Project Four Abbesses to help them to Cordials in that languishing State of Loyalty they then were in The Earls and Barons were then and long after Great and Noble by Descent Birth Extraction Lands Estate Alliance Command Power and Authority not a few of them by Consanguinity or Affinity deriving their Progeny from the lines of several of their Kings and Princes and much of their Honors and Support from their Bounty and Munificence as they were pleased to dispence them by their influence favors or bounty for great and heroick Actions and Services done for them and the Weal publick and their Authority could not be small either in the Fear or Force of it when at the time of the Norman Conquest all the Lands and Services thereunto belonging of the Kingdom were either the Kings in Demesne or in the Possession of those Great Men and Commanders unto whom he had granted them and that again distributed by them to their Servants Friends or Followers to hold by Knights Service Soccage Copy-hold Leases for Years or Villenage with some Services imposed as going in Person to War to defend them and their Soveraign Castle-guard Carre and Manuopara and the consented unto Reservations or willing Oblations of doing much of their works of Husbandry in the hopes of their Justice in their little Courts or petit Soveraignties Protection and Assistance against the injuries and oppression of wrong Doers and the Comfort of a large and free Hospitality and Charitable uses together with the Foundation and Endowments of many Abbies Priories and religious Houses which obliged both the secular and regular Clergy to love and honour them and the liberi homines or Freeholders were as unto many of them only such as had been manumissed and had from the condition of Servants or Villaines attained unto the degrees of libertini or ingenui or so fortunate as to have some small Parcells of Lands in Fee simple or Tail or for life by Gift Purchase Marriage or Copy-hold granted and given by them most of the Saxon race being so unhappy as to be content to become Tenants to the Conquerours of their own Lands whilst the Nobility and Great Men being more desirous of Service than Money or Rents granted the Service of Men or Tenants that held by Knights Fees or Service or parts thereof one unto another which in those times were in so high Esteem and of such a Value as Ten Knights Fees were reckoned a Satisfaction for a Release of the Claim of that great Office of High Steward of England in Fee by Roger Bygott Earl of Norfolk and his Heirs to Symon de Montfort Earl of Leicester Seven and a half whereof being paid King Henry the Third upon a Reference of the Controversy betwixt the said Earles unto him made his Award That the said Symon should Execute the said Office of High Steward and the said Roger should bring his Action for the other Two Knights Fees and a half and the English Nobility having all the great offices and places of Honour of the Kingdom and about the Persons of their Kings with their Influence Power and Authority in their great Councels or Parliaments and thereby the Opportunities of pleasing and displeasing hurting or helping whom they would were as to many of them and not a few of the common People like the righteous Job in his Prosperity when they came out to the Gates of the City the Eares that heard them blessed them the Eyes that saw them gave Witness unto them they delivered the Poor that cryed and the Fatherless and them that had none to help them the Blessing of those that were ready to perish came upon them they caused the Widdows hearts to sing for joy were Eyes to the blind Feet to the lame and Fathers to the poor brake the Jawes of the Wicked and pluckt the Spoyl out of their Mouths their Root was spread out by the Waters and the Dew lay all night upon their Branches they gave ear unto them waited and kept silence at their Councel And could not be slighted or taken to be Benefits of a small size or esteem but to be very great and worthy the seeking and obtaining when Threescore and Ten Thousand Knights Fees every one of which being then no small Estate either as to the extent of the Lands or the Value thereof as Ordericus Vitalis who lived in the time of the Conqueror hath numbred them or but about Thirty two Thousand as Mr. Selden believeth were given by William the Conqueror to his Nobility Great Men and Followers to be holden of him his Heirs and Successors in Capite and all the other Lands of the Kingdom except those large quantities which were King Edward the Confessor as appertaining to the Crown of England and what else he kept in his own Possession and Demesne and besides what he endowed and founded divers Abbys Monasteries Priories and Nunneries withal to hold of him and his Heirs and Successors in Capite and by Knights Service were again as unto a great part thereof distributed and granted by his Nobility great Men and Followers to their Dependants Servants Tenants and Friends to hold of them by Knight-Service Which drawing to it by the Feudal Laws part of the fundamental Laws of England and incorporated therein Wardships no Slavery Burden or Grievance if rightly used or understood but a Protection Comfort and Benefit as well publick as private Reliefs Education Protection and Marriage of their Heirs in their Minority which was the greatest Concernment of their Families did put and render the Commonalty under the Patronage and Tutelage of the Nobility and great Men Subordinate to the King their Soveraign and common Parent which many other Nations and the greatest Pretenders and Enjoyers of Liberties in the Christian World have not onely deemed but experimented to be an Happiness Insomuch as if it were to be tryed by the Suffrage and Experience of our English Ancestors if they could from the Dead be produced and heard to speak in the Affairs and Case of England and a due Consideration had of the Security had and long enjoyed by the Northern parts thereof by the Tenures by Cornage assisted by that of Knight-Service and Capite and the Residence of the Baronage of those Countryes against the dayly and nightly Incursions and Spoil of their then ill Neighbours the Picts and Scots which amounted unto as much or more than the costly Wall and Fortifications which the Romans built and provided against them together with the Safety and Guard which a great part of England hath been often defended by the Lords Marchers against the Hostilities and Unquietness of the Welch it 's former Owners would bring us in a verdict of O felices bona si sua nôrint Which must needs attract the Love good Will Fear Awe and Obedience of the People who so well understood their own conditions and that of the Nobility as to believe that to quarrel or be
Mannors in Kent besides a large proportion of Rumney Marsh Sixteen in Essex Fifty-one in Suffolk and Nineteen in Norfolk a Descendant of whom had in 12. Henry the Second holden of him Ten Knights Fees and a Fourth part de veteri feoffamento and was seized of the Mannor of Wellesborne in com Leic which Peter had in 12 Henry the Third the Mannor of Beldesert in Comitat ' Stafford in Anno 35 Henry the Third was Governor of Horeston Castle in Derbyshire in Forty-One Warden of the Marches of Wales towards Montgomery and also of the Castles of Salop and Bruges was Sheriff of the Counties of Salop and Stafford and so likewise for the next ensuing Year had the Custody of the Castles of Bruges and Ellesmere in Anno 47. Henry the Third was Governor of the Castles of Corff and Shirburne and of the Castle and Mannor of Seggewick and was in Anno 49. Eiusdem Regis made by that King 's Imprisoned Seal Governor of Whittenton Castle in Shropshire Gilbert de Segrave the Son of Hereward held the Mannor of Segrave in Com' Leic ' with the Fourth part of a Knight's Fee had a Grant of the King of the Lands of Stephen de Gaunt in the Counties of Lincolne and Leicester in the 5th of Henry the Third was Sheriff of the Counties of Essex and Hartford and the Two next ensuing Years in the 6th of Lincolnshire for Three parts of the Year and to the 8th in 11th Henry the Third Sheriff of Buckingham and Bedfordshire and continued until the 18th in the 10th of Henry the Third was a Justice itinerant for Nottingham and Derby-shires purchased Mount Sorrel in the County of Leicester in the 16th Henry the Third had the Custody of the Castle of Northampton and of the Counties of Buckingham Bedford Warwick and Leicester for the term of his Life taking the whole Profits of all those Counties for his Support in that Service excepting the ancient Farms which had been usually paid in the Exchequer with the Encrease which in King Henry the Seconds time had been answered for them was Chief Justice of the Court of Common-Pleas in 2d Henry the Third when upon the removal of Hubert de Burgh he was made Cheif Justice of England and had likewise the Mannor of Almonsbury in com' Huntington Hugh Despencer was in the Eighth Year of the Raign of King Henry the Third constituted Sheriff of the Counties of Salop and Stafford Governor of the Castles of Salop and Bridgenorth in the 10th of Henry the Third Sheriff of Berkshire and Governor of Wallingford Castle and in the 17th of Bolsoner Castle in com' Derby in 44th was by the rebellious Barons made Chief Justice of England after the Battle of Lewes Governour of Oxford Castle in Suffolk the Devises in Wiltshire Oxford and Nottingham Castle Bernard in the Bishoprick of Durham and one of the Twenty-Four Conservators for managing the Affairs of the Realm was seized of the Mannor of Ryhal in com' Rotel ' Leghere and Wykes in com' Essex Bernewell in com' Northampton Wycomb in com' Buck ' Soham in com' Cant ' Berewick Winterborne Basset in com' Wilts Speke in com' Berk whose Grand-child Hugh le Despencer in the Raign of King Edward the Second was possessed of no less than Fifty-Nine Lordships in several Counties Twenty-Eight-Thousand Sheep One Thousand Oxen and Steers Twelve Hundred Kine with their Calves Sixty Mares with their Colts Two Years old One Hundred Sixty draught Horses Two Thousand Hogs Three Hundred Bullocks Sixty Tuns of Wine Six Hundred Bacons Eighty Carkases of Martilmas Beef Six Hundred Muttons in the Larder Ten Tuns of Cider with Armes Plate Jewels and ready Money to the value of Ten Thousand Pounds Thirty-Six Sacks of Wool besides a Library of Books Humfrey de Bohun whose Descendant joyned with the Barons against King Henry the Third had in Anno 12. Henry the Second Thirty and a half Knights Fees de veteri feoffamento and Nine and a half de novo was Earl of Hereford and Constable of England by descent from his Mother his Son Henry de Bohun answered Fifty Marks and a Palfreâ— to the King for Twenty Knights Fees belonging to the Honor of Huntington had the Earldom of Essex and a very great Estate of Lands belonging thereunto descended unto him by Maud Countess of Essex his Mother together with a great Estate of Lands which came unto her from Isabel third Daughter and Co-heir of William Earl of Gloucester had likewise Lands in Haresfeild in com' Glouc ' holden by the service of Constable of England the Mannors of Shudham and Wâ—tnorst Kineton in com' Hunt ' and Walden in com' Essex Vescy one of the Barons against King Henry the third was at the time of the Norman Conquest seized of one Mannor in com' Northtamp ' two in Warwickshire seven in the County of Lincoln nine in Leic ' the Castles and Baronies of Alnewick in com' Northumberland and Multon in com' Eboru ' had besides vast Possessions bestowed on him by King Henry the first the Mills of Warner Bodele and Spilsham with eleven Mannors divers Lands and Tenements in the City of York and whatsoever he held of David King of Scotland and Henry his Son the Arch-Bishop of York Bishop of Duresme of the Earl of Richmond Geffry Estcland and Richard fitz Paine Roger de Moubray William Fossard William Paganell the Earl of Albemarle Roger de Clare Gilbert de Gant Roger de Beauchampe Henry de Campaine Ralph the Son of Bogan the Earl of Chester Abbess of Berking William de Sailley and of all the Fee of Thurstane the Son of Robert de Mansfeild had likewise the Mannors of Ellerton and Cansfeild and was Governour of the Castle of Bamburgh in com' Northum ' seized of the Mannors of Brentune Propertime Pecheston and Sornneston Burgh and Knaresburgh in the County of York Barony of Halton and Constabulary of Chester a Descendant whereof had in the Raign of King Henry the Second twenty Knights Fees de veteri feoffamento and many de novo that held of him had in 32d Henry the third in the Right of Agnes his Wife one of the Daughters of William de Ferrers Earl of Derby partition of the Lands in Ireland which did belong to William Marshal Earl of Pembroke Whose Ancestor had in the 2d Henry the Second Lands of a great Yearly value in Westcombe Marleburgh and Criâ—l in com' Wilts ' given unto him by the King with the Office of Earl Marshal and all other Lands holden of him in England or else-where had a Grant of the Mannor of Boseham in com' Suff ' with the Lastage and Hundred the Lordships of Westive and Bodewin with the Hundred of Bodewin all the Lands which the Earl of Eureux held in England except the Mannor of Marlow all the Lands of Hugh de Gournay lying in the Counties of Norfolk and Suff ' Kaule and Castre and all the Lands of Hugh
Expedition into Gascoigne and that he might levy the like upon his Tenants gave One Hundred Twenty Pounds more And of no less Power and Authority with and over the Common People were the rest of our English Nobility which took up Armes with the King or stood Neutrals or at a Gaze until they saw what would become of him witness that of the Earl of Chester who executed the Office of Sheriff by his Deputies for the Counties of Salop and Stafford in the 2d 3d 4th 5th 7th and part of the 8th of Henry the third for the County of Lancaster in the 3d. 4th 5th 6th and the latter end of the 16th was seized of the whole County and Lands of Chester with Royal Jurisdiction Tenenda per Gladiune it à liberè sicut Rex ipse tenebat Angliam per Coronam at the time of the general Survey of the Conqueror was Count Palatine thereof had nine Mannors in Barkshire in Devonshire two in Yorkshire seven in Wiltsshire six in Dorsetshire ten in Somersetshire four in Suffolk thirty-two in Norfolk twelve in Hantshire one in Oxfordshire five in Buckinghamshire three in Gloucestershire four in Huntingtonshire two in Nottinghamshire four in Warwickshire one in Leicestershire twenty-two fifteen great Men of Estate in Cheshire his Barons holding Lands of him and his Heirs as Willielmus Malbane Gislebertus de Venables Rad Venator c. and was seized of that Mountainous part of Yorkshire and Westmoreland called Stanemore Unto one of whose Descendants or Family King Stephen gave the City and Castle of Lincolne with License to Fortify the Town thereof and to enjoy it until he rendred unto him the Castle of Tickhil in Yorkshire granted likewise unto him the Castle of Belvoir with all the Lands thereunto belonging all the Lands of William de Albini Grantham with all its Soke thereunto belonging Newcastle in Staffordshire with the Soke of Roely in com' Leic ' Corkeley in Lincolnshire the Town of Derby with the appurtenances Mansfield in com' Nott ' Stonely in Warwickshire with their appurtenances the Wapentake of Oswardbeck in com' Nott ' and all the Lands of Roger de Busty with the Honour of Blythe and all the Lands of Roger de Poictou from Northamptom to Scotland excepting that which belonged to Roger de Montbegon in Lincolnshire all the Lands betwixt the Rivers of Ribble and Merse in Lancashire the Lands which he had in Demesne in the Mannor of Grimsby in com' Lincolne and all the Lands which the Earl of Gloucester had in Demesne in that Mannor the Honour of Eye Nottingham Barony and Castle Stafford and the whole County of Stafford except the Fees of the Bishop of Chester Earl Robert Ferrers Hugh de Mortimer Gervase Paganel and the Forrest of Canoc the Fees of Alan de Lincolne Ernise de Burun Hugh de Scoteny Robert de Chalz Rafe Fitz Oates Norman de Verdun and Robert de Staford Odo Bishop of Baieux William the Conquerors half Brother had one hundred eighty-four Mannors given him in Kent thirty-nine in Essex thirty-two in Oxfordshire in Hartfordshire thirty-three in Buckingham thirty in Worcestershire two in Bedfordshire eight Northamptonshire twelve in Nottinghamshire five in Norfolk twenty-two in Warwickshire six in Lincolnshire seventy-six amounting in the whole to Five Hundred Forty-Nine whereof two hundred eighty he gave saith Mr. Selden to his Nephew de Molbraio Earl John afterwards King of England had in the Life time of King Richard the First his Brother the Earldomes of Cornwall Dorset Somerset Nottingham Derby and Lancaster with the then large Possessions thereof and had in Marriage with Isabel Daughter and Heir to the Earl of Gloucester that Earldom together with the Castles of Marleburgh Ludgersel Honours of Wallingford Tickhil and Eye John Earl of Surrey and Sussex had in Yorkshire the great Lordship of Connigsburgh in the Soke whereof were near twenty-eight Towns and Hamlets Westtune in Shropshire in Essex twenty-one Lordships in Suffolk eighteen in Oxfordshire Maple Durham and Gaddington in Hantshire Frehinton in Cambridgeshire seven in Buckinghamshire Brotone and Cauretelle in Huntingtonshire Chevevaltone with three other Lordships in Bedfordshire four and in Norfolk one hundred thirty-nine and the Castle of Rigate in Surrey Yale and Bromfeild with their large Extents in Shropshire and was at the Battle of Lewes on the King's part Ralph de Mortimer had given him by the Conqueror in Berkshire five Mannors in Yorkshire eighteen besides divers Hamlets in Wiltshire ten in Hantshire thirteen in Oxfordshire one in Worcestershire four in Warwickshire one in Lincolnshire seven in Leicestershire one in Shropshire fifty in Herefordshire nineteen besides the Castle of Wigmore And Roger de Mortimer Earl of March a Descendant of the same House and Family was in the Raigns of King Edward the First and Second besides their former large Estates in Lands seized of the Town of Droitwick and Chace of Malverne in com' Wigorn ' the Chase of Cors in com' Glou ' the Castle of Trym in Ireland with its large Territory and Appurtenance and in VVales the Castles of Kentlies Dominion of Melenith and Comott of Duder Castle of Radnor with the Territory of VVarthre and Mannors of Prestmede or Presteigne and Kineton Castles of Ruecklas and Pulith Castles and Lordships of Bledleveny and Bulkedinas Castle and Mannor of Nerberth Comots of Amgeid and Pennewick Castles and Dominions of Montgomery and Bulkedinas Mannor and Hundred of Cherbury Castle of Dolvaren and Territory of Redevaugh Town and Territory of Ewyas Castles of Kery and Rodewin Castle of Dynebegh Castle and Cantred of Buelch Comots of Ros Rowenock Konuegh and Diomam and in Somersetshire the Castle of Brugwater with three Mannors Bayliwick of the Forrests of North Pederton Exmore Noreech Chich Mendip and Warren of Somerton three Mannors in Kent one in com' Buck ' and one in Staffordshire and kept in his House a constant Table in imitation of King Arthurs Round Table for one hundred Knights King Henry the Third after the Battle of Evesham gave unto his Son Edmond to hold to him and the Heirs of his Body the Earldom Honour and Lands of Leicester and Stewardship of England the Earldom Honour and Lands with the Castles Mannors and Lands of Robert de Ferrers Earl of Derby and Nicholas de Segrave the Custody of the Castles of Caermarden and Cardigan and Isie of Lundy the Castle of Sherborne in com' Dors ' the Castle of Kenilworth in com' VVarwick with all the Lands thereunto belonging the Honour Earldom Castle and Town of Lancaster and was Count Palatine thereof with their Appurtenances together with the Castle of Tutbury with its great Appurtenances in the County of Stafford the Honour and Castle of Monmouth the Honour Town and Castle of Leicester with all the Lands and Knights Fees which Symon de Montfort had Whose Son and Heir Thomas Earl of Lancaster having as an addition to the great Estates in Lands remaining unto him after his Father divers
