their conâ—â—tion had not been equal to their desires yet it had been a madness to have made it worse by delivering up themselves and their Country into the hands of the French and Papists But if it relates to the Duke and the Civil and Military Officers then I hope he will excuse me if I do not think it fit to have another Union of Protestants of that sort again A long and sad Experience had shewed how vain the endeavours of former Parliaments had been to force us to be all of one Opinion and therefore the House of Commons resolved to take a sure way to make us all of one Affection This was the very reason of the Declaration of Liberty of Conscience But how unlike that course was to prevail the Nation had sufficient experience in a few years And Sir I can assure you it is above the power of a House of Commons to unite those men in Affection who differ not only in Opinion but Practice too in matters of Religion For these reasons my Author saith this Vote was made in order to a repeal of them by a Bill to be brought in and presently he grows Pettish and tells us None but a Frenchman could have the confidence to declaim against a proceeding so regular and Parliamentary as this Your humble Servant Sir I pray be a little pacified you may possibly be mistaken as well as another man but would I believe take it a little unkindly to be called Monsieur presently They very first Vote they made that day was this Resolved That whosoever advised his Majesty to Prorogue this Parliament to any other purpose than in order to the passing of a Bill for the Exclusion of James Duke of York is a betrayer of the King the Protestant Religion and of the Kingdom of England a promoter of the French interest and a Pensioner to France So they knew they were to be Prorogued that very day and as the Story goes made more than ordinary haste to pass these Votes Now it was impossible that a Bill should be brought in much less passed in that Session which was to end before night and therefore this was not nor could not be the cause of that Vote and all your little Queries founded upon this supposition are silly and impertinent There was not the least direction or signification to the judges which might give any occasion for the reflection which follows in the Declaration The due and impartial execution of the Laws is the unquestionable duty of the Judges and we hope they will always remember that duty so well as not to necessitate a House of Commons to do theirs by calling them to account for making private instructions the Rule of their judgments and acting as men who have more regard to their Places than their Oaths So the Dissenters may see they are mistaken when they think the Judges or Justices may forbear executing the Laws against them upon the score of this Vote But tho the Judges are sworn to execute all Laws yet there is no obligation upon any man to inform against another No Sir Is not every Grand-Jury man every Constable and Churchwarden sworn to Present the breakers of our Laws as well as the Judges are to punish them And as for the next Conundrams of yours the comparing a parcel of Laws made within twenty years to those Antiquated ones about Caps and Bows and Arrows and killing of Lambs and Calves and your business of Empson and Dudley they are such stuff as a man of half your understanding would have been ashamed to have mensioned in a good cause In the next place my Author acquaints us what are the causes usually of disusing Laws alterations of the Circumstances whereupon a Law was made or if it be against the genious of a People or have effects contrary to the intents of the Maker none of which can be said in this case Nor is that true which follows that the quiet safety or trade of our Nation hath been promoted by the not executing of these Laws as any man may know that can remember but ten years backward And therefore notwithstanding the Vote of the Commons the Judges may act wisely and honestly if they should encourage Informers or quicken Juries by strict and severe Charges For the due and impartial execution of the Laws is the unquestionable duty of the Judges according to my Author and therefore I will hope they shall not be accounted Knaves or Fools for doing their unquestionable duty But then my Author hath another quarrel with the Ministers and that was for numbring this Vote amongst the causes of the Dissolution of that Parliament when the Black Rod was at the door of the House to require them to attend his Majesty at the very time when it was made Well suppose we should grant that this was not one of those Votes that occasioned the Prerogation it not being then made when that was resolved on yet it might occasion their Dissolution which hapned some time after And was not this an excellent time to make Votes for the bringing in of Bills for the Repeal of Laws when the Black Rod was at the door to call the House to a Prorogation After a little anger against the Ministers for arraigning one of the Three Estates in the face of the World for usurping power over the Laws imprisoning their fellow Subjects Arbitrarily exposing the Kingdom to the greatest dangers and indeavouring to deprive the King of all possibility of supporting the Government the man hath forgot how often he hath arraigned the Long Loyal Parliament for a