and for difficulty saith Mathew Paris Prorogued to St. Barnabas day and thence Adjourned to Oxford And thence in the same year adjourned to London in Anno 48 two Parliaments were called at London 51. a Parliament at London Anno 53. another at Marlburgh but in truth in Anno 47. as appeareth by the Parliament Roll. There was a Parliament at Westminster in the third year of the Raign of King Edward 1. another Anno 4. one at Gloucester Anno 6. another at Westminster Anno 7. one Anno 10. 13. another at Acton Burnel and one afterwards in the same year at Westminster another in that year at Winchester another afterward in the same year at Westminster Anno 18. two Parliaments were holden at Westminster the Statute of Quia Emptores terrarum Quo Warranto fines seeming to be made at several Parliaments or Sessions Statutes of Vouchers Wast and de defensione Juris made in Anno 20. E. 1. probably made in like manner Anno 21. De his qui ponendi sunt in Assisis and another ut supra de malefactoribus in Parcis the Statute of Consultation Anno 24. A Parliament in Anno 25 at London another at Bury another at Salisbury 26. At York held at another time a Parliament â—nno 27. a Parliament at Westminster and another Anno 28. for Persons appealed and a Parliament wherein were made the Articuli super Chartas Anno 30. The Statute of Quo Warranto 31. a Parliament Statutes of Conspiracy and Maintenance in Anno 33. And in the 34th year of his Raign before the Writ of Summons could be executed sent another Writ to Adjourn the Parliament and by his Writs Prorogued or Adjourned some if not many of those other Parliaments In the 5th year of the Raign of King Edward the 2d a Parliament being Summoned to be holden at Westminster it was Prorogued before they could meet and Writs were sent to signifie that they need not come In the 18th year of his Raign having Summoned the Earl Marshal to be at a Parliament to be holden at Winchester secunda dominica quadragessima prox futur and being informed by some of the Nobility that by reason of the shortness of time they could not sufficiently provide themselves Prorogued the Parliament to Octabis Paschae prox futur In the Printed Statute made at Lincoln in 9 E. 2. Mr. Pulton hath by his Modern Ph 〈…〉 mentioned that Statute to have been made by the Assent of t 〈…〉 〈◊〉 Earls Barons and other great Estates but the origiâ—â—l Record is only Prelats Countz Ba 〈…〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And in 5 E. 3. it was mistakenly 〈◊〉 by the Abridger that all the Estates in full 〈◊〉 the King being not with his Power of Pardoning 〈◊〉 other his Rights of Soveraignty comprehended 〈◊〉 that notion did agree that none of them should retain sustain or own any Felon or other Common Breaker of the Law And the whole Estate whereof the King was not likely to be one moved the King to be Gracious to Edmond Son of the late Earl of March who asked what they would have done sith King Edward the 2d was murdered by the procurement of the said Earl they Answered for certain Lands Entailed the Kings Answer was that the same should be done at his pleasure In Anno 6 E. 3. The Parliament Adjourned which was done by no other than the King because most of the Estates were not come The Archbishop of York and his Suffragans and Clergy came but the Archbishop of Canterbury and his did not by reason of the contention betwixt them for Superiority of bearing up their Crosses whereby the same was not only a loss of an opportunity for Scotland but also an insupportable charge to the whole Estate saith the Erroneous Abridger of the Parliament Records by a new Re-assembly which could not be intended of the King who then was there resident at his Palace of Westminster to which they were Summoned For the efficient Formal and Final cause of our Parliaments or great Councels being vested in our Soveraign Kings and Princes and in no other solely and incommunicably none of their Subjects did or could ever rightly understand or believe that any of those great Councels or Parliaments summoned upon great and weighty emergencies of State accidents or dangers which were to be suddenly heeded by preventing or avoiding imminent or Impendent evils by their wary and deliberate consults put into a speedy Execution could ever receive a certain and continual fixation or be obliged thereunto for that besides the fertility and growth of Hydras innumerable mischiefs and Inconveniences not long ago wofully experimented it would altogether contradict and be against the nature reason and being of our Kings and Princes summoning or calling of Parliaments according to the ancient and Laudable constitutions of our Nation It being as unusual as improper to Summon or call Parliaments pro quibusdam arduis when Hannibal is not every day ad portas but sometimes ruining himself and his Army at Capua when our Kings have their continuum Concilium private Councel and cares in a perpetual watch for the preservation of them and their people when the Ardua are but the well foreseen Accidents and Dangers likely to happen and fit to be prevented and it is not pro omnibus arduis but quibusdam and the Civil Law can inform us That Accidens appellatur quod adesse aut abesse potest preter Subjecti corruptionem de donat ante nupt Accidens is defined to be 1. Quod Accidit 2. Quod inheret Subjecto oppositum substantiae 3. Quod est extra essentiam rei ut neque intra attributa essentialia neque desinitione Essentiali exprimitur For a Fleet of well Rigged and furnished Ships doth not call a Councel or cause all the Commanders Captains and Pilots to come on board the Admiral for every little storm or quarrel of the Winds and Seas Nor our Generals of an Army at Land call a Councel of War for every small alarm or beating in of the Scouts And our Kings without Assent or Act of Parliament have appointed Terms or times for the orderly dispatch of Law affairs in the distribution of their Justice in their many other Courts of Justice And our inferior Courts Baron and Leet and Hundreds have been contented with lesser Periods And a standing perpetual Parliament either in Actu or potentia was never yet known or used in England when its Constitution Writs of Summons and Usage doth at all times and should declare the contrary And as extraordinary Accidents dangers and emergences in a Kingdom and Government and their greatest concernments are in no wife to be slighted delayed or neglected but suddenly endeavoured to be prevented escaped avoided or lessened though it be to no small charge attendance and trouble put upon the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Members summoned and caused to convene and come from several parts remote or further distant as in their
Grammar or Construction of Reason or Sense will ever be able to comprehend the King The 17th day of December the Chancellor in the presence of the King and the 3 Estates which is surely to be understood to consist of other Persons separately and distinct from the King Prorogued the Parliament until the 20th day of January then next ensuing at Westminster and upon the 28th day of April was likewise Prorogued to the 5th day of May next following The Archbishop of Canterbury Chancellor of England in the presence of the King Lords and Commons declaring the cause of Summoning the Parliament said that the Kings pleasure was that all Estates should enjoy their Liberties which could not signifie that the King himself was one of those Estates to whom he granted that favour The 25th day of December the Chancellor in the presence of the King and the 3. Estates by the Kings Commandment giving thanks to the 3. Estates the King being then by the Chancellor or any other Master of Reason or Common Sense not understood to be any one of the 3. Estates to whom the thanks were given dissolved the Parliament An Act of Parliament was made wherein was declared that King Edward the 4th was the undoubted King of England from the 4th day of March last before and that all the Estates yielded themselves obeysant Subjects unto him and his Heirs for ever the late never to be maintained Doctrine of the pretended co-ordination of the House of Commons in Parliament as Subjects with their Soveraign in Parliament and the Government being not than that established or ever to be evidenced otherwise then God hath ordained a co-ordination betwixt the King and his Subjects which is that the People as Subjects should obey their King and the King as their Soveraign Protect Rule and Govern them and affirmed the Raign of King Henry the 4th to be an Intrusion and only Usurpation The Chancellor the King sitting in his Royal State in the presence of the Lords and Commons made an Eloquent Oration wherein he declared the 3. Estates to comprehend the Governance of the Land the preheminence whereof was in the Bishops the second to the Lords Temporal which the learned and men of that Age and other Chancellors understood to be no other than two separate and distinct Estates the one Temporal and the other Spiritual and the King to be Superiour The Bishop of London Chancellor of England in the presence of the King and the 3. Estates the King being none of them but Superior over them all Prorogued the Parliament to the 6th of June ensuing For where the Abridger or Mr. Pryn possessing himself to be the Rectifier or Corrector amongst his other faults and mistakings in his Epitomizings made it to be in the Parliament Rolls of 6 Edwardi 3. that many failing to come to the Parliament upon the Summons of the King did put a charge upon the whole Estate by a reassembly he will find neither words or matter for it All that appears of the Title of Estates in the Parliament and Statute Rolls of that year is no more than the Prelats grants gentz du Commune or les Prelats Counts Barons gentz des Countez gentz de la Commune No whole Estate mentioned in the Parliament Roll all that is said n. 42. is no more than a les requests des grantz come de ceuâ— de la Commune de le Clergie That which is translated the Estate of the King is no more in the Parliament Roll n. 5. than les beseignes nostre seigneur le Roy de son Royame Where the Abridger saith the Parliament was to treat and advise touching the Estate de nostre Seigneur le Roy le Governement le salnette de sa terre d' Angleterre de son people relevation de lour Estate there is no other mention of Estates than the Prelatz grantz Commons de son roiame and charged les Chinalers des Countes and Commons to assemble in the Chamber de Pinct A quel Jour vindrent les Chivalers des Counties autres Commons and gave their advice in a Petition in the form ensuant a tres excellent or tres honorable Seigneur les gentz de vostre Commun soy recommandent a vous obeysantment en merciant se avant come leur petitesse powre suffice de tant tendrement pervez a quer maintenir la pees a la quiete de vostre people c. Et en maintenance des autres Leyes as autres Parliaments devant ces heures grantees vostre poure Commons sil vous plaist sa gree semble a la dite Commune totes autres choses poent suffisantement estre rewelez Terminez en Bank le Roy Commune Bank devant Justices as Assises prendre nisi les delayes nient covenable soient aggregez oustez ore a ce Parliament per estatut En. Ro. Parl. 18. E. 3. Where the King desired the names of the absent Lords that he might punish them there is no mention of the Clergy or Commons or of any Estates and the King afterwards desiring their advice touching his Treaty with France charged the Prelats Countz Barons et Communs to give their advice therein Which they all did without naming themselves or being stiled Estates The Kings Letters of Credence sent out of France to his Parliament in England were directed a toutes Erchevesquis evesques Abbes Priours Counts Barons toutz autres foialx le Roy vendront au dit Parlement troter sar les beseignes le Roy whereupon he demanded an Aid of the said Prelats grantz Communs And the Lords without the Title of Estates having granted it the Chivalers des Counties Citizens Burges des Cities Burghs Prioront de avoir avisement entre eux and in Answer thereunto delivered a Petition unto the King for redress of Grievances not by the name of the Estates but a nostre Seigneur le Roy a son conseil 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 gentz de la Communes de sa terre ausi bien des 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 de Counties Where it was supposed that a Pardon was granted and a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to Sir John Matrevers of all his Lands by the whole Estates there appeareth no more in the 〈…〉 ment Roâ—â— than that he Petitioned A nostre Seigneur le Roy a son bon conscil wherein he recited that Restitution had been granted de poiar royal nostre Seigneur le Roy par bor accord 〈◊〉 Common assent des Prelatz Co 〈…〉 es Barons de son Roialme par plusieurs causes appearing in the 〈…〉 ings Charter of Pardon and prayed quil p 〈…〉 st a nostre dit Seigneur le Roy a son bon conscil par la boâ—dance de sa Noble Seignorie granter la restitution scisdite pâ—usse estre ore renovelle en cest Parlement quelle Petition lue fut respondue
the number of their Confederates à Civibus accepta securitate they sent their Lettess to all the Earls Barons and Knights which yet adhered to the King exhorting and threatning them as they loved Themselves their Lives and Estates they should forsake a perjured King and joyn with them to obtain their Liberties otherwise they would take them for publick Enemies turn their Arms against them destroy their Castles burn their Houses and spoil their Lands and Estates The greatest part whereof upon those threatnings did so think it to be their safer way to forsake Him and their Loyalty as they joyned with them The King finding himself fere derelictum ab omnibus and but seven Knights ex omni multitudine Regia abiding by him timuit valdè lest the Barons in castra sua impetum facientes illa sine difficultate sibi subjugarent especially when they should find nothing to hinder them sent William Marescal Earl of Pembroke and others to treat with them being then at London for a Peace with an offer to grant the Laws and Liberties demanded and thereupon statuerunt Regi diem ad colloquium in pratum inter Stains Windleshores 15o. die Junii where Rex Magnates being met and treating concerning the Liberties and a lasting Peace there being with the King besides Pandulphus and Stephen Archbishop of Canterbury his double-dealing Friends and some few others in all but Twenty-five tandem cum in varia sorte tractassent the King vires suas Baronum viribus impares intelligens sine difficultate Leges Libertates coneessit Charta sua confirmavit data per manum suam in prato quod vocatur Running-Mead inter Stains Windleshores decimo quinto die Junii anno Regni sui decimo septimo Which as Matthew Paris a Monk of St. Albans living not only at the same time but being Historiographer unto King Henry III. his Son privy to many of his affairs and wrote in the 57th year of his Reign hath faithfully related those passages and proceedings was as to the preamble thereof the exact and full tenor thereof being with it truly mentioned in his Book in these words Intuitu Dei pro salute animae meae Antecessorum omnium Haeredum suorum ad honorem Dei exaltationem sanctae Ecclesiae emendationem Regni sui per concilium Stephani Archiepiscopi Cantuarensis who prepared them and had incited the Pope and Barons against him aliorum Episcoporum ibi nominat Pandulphi Domini Papae Subdiaconi familiaris Willielmi Marescali Comitis Pembrochiae Willielmi Comitis Sarisberiensis Willielmi Comitis Warrenniae c. aliorum fidelium mera spontanea voluntate pro Me Haeredibus meis Deo liberis hominibus Angliae habendas tenendas eis Haeredibus suis de Me Haeredibus meis which our Laws no other tenure being specified will interpret to be in capite And more at length as Matthew Paris hath recorded it with a salvis Archiepiscopis Episcopis Abbatibus Prioribus Templariis Hospitalariis Comitibus Baronibus Militibus omnibus aliis tà m Ecclesiasticis personis quà m Secularibus Libertatibus Liberis consuetudinibus quas prius habuerant which gave them a better security in their former Liberties than they could claim by the forced and indirect gaining of the latter and concluding in the perclose with his Testibus c. hath these words subjoyned Libertates vero de Foresta liberae consuetudines quas cum libertatibus praescriptis in una schedula pro sua capacitate continere nequiverimus in Charta subscripta continentur saith Matthew Paris In which not in the modern Language and stile of our Acts of Parliament but as Charters in the dictates of Regal Authority as that of William the Conquerour to the Citizens of London and that of dividing the Temporal and Spiritual Jurisdictions and those of King Henry I. King Stephen and Henry II. and all the Charters of Liberties and Priviledges granted by our Kings before and since to Cities Boroughs Corporations and Lords of Manors as the Charter of King Edward I. to the Citizens of London in the 6th year of his Reign and of King Edward III. in the 14th year of his Reign to all the people of England to be governed by the English Laws in case he should obtain his Right to the Kingdom of France and all our preceding Laws have used to be He granted away many of the ancient Rights of the Crown made and ordained new Laws as that amongst others of Communia placita nan sequantur Curiam nostram sed teneantur in certo loco and that of recovering the King's Debts c. Enlarged some abrogated others and gave unto the people greater Liberties and Immunities then the Laws of King Edward the Confessor and the Charter of King Henry I. put altogether had allowed them the Original whereof or the Magna Charta of King Henry III. remaining in the Library of the Archbishops of Canterbury at Lambeth at the time of the Imprisonment of that martyred great Anti-Papist William Laud Archbishop of that See and the ransacking of it preceding his Murder in the Reign of that Blessed Martyr King CHARLES I. by Hugh Peters Mr. Pryn and some others thereunto appointed by their Rebellious Masters the then miscalled Parliament was never after found and by it self in a distinct paragraph did follow as it were a Bond or Security given by King John in these words Cùm autem pro Deo ademendationem Regni nostri ad melius sapiendam discordiam inter nos Barones haec omnia concessimus volentes in integra firma stabilitate gauderi facimus concedimus securieatem subscriptam viz. That the Barons should elect Twenty-five Barons of the Realm who should be Conservators thereof pro totis viribur suis observare tenere facere observari pacem libertates quas eis concessimus and correct the King's defaults in Government Of which number Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester and Hertford was one with a power that if the King or his Chief-Justiciar should trangress in any Articles of the Laws it should be lawful for any Four of them after Forty days notice given to Him or his Chief-Justiciar and no amendment to complain to the rest and joyning with Them and the People to distrain and compel him with a salvâ Personâ Regis only Reginae liberorum suorum Et isti 25o. Barones juraverunt in animabus suis Rege hoc disponente quod omni instantia his obsequerentur Regem cogerent si fortè rescipisci vellet tenere sequentes and the Earls of Gloucester Arundel and Warren with Thirty-four other Barons and great men juraverunt to obey the commands of the Twenty-five Barons and all that would might swear to assist them and the people cùm communia totius terrae might gravare eum cum eis and to that end those Conservators should have
Canterbury in the behalf of the State of his Oath made and taken by others for him upon the Peace made with Lewis for confirmation of the Liberties of the Kingdom for which the War was begun with his Father without which the whole State would again fall assunder and they would have him to know it betimes to avoid those miserable inconveniencies which might happen William Brewere a Councellor urging it to have been acted by constraint and therefore not to be performed Notwithstanding which it was at that time being the 7th year of his Reign promised by the King to be ratified and a Commission was granted by Writs unto Twelve Knights in every Shire to examine What were the Laws and Liberties which the Kingdom enjoyed under his Grandfather and return the same by a certain day which saith the learned and judicious Sir Henry Spelman were never returned or could not be found In the mean time the Earls of Albemarl Chester and divers of the Nobility assemble together at Leicester with intent to remove from the King Hubert de Burgh Chief-Justiciar and other Officers that hindred their motion but the Archbishop of Canterbury by his Spiritual Power and the rest of the Nobility being careful to preserve the Peace of the Kingdom stood to the King and would not suffer them to proceed therein so as they were constrained to come in and submit themselves And the King in Parliament resumed such alienations as had been made of the Lands appertaining to the Crown by any of his Ancestors to the end he might live of his own and not be chargable to the People The next year after being the 8th year of his Reign another Parliament was holden at Westminster where the King required the Fiftieth part of all the movables both of the Clergy and Laity but Mat. Paris more probably saith the Fifteenth for the recovering of those parts in France which had been held from the Crown being one and the same which is said in Magna Charta to have been granted as a grateful acknowledgment for the grant of their Liberties which though it concerned the Estates of most of the Nobility that had Lands therein would not be yielded unto but upon confirmation of their Liberties atque his in hunc diem prosecutis Archiepiscopus concilio tota Episcoporum Comitum Priorum habita deliberatione Regi dedere responsum quod Regis petitionibus gratunter ad quiescerent si illas diu petitas libertates concedere voluisset annuit itaque Rex cupiditate ductus quod petebant Magnates Chartisque protinus conscriptis Regis sigillo munitis in the next year after for the Charters themselves bear date in the 9th year of his Reign And the several Charters or Copies thereof were sent to the Sheriffs of every County and Twelve Knights were out of every County chosen to divide the Old Forests from the New and lay open all such as had been afforested since the first Coronation of King Henry II. Although at the same time or a little before or after it some of the Nobility who had formerly crowned Lewis of France King and had been the cause of King John's death for which they were banished the Realm endeavouring to return into England and to set up again the French King's Interest and domineer over the King and his faithful Councellors by circumventing Pope Honorius Hubert de Burgh Chief-Justice of England the Earl of Chester and seven other of the King's Councellors sent an Epistle to the Pope desiring him to assist the King and them and prevent those dangerous Plots and Designs And the King having sent also his Proctors to Rome upon the like occasion they returned him an account of a new Confederacy betwixt his discontented Barons and the French King to invade England and dispossess him of the Crown thereof adding thereunto quod Gallici praedicabant omnibus quod majores Angliae obsides offerebant de reddendo siâ—i terram â—um primo venire curaret ad illam adjicientes Si aâ—iquid in curia Romana contra voluntatem Regis Franciae attemptaretur incontmenter Rex transfretaret in Angliam Nor could any such authority accrue to them in or by those Charters called Magna Charta and Charta Forestae granted by King Henry III. his Son which were in very many things but the exmeplaria or patterns of that of King John in the like method and tenour containing very many Liberties and great Priviledges which were by King Henry III. as those Charters do declare of his own free accord granted and confirmed in the 9th year of his Reign to his Subjects and People of England Liberis hominibus Free-men or Free-holders for otherwise it would have comprehended those multitudes of Villains Bondmen and Bond-women which the Nation did then and long after employ and make use of and those very many men accounted by the Laws of England to be as dead men viz. Monks Fryers Priors and Abbots to be holden to Them and their Heirs of Him and his Heirs for ever But in those Charters or his confirmation of them in the 21st and 28th year of his Reign could not procure to be inserted or recorded those clauses which they had by their terrours gained from his Father in these words viz. Nullum scutagium vel auxilium ponam in Regno nostro nisi per commune consilium Regni nostri ad corpis nostrum redimendum ad primogenitum filium nostrum militem faciendum ad primogenitam filiam nostram semel maritandam ad hoc non fiet nisi rationabile auxilium simili modo fiat de auxiliis de Civitate Londinensi quod omnes aliae Civitates Burgi Villae Barones de quinque portubus omnes portus habeant omnes libertates omnes liberas consuetudines suas Et ad habendum commune concilium Regni de auxiliis assidendis aliter quam in tribus casibus praedictis scutagiis assidendis submoneri faciemus Archiepiscopos Episcopos Abbates Comites majores Barones Regni singillatim per literas nostras Et praetereà faciemus submoneri in generali per Vicecomites Ballivos nostros omnes alios qui in capite tenent de nobis ad certum diem scilicet ad terminum quadraginta dierum ad minus ad certum locum in omnibus literis submonitionis illius causam submonitionis illius exponemus sic facta submonitione negotium procedat ad diem assignatum secundum consilium eorum qui praesentes fuerint quamvis non omnes submoniti Nos non concedimus de caetero alicui quod capiat auxilium de liberis hominibus suis nisi ad corpus suum redimendum ad faciendum primogenitum filium suum militem ad primogenitam filiam suam semel maritandam ad hoc non fiat nisi rationabile auxilium but were constrained to omit altogether and forgo those clauses and provisions which
in his name 〈◊〉 and Clam ' as it were an Hue and Cry against his own â—on upon his fortunate Escape sent the same day notice untâ— John de Eynill a Judge and a man much adhering to the Barons and trusted by them of the Prince's Escape from his Imprisonment at Hereford and believing that he would apply himself to John de Warren William de Valence and others disaffected in Pembrokeshire and the Marches of Wales as in the Language of some in those Rebellious times they were then phrased and thence to go beyond the Seas unless prevented commanded him in fide homagio and under the Forfeiture of all that he had that cum equis armis toto posse suo sub omni festinatione he should come to Him at Worcester to march against his Enemies Et eodem modo commanded all that held of him in Capite as well Earls Barons Knights as Bishops Abbots and Priors those only excepted which were of the Earl of Gloucester's Party in manner following viz. Rex Johanni de Eynill salutem Cùm Nos quidam Magnates Fideles Nostri in partibus Hereford circá tranquilliâ—atem pacem Partium illarum jampridèm agentes pro viribus laboravimus prout status partâ—on earundem requirit sperantes Edwardum filium Nostrum ad hoc Adductorem praecipuum serventiorem prae caeteris invenisse Idem Edwardus die Jovis in Ebdomade Pentecostes circà horam vespertinam à militum Comitiva quos secum adspaciandos extra Hereford duxerat cum duobus Militibus quatuor Scutiferis propositi sui consciis Spreto concilio Nostro Magnatum fidelium Nostrorum praedictorum Subito ex inopinato recessit volens nt pro certo credimus se ad Johannem de Warrennia Willielmum de Valencia Complices suos qui nuper absque conscientiâ Nostrâ voluntate contra pacem Nostram applicuerunt in partibus Pembrochiae ac etiam ad quosdam Marchiones Rebelles Nostros pacis Nostrae Perturbatores transferre ut exinde partes adâ—at transmarinas vel alios illue mittat qui adventum Alienigenarum in regnum Nostrum per partes Pembrochiae cùm alibi non pateat eis aditus ad Nostram Regni Nostri confusionem procurent quia praefati Rebelles Nostri licet adhuc pauci existant per hoc potestatem vires suas augere possent nisi â—orum insolentia antèquam ulterius invaleseat citiùs reprimatur Nos de vestrâ aliorum fidelium Nostrorum fidelitate constantia specialitèr confidentes vobis Mandaâ—us in fide homagio dilectione quibus Nobis estis astricti sub periculo amissionis omnia quae in Regno Nostro tenetis ac sub debito Sacramenti quo omnes singuli de Regno Nostro sunt ad hoc specialiter obligati quod volumus firmitèr observari injungentes quatenùs statim visis Literis istis â—mnibus aliis praetermissis cum equis armis toto servitio vestro Nobis debito nec non toto posse vestro sub omni festinatione de die nocte usque Wygorniam veniatis parati exinde in manu forti ire Nobiscum super inimicos Nostros praedictos hoc sicut Exhaeredationem Nostram vestram perpetuam Regni Nostri Confusionem vitare volueritis vitam propriam diligitis nullo modo omittatis nec de summonitione exercitûs brevitatem temporis allegetis quia urgentissima necessitas tempus non patitur ulterius prorogari nè inter moras per adventum Alienigenarum quos iidem Rebelles Nostri expectant eorundem vires in Nostri Regni Nostri perniciem augeri contingat qui adhuc dum pacisci existunt de facili Nobis poterunt subjugari Teste Rege apud Hereford tricesimo die Maii. Eodem modo scribitur omnibus Tenentibus de Rege in Capite tà m videlicet Episcopis Abbatibus Prioribus quà m Comitibus Baronibus Militibus omnibus aliis exceptis illis qui sunt pro parte Comitis Gloucestriae Robert de Ferrers Earl of Darby having threatned to burn and spoyl the Lands and Estate of the Abby of Bildwas and made the Abbot to pay him a Fine of 100 Marks for the Redemption thereof a Wâ—it was sent to Thomas le Blund who had in Sequestration the Lands of the said Earl of Derby that he should out of the Issues and Profits thereof pay unto the said Abbot and Covent the aforesaid 100 Marks in these words viz. Rex Thomae le Blund Custodi terrarum Roberti de Ferrar ' Comitis Derby salutem Cùm tempore turbationis nuper habitae in Regno Nostro praefatus Comes minatus fuerit Abbati Conventui de Bildewas de incendio domorum depraedatione bonorum suorum per quod idem Abbas Conventus metu ducti finem fecerunt per centum Marcas cum Comite predicto quas eidem solverunt ut accepimus Nos corum paupertati pio compatientes affectu eis gratiam facere volentes in hac parte vobis mandamus quod de exitibus terrarum tenementorum praedictorum eisdem Abbati Conventui centum Marcas habere facias in recompensationem centum Marcarum praedictarum hoc nullatenùs omittatis T. R. apud Hereford 1â— dic Junii The same first day of June the King being carried along with the Rebel-Army Captive to Hereford and having commanded all that held of him in Capite to attend him there cum equis armis issued out his Writ or Proclamation to Gilbert de Preston and the rest of the Justices of the Court of his Bench to Surcease all Pleas and Proceedings to the end that none be damnifyed in any Actions at the present depending before them Super Brevia and that all things may remain as they were before untill the King should give further Order as the Writ or Proclamation imported Rex Gilberto de Preston ' sociis suis Justiciariis suis de Banco salutem t Quia pro arduis urgentissimis Nostris Regni Nostri negotiis jam vocari fecimus omnes qui de Nobis tenent in Capite quòd cum equis armis cum servitio suo Nobis debito nec non toto posse suo quod perquirere poterunt ad Nos omnibus aliis praetermissis in partibus ubi nunc agimus festinantèr accedant factuâ—i quod eisdem duxerimus injungendum propter quod ipsi persecutioni vel defensioni Loquelarum suarum quae sunt coram vobis per Brevia Nostra ad praesens intendere non possunt Volumus quòd omnia Placita de Banco remaneant in eodem statu in quo nunc sunt donec aliud inde praecepimus ideò vobis Mandamus quòd hoc publicè proclamari faciatis Teste Rege apud Hereford 1 o die Junii per ipsum Regem Justiciarium alios de Consilio Teste Rege apud Heref. 1 o die Junii The
they endeavoured to doe but were over-reached by the Military Arts and Stratagems of the Montfortian Party the King having the Castle of Kenilworth surrendred unto him Symon and Guy de Montfort Sons to the Earl of Leicester with the disinherited Barons who escaped from the Battel of Evesham defending the Isle of Ely the King and the Prince going with an Army against them streightly besieged them and tendred them afterwards gentle Conditions wherein the King 's Privy Councel were divided for that Mortimer having the whole Earldom Honor and great Estate of the Earl of Oxford after the battle of Evesham granted unto him and many others who had great Quantities of the disherited Parties Lands given unto them were unwilling to forgo what the King had for their Valour and Fidelity bestowed upon them and therefore would hold what they had but Gloucester and the Twelve Ordained to deal for the Peace of the State and other their Friends which were many stood stifly for a Restoration Which raised new Displeasures so as Gloucester retired from the Court and sent a Messenger to require the King to remove Strangers from his Court and observe the Provisions made at Oxford according to his last Promise made at Evesham otherwise he should not marvel if himself did what he thought fit whereupon in the one and fiftieth year of his Raigne at S t. Edmunds-Bury was a Parliament summoned unto which were cited Comites Barones Archiepiscopi Episcopi Abbates and all who held by Knights Service were to appear with Horse and Armour for the vanquishing of those disherited Persons who contrary to the Peace of the Kingdom held the Isle of Ely John de Warren Earl of Surrey and William de Valentia were sent to the Earl of Gloucester who had leavied an Army upon the Borders of Wales to come in a fair manner to that Parliament which he refused to do but gave it under his hand that he would never bear Arms against the King or his Son Edward but to defend himself and pursue Roger Mortimer and other his Enemies for which he pretended to have taken Armes The first Demand in that Parliament which was made by the King and the Legat was That the Clergy should grant a Tenth for three Years to come and for the Years past so much as they gave the Barons for defending the Coasts against the Invasion of Strangers Whereto they answred That the War was begun by unjust Desires which yet continued and it was more necessary to treat of the Peace of the Kingdom to make use of the Parliament for the benefit thereof and not to extort Moneys considering the Land had been so much destroy'd by the War as it would never be recovered When it was required That the Clergy might be taxed by Laymen according to the just Value They answer It was neither Reason nor Justice that they should intermeddle in collecting the 10 th which they would never consent unto but would have the Antient Taxation to stand It was desired That they would give the 10 th of their Baronies and Lay-fees according to their utmost values They answered That they were impoverished in attending the King in his Expeditions and their Lands lay untilled by reason of the Wars It was moved That in liev of a 10 th they