ill men upon his Royal mind c. Now let all the World judge betwixt the King and this Party they grant the King has been heretofore compliant enough to their desires and then in the rudest Language that spight and scorn could dictate conclude against sense and reason that it was not fondness to his Brother nor kindness to the Monarchy but the ill influence of a few men that had thus disposed him A likely thing that he which could give up a Brother and be so unconcerned for his Crown should be so stupid rather than stiff as to venture all for a few ill men Creatures to the Duke and Pensioners to France wicked Wretches who have infected him with the fatal Notion that the Interests of his People are not only distinct but opposite to his No words I can write are sharp enough to reprove this Miscreant that thus rails against his and my Sovereign the Lords Anointed and therefore to God Almighty I leave it He tells us in the next place his Majesty doth not seem to doubt of his Power in Conjunction with his Parliament to Exclude his Brother He very well knows this Power hath been often Exerted in the time of his Predecessors Yes doubtless his Majesty hath read the English Story and observed at the same time that more Princes have been deposed by Pretended power of Parliament than Excluded and he very well knows that if he shall yield that an Argument drawn from Example is valid he will then stand upon slippery ground He also knows that the right Heir was never put by but a good plenty of Miseries Wars and Calamities followed upon it and he is able to foresee that if the same should happen again the French King may easily possess himself of these miserable Kingdoms and therefore it is fairly probable love to his People as well as his Brother hath kept him from consenting The reasons he saith that his Majesty hath aliedged are because it concerned him so near in Honour Justice and Conscience not to do it And are not these three powerful Arguments But my Author can ridicule them and turn them all against the King It is not saith he honourable for a Prince to be true and faithful to his Word and Oath To keep and maintain the Religion and Laws Established Yes who doth question it but all this and all that he hath said besides may be done without Excluding his Brother who would have just as much right supposing the King dies without lawful Issue to the Reversion as his Majesty hath to the present Possession And can his Majesty wrong him of that Right without a blemish to his Honour Justice and Conscience Who will ever after dare to relie upon his Majesty if they once see him desert his own Brother But that which follows is amazing All Obligations of Honour Justice and Conscience are comprehended in a grateful return of such benefits as have been received can his Majesty believe that he doth duly repay unto his Protestant Subjects the kindness they shewed him when they recalled him from a miserable helpless Banishment and with so much dutiful affection placed him in the Throne enlarged his Revenue above what any of his Predecessors had enjoyed and gave him vaster Sums of Money in twenty years than had been bestowed upon all the Kings since William the First Should he after all this deliver them up to be ruined by his Brother It should have been Should he after all this deliver them up to be ruined by the Dissenter and the Faction that Murthered his Father drew up an Oath of Abjuration of the whole Family of the Stuarts hanged plundered murthered sequestred and destroyed so many of his Loyal Nobility Gentry and Clergy Sir I am not so ill bred as to Catechise my Sovereign but I thing I may without offence ask the Whigs a few small questions Have you the impudence after all the Villanies you have done to Usurp the Loyalty that you never were guilty of Was it not enough to banish your Sovereign and keep him twelve years in that miserable helpless condition but you must reproach him too with it Did he not pardon you when you had sormited your Lives and all you had to his Justice by all the Laws of God and man Must he once more put himself into your power that he may try whether you will use him as you did his Father Have you not repined at his Restitution endeavoured to Banish him the second time by all the Arts imaginable Have you not murmur'd at all that has been given him Slandered that Parliament that gave it whilst it fate and since it was dissolved laboured to represent it to the Nation as the worst Parliament that ever sate Have not you Sir called them Danby's Pensioners Mercenary Pensioners c. And can you shew any vast or indeed competent Sums of Money given to the King since you know when And after all this have you the insolence to call your selves Protestants or own your selves Subjects And expect the King should in pure gratitude for what you never did lay all at your feet again As for those Protestant Subjects who besides all that you have falsely ascribed to your selves fought for him and his Father they do not fear his Majesties Brother would ruine them if he could and therefore have by thousands thanked his Majesty for his care in preserving the Succession in its due and legal course of descent In the next Paragraph my Author is very Politick and tells us Our Ancestors have been always more careful to preserve the Government inviolable than to favour any personal pretences and have therein conformed themselves to the practice of all other Nations whose examples deseve to be followed That is they have been more careful to preserve the Mornarchy it self and the Liberties of the Subject than the due and legal Descent in the Succession This is certainly true And they have paid well for neglecting the other as is apparent to any body that has read the History of England I will instance only in the Wars betwixt the Houses of Lancaster and York Richard II. being deposed and murthered Henry IV. who had no Title but was a brave Prince was set up But mark the Consequence before this Quarrel could be ended in B sworth Field there perished 80998 Private Souldiers two Kings one Prince ten Dukes two Marquesses twenty one Earls twenty seven Lords two Vicounts once Lord Prior one Judge one hundred thirty nine Knights four hundred forty one Esquires and my Author knows not how many Gentlemen in twelve Battels The total saith my Author of all the persons that have been slain is 85628. Christians and most of them of this Nation Is it fit to run the Risque of suffering all this over again As to his Examples of Princes that have been Excluded upon the account of Religion or for other smaller matters they prove nothing but that ill