should give among them 30000 Marks to discharge the King's Debts contracted concerning the Kingdom of Sicily They answered They would give nothing in regard that all those Taxations and Extortions formerly made by the King were never converted to his own Use or the Benefit of the Kingdom Demand being made That all the Clergy-men which held Baronies or other Lay-fees should personally serve in the Wars They answer They were not to sight with the Material Sword but the Spiritual and that their Baronies were given of mere Almes Being required to discharge the 9000â— which the Bishops of Rochester Bath and the Abbot of Westminster stood bound to the Pope's Merchants for the King's Service at their being at the Court of Rome They answered That they never consented to pay such Loan and therefore were not bound to discharge it Then the Legate from the Pope required That without delay Praedication should be made throughout the Kingdom to incite men to take the Cross for the Recovery of the Holy Land Whereunto Answer was made That the greatest part of the People were already consumed by the Sword and that if they should undertake that Action there would be none left to defend the Kingdom and the Legate seemed to desire to extirpate the Nation and introduce Strangers Lastly when it was urged That the Praelates were bound to yield to all the Kings Demands by their Oath at Coventry where they did Swear to aid him by all means possible they could They answered that when they took that Oath they understood no other Aids than Spiritual and wholsome Councell So nothing but Denyals being obteyned in that Parliament the Legat imployed some to Sollicite the disherited Lords that held the Isle of Ely to leave off their Robberies and return to the Peace of the King the Faith and Unity of the Church according to the Form provided by the Dictum de Kenilworth made by a Commission of the King no Dict or Act of Parliament to 12 of the Peers for the Redemption of their Inheritances given away by the King for Five say some other Seven years Profits They who had no Lands were to give their Oaths and to find Sureties for their Peaceable Behaviour and make such Satisfaction and undergo such Penances as the Church should appoint they who were Tenants should lose their right to their Farmes saving the right of their Lords they who did instigate any to Fight against the King should forfeit the Profit of their Lands for two years and if any Person should refuse those Conditions they should be de Exhereditatis and have no power of recovering their Estates in which Composition or Dictum some Persons and particularly Symon de Montfort himself and his Heirs were excluded To which they answered That they hold the Faith received from their Catholick Fathers and their Obedience to the Roman Church as the Head of all Christianity but not to the Avarice and wilful Exactions of those who ought to Govern the same And that their Praedecessors and Ancestors whose Heirs they were having Conquered the Land by the Sword they held themselves to be unjustly disherited and that it was against the Popes Mandate they should be so dealt withal That they had formerly taken their Oaths to defend the Kingdom and Holy Church all the Prelates thundring the Sentence of Excommunication against such as withstood the same and according to that Oath they were prepared to spend their Lives and seeing they Warred for the benefit of the Kingdom and Holy Church they were to sustain their Lives by the Goods of those that detained their Lands which the Legat ought to cause to be
and that long after both by the Feudal and common Laws of this Kingdom the Lords Spiritual and Temporal were in Parliament to Assess a proportionable Escuage upon such of their Tenants who held any Capite Lands and did not go with them in Person to serve their King and Country and were not to be their own Assessors but submit unto what they should in those great Councels subordinate to their King 's determine and as they anciently were used to do when Taxes were laid upon Knights Fees when the Common People that were to pay them were not all present or any for them Or never to intend to introduce such a Party of the Common People into a Co-ordination or Fellowship with them in a Subordination to their Soveraign which might as they did afterwards entice them to encroach and believe that a License of Petitioning for Redress of any Grievances which might happen and a Liberty to give an Approbation and Obedience to what should be there ordained by the King by the Advice of his Lords Spiritual and Temporal for the publick Good should be in or unto them or their Successors an Authority or original Power to controul what their Kings by the Counsel of their Lords Spiritual and Temporal should there find necessary to Enact when they could not forget that even in the time of the Imprisonment of King Henry the Third they did in his Letters Rescripts Writs and Edicts written and sent about the Kingdom in his Name amounting to no fewer than Sixteen mention that his said Orders Acts and Commands were done by the Counsel and Advice Procerum Magnatum suorum and in some of them his Prelates Barons hautes hommes but nothing at all of the Commons And that Rebellious part of the Baronage might the easier be led into that they never meant when they had some reason to think or assure themselves that such an Election of Members or the parts of the common People would much advance the fixing and setling their Designes when they could not but acknowledge that they owed much of their Liberties and happiness under their Kings and Princes unto them and their Ancestors as in particular unto an Earl of Oxford in procuring of the King Three Hundreds in the County of Essex to be diaforrested and might be glad to entail and perpetuate their Assistances Dependencies Hospitalities Priviledges and Favours upon their Posterity and after Generations and rather return a submissive Compliance unto them well accepted than to endeavour to prejudice or in the least to make themselves equal unto them or Mastors of them but would be content to be ruled by them and not endeavour to govern or domineer over them With which doth accord that well founded Opinion and Answer of that excellent Prince and very Martyr King Charles the First our late gracious and pious Soveraign in his Answer to the haughty and undutiful Nineteen Propositions sent unto Him by the rebellious and misled Parliament the Second Day of June One Thousand Six Hundred Forty Two That the House of Commons was never intended for any share in the Government or the Choosing of them that should Govern and were not likely in those early and troublesome times to get any Root or Foundation for such an unwarrantable Pretence And might have believed that the Prelates and Baronage of England had heretofore Power and Influence sufficient to have kept them in a better Order both towards them and their Sovereign SECT II. Of the great Power Authority Command and Influence which the Prelates Barons and Nobility of England had in or about the Forty-Ninth Year of the Raign of King Henry the Third when he was a Prisoner to Symon de Monfort and those Writs of Election of some of the Commons to Parliament were first devised and sâ—nt to Summon them And the great Power and Estates which they afterwards had to create and continue an Influence upon them WHen the then Prelates by the Papal great and exorbitant Power over the Bodies and Souls of the People of England as well high as low rich or poor their Power of certifying Illegitimations Bastardy or Ne unques loyalment accouplis en Matrimony with their Fulminations Excommunications Curses Interdictions Confessions Absolutions Pardons and Dispensations Denial of Christian burial Affrights of Purgatory undenyable Commands over the inferiour Clergy and they over the People together with the great Authority which their Episcopal Function and Dignity inseparably conjoynt with their Temporal Baronies had given unto them in the Parliaments of England the greatest and highest Councels and Assembly of the Nation were in the time of King Henry the Third's Imprisonment so much allured and drawn by some of their factious and naughty Incitements to Symon de Montfort's Party by a kind of Ordinance and Agreement before mentioned of the then over-ruling-Power of the rebellious Victors as there was an undertaking to preserve from Plunder and Spoil all the Lands and Estates of the Holy-Church affirm their Authorities and all that they should have reasonable Order for amends should be performed and full Power granted unto them by the King or Generality of the Earls Barons and great Men of the Land to provide things profitable for the bettering the Estate of the Holy-Church to the Honor of God And with their temporal Baronies unto which many Mannors of a great Extent and yearly Value were annext and some other Barons holding of them and had their many Milites for service of War and Multitudes of Tenants by Tenure Lease and Copy-holding of them And the regular and monastick part of the Clergy of England many of whose Abbots and Priors were admitted to sit amongst the Peers in Parliament were so envied for their great Revenues and Estates as the Commons in a Parliament in the Raign of King Henry the Fourth wherein Lawyers were prohibited to be elected Members and therefore stiled indoctum Parliamentum did petition the King to confiscate and take into his own Revenue all their Lands which they had calculated to be sufficient to maintain One Hundred and Fifty Earls no small Estate in those times being enough to satisfy the honourable Yearly expences of one Earl and his numerous Retinue after the rate of their then living One Thousand Five Hundred Knights Six Thousand Two Hundred Esquires and erect Two Hundred Hospitals for the Relief of maimed Souldiers And in that new Frame of a great Council or Parliament wherein a part of the Commons of England were to be Assembled which can find no other Original than the Fate of that unhappy King in the battle of Lewis as the close Roll of the Forty Eight of that King will tell us there were no fewer of the then well-wishing Clergy to Symon de Mortfort Summoned unto that new modelled Parliament than One Arch-Bishop Fourteen Bishops Thirty-Five Abbots Two Priors their good Friends and Confederates and for Companies sake in such an hopeful and popular
which the Honor of Peverell did consist in Derbyshire fourteen and six in Leicestershire Roger de Montgomery Earl of Shrewsbury had in the Reigns of VVilliam the Conqueror and his Son VVilliam Rufus besides great Possessions in Normandy in VViltshire three Lordships in Surrey four in Hantshire nine in Middlesex eight in Cambridgeshire eleven in Hartfordshire one in Gloucestershire one in Worcestershire two in Warwickshire eleven in Staffordshire thirty in Sussex seventy-seven with the City of Chichester and Castle of Arundell and in Shropshire very many near all that County with the Castle and Town of Shrewsbury Odo Earl of Albermarle and Holderness had shortly after the Conquest given him by William the Conqueror the large Territory of Holderness with fifteen Mannors or Lordships in other Counties that would bear Wheat because he alledged that of Holderness would bear only Oates and had in the Raign of King Henry the Third the Barony of Skipton in Craven with sixteen Knight-Fees a Moyety of the Forrest of Allerdale Caldebec with the Mannor of Cockermouth in the County of Cumberland the Bond Service of the Tenants in Freston a Member of Brustwick in Holderness and in the right of Isabell his Wife the Castle of Carisbrooke and Isle of Wight Robert de Stafford was shortly after the Conquest seized of two Lordships in Suffolk one in Worcestershire one in Northamptonshire twenty in Lincolneshire twenty-six in Warwickshire with eighty-one in Staffordshire Walter de Eureux had shortly after the Conquest two Lordships in Dorsetshire three in Somersetshire one in Surrey one in Middlesex two in Hantshire two in Hartfordshire two in Buckinghamshire and thirty-one besides the Mannors of Saresbury and Ambresbury in Wiltshire and as Sheriff of that County received in Rent one hundred and thirty Hogs thirty-two Bacons two bushels and sixteen gallons of Wheat and as much in Barley bushells and eight gallons of Oates thirty-two gallons of Honey or sixteen Shillings four hundred and forty-eight Hens one thousand and sixty Eggs one hundred Cheeses fifty-two Lambs two hundred Fleeces of Wool having likewise one hundred and sixty-two Acres of arable Lands and amongst the Reves Lands to the value of Forty Pounds per Annum Baldwin de Molis second Son to Gilbert Crispin Earl of Beton Son of Godfrey Earl of Eu natural Son of Richard Duke of Normandy great Grand-Father to William the Conqueror was one of the principal Persons of the Laity that won much Fame at the Conquest and Marrying Aldreda a Neice of the Conqueror had shortly after the Castle of Exeter granted unto him and besides Mola and Sappo had given unto him Werne in Dorsetshire Apely Portlock and Mundeford in Somersetshire one hundred and fifty-nine Lordships in Devonshire and nineteen Houses in Exeter To whose eldest Son Richard was also given the whole Honor and Barony of Okehampton with the Shrievalty of the County of Devon Geffry Mandeville had given him by the Conqueror in Barkshire four Mannors in Sussex twenty-six in Middlesex seven in Surrey one in Oxfordshire three in Cambridgeshire nine in Hertfordshire nineteen in Northamptonshire seven in Warwickshire two in Essex forty with Hurley and the Woods in Barkshire Alan Sirnamed Rufus or Fergaint Son of an Earl of Britany in France had given him by William the Conqueror the Northern part of the County of York called Richmond which with what he had in Yorkshire made one hundred and sixty-six Lordships besides the Castle of Richmond one called the Devises in Wiltshire in Essex eight in Hartfordshire two in Cambridgeshire sixty-three with ten Burgages in Cambridge in Herefordshire twelve Mannors in Northamptonshire one in Nottinghamshire seven in Norfolk eighty-one and in Lincolneshire one hundred and one Together with many others of the Norman Nobility and Adventurers who had great quantities of Lands and Possessions given unto them by that Conquerour of England And some of our English Nobility were so Great Magnanimous and Munificent as at the Coronation of King Edward the First when Alexander King of Scotland his Brother-in-Law came from thence to Westminster to be present and do him Homage Sir Edmond Earl of Kent the King's Brother the Earls of Cornewall Gloucester Pembroke and Earl Warren each of them by themselves Led on their Hands one hundred Knights disguise in their Armes and whame they weren alyght of theyr Horse they let them goo whedyr they wolde and they that cowd them take had them stylle at their own lyking The great Ancestors of whom as well as those that stood with or against King Henry the Third or were but as sad Spectators of those tragick Wars had in their Hospitalities and huge quantities of Lands holden of them as may appear by their Certificates of Knights Fees recorded in one part of the Book called the Red-Book of the Exchequer happily preserved from the Conflagration or great London Fire several Forrests Parks and Chases with multitudes of Castles in some of their Possessions had been the Procurers of many of their own and the common peoples Liberties and Priviledges in the often confirmed Magna Charta and Charta de Foresta with divers great Priviledges Fairs and Markets and had given unto them large Commons of Pasture and Estovers and by their Grants of Markets and Fairs and likewise by their very many Advowsons and Patronages of Churches of a great part of which they had been the Founders Builders and glebe Endowers had to their Spiritual Estates laid upon the Commonalty as great Obligations of Gratitude as they had in the before-recited Temporal Favors and Benefits besides their granting of Leases of part of their demesne Lands at small Rents with reservation of some Service in permitting their Charity and good Will in Copy-hold Lands to Tenants or Servants or their Widdows or Children which at the first was but at the Will of the Lord or for Life or Years to continue and breed into a custom of Inheritance Secundum consuetudinent manerii and enfranchised and made many of them Free-holders permitted many Copy-hold Fines incertain to be made certain where they had been anciently at the Will of the Lord and to be limited by the Chancery or Courts of Justice to the Rent of two Years improved Value and when they do in these later times demise any part of their demesne Lands to a Tenant for twenty-one Years now that the legal Usury or Interest for Money is but six per cent for ten Years purchase do take as many Landlords do now Money before hand at a chargeable Interest and next to the manifold reiterated Blessings of the God of Heaven and Earth together with the favours and benefits of the Elements and superior Regions and astral Influences by and under the divine Providence were as much Blest and Happy under their Kings Princes Bishops and Nobility as any Nation or common People of the World could be or expect to be in their Properties Liberties Protection and Priviledges whom those