things have been done but ought they therefore to be reacted As for his railing Accusations brought against his Royal Highness they deserve so much the less consideration because he treats the King at that abominable rate he doth of whose Clemency Justice and Compassion all Europe are Witnesses Having concluded there must be a War he saith Let it be under the Authority of Law let it be against a Banished Excluded Pretender There is no fear of the Consequence of such a War No true Englishman can joyn with him or countenance his Vsurpation after this Act and for his Popish and Forein Adherents they will neither be more provoked nor more powerful by the passing of it This man all along supposeth that neither the Duke nor the King have any natural Hereditary Right to the Crown but talketh as if it were meerly at the pleasure of the People and their Representatives to make what man they please King of England supposing that a Son of an Emperour of Germany or of a King of Poland were passed by or Excluded and should enter a War for the gaining of that Crown to which for want of an Election he had never any legal right he might be stiled a Pretender or an Usurper but in an Hereditary Kingdom it can never be so if according to the before cited opinion of K. James no Act of Parliament can extinguish the Dukes Right which God and Nature hath given him in case the King should die before his Royal Highness without lawful Issue tho it may prevent his obtaining it So that he can never be an Usurper or Pretender till the Monarchy of England is declared to be Elective And this may be thought to be one reason why his Majesty should never yield the point And as for my Authors confidence in the success of such a War it speaks nothing but his earnest desire of one rather than not to have his Will and I hope the Nation will have no occasion to prove him a false Prophet Nor will his Exclusion make it at all necessary to maintain a standing Force for preserving the Government and the peace of the Kingdom The whole People will be an Army for that purpose and every heart and hand will be prepared to maintain that so necessary so much desired Law If all this were true there would be no need of an Army indeed but then there would also be as little need of an Association too for I never heard of a Prince that was able to compel three whole Nations to submit to him against all their Wills and without Forein Aids But Sir the House of Commons thought the latter necessary or else they would never have desired that his Majesty would be likewise Graciously pleased to Assent to an Act whereby his Majesties Protestant Subjects may be enabled to Associate themselves for the defence of his Majesties Person the Protestant Religion and the security of your Kingdoms This was thought as necessary as the Bill of Exclusion and what kind of Association some men intended is well enough understood now by the whole Nation As to his Recrimination upon the Ministers for the two Armies and the Guards let him set his heart at rest for the World is very well satisfied the one were never intended to be kept up and it is hoped the other the Guards will be ever formidable to such Gentlemen as my Author who in kindness to the Queen of Scots Title and the Bill of Exclusion is like a good Protestant contented to insinuate that Queen Elizabeth was a Bastard though born in Matrimony For so she must be if what the Papists say of her having no other Right but only that of an Act of Parliament by which Mary Queen of Scots was Excluded be true In the next Paragraph my Author endeavours to face his Majesty down That nothing was intended by those other ways which were darkly and dubiously intimated in his Majesties Speech unto the Parliament at Oxford and repeated in the Declaration and he saith that his Majesty in his wisdom could not but know that they signified nothing Now this is a strange way of proceeding with Princes and would anger a private man The Regency signified nothing the distinction betwixt the Kings Personal and Politick Capacity was unfeasible the Pope might absolve him from all Oaths as he did King John and Henry III. and it would be more fatal to us when Religion is concerned which was not then in question His Confessor would excite him against us and he who has made use of all the Power he has been intrusted with hitherto for our destruction witness his Naval Wars against the Dutch would certainly Elude all Methods but the Bill of Exclusion and if it were otherwise there was no hopes of having any fruit of any Expedient without a War and to be obliged to swear Allegiance to a Popish Prince to own his Title to acknowledge him supreme Head of the Church and Defender of the Faith seems says my Author a strange way of entitling our selves to fight with him It doth so and therefore all those that are resolved on a War will I suppose never do it But are all these Titles annexed to the Crown as Protestant or as imperial and