great Barons and Lords Spiritual and Temporal could not imagine would ever be able either to forget the Good which they and their Fore-Fathers had received and they and their after-Generations were like to enjoy under them or get loose from those many great Ties and Obligations of a never-to-be-forgotten Gratitude which they had upon them but thought themselves very secure from any danger that might happen by any of their Incroachments or Usurpations by placing any Power or but a Semblance of Authority for once in the lower Ranks of the People nor could have believed that the common People of England after their solemn Protestations to preserve them and the Government could after the Murder of their King in their last horrid Rebellion have Voted them to be useless and dangerous and being unwilling to leave any of the Divels their Masters business unfinished did solemnly enforce the deluded Seditious People under as many severe Penalties as they could lay upon them not any more to submit to any Government by a King and House of Lords to whom our Kings had given no Power to make their own Choice but lodged and onely entrusted it in the Sheriffs many of which the rebellious Barons had by Usurpation of the King's Authority provided before hand to be at this present of their own Party or were like to be so or under their Awe and Guidance wherein they were perceived by the King some Years before upon their ill-gained Provisions at Oxford to have been very diligent in making Sheriffs of their own Party those great Offices being in those times and many Years before and some few Years after alwayes put into the Hands and Trust of the Baronage or Men of great Estate and Power Whose Number by Tenures and Summons by Writs to our King 's great Councels or Parliaments Creations or Descents accounted in the Raign of King Henry the Third to be no less than Two Hundred and Forty if not many more and like the tall and stately Cedars of our Nation might well deserve the Titles of Proceres and Magnates especially when many or most of them were in their Greatness Goodness and Authority in their several Stations like the Tree which Nebuchadnezzar saw in his Vision high and strong The height whereof reached to the Heaven the leaves were fair and the fruit thereof much the beasts of the field had shadow under it and the fowles of the heaven dwelt in the boughs thereof and as ex pede Herculem the Length and Greatness of Hercules's Foot declared the vast Proportion and Magnitude of the residue of his Body it was easy to compute how little were then the Common People how great the Nobility whom the Brittaines ancient Inhabitants of our Isle as the Learned Francis Junius the Son of the no less Learned Francis Junius hath observed justly stiled them Lhafords Lords and their Wives Lhafdies Ladies because they usually gave Bread and Sustenance to those that wanted it gave License of Marriage to the Widdows of their Thanks by Knight Service punished their Tenants so holding their Lands by Writ Cessavit per Biennium and a Forfeiture if not redeemed was Entituled to a Writ of Contra formam Collationis for not performing the Duties and Offices of their Endowments and the large Revenues and Emoluments appropriated thereunto And with the many Accessions and Devolutions of other Mannors Lands Revenues Estates Baronies Titles of Honour and Offices of State by Marriages Descents in Fee or remainders in fee-Fee-tail munificent Guifts and Grants of their Kings and Princes upon Merit and great Services done for them and their Country or by Purchases guarded by the strength of the Statute De donis Conditionalibus made in the 13th Year of the Raign of King Edward the First with the Tye and Obligation of their Tenures and the Restraints of Alienation made them to be such Grantz Magnates as the common People did in their Disseisins Intrusions and Outrages done one unto another which in the elder times were very frequent colour and Shelter those Injuries by or under some Title or Conveyances made unto some of the Nobility or great Men of the Kingdom which caused some of our Kings to grant out Commissions of Ottroy le Baston vulgarly called Trail Baston to find out and punish such Evil doings and by the making of some of our later Laws to restrain the giving of Liveries so as until the Writs of Summons granted by King Edward the First in the 22d Year of his Raign to Elect some Knights of the Shires Citizens and Burgesses to give their Assent in Parliaments to such Laws and Things as by the advice of his Lords Spiritual and Temporal should advise should by him be ordained there having been an Intermission of those or the like kind of Writs of Summons from the first Contrivance thereof in the time of the Imprisonment of King Henry the Third in the 49th Year of his Raign it was and ought to be believed as a matter or thing agreeable to Truth right Reason and the Laws and Records of the Kingdom that the Commons and Freeholders of England were long before and for many Ages past as ancient as the British Empire and Monarchy were to be no part of our Great Councels or Parliaments were never Summoned or Elected to come thither but had their Votes and Estates and well Being as to those great Councels included in the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and as to their assent or dissent good or ill liking represented by them and retaining their well deserved Greatness were so potent and considerable as Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester could after the Battle of Evesham where he had Fought for the King March with a formidable Army composed for the most part of his own Servants Tenants Reteiners and Dependants from the Borders of Wales to London quarrel and capitulate with his King that had been but a little before extraordinary Victorious and with John Warren Earl of Surrey did after the Death of King Henry the Third before the Return of his Son Prince Edward from the Wars in the Holy-Land to take the Crown upon him at the Solemnization of the Funeral of the deceased King in the Abbey-Church of Westminster with the Clergy and People there Assembled without their License and Election go up to the high Altar and swear their Fealty to the absent King Edward the First his Son So beloved feared and followed as the great Earl of Warwick was said in some of our Histories to have been the Puller down and Setter up of Kings could with the Earl of Oxford in the dire Contests betwixt King Henry the Sixth and Edward the Fourth for the Crown of England rescue and take by force King Henry the Sixth out of the Tower of London where he was kept a Prisoner attend him in a stately and numerous Procession to the Cathedral Church of St. Paul the one carrying up his Train and the other
bearing the Sword before him to the Church where they Crowned him and after a Frown of Fortune did stoutly by the help of the Lancastrian Party give Battle to King Edward the Fourth at Barnet-field where but for a Mistake of Oxford's and Warwick's Soldiers and their Banners and Badges fighting one against the other in a Mist instead of King Edward the Fourth's Men they had in all Probability prevailed against him And the Interest Alliance and Estate of that Earl of Oxford was so great notwithstanding shortly after in the Kingdom as although he had very much adventured suffered and done for King Henry the Seventh led the Vanguard for him at Bosworth field against King Richard the Third and eminently deserved of him as the Numbers and Equipage of his Servants Reteiners Dependants and Followers did so asfright that King and muster up his Fears and Jealousies as being sumptuously Feasted by him at Hedingham Castle in Essex where he beheld the vast Numbers goodly Array and Order of them he could not forbear at his Departure telling him That he thankt him for his good Cheer but could not endure to see his Laws broken in his Sight and would therefore cause his Attorney General to speak with him which was in such a manner as that magnificent and causelesly dreadful Gallantry did afterwards by Fine or Composition cost that Earl Fifteen-Thousand Marks Did notwithstanding their great Hospitalities Magnificent manner of Living founding of Abbies Monasteries and Priories many and large Donations of Lands to Religious Uses and building of strong and stately Castles and Palaces make no small addition to their former Grandeurs which thorough the Barons Wars and long lasting and bloody Controversies betwixt the two Royal Houses of York and Lancaster did in a great Veneration Love and Awe of the Common People their Tenants Reteiners and Dependants continue in those their grand Estates Powers and Authorities until the Raign of King Edward the Fourth when by the Fiction of common Recoveries and the Misapplied use of Fines and more then formerly Riches of many of the common People gathered out after the middle of the Raign of King Henry the Eighth by the spoil of the Abbey and religiously devoted Lands in which many of the Nobility by Guifts and Grants of King Henry the Eighth King Edward the Sixth and Queen Elizabeth in Fee or fee-Fee-tail had very great shares brought those great Estates of our famous English Baronage to a lower condition than ever their great Ancestors could believe their Posterities should meet with and made the Common People that were wont to stand in the outward Courts of the Temple of Honour and glad but to look in thereat fondly imagine themselves to have arrived to a greater degree of Equality than they should claim or can tell how to deserve And might amongst very many of their barbarously neglecting Gratitudes remember that in the times in and after the Norman Conquest when Escuage was a principal way or manner of the Peoples Aides especially those that did hold in Capite or of Mesne Lords under them to their Soveraign for publick Affairs or Defence the Lords Spiritual and Temporal being then the only parts of the Parliament under their Soveraign the sole Grand Councel of the Kingdom under him did not only Assess in Parliament and cause to be leavied the Escuage but bear the greatest part of the Burden thereof themselves that which the common People did in after times in certain proportions of their Moveables and other Estates or in the Ninth Sheaf of Wheat and the Ninth Lamb being until the Dissolution of the Abbies and Monasteries in the latter end of the Raign of King Henry the Eighth when they were greatly enriched by it did not bear so great a part of the Burdens Aides or Taxes or much or comparable to that which lay upon the far greater Estates of the Nobility there having been in former Times very great and frequent Wars in France and Scotland no Escuage saith Sir Edward Coke hath been Assessed by Parliament since the 8th Year of the Raign of King Edward the Second Howsoever the Commons and Common People of England for all are not certainly comprehended under that Notion their Ancestors before them and their Posterities and Generations to come after them lying under so great and continued Obligations and bonds of an eternal Gratitude and Acknowledgement to the Baronage and Lords Spiritual and Temporal of England and Wales for such Liberties and Priviledges as have been granted unto them with those also which at their Requests and Pursuits have been Indulged or Permitted unto them by our and their Kings and Princes successively will never be able to find and produce any Earlier or other Original for the Commons of England to have any Knights Citizens or Burgesses admitted into our Kings and Princes great Councels in Parliament until the aforesaid imprisonment of King Henry the Third in the 48th and 49th Year of his Raign and the force which was put upon him by Symon Montfort Earl of Leicester and his Party of Rebels SECT XII That the asoresaid Writ of Summons made in that King's Name to Elect a certain Number of Knights Citizens and Burgesses and the Probos homines good and honest Men or Barons of the Cinque Ports to appear for or represent some part of the Commons of England in Parliament being enforced from King Henry the Third in the 48th and 49th Year of his Raign when he was a Prisoner to Symon de Montfort Earl of Leicester and under the Power of him and his Party of rebellious Barons was never before used in any Wittenagemots Mikel-gemots or great Councels of our Kings or Princes of England FOr saith the very learned and industrious Sir William Dugdale Knight Garter King of Armes unto whom that Observation by the dates of those Writs is only and before all other Men to be for the punctual particular express and undeniable Evidence thereof justly ascribed which were not entered in the Rolls as all or most of that sort have since been done but two of them three saith Mr. William Pryn instead of more in Schedules tacked or sowed thereunto For although Mr. Henry Elsing sometimes Clerk to the Honourable House of Commons in Parliament in his Book Entituled The ancient and present manner of holding Parliaments in England Printed in the Year 1663. but Written long before his Death when he would declare by what Warrants the Writs for the Election of the Commons assembled in Parliament and the Writ of Summons of the Lords in Parliament were procured saith That King Henry the Third in the 49th Year of his Raign when those Writs were made was a Prisoner to Symon de Montfort and could not but acknowledge that it did not appear unto him by the first Record of the Writs of Summons now extant by what Warrant the Lord Chancellor had in the 49th Year of the Raign of that King caused
of King Edward the Fourth with the allowance of Sir Edward Coke his justly adoring Commentator hath taught us That Tenures in Capite do draw and bring along with them as incidents thereunto Homage which is the most humble and honourable Service and Reverence that a Tenant can do unto his Lord when upon his Knees with his Sword ungirt and his Head uncovered holding his hands between the Hands of his Lord he sweareth and professeth to be his Man of Life and Limb and earthly Worship and to bear him Faith for the Lands and Tenements which he holdeth of him saving the Faith which he holdeth to his Soveraign Lord the King together with Fealty Service in War or instead thereof Escuage Socage Franck Almoigne Homage Auncestrel Grand Serjeanty Petit Serjeanty Tenures in Burgage and Villeinage and then the Lord so sitting Kisseth him And where the Service is not done by the Tenant in Capite or by Knight-Service in Person the Escuage Money or Fine that is to be paid in recompence thereof is to be Assessed by Parliament and if any Controversy do arise whether the Service were done personally or not it shall be tryed saith Littleton by the Certificate of the Marshal of the King in Writing And Tenant saith Sir Edward Coke is derived from the word Tenere and all the Lands in England in the hands of Subjects are holden of the King immediately or mediately for in the Law of England we have not properly any Alodium that is any Subjects Lands that are not Holden unless saith he you will take Allodium for a Tenant in Fee Simple as it is often taken in the Book of Dooms-Day and Tenants in Fee Simple are there called Alodii or Alodiales and he is called a Tenant because he holdeth his Lands of some Superior Lord by some Service and therefore the King in this Sence cannot be said to be a Tenant because he hath no Superior but God Almighty and Praedium domini Regis est directum Dominium cujus nullus est Author nisi Deus And Alodiarius Alode seu Alodium saith Sir Henry Spelman est Praedium liberum nulli Servituti obnoxium but were never so free as to be no Subjects or exempt from Obedience to our Kings in whose Land and Dominion they lived Ideoque Feudo oppositum quod hoc semper alicui subiacet servituti Feuda enim antiquò dicuntur Servitii Fidelitatis gratia proprietate feudi penes dantem remanente usu fructu tantummodo in accipientem transeunte ut ex C. de feud cogn ' collegit Barat ca ' 1. Quamobrem nec vendi olim poterant invito Domino nec ad haeredes Vassalli transiunt nisi de ipsis nominatim dictum esset sed laesa fidelitate adimerentur dicitur à Saxon ' Leod quasi populare dicitur Alodium ab à Privitiva Leed Gallicè Leud pro Vassallo quasi sine Vassallagio sine Onere quod Angli hodie Load appellant Alodium feudo opponitur in antiqua versione LL Canuti ca ' 73. Ubi Sax ' Bocland dicitur quod in Aluredi LL ca ' 36. tota Haereditas vocatur idem esse videtur quod hodiè Fee Simple Dicitur etiam Alodium terra libera quam quis à nemine tenet nec recognoscit licet sit in alieno Districtu Jurisdictione Ita quod solum est sub Domino districtus quoad Protectionem Jurisdictionem And believes the Aloarii mentioned in Dooms-Day Book do signify no more than our Sockmanni or Socage Tenants Cum Germanis Liberos Gallis Nobiles qui militiam ex arbitrio tractantes nullius domini Imperio evocati nulloque sendali gravamine Coerciti sui Juris homines non Feudales seil qui dominium tamen agnoscerent ut locus ille e Domesday citatus plane evincit qui fidelitatem apud nos Jurarent Censum quantulumcunque augebunt siâ—t etiam qui de nomine eos tenâ—isse asserunt ac si Hunnoniorum more adeo sole suum accepissent patrimonium And du Fresue Etymologizing the word Alodiarias saith It is Praedium etiam domino obnoxium possidet tenens Domesday quando moritur Alodiarius Rex inde habet Alleniationem terrae a releife excepta terra sanctae Trinitatis Gulielmus Gemeticensis Lib. 3. Ca. 8. Abbatique locum cum tota villa quam ab Alodiariis auro redemit Thomas Walsinghamus p. 419. Et in definitione Alodialis which he saith is Idem quod Tenens mentioneth Chartam Gulielmi ducis Normanniae p. 1042. In Monasticon Anglicanum Tom. 2. p. 959. Dedi etiam Ecclesiam Radulphi villae umon Allodialem in ipsa villa dedi quoque unum Allodialem in Amundevilla quietam ab omni Consuetudine Bignenius dicit quod significat Haereditatem paternam Terram Et Dominicus de Prorogat ' Allodiorum dictum oppinatur quasi Alo Leuden id est sine Subjectione a voce Leuden quae Germanis paâ—i subire fignificat sicut subjectionem servitium Spelmannus derivat a Leod populare Saxonice Ita ut Aleod sit idem quod Praedium populare oppositum Feudo quod est Praedium dominicale And the Learned du Fresne amongst the various Opinions mustred up by him Concludeth with a Deniquè plerique è doctioribus existimant vocem esse primogeniam Gallicam vel Francicam quae Praedium ac rem proprietario Jure possessum denotat Feudum novum absque domini Concensu alienatum revocari potest a Domino Decis 14. Feudum in dubio praesumitur esse haereditarium non ex pacto providentia Decis 30. n. 22. Feudum antiquum absque concensu domini alienatum ex communi D. l. sententia a filio revocari potest n. 11. And the Tenures in Capite and by Knight-Service were of so high an Esteem and Value amongst the English whereby to do unto their Kings and Country that Honor and Service which was due and might be expected from them in their several Degrees and Stations as the great Lords and other Men of Note did many times purchase or obtain of each other the Homages and Servitia of so many Men or parts of Knights Fees by Deeds or Charters and so much beyond any Money or other kinds of Estate Lands or Offices as Robert Earl of Leicester's Ancestor having at the Coronation of King John agreed to pay unto Roger Bigot Earl of Norfolk's Ancestor Ten Knight's Fees for the Purchase of that great Office of High Steward of England of which Seven and an half were paid and a Controversy arising afterwards betwixt the said Earls for the Satisfaction of the Remainder in the 31st Year of the Raign of King Henry the Third the King undertaking to make an Accord betwixt them adjudged Simon Montfort who afterwards ill requited him to have and execute the said Office of High Steward and that Roger Bigot Earl of Norfolk who afterwards joyned in the