subject to none but God Did they belong to Henry VIII or did they not And supposing no Expedient should be used would not the Number Constancy and Resolution of the English Nation and Protestants in it preserve the Religion in one Prince's Reign tho of a different Religion without a War The Expedient propounded by his Majesty that if means could be found That in case of a Popish Successâ—r the Administration of the Government might remain in Protestant hands whether it be feasible or no shews an inclination in his Majesty to submit to any thing but what will ruine both him and his Brother as the Bill of Exclusion backed with such an Association as was lately found certainly will In short this Case is beset with so many and great difficulties that it baffles all humane wit and understanding to provide such an Expedient for it as may be secure and satisfie and therefore when all is done that can be done it must be left to God Almighty who only can and will determine it Having denied the charge in the Declaration That there was reason to believe that the Parliament would have passed further to attempt some other great and important changes even at present and according to his wont schooled the King and told the Ministers That they hate Parliaments because their Crimes are such that they have reason to fear them He relents a little and tells us if they the Ministers by that expression meant That the Parliament would have besought the King that the Duke might no longer have the Government in his hands This is a little hard to be understood the Duke not being then in England 2. That his Dependants those that had
four they fell upon the Exclusion Bill and that being rejected by the Lords they fell upon the Revenue and seemingly Voted the King a Bankrupt Jar. 7. by declaring that no man ought to trust him further than he had ready money nor lend him any and Declared that several eminent men of the Privy Counsellors were favourers of Popery and enemies to the King and Kingdom and for which and the other things they were dissolved then comes that at Oxford with the Votes I have recited for which and for insisting upon the Bill for Excluding the Duke of York they were dissolved Could none of these Parliaments have tried the Popish Lords without these things Yes doubtless they might but they would not but kept these Lords in the Tower that whatever provocation they should give the King to Dissolve or Prorogue them still the clamour might be that it was to prevent their Trials And I am fully persuaded there are some men in England would almost choose to be hanged themselves rather than be deprived of this glorious and popular pretence of insensing the People against the King and the Court. If there be no other Evidence of the Unparliamentary and mean Solicitations used to promote this pretended Rejection of the Commons Accusation than this scurvy Hint in my Author which he acknowledgeth not fit to be remembred tho he cannot forbear Printing it I suppose it is but a small part of the Nation that will be extremely sensible of it But yet however if their Impeachment had not been rejected Fitz-Harris had long since been executed or deserved mercy by a full discovery of these malicious designs against the King and People and the secret Authors of them And that he would certainly have done to have saved his own life and then we should have had an opportunity to have made the World believe that the King did hire Fitz-Harris to raise a Rebellion against himself to defame himself and insense the minds of the People against him for thus he defamed the King at his Trial. This was all he could do to merit a Pardon by and this he did at his Trial but was able to produce no testimony to back it But this Trial occasioned strange talk in Westminster Hall and Questions were raised of a strange nature that will never have a determination in any inferiour Court but will assuredly at one time or other have a further Examination These questions were moved then by Fitz-Harris his Counsel and need never be determined By the Term in the Declaration of the Lords having done themselves right by refusing to admit the Impeachment he hath discovered the Penman of the Declaration and says he has done himself and the Nation Right and discovered himself by using his ordinary Phrase upon this occasion Now I thought verily the next word would have been his Name no but stay you there The Person is well known without naming him who always tells men they have done themselves no right when he is resolved to do them none Now cannot I tell any more whom he means by this private token than the man in the Moon and if he had graciously vouchsafed to have whispered his name in my Ear and I had known that he had usually thus expressed himself yet I should still be a little jealous some Frenchman or other might be the Author of it because my Author hath given full as good evidence Page 5. to prove it was so As for the Commons nothing says my Author was carried on to extremity by them nothing done but what was Parliamentary they could not desire a Conference till they had first stated their own Case and asserted by Votes the matter which they were to maintain at a Conference This was done effectually in the first part of the first and second Vote without adding That the refusal of the Lords to proceed in Parliament upon such Impeachment is a denial of Justice and a violation of the Constitution of Parliaments and in the second Vote and an obstruction to the further discovery of the Popish Plot and of great danger to his Majesties Person and the Protestant Religion Here the Declaration lays