Rebellion with Montfort against him should bring his Action for the other Two Knight's Fees and an half From which most necessary and excellent Feudal Laws have proceeded those grand Honors fixed and appurtenant to our ancient Monarchy of England in our Kings and Princes Grant to several great Families in England in Fee or Fee-Tayl as to be Constable of England Earl Marshal of England Lord Steward of England Lord Great Chamberlain of England Chamberlain of the Queens of England Die Coronationis suae Butler to our Kings at their Coronations c. And likewise the Statute de Donis or Entailes the neglect whereof in leaving all the ruined Families of the Nobility Gentry and better sort of the English Nation to feigned Recoveries introduced about the Raign of King Edward the Fourth by an unhappy and unjust Trick of Law to make the Losers believe that they shall recover the Value of their Lands so Lost amounting in the whole unto the greatest part of all the Lands in England of the Bagbearer of the Court of Common-Pleas who in the Conclusion is only Vouchee to Warrants and to make it good out of his own Land and by the small Fees and Profits of his Office was never yet known to Inherit or to have been a Purchaser of ten Acres of Land yet walks about and is never molested or called to Account for those vast Sums of Money or his Land if he ever had or was re vera intended to have had any was to be liable by his being a Common Vouchee in all the Common Recoveries which are suffered in that Court It being in those more Obedient and Loyal Times esteemed no small Honour to serve our Kings or hold Lands by such a Kind of Tenure as it may be believed to have occasioned that Adage or Common saying in England before the ever to be lamented taking away of Tenures in Capite and by Knight-Service and Pourveyance No Fishing to the Sea no Service to the King and those Royal Services affixed unto Lands and Territories have been so immutable amongst other our Neighbor Nations as in the Aurea Bulla fastned upon the Empire of Germany about the 30th Year of the Raign of our King Edward the Third the Three Spiritual Electors viz. the Arch-Bishops of Mentz Cologne and Triers or Trevers do hold their Lands and Territories by their several Tenures of being Arch-Chancellors the First of Germany the Second of Italy and the Third of France the King of Bohemia to be Archipincerna Duke of Bavaria or Count Palatine of the Rhine Archidapifer Duke of Saxony Archimariscallus Duke or Marquess of Brandenburgh Archicamerarius of that Empire and might be with or amongst them exampled from our Pattern which was long before as also from the Scots who have to this day some of the like official Dignities annexed to their Lands and Estates and as in the Raign of our King Henry the First Count Tankervile was by Inheritance and Tenure of his Lands Chamberlain of Normandy And although not so ancient as the Customs of the Patroni and Clientes in the beginning of the flourishing of the vast Roman Empire which was so greatly advantageous both unto the greater and lesser part of the People the Patroni in their Popularities and Ambitions to gain and please them in their way of Advancements to Annual Magistracies not seldom exercising their Eloquence in pleading their Causes or Suits in Law before the Lawyers had for another kind of Advantages by the Gratifications of Fees and Rewards made it to be the greatest part of their Profession which before were principally employed upon seldom Occasions in matters of Difficulty in Jurisconsults and Decisions some of the more eminent sorts of them having about the Raign of the Emperor Augustus Caesar obtained Licenses of him ad respondendum Yet after the Irruption of the Goths Vandals Longobards and Hunnes with other Northern Nations into that Empire they found it to be more beneficial to do as the Germans and many other Northern Nations have done to be Feudalists and to have Lands given unto them and their Heirs to hold by Service of War and other necessaries under those grand Obligations of Interests Oaths Gratitude Homage and Fealty which proved to be better more certain and beneficial both for the Patroni and Clientes the poorer sort of the People alwayes or very often wanting the Aid and Protection of the greater from Wrongs and Oppressions like to be put upon them And the Patroni and Greater procuring to themselves thereby a more constant Observance of Duty Honour and Additions to their former Grandeur the greater and lesser thereby mutually supporting and assisting each other which in the Consequence was as it did likely to prove much better than the charge and trouble the Patroni were used to be as in the frequent courting and Humoring of the common People with their costly Epulae's and Ludi's not only to gain their own Preferments in their Annual poursuites of Offices of Magistracy but to keep the popular Votings from Mutiny and ruining them as much as themselves And howsoever that they with us in England by a great infelicity to our languishing Monarchical Government after an horrid Rebellion and murder of our late King Anno. 12. Car. 2. by an Act of Parliament made upon his now Majesties happy Restoration for the taking away the Court of Wards and Liveries Tenures in Capite and by Knight service and Pourveyance and for settling a Revenue upon His Majesty in lieu of a great part of the lands of England and Wales which the Rebels besides their great Estates had forfeited unto him which they were willing to retain to themselves and thank him as fast as they could with a more detestable Rebellion the Praeamble mentioning most unfortunately for want of a right Information and understanding thereof That the said Court of Wards and Liveries Tenures by Knight service in Capite holden of the King or others and Socage in Capite have been by consequence more praejudicial then beneficial to the Kingdome as if the Nerves and Ligaments of the Crown of England and the ancient Support and Defence of the Honour and glory thereof for more then one thousand years could any way deserve to be so Charactered and that after the Intromission of the said Court which hath been since the 24 th day of February 1645. when the Divel and his Reformation had made a large progress in the chasing Religion out of the Kingdom and washing over in blood the Blessed Martyr King Charles the first 3 Kingdomes of England Scotland and Ireland many Persons could not by their Will or otherwise dispose of their Lands by Knight Service whereby many Questions might possibly arise unless some seasonable remedy be taken to prevent the same Our Soveraign Lord by the Assent of the Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled and by the Authority of the same did enact the taking away of the said Court
of Wards and Liveries with other the Premises And all Tenures of any Lands holden of the King or any others shall be turned into free and Common Socage and be discharged of all Homage Escuage Voiages Royal Wardships and Aide Pour file marier pour faire fitz Chivaler livery ouster le maine all Statutes repealed concerning the same all Tenures hereafter to be created by the King his Heirs or Successors shall be in free and Common Socage Provided that that Act extend not to take away Rents certain Herriots or Suits of Court belong ing to any other Tenures taken away or altered by that Act or other Services incident to common Socage or any Releifes due and payable in cases of free and common Socage or of any Fines for Alienations holden of the King by any particular Customes of Lands and Places other then of Lands holden immediately of the King in Capite Nor extend unto any Tenures in Franck Almoigne or by Copy of Court Roll honorary Services by grand Serjeanty other then what are before dissolved or taken away Provided that this Act nor any thing therein contained shall infringe or hurt any Title of Honour feodal or other by which any person hath or may have right to sit in the Lords House in Parliament as to his or their Title of Honour or Sitting in Parliament and the Priviledges belonging to them as Peers And that that Act extend not to any the Rights and Priviledges of His Majesty in his Tynn Mines in Cornewal In recompence whereof the King shall have the Excise of Ale Beer Perry and Syder Strong and Distilled Waters setled by that or some other Act of Parliament touching the Excise upon the King during his Life and a Moyety only after his death to His Heirs and Successors And are by Sir Henry Spelman said to be non solùm jure positivo Sed Gentium quodammodo Naturae not only by positive but the Laws of Nations and Nature Especially when it was not to arise from any compulsory incertain way or involuntary Contribution or out of any personal or movable Estate cases of Relief only excepted but to fix and go along with the Lands as an easy and beneficial Obligation and Perpetuity upon it and was so incorporate and inherent as it was upon the matter a Co-existence or Being with it Glanvil and Bracton being of Opinion with the Emperour Justiniam that the King must have Armes as well as Laws to govern by and not depend ex aliorum Arbitrio and therefore the Prelates Earles and Commonalty of the Realm did in a Parliament in the 7th Year of the Raign of King Edward the 1st declare it to be necessarily belonging unto him and to none other Judge Hutton in his Argument in the case of the Shipmony in the Raign of King Charles the Martyr and diverse other Learned Judges and Lawyers have declared Tenures in Capite and by Knight Service to be so inseparable from the Crown as not to be aliened or dissolved by any Act or Authority of Parliament Some of whom could not forget that a Design having been presented and offered unto King James when the Scots had by their importunityes much enfeebled the Royal Revenue by some who neither understood our Fundamental Laws or the Constitution of our Government and having considerable Estates in the County of York and Bishoprick of Durham and being Members of the House of Commons in Parliament and mischievous enough in the long Rebellious Parliament a Revenue of Two hundred thousand pound per Annum to dissolve his Courts of Wards and Liveries and release his Tenures in Capite and by Knights Service and the King liked so well of those Hopes of augmenting his overwasted Revenue as he with Promises of great Rewards to the Designers ordered a Table to be purposely kept at White-Hall for them untill they had brought their undertakings to perfection unto which the Reverend Judges being summoned by the King to deliberate and give their Opinions could find neither Law or right Reason for the taking away of those Tenures with their incidents even by an Act of Parliament Insomuch as the Design and Table were laid down and no more thought of until the unhappy Fate and Misery of forsaking and destroying Fundamentals did so drive it on afterwards as it hath done by our abandoning the old ways and the Truths thereof into those very many Misfortunes which it hath brought us into already and will more and more into the Prophet Jeremiah's Lamentations And so greatly resembled that very antient way of the great Councels or Parliaments in France drawn and derived from their Ancestors the Francks and other their Northern Progenitors in and of that Kingdom long before there inhabiting until the miseries brought by the English Conquests and their own Divisions upon that people by those Warrs and their seeking in the interim to govern their Kings and Domineer over them in the midst of their Troubles Necessities and Disabilities to protect them had constrained some of their after Kings as Lewis the 11th one of their Kings to find the way to govern so Arbitrarily as they have since done with a continual so limited Parliament as it signifieth little more than an extraordinary Court of Justice and verify the Edicts of his prerogative Power with a car tel est nostre plaisir Insomuch as those kind of Tenures and beneficial Mutualites might not improbably have been here introduced by the Saxons from one and the same or a like Radix or Original before the Normans Atcheivements and Acquests either here or in France or by what they had learned or practised of the Feudal Laws in the Empire or after the Normans had brought England their long before Compatriots into subjection and in the Reigns of some of their after Kings continued Masters of Normandy Aniou Aquitaine Mayne and Poicteau and of so many other great parts and Provinces of the French Dominions as in process of time they gained a full Possession of the residue and in a short time after lost them all by our own Domestick Ambitions and Discords So as one Egg of the same kind cannot commonly be more like in it's external Form and Likeness to an other then the antient and ever-to-be-approved Method of our and their former great Councels or Parliaments were Wherein may warrantably without any suspicion of an Arbitrary Government be vouched and called the learned Sieur du Fresne a man of vast Reading and Litterature and not only Learned in all the Roman and Northern Antiquities but in our Old English Saxon Laws and the allowed classical and veritable Authors and Writers of our Nation and to whom the Learned Works of our Glanvil Bracton Littleton Fortescue Coke Stamford Spelman and Selden were no Strangers when in his Glossary or Comment upon the word Pares he represents unto us the Figure or lively Picture of our own ancient Customes and Usages in our great Councels
Fidus Achates the Trinoda necessitas or expedtitiones castrorum pontium reparationes From which the Bishops and Clergy by themselves or others were not to be excused raysing of Forces at the Countries Charges which the preservation of their Lands that were given them for that service besides the obligations of their Oaths and gratitude strictly oblige them unto making provisions for the War for the Victuals and the Wages of Military Men as well at Home as in Forreign Expeditions for the defence of the Kingdom and State together with the Arrogationes Auctoritatem dare l. 2. F. de adopt Sect. c. 1. or give licence to adopt as our King Stephen did King Henry the II. Which together with our Licences Pardon of Alienation and Fines paid for the neglect thereof Courts-Leet and Baron Ancient demesne Free and Copyholders and Fines certain or uncertain at the Will of the Lord Prescription of Ancient Custome and Usage not mala in se villani Bordarii manucaption Satis datio or Baile Fribergh Tithings Sheriffs Turnes or County-Courts Hundred-Courts and our Communia Concilia or Parliaments upon Urgent and Special occasions concerning the defence of the Kingdom and Church of England and the advice of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal to be had therein Wardships Marriage Advowsons Patronage of Churches License of Widdows of Tenants in Capite to Marry Seizures Ouster les maines Liveries or Investitures Primer seizen forfeiture of portion upon marriage tendered and refused respite of homage Priority in Suing for Debts Ann. Diem Vastum Power to amend wave or charge his Demurrer to Imploy Coroners Escheators and Feodaries Issues aut diem clausit extremum stay other Mens Actions with a Rege Inconsulto Kings Silver or Money to be paid pro Licentia Concordandi Writs of per que Servitia cessavit per Biennium de Coronatore eligendo de advocatione and the Assessments of Escuage quare impedit de viridario eligendo in Parliament Writs of Couge de Eslire Evesque Writs of Recordare or Accedas ad Cariam Writs of Prohibition distringas de Excommunicato Capiendo our Juries or Tryals in matters of Controversies per pares our Writs de Odio Atia ne injuste vexes Writs of Novell Disseisiu or of Entry and Redisseisin or Triall by Battell or Judicium Dei fire deal or Ordial Writts de Nativo habendo Certiorari de Proprietate probanda cum multis aliis mentioned in that authentique book of our Laws called the Register of Writs and even almost the whole frame and Context of our Laws do besides the Laws and Statutes made by our Kings and Princes and the reasonable Customes and Usages of the People indulged or allowed by them plainly bear and declare the Idea Effigies and lively Portraict of the Feudall Laws Planted and established as they ought to be in this our heretofore more happy Islands distinguishing Estates in Lands granted inter feudum nobile plebeium From the former of which our Nobility and Bishops have derived their Privileges of Freedom from Common Process of Arrest and even the widdows of the Nobility together with the precedency of the Sons and Daughters of them And our Kings have enjoyed the privilege of protecting the persons of their servants from personall arrests which they may certainly as Justly and lawfully do as the members of the house of Commons and their Servants And that of the House of Peers in Parliament do and have none in the Times of Parliament and it should not be unobserved or unknown by or unto our later Lawyers of England that the ancient and usuall forms of our Declarations and Pleadings at Law have been and are that the Plaintiffs or Defendents were or are Seized in dominico suo ut de feodo Simplici aut Talliato and that our Laws have or had ab antiquissimis Seculis or ages a great mixture of the Feudal Laws which the people esteemed to be a part of their happiness untill this our last mad age of Rebellion Faction and Sedition had taught our English Copy-holders to esteem their Tenures to be a Norman Slavery wherein the Charity and good-will of their Landlords have continued to their generations yet notwithstanding have by length of time converted their kindnesses into a villanous Custome of Ingratitude And as the Civill Law had before done inter patrones et Clientes the patritii or Nobility esteemed it to be a Disparagement to intermarry with the vulgar who could not for a long time and without much Strugling be admitted into the Magistracy as Livy and other good Roman Historians have assured us but were as a Seperate part of the people glad to be content with their Tribuni plebis to Intercede with the Senate to make good and wholsome Laws or abate the rigour or Severity of any of them so far were they from ambition or any designs of Intermedling above their Incapacitated Spheres or Incroaching upon the Kinâ—â—y Government as if Simon Montford and his Fellow-Rebells had by force put upon King Henry the 3d. in the 49th year of his Reign taught them the way unto it not as he did by force but by degrees and sly Insinnuations working upon the Indulgence or necessities of their princes but might have tarryed long enough and beyond the longest period of time before our Feudal Laws would have given them so much as a leave or licence to attempt it However if that will not do those Novillists or hatchers of new unwarrantable doctrines will to work again limbeck their Fancies to vent the only Vapours of such imaginations or what can be Extracted as some Elixir Proprietatis Elixir Vitae or Salutis to be purchased at their own others costly enough rates and prices so as they may be instrumentall and subservient to their Wicked and Seditious Designs of Subverting the Monarchy and Deluding the People And their men of more Faction then Wifdom Law Right Reason or Evidence SECT XVI That the General Councels or Courts mentioned before the Rebellious meeting of some of the English Baronage the constraint put upon King John at Running Mede or before the 49. of H. 3. were not the Magna Consilia or Generale consilium Colloquium or Communia Consilia now called Parliaments wherein some of the Commons as Tenants in capito were admitted but only truly and properly Curiae Militum a Court Summoning those that hold of the King in Capite to acknowledge record and perform their services do their homage and pay their reliefs c. and the writ of Summons mentioned in the close Rolis of the 15th year of the Reign of K. John was not then for the summoning of a great Councell or Parliament but for other purposes viz. Military Aids and Offices WHich withall their Strains Conjectures or Alchimy of abused Wit will never be able to make the Writ which Mr Selden found in the close Role of the 15th year of the Reign of King John to be