the stress of the business and says That when either of the Houses are so far transported as to pass such Votes concerning the proceedings of the other without Conferences first had to examine upon what grounds such proceedings are made and how far they might be justified this puts the Two Houses out of a Capacity of Transacting business together and consequently is the greatest violation of the Constitution of Parliaments Now surely the House of Commons might have asserted their Right without these Expressions which must needs insense the Lords especially when they were Printed and spread over the whole Nation But the House of Commons was so far from thinking themselves to be out of a Capacity of Transacting with the Lords any further that they were preparing to send a Message for a Conference to Accommodate this difference at the very instant when the Black Rod called them to their dissolution But this it is very probable was not known to his Majesty so that it came too late to save them If every difference in Opinion and Vote should put the Two Houses out of a Capacity of transacting business together every Parliament must be dissolved as soon as called Now Sir I could never have thought that it is so usual a thing for the Two Houses to make such Votes as these against each other I am persuaded the Lords would never have treated with the Commons if a Conference had been demanded till the Conclusions of the first and second Vote had been recanted But the Ministers promoted this difference between the Two Houses what did any of them dictate these Votes and then broke the Parliament lest it should be composed And for this my Author gives you his own honest word over again in the next Page and hopes no man will be so hard-hearted as not to believe him But my Author hath another quarrel against the Ministers because they censure these Votes of the Commons as the greatest violation of the Constitution of Parliaments They ought certainly says my Author to have excepted the power which is here assumed of giving such a Judgment and Publishing such a charge as being not only the highest violation of the Constitution but directly tending to the destruction of it Well then I for my part will never undertake to defend them in it Aut I have observed one thing in these debates that the Priviledges of the House of Commons are not much unlike the Power claimed by the Pope which is to judge all men and to be judged by no man So that whatever they are pleased to call Priviledge of Parliament I am bound to believe is so with an implicit faith For these Priviledges of Parliament are known to none but those that sit in St. Stephens Chappel and if
that you would not let your Conscience in this passage give your Passion in all the rest the lie Now if I might interpret your meaning I should guess it to be this They that on the one hand pretend to maintain the Legal Monarchy but do really intend to advance it into an absolute form without any dependence upon Parliaments and they who pretend the same thing but design to throw off the Monarchy and put the whole Power into the hands of the People i. e. the Commonwealth Party are the men that have brought things into the disorder they are now in Whilst they who love the Legal Monarchy both out of Choice and Conscience amongst which persons I will subscribe my name when occasion requires are they who desire the frequent and successful meetings of the Great Coucil Now Sir here seems to be a little Justice in this for as it were a high and flagrant piece of injustice to say that all that made up the House of Commons in the two last Parliaments designed to ruine the Monarchy and set up another Parliamentary Commonwealth of England So it is the same notorious and base injustice in you to traduce the Ministers in general as you do throughout the whole Pamphlet when as it is apparent enough first That his Majesty never did intend to set up one Dram of Arbitrary Government Secondly That it is not possible for the Ministers to do it without his consent Thirdly That it is scarce possible for him and them to do it if they had designed to do it till there hath been another War Fourthly That never any considerable person or number of persons amongst the Ministers did ever yet make one step towards it For all those Acts that have been so basely traduced are fairly defensible Those that look worst the Transactions about 1671. and 72. not excepted one of which you your self have excused viz. the Postponing of all Payments to the Bankers out of the Exchequer And the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience though you stile it an Arbitrary Power assumed to suspend Penal Laws and say the whole Nation was justly alarmed upon it yet I believe should his Majesty do the same thing over again those that now make the greatest noise against Arbitrary Power without cause would willingly enough accept of it And yet there is no reason that the present Ministers should bear the blame of these things when they that promoted them are now Sir in your Interests And Sir that the meetings of the Great Council may be successful as well as frequent one of these things must be that either the People change the Members of the Lower House or that those Members change their Methods of Proceeding and till this be done these meetings how frequent soever can never be successful For if things be carried in the next Convention as they were in the late Parliaments neither can the King neither will the Nation endure it and for all our Threats you will find when you come to bring it into Act such difficulties as I car not to foretel tho