lands and Estates where our Laws do give unto them the benefit accrewing And the honourable Peers and Judges in that Court subordinate unto the King may as to matters therein determinable be the better content therewith for that not being Sworn nor punishable as Judges in other Courts are and in what they do advise therein they neither are or can be punishable in a judicio colloquiale wherein as Paulus Screrbic hath said in his Statua Poloniae Judex in colloquiis aut Regis praesentia judicans argui de male judicato non potest And the word KUPIA as Sir Henry Spelman saith with the Greeks and Romans signifying potestas dominium and the Lord or owner of it qui potestate fretus est judiciumque exercet and the place habitaculum domini the residence or Court of the Lord or Superior ubi sana rei narratio placitum forenses vocant dicebatur autem Curia primo de Regia palatio principis inde de familia judiciis in ea habitis ritu veterrimo or the place where Kings did administer Justice surely Kings were not therein to be co-ordinate or any less then Superior And the very Learned Sir John Spelman the Son of that Excellent Learned Father writing the Life of King Alured or Alfred hath together with the unquestionable historical part and truth of the relation given us the observation that Et Comitum potestatem ad huc minuebat nam neque iis integra restabat negotiorum bellicorum tractatio Horum enim magna pars Heretochiis sive Ducibus inferioribus a plebe in Comitiis suis Electis Committebatur Hi enim recensionibus meditationibis armorumque lustrationibus praefuerunt milites in Centuriis suis coeuntes ad locum toti exercitui destinatum deducebant in bellis demum Ducum inferiorum officiis fungebantur Prout e legibus boni Edwardi aliisque locis facile colligitur Haec institutio cum a populo non Comitibus Ductores hi eligebantur non parum e Comitum potentia abstulit Comitibus ergo quorum potentia Regibus semper maxime formidabilis relinquebatur ordinaria potestas in Comitiis Comitativis praefidendi in bellis sui Comitatus militibus imperandi in Curia sive Comitatu Regis conciliis publicis suo rumque negotiis attendendi mandata Regia subditis suis communicandi quod mira celcritate post novam hanc imperii institutionem factum est Et quidem si Aelfredi nostri vestigiis posteriores Regis institissent neque tot Seditiones ortae neque tantum Sanguinis in bellis Civilibus exhaustum neque Regis ipsi toties temporibus subsequentibus periclitati fuissent Sed tam bene constituta partim bella Civilia quae statim post ejus obitum recrudescentia pene omnibus legibus executionem impediebant videantur Edvardi senioris querelae lege quarta Danique post renovatas invasiones sub canuto victores maxime vero Normanni labefactarunt Gulielmus enim sive ut Magnates in invasione regni hujus maxima momenta pro meritis pactis etiam remuneraret sive ut Anglos dominio suo efficacius subderet nobilibus suis Normannis maximam potentiam que postea tot malorum origo indulsit Henricus vero primus quantum potuit leges Aelfredi nostri instituta revocavit sed tempora consuetudinesque perversae omnia quae expedire poterant inferri non patiebantur And the authority of our Kings in Parliament were not only in the Ages before but in King Alfreds or Alureds time Superior and Super-eminent in his great Councells over his Subjects as Asser Menevensis living in his Court and Writing his Life after his Death saith that Saepissimo in concionibus Comitum praepositorum ubi pertinacissime inter se dissentiebant ita ut pene nullus eorum quicquid a Comitibus praepositis judicatum fuisset verum esse concederet qui pertinaci dissensione obstinatissimo compulsi Regis subire judicium singuli subarrabant and when Appeals and Writs of Error came before him from his Earls or Ealdermen saith Mr. Selden out of Asser Menevensis when he found Error and Injustice committed by them would Sharply reprove them For in our Monarchicall Government with the ancient long continued and well-experimented existence and constitution of the House of Peers and Peerage in the Kingdom of England the Common People were so subordinate to the Baronage and Peers as the Commons were allways understood by our Kings and our Laws and the Lords Spirituall and Temporall and by the Common People themselves to be comprehended in and under the Baronage who did for them and as they were included in them very often in our great Councells and Parliaments grant or deny aids or Subsidies and in their behalf without the Commons themselves speaking or advising alledge their poverty and disability and the Popes and Forreign Neighbour Princes in their letters and rescripts understanding it no otherwise of which Mathew Paris and Thomas of Walsingham authors of great credit living in the Reign of King Henry the 3d. and King Edward the 1st his Son have afforded us plentiful instances And all things rightly observed or Considered could not give any one the least of reason or colour of it for if our Comites Burones Bracton not mentioning the Bishops who then had great power if not too much over our Kings and Princes there then being no Dukes Marquisses and Viscounts whom our Kings then used not to create though there were many Dukes or said to be in the time of the Saxons before the Norman Conquest who by our fundamentall Laws enjoyed all their authority Subordinate unto their Parliaments and Great Councells might forfeit their Lives Estates and Lands holden of them in Capite which was the only Measure of punishment in England before the Act of Parliament in the 25th Year of the Reign of King Edward the 3d. was made which did at the request of the Lords and Commons the Bishops not mentioned declare what should afterwards be attempted and punished as High Treason against him and his Heirs or for Counterfeiting his Great Seal which did or should bear record of the Laws and Actions and Kingly Government of our Kings Princes there having not been in that Act of Parliament or any Act of Parliament or Laws of our Brittish Saxon Danish or Norman before or since tacitly or expressly for the abolishing or taking away our Feudall Laws and Customs or that ever to be wailed unhappy Act of Parliament made by his now Majesty King Charles the 2. for the taking away of the Court of Wards and Liveries by reason of his tenures in Capite and of all homage and fealty drawn and prepared by a Learned Lawyer and a Member of that House of Commons in Parliament Dreaming of a Common-Wealth untill their man of Sin Oliver Cromwell was pleased to awake them who was in his profession well known to have been eminently skilled in
would condescend to please the People which Some of them or those that would make use of them began to be too fond of and therefore could hardly bring himself to please them in that kind especially when he could perceive the Nobility Disliking and averse unto it Howsoever with some Confidence believing it to be beyond any fear or Imagination that any Danger to the English Monarchy and Government so Anciently rationally and well founded according to the Laws of God Nature and Nations Laws of the Land and reasonable Customes thereof could happen thereunto by the election of a part of the People Subordinate to the Nobility and Baronage as well Spirituall as Temporall adstricti legibus and obliged by their Tenures in Capite Homage and Fealty in the strongest manner that the Wisdom and Care of Mankind could devise as bonds never to be shaken off and a tye upon their Estates Bodies and Souls by their Oaths of Allegiance Tenures and Forfeiture of their Lands to be true and faithfull to their King and those which they held of or that they or any of their Posterities could be so ingratefull for benefits received from the Crown and his Progenitors from Generation to Generation as to be so unmindfull of their often repeated Homages and Oaths of Allegeance as when they were Summoned only to perform and obey what the King and his Lords Spirituall and Temporall in his greatest Councell should adjudge meet to be done for the Publique Good and to stand as Petitioners in the outward Courts should by Insinuations from some priviledges and the Power granted unto them and others for that purpose and only end of contributing necessary aids for their Kings for the defence of themselves and their Defenders by gradations and the over indulgence of their Kings and Princes and the advantages of catcht opportunities creep into the Arcana Imperii and snatching the thunderbolts and authority of the Sovereign out of his hands make themselves too busy with the supream power themselves that should be governed to be the unruly and unreasonable Governors of their King and Gods Vice-Gerent Who might have thought himself and his Successors to have been in some condition of Safety when the Summons to Parliament were to be only by his Writs and Authority and the Sheriffs who were not the Parliaments Officers but the Kings and by the Law Sworn unto him not unto both or either of the Houses in Parliament and strictly bound to observe and Execute his Writs and Mandates made himself content to allow some things of that way or course which had been before unduly and Illegally contrived and therefore did as it appeareth alter and change it into a more legall and just way with different methods enough as he thought to make them and after Ages understand that it was his only right to do it and that they were to be no more then consenters obedient and ready to do and perform what the Lords Spiritual and Temporal should in Parliament advise wherein he was to be the sole Director Ratifier and Ordainer and to be at his Disposing in the Summoning and Calling them together as to Time Place Continuance Proroguing Adjourning or Dissolving any such or the like Assemblies and that he in all things to be done therein was as their Sovereign to have his Granting Directive and Negative Voice and in the sending out of his Writs of Summons for any Great Councells or Parliaments to vary in the circumstances orders or limitations or additions as his occasions for the Weal publick should require with such other variations as might signify his care to prevent future Evils or impending Dangers and reserve to him and his successors the long ago just rights of the best tempered Monarchy in the Universe And for the better method and order to be used in his House of Lords and Peers whom he had Summoned and made use of in his great Councels and Parliaments untill that time without the Commons or any Procurators on their behalf in the making of divers Laws and Statutes of very great Concernment to them and the Weale Publick And to make the Councells and Assistance of the Wiser and better part of his People more Effectuall and in a better order then that which the rebellious part of his and his Fathers ill-affected Baronage had neither well provided for themselves or them did whilst he was content to admit into the fitting and necessary Secrets and intimacy of his great Councells a select part of them to be duly chosen by his Writts and commands as to Time Occasion and Place resolve to give after ages to understand that he did notwithstanding reserve to himself as his Royal Progenitors had Anciently done when they only Summoned the Prelates and Peers to their Great Councells his and their most undoubted rights and power of Summoning Proroguing Adjourning or Dissolving those Assemblies and the sole and only affirmative or negative voice in the making of Laws as being the only breath Life and being thereof Did at his being in Goscoigne in the Twenty Second year of his Reign send his Writs of Summons to Summon divers great Lords as well French as English being in number Sixty one amongst whom were Roger de Moubray William Trussel Symon Basset Theobald de Verdon c. habere colloquium tractatum with him in England ubicunque fuerit in a much Differing form then those of Henry the 3 his as aforesaid Imprisoned Father And Directed his Writ to the Sheriff of Northumberland in these Words viz. Rex c. Vice Comiti Northumbriae Salutem tibi praecipimus quod de Comitatu praedicto duos milites de qualibet Civitatem ejusdem Comitatus duos Cives de quolibet Burgo duo Burgenses de discretioribus ad laborandum potentioribus sine dilatione eligi eos ad nos ubicunque in Regno nostro fuerimus venire facias it a quod dicti milites plenam sufficientem potestatem pro se communitate Comitat praedicti duos Cives Burgenses pro se communitate civitatum Burgorum praedict divisum ab ipsis tunc ibidem habeant ad consulendum consentiendum pro se communitate illa his quae Comites Barones proceres de Regno nostro ordinabunt c. T. Rege octavo die Octobris alltogether Different from the Writs made out and enforced from his Father King Henry the 3. During his Imprisonment in Anno 49 of his Reign Consimilia brevia diriguntur singulis aliis Vicecomitibus Angliae And in the same Year and the next Day after sent another Writ to the same Sheriff in these words Cum nuper tibi praeceperimus quod duos milites de discretioribus ad laborandum tunc potentioribus ejusdem Comitatus de consensu ejusdem eligi eos ad nos usque Westmonasterium in crastino Sancti Martini proximo futuro cum plena potestate pro se tota Communitate
encouraging and rewarding merit and Service for the good of the publick greatly and too much wasted and exhausted ever have been perswaded to have released so much as was done of the Tenures in Capite by a factious part of the people who designed to undermine the Monarchical Estate of the Government Or by some of the more Loyall advisers who either by ignorance or otherwise did not well understand Monarchy and the Government Or the sad and ever to be lamented Consequences and Effects that have already followed and will hereafter fatally ensue the change of the Tenure in Capite and by Knight Service to release and turn those Nerves and Sinews of the Government ligaments and ties of the Crown the Chariots and Horsmen of our Israels Glory Strength and support of it and the Loadstone of the Subjects obedience into free and common Soccage Wherein much more heed was to have been taken then formerly for that the Militia and the Sovereignty and Power of our Kings much whereof were lodged and incorporated therein were founded and built upon the Tenures in Capite and by Knights Service the Basis Foundation Life Blood Animall Spirits Soul Essence and support thereof and had not long before been by an Horrid and Hypocritical Rebellion wrested out of the hands of the late blessed Martyr King Charles the 1st by abuse and misconstruction of the Laws false arguments and the fear and flagging of some of his most Eminent Justices and Lawyers who were too little acquainted with the Feudall Laws and Laws of Nations the Records Annalls and Histories of the Kingdom and the Monarchicall Government thereof Which too much encouraged and assisted the Rebellion against him together with the murder and destruction of him and many Thousands of his Loyall and more Dutifull Subjects that fought for him Notwithstanding all which the aforesaid cares condescensions of that prudent Prince King Edward the 1. hoping for the best and not suspecting the worst In the 25th Year of his Reign requiring Bohun Earl of Hereford and Constable of England and other the Barons to go with him to the Wars in Gascoigny and Bygod Earl Marshall of England likewise refusing unless the King himself would go in Person the King swears ye shall go or Hang and the Earl answered he would neither go nor Hang and so without leave departed the King notwithstanding proceeded in his Voyage to Flanders the two Earls of Hereford and Norfolk assemble many Noblemen and other their friends to the number of 30 Bannerets so as they were 1500 men at Arms and stood upon their Guard and the King being ready to take Ship the Archbishops Bishops Earls Barons and Commons sent him a Roll of the Grievances of his Subjects in Taxes Subsidies and other imposicions with his seeking to force their services by unlawfull courses to which the King answered that he could not alter any thing without the advice of his Councell who were not now about him and therefore required them that seeing they would not attend him in his journy which they absolutely refused to do though he went in person unless it were into France and Scotland that they would yet do nothing in his absence prejudiciall to the Crown promising at his return to set all things in good order but being afterwards enforced to send for more Supplies of Mony ordained a Parliament to be held at York and to the End he might not be disappointed of aid condesended to all such Articles as were demanded concerning the great Charter promising from thenceforth never