I can foresee them As for the other sort of Peevish men of whom the Declaration gives us warning who are angry at the disappointment of their Ambitious Designs If these words are intended to reflect on those men of Honour and Conscience who being qualified for the highest imployments of State have either left or refused or be removed from them because they would not accept ro retain them at the Price of selling their Country and inslaving Posterity and who are content to sacrifice their Safety as well as their Interest for the Publick and expose themselves to the malice of the men in power and to the daily Plots Perjuries and Subornations of the Papists I say if these are the Ambitious Men spoken of the People will have consideration for what they say and therefore it will be wisdom to give such men as these no occasion to say they intend to lay aside the use of Parliaments This your Appeal to the People hath spoiled all the fine things you had said before for supposing all the rest had been true as it is notoriously false yet this making the People the Judges is a kind of attempt to separate them from their Governours and exasperate them against the Government from whence must spring as great inconveniences as those you pretend to avoid and therefore had I been one of these men I would never have appealed to them but to God and my own Conscience and have sate still till he had pronounced the Sentence in this World or that which is to come You know Sir the People are not able to examine any thing but being once put into a rage by such specious Harangues as these are rush into disorder and confusion and take all that endeavour to quiet them for Enemies and Papists and so the guilty escape and then innocent are cut in pieces And besides all this never was any disorder in a Government rectified by the People but by a greater and more fatal disorder as we had experience in the late times and very often before But let the Event be what it will you are resolved to stir up the People to the utmost to revenge your case upon the Government and to that purpose insinuate there is a design to lay aside the use of Parliaments as if you should have said Stand to your Arms Gentlemen against these Ministers for as they have laid us aside men of Honour and Conscience because we would not sell our Country and enslave Posterity so the next thing to be done is the laying aside Parliaments and you are the men that must by your consideration of us prevent this great mischief This was pretty well but the next is excellent In good earnest the behaviour of the Ministers of late gives but too just occasions to say that the use of Parliaments is already laid aside for tho the King has own'd in so many of his Speeches and Declarations the great Danger of the Kingdom and the necessity of the aid and counsel of Parliaments he hath nevertheless been prevailed upon to dissolve four in the space of twenty six months without making provision by their Advice suitable to our dangers or wants My Author was sensible that the People might think that the former hint proceeded from Passion or was not serious or at least the danger was not eminent and he comes now nearer to them and tells them in good earnest they had but too just occasions to say that Parliaments were already laid aside as to any use of them and he proved it too Four had been dissolved in twenty six months but three of them were called in that time And this is an odd sort of laying them aside to call as many in twenty six months as heretofore have been called in so many years Well but there was no provision made by their Advice suitable to our Dangers
or Wants The fault says the Declaration was in them The King was willing to have done any thing which would have consisted with the very being of the Government He passed every Bill that was tendred connived so long at the proceedings of the last Parliament of Westminster that many men wondred and some that were neither Papists nor Malefactors murmured And a grave man told the very Parliament that he suspected they were permitted to sit there rather to destroy themselves than to save their Country And now after all this is his Majesty to bear the blame that no provision was made by their Advice suitable to our wants and dangers Well but the People to whom my Gentleman is appealing they will never undestand nor consider these things nor any thing else and therefore my Gentleman did wisely to make them the Judges but for the honesty of it or the truth of any of this I have nothing to say Nor can we hope the Court will ever love any Parliament better than the first of those four wherein they had so dearly purchased such a number of fast friends men who having first sold themselves would not stick to sell any thing after And we may well suspect they mean very ill at Court when their designs shockt such a Parliament The business of the Pensioners hath been considered elsewhere and need not here be repeated Now to me one of these things must be false viz. that there was such a number of men who had so sold themselves Or that the Court are such men as you Sir say they are If these men had sold themselves why did they not go on with the bargain If the Court had such an interest in them and such designs upon them and us why did it part with them Especially when the Ministers knew they lost thereby a constant Revenue of extraordinary Supplies as you say they did and I may say they have had little enough since Oh the Reason was they began in good earnest to examine what was done and what was doing And therefore they were pack'd away Well the matter was not great they were a company of Pensioners men that had sold themselves and would not stick to sell any thing after And Sir if it were so the Nation has no reason to complain of the Court for that and I hope I too shall be excused if I have dropt a few less respective words of the three Parliaments that have since followed for they are not better nor more sacred than this of which many of the Lord Chancellors have given high Encomiums my Lord of Shaftsbury not excepted Now let my Reader reflect on all this seriously and tell me if any person even Fitz-Harris himself could possibly write any thing worse than this and which tended more to heighten the resentments of the Nation and put the People into disorder and confusion The most direct and passionate incitements to rebellion he used are not more likely to stir them than our Authors warm and earnest applications on the behalf of these Ambitious men as I perceive the Declaration rightly stiles them for none but such would ever desire to see their Country imbroyled and to that end appeal to the People And supposing the People to be well disposed that way it would be no wonder that the Ministers dare not suffer a Parliament now to sit till the People are in a better temper to chuse one but then Sir this is owing to such men as you and such Books as yours and you must answer for it But we have gained at least this one point by the Declaration that it is own'd to us That Parliaments are the best Methods for healding the distempers of the Kingdom and the only means to preserve the Monarchy in Credit both at home and abroad Own'd by these very men who have so maliciously rendered many former Parliaments ineffectual and by this Declaration have done their utmost to make those which are to come as fruitless and thereby have confessed that they have no concern for healing the distempers of the Kingdom and preserving the credit of the Monarchy which is in effect to acknowledge themselves to be what the Commons called them Enemies to the King and Kingdom Just before Sir you had been proving them designing to lay all use of Parliaments aside and now you bring them in owning what will certainly ruine that design not long before that you had been convicting them of a design of making the Monarchy Arbitrary and absolute and now they are unconcerned for the very Credit of the Monarchy Are you in your right Wits Do you think thus to prove them Enemies to the King and Kingdom Why must those Parliaments that are to come be as fruitless as those that are past The Ministers may be changed or the People may change or the very Parliament men may change and time may be Gods grace have strange effects And in the mean time his Majesty is not in 〈…〉 wants of a Parliament but he 〈…〉 than a bad one a Rending instead of a Healing Parliament And in the interim his Majesties good Subjects can rely as socurely upon his Royal Declaration that he intends not to lay aside the use of Parliaments as if there were one now actually sitting at Westminister However we rejoyce that his Majesty seems resolved to have frequent Parliaments and hope he will be just to himself and us by continuing constant to this Resolution Yet we cannot but doubt in some degree when we remember the Speech made January 26. 1679. to both Houses wherein he told them that he was unalterably of an Opinion that long intervals of Parliaments were absolutely necessary for composing and quieting the minds of the People Therefore which we ought rather to believe the Speech or the Declaration or which is likely to last longest a Resolution or an unalterable Opinion is a matter too nice for any but Court Criticks to decide The effectual performance of the last part of the promise will give us assurance of the first When or where this Speech was spoken by his Majesty I cannot devise for at the time assigned there could be none The first short Parliament was Prorogued May 27. 1679. And the second met not till October 21. 1680. and was Prorogued the tenth of January following I have read over all his Majesties Speeches too about that time and I find not one tittle in them to this purpose But if there ever were any such Speech spoken for I will not be positive there was not it is fairly reconcileable with the very words of the Declaration for the Statute made in his Majesties Reign calls Triennial Parliaments A frequent calling assembling and holding of Parliaments which yet is a very long Interval in comparison of the time his Majesty hath hitherto interposed betwixt the Dissolving or Proroguing of one Parliament and the sitting of another so that the matter was
not so nice but it might have been â—een determined by a meaner Critick than our Author who hath shewn his great skill in the French Tongue in his learned Remarques on the Phrase it is a matter extremely sensible to us And in the Latine upon the word Republick or Commonwealth If he had not from hence sought an occasion to call his Majesties Fidelity in question which tho it may become a Republican is very indecent in a good Subject When we see the real fruits of these utmost endeavours to extirpate Popery out of Parliament when we see the Duke of York no longer first Minister or rather Protector of these Kingdoms and his Creatures no longer to have the whole direction of Affairs when we see that love to our Religion and Laws is no longer a Crime at Court no longer a fore-runner of being disgraced and removed from all Offices and Imployments in their Power That is when the Duke of York is ruined and not only his Popish but his Church of England Creatures who have shewn themselves such by Voting against the Bill of Exclusion be laid aside When our Religion which no man knows what it is and that part of the Laws which we skulk behind now to ruine all the rest and the King and Kingdom to boot shall not hinder our Preferment whatever we do or say When the word Loyal which is faithful to the Law shall be restored to its own meaning and no longer signifie one who is for subverting the Laws That is when men may safely pretend so much respect to the Laws that they may affront his Majesty who is the Fountain of all Laws and the Protector of them and us by them when the word Loyal shall have no other relation to his Majesty than the same word if in use there hath in Venice when spoken concerning their Duke When we see the Commissions filled with hearty Protestants that is with Whigs and Republicans and the Laws executed in good earnest against the Papists and the Dissenters passed by unpunished The Discoverers of the Plot countenanced or at least heard and suffered to give their Evidence except when they make bold with our selves and such a Colledge and Fitz-Harris and the Association-men in which cases they ought neither to be heard nor believed The Courts of Justice steady and not avowing a jurisdiction one day which they disown the next but just such as they were in the late times When we see no more Grand-Juries discharged lest they should hear Witnesses nor Witnesses hurried away lest they should inform Grand-Juries tho it were against his Majesty and when all Grand-Juries are of the Family of Ignoramus the Lawyer and will find according to their Conscience tho against both their Oath and their Evidence especially when a Precious man is in jeopardy to be hanged for something done or said against the King When we see no more instruments from Court labouring to raise jealousies of Associating Petitioning Protestants who have a Patent from heaven to retail all the fears and jealousies that ever shall from henceforward be put off in England Scotland and Ireland and in all other his Majesties Dominions and Countries whatsoever And to that purpose have erected several Mints for the Coining of them in London and the parts adjacent and do maintain several Presses and a great many Intelligencers to collect and disperse the same for the benefit of his Majesties discontented Subjects who receive much comfort by the worst and falsest of them and hope to have just such another harvest in the end as they reaped from the same Seed in and about the years 1640 41 42 and so on till 1660. When we see some regard had to Protestants abroad tho his Majesty should be by our defaults brought into such straits as hardly to be able to maintain the Government at home When we observe somewhat else to be meant by Governing according to Law than barely to put them in execution against Dissenters in whom our strength against the Government doth chiefly consist the Laws made against Papists In which number we desire the Church of England men that is all that stick to the Religion by Law Established may be included and then we shall promise our selves not only frequent Parliaments but everlasting ones and all the blessed effects of pursuing Parliamentary Councils the Extirpation of Popery and Prelacy the redress of Grievances the flourishing of Laws and the perfect restoring the Monarchy to the credit which it had in 1658 and 59. both at home and abroad There needs no time to open the Eyes of his Majesties good Subjects the Whigs and their hearts are ready prepared to meet him in Parliament in order to perfect all these good Settlements and Peace which are now wanting in Church and State But whilst there are so many little Emissaries imployed to sow and encrease divisions in the Nation as if the Ministers had a mind to make his Majesty head of a Faction and joyn himself to one Party in the Kingdom who has a just right of Governing all which Thuanus lib. 28. says was the notorious Folly and occasioned the destruction of his great-Grandmother Mary Queen of Scots whilst we see the same differences Promoted industriously by the Court which gave the Rise and Progress to the late troubles and which were once thought fit to be buried in an Act of Oblivion What is meant by the little Emissaries here I know not nor will I guess Nor did I ever observe the Ministers had a mind to make his Majesty the Head of a Faction which your Author much blames in Henry III. of France too when he suffered the Holy League the Prototype of the Association to be set afoot and propagated so far before he took notice of it that he was forced at last to attempt to make himself the Head of it which was properly a Faction combined by an Oath against the Right Heir to the Crown and a part of the Natural Subjects of France on pretence of Religion for the Exclusion of the first and destruction of the latter without and against the consent of the King which caused a Rebellion in France the destruction of the King a sooner Succession of Henry IV. the right Heir upon changing his Religion and if God had not prevented it had betrayed France into the hands of the Spaniards or Cantoned it into small Principalities Now this is properly to make a Prince the head of a Faction without consideration of the Rise of our late Troubles which sprung from such another League but to countenance a Loyal Party more than a Rebellious one is not so and whatever effect it had in the Reign of Queen Mary his Majesties Grandmother seems the only way now to save England and prevent the need of another Act of Oblivion and Indemnity for all those Crimes that were pardoned by his Majesty but never repented of by them that acted them Whilst