to charge his Subjects otherwise then by their consent in Parliament Seized the moneys in the Popes Bankers hands to relieve his and the publick necessities gave protections from arrest and troubles in their Estates to them that should have paid it otherwise and notwithstanding the Popes Anger and Threats not in those days easily to be adventured upon did not pay and refund it within 2 or 3 Years after Seized also and took at his own price the Wools which the Merchants then had in the Ports ready to be transported and all the Lands and Great Estates of Bohun Earl of Hereford and Clare Earl of Gloucester and upon the Marriage of his Daughter the Lady Elizabeth to the first with a Gift in Tayl to them the reversion in the Crown and the like to Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester and Hertford by Marriage of his Daughter the Lady Joan restored them in tail as aforesaid unto them and made not only the said Humfrey de Bohun Roger Bygod Earl Marshall whom upon second failings he afterward confiscated and all others who had joined with him in refusing to serve him in his warrs according to the tenure of their lands to be glad and well content with his generall pardon In the same year granted to Hugh Kent de Galvy in Ireland and the Heirs Males of his body the liberty of enjoying the benefit of the English laws in terra sua Hyberniae as the writ ensuing wlll evidence viz. Rex omnibus ballivis fidelibus suis in Hybernia ad quos c. Salutem volentes Hugoni Kent de Galvy Hyberniae gratia facere specialem concedimus ei pro nobis haeredibus nostris quod ipse liberi sui de corpore ipsius Hugonis legitime procreati procreandi hanc habeant libertatem quod ipsi posteri eorum de extero in terra nostra Hyberniae tam in morte quam in vita legibus consuetudinibus utantur Auglicanis firmiter inhibentes ne quis eos contra hanc concessionem nostram injuste vexet in aliquo vel perturbet in cujus c. Teste Rege apud Gillingham 25 die Martii per ipsum Regem And by his letters patents constituted Johannem de Breton Custos or Warden of the City of London as followeth viz. Rex omnibus ballivis fidelibus suis ad quod c. sciatis quod dilectum fidelem nostrum Johannem le Breton constituimus custodem civitatis London ad amerciandos Aldermannos alios quoscunque de civitate praedicta qui ad rationabilem praemonitionem Seu Summonitionem custodis ejusdem pro negotiis nos Civitatem illam tangentibus venire contempserent etiam ad Vicecomites Civitatis praedict ipsorum Clericos ac ministros mercedem sui Officii capientes cum super hoc modo debito convicti fuerint juxta quantitatem delictorum suorum castigandos puniendos quantum necesse fuerit quatenus sua discretio de jure viderit faciendum specialem tenore praesentium committimus potestatem quam diu nos placuerit durando in cujus c. Having before in the 13 or 14th Year of his Reign fined Gregory de Rokesly Mayor of London for that he renounced the Mayoralty and delivered the Common Seal of the Mayoralty or City to Stephen de Ashren aliis de Communitate London sine licencia ipsius Regis for which he
before mentioned Congress at Montpelier in France understand that he knew how to perform what he had promised and undertaken And it was high time to do it and look about him when the Benificiarii his Tenants in Capite would not be content to be gratefull and allways keep in remembrance the Obligations incumbent upon their Lands Estates Ancestors and Posterities past or to come and their Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy grounded thereupon unless they might so work upon the favours Indulgence and many times necessities of their Kings and Princes as to procure as much as they could of their Regall power and Authority into their hands as an addition to the many Manors and Lands formerly bestowed upon their forefathers severall Precious Flowers of the Crown as Fines and Amerciaments Assize of Bread and Beer Felons and Outlaws Goods Year Day and Wast Deodands Waifs Estreats and Herriot fossa furtas Pillory and Tumbrell c. And the then over-powering Clergy with their Multitudes of Abbotts Priors and several orders of Monks Fryars and Nuns working upon our former Kings and Princes Devotions and Liberalities heightned and procured by their too many tales and fictions of Miracles and Relicques attracted unto themselves and their several Houses and Societies as much of their Kings Regalities as could with any Justice to themselves or the rest of their Subjects and people or any reason be required or asked of them And were Anciently so fearfull to loose what they should not in that manner have gained as the Charter and Patent-Rolls of many of our ancient Kings never wanted the company of the many Confirmations of such kind of unbecoming grants and it may moreover justly be attributed unto the over-much Clemency and Indulgence of our Common Parents Kings and Princes that in their many Acts of Resumptions of no small quantities of Manors and Lands aliened from the Crown of England which as to its real Estate in Lands is almost reduced to an Exinanition or much too little for a Royal Revenue they have notwithstanding without any diminution permitted their Feudatories to enjoy those very many Regalities which made them live like so many Subreguli or Petty Kings or Princes under them and leave them so far exceeding the Old Saxon Heptarchy as Ten thousand Manors in England and Wales unto their great Regalities and Liberties can amount unto no less then a strange kind of Poliarchy in a Monarchy which like Esau and Jacob Strugling in the Womb never after agreed together which that great Prince King Edward the 1. suis aliorum miseriis edoctus did endeavour to prevent and leave it to his Heirs and Successors as it ought to be a most Ancient great and entire Monarchy Was so exact and carefull in the Causing of Justice to be done unto his people and Subjects as by himself or his Justices Itinerant and Juries Impannelled to enquire according to certain Articles given unto them in writing unto which they were to answer negatively or affirmatively not as is now used by the Justices of the Court of Kings Bench twice every Year upon the Impannelling of the grand Juries of the County of Middlesex or by the Judges in their several Circuits to the Grand Juries of the several Counties or places by their Learned speeches and recommending unto them what they should enquire and present what they know and not tarry untill by chance or malice it be brought unto them which for the most part proves to be as little effectual as if they should be required to have a care of their Bill of Fare or what good provision of Meat and Wine was to be had at Dinner from whence well Luxuriated and Tobaccoed as unto not a few of them if they get home at any reasonable time of the night they have done their Countrey service that they have and all is well and for the little that they know is like to continue But it was not thought to have been enough in that our great Justiciar King Edward the first his Reign when he Commissionated some of his Justices to Impannell Juries in every Ward of London where it was found and returned upon their Oaths in Anno 3. of his Reign Quod Civitas London cum suis pertin cum Com. Middlesex tenetur in Capite de Domino Rege pro certa Annua pentione soluta ad Scaccarium Dominum Regis per Vicecom London Quod Dominus Radolphus de Berners Mil. ten unum messuagium duo molend aquatic cum pertin in paroch Sancti Botolphi extra Algate quae vocantur the Knights fee quod quidem Tenementum debet invenire Domino Regi unum servientem Armatum in uno Turretto Turris London per xl dies tempore guerra ad proprios sumptus in ultima guerrae fecit defalc c. Dicunt etiam quod in Com. Midd. sunt 7 Hundred Wapp Tithing pertin ad Civit. London Palat. Westminster Keneton Judaismum Turrim Civit. London in manu sua Inquisitio facta per 12 Jur. de Warda Anketili de Alneranzo Civis Aldermanni London super certis Articulis ex parte Domini Regis E. Anno ejusdemtertio apud Sanctum Martinum magnum London eisdem Jur. tradit In which dicunt quod Civit. London Turr. ejusdem Westm. Com. Midd. sunt de Dominico Domini Regis quod reddant Domino Regi per Annum 400l Item dicunt quod Wynton Northampton Southampton Oxon Bristoll Ebor. al. Civitat Burg. quorum nomina ignorant sunt de Dominico Domini Regis reddunt certam pecuniae Summam annuatim sed quantum ignorant Et quod Dominus Johannes quondam Rex Angliae pater Domini H. Regis dedit Elianorae tunc temporis Reginae Angliae Ripam Regiam in Civitate London quae fuit de Jure est de Dominico Domini Regis In which that great princes inquisitions and desire of administring Justice to his people It is not to pass unobserved that amongst all his Quo Warranto's what Liberties were Claimed in every part of the Nation and every man that would enjoy them driven not to conceal but Claim them there was untill the 22 year of his Reign when the disused house of Commons first erected in and by Simon Montfort's aforesaid Rebellion was again ordained to be elected with some modification there was not any claim of Parliament Liberty nor in any of our after Kings Reigns nor is it at any time to be called a Liberty to be Crowded under that Denomination for that it was but Transitory not fixt to any person or Land and was but vaga incerta that opinion of a would be Learned Lawyer and Recorder in the County of Surry reprehended openly by a Judge that it was a privilege or liberty of Parliament to use some Art by a Counterfeit Deed or otherwise to make himself to be a Freeholder with an Intent to be a Parliament-man Which Jury presented Pourprestures in stopping up the way
County it was adjudged by the House of Commons to be void because it was against the Tenor and exception of the Writ and that he ought to be Fined In the debate whither the Speaker should send his Warrant to the Clerk of the Crown for the Election of a Burgess it was answered by one of that House and not contradicted that since 26. Eliz. he did ex officio send his Warrant to the Clerk of the Crown who is to certifie the Lord Keeper and so make the Warrant Sr Francis Hastings a member going down the Stairs a Page offering to thrust him was brought to the Barr and committed but was the next day upon the motion of Sr Francis and his submission upon his knees released some of the House moved to send him to a Barbers to have his hair cut because it was too long but others disswaded it as a matter not becoming the gravity of the House Sr Walter Rawleigh declared that the Queen had sold her jewels the money lent her by her Subjects was yet unpaid she had sold much of her Lands spared money out of her own purse and apparell for her peoples sakes and for his own part wished that they would bountifully according to their Estates contribute to her Majesties necessities as they now stand Mr Townsend one of the Members declared in the House of Commons that they were Summoned and called as a grand Jury of the Land though not upon their Oaths yet upon their conscience and was not contradicted Sr Edward Hobby said it was always the custom of the House of Commons to have their Warrant for the Election of a new Member directed by their Speaker to the Clark of the Crown But Sr Francis Hastings said that the Lord Keeper had in private informed him that he had rather have it made to himself then to any inferior Minister Sr Edward Hobby said that the Parliament being the highest Court was to Command all other Courts A bill being brought in for explanation of the Common Law concerning the Queens Letters-patents and certain Monopolies Mr Spicer a Burgess of Warwick said that bill might touch the prerogative Royall which was as he had learned so transcendant as the eye of the Subject may not aspire thereunto and therefore be it far from him that the State and prerogative Royall of the Prince should be tyed by him or the Act of any other Subject Mr Francis Bacon said for the prerogative royall of the Prince for his part he ever allowed it and is such as he hoped should never be discussed the Queen is our Sovereign hath both a restraning and enlarging liberty of her Prerogative that is hath power by her patents to set at liberty things restrained by Statute Law by Non obstante's of Penall Laws or otherwise and by her Prerogative to restrain things that are at liberty as by her Letters-Patents for new inventions license for transportation c. But Mr Speaker pointing to the bill said this is no stranger in this place but a stranger in this vestment the use hath been ever by petition to humble our selves to her Majesty and by petition to desire to have the grievances redressed especially when the remedy toucheth her in Right or Prerogative If her Majesty make a patent or a Monopoly to any of her servants that we must cry out against but if she grants it to a namber of Burgesses or a Corporation that must stand and that forsooth is no Monopoly I say and I say again that we ought not to deal or meddle with or judge of her Majesties Prerogative I wish every man therefore to be carefull of this point Mr Lawrence Hyde said I do owe a duty to God and Loyalty to my Prince I made it the Bill and I think I understand it far be it from this heart of mine to write anything in prejudice or derogation of her Majesties Prerogative Royall and the State Mr Serjeant Harris moved that the Queen might be petitioned by the House in all Humility Mr Francis Moor afterwatds Serjeant Moor said he did know the Queens Prerogative was a thing curious to be dealt with Sr George Moor said We know the power of her Majesty cannot be restrained by any Act why therefore should we thus talk Admit we should make the Statute with a non obstante yet the Queen may grant a Patent with a non obstante to cross it Mr Spicer said He was no Apostate but should stick to his former faith which was that it should be by way of Petition and that a course by Bill would neither be gratum nor tutum Mr Davies said God had given power to absolute Princes which he attributeth to himself Dixi quod Dii estis and as he attributes unto them he hath given unto them Majesty Justice and Mercy Majesty in respect of the Honour that a Subject oweth unto his Prince Justice in respect he can do no Wrong and therefore the Law is in First H. 7. the King cannot commit a disseisin Mercy in respect he giveth leave to his Subjects to right themselves by Law Mr Secretary Cecill said I am a Servant to the Queen and before I would speak or give any consent to a case that should debase her Sovereignty or abridge it I would wish my tongue cut out of my Head I am sure there were Law-Makers before there were Laws if you stand upon Law and dispute her Majesties Prerogative hear what Bracton saith Praerogatium nemo audeat disputare for my own part I like not such courses should be taken and you Mr Speaker should perform the charge which her Majesty gave unto you at the beginning of this Parliament not to receive Bills of this nature for her Majesties ears be open to all our grievances and her hands stretched out to every mans petition All which worthy and dutyfull expressions of duty and Loyalty to their Sovereign were made by Mr Spicer Mr Francis Bacon Sr Robert Cecill Sr George Moor Serjeant Francis Moore Sr Walter Rawleigh and others without any neglect of the good of the publick or the Office of Members of the House of Commons Elected only upon their Princes Writs and Warrants ad faciendum consentiendum to those things which should be by their Soveregn ordained by the advice of the Lords Spirituall and Temporall in Parliament assembled without any question or contradiction made thereupon or calling them to the Bar Imprisoning them in the Tower of London excluding them the House or making them ask pardon upon their knees with other exorbitances which some of their Successors have too often usurped to ask pardon of their fellow Members who did not at all represent those that Elected them who were not wont to call everything that suited not with their fancies to be an Error against the sence or Tyde of the House or to be sent to the prison of the Tower of London none of their prison or under their command or Authority without their
proper for Members of the House of Commons in Parliament may be extended to all that they shall fancy or think to be necessary or suitable to their incroaching humours or designs and may be very great loosers by the bargain if by such a Gross mistake they make all that is or shall be their own proper Estates allowed or given unto them by the bounty and munificence of our Kings and Princes and their Feudal Laws to be Priviledges of Parliament when their Properties and Liberties are not Priviledges of Parliament and all kind of Priviledges are and ought to be subject unto these two grand Rules of Law and may and ought to be forfeitable by a non user or misuer no Praescripton or length of time in such cases being to be made use of against the King and some Corporations as the Burrough of Colchester procured an Exemption from sending Members to the House of Commons in Parliament in regard of their charge of Building or Repairing their Town-walls and New-Castle upon Tyne did the like propter inopiam and charge and trouble to defend themselves against the Scots and Priviledges of Parliament are not nor can with any propriety of Speech Truth Reason or Understanding be called Liberties Properties or Franchises which they that make such a noise with them would be sorry to have so brittle short or uncertain Title in or unto their own Rights in their own Estates Lands or Livelihoods and had better be at the charge to go to School again or fee a Lawyer to instruct or make them understand the difference betwixt Priviledges of Parliament and Priviledges that do no way appertain unto the aforesaid Parliament Priviledges and betwixt Privilegium and Proprium and cannot sure be so vain or foolish as to think that they were Elected by the Peoples Authority and their own and not by the Kings or that after the King hath allowed them a Speaker for otherwise he must be at the trouble to forsake his own proper place Chair of Estate or Throne in the House of Peers and sit in the House of Commons with them and hear their Debates Discourses and Speeches pro aut contra which might have abridged them of their Priviledge of Freedom of Speech granted at his allowance of their Speaker or that by the immediate causing to be carried before that their allowed Speaker in the presence of these many Members of the House of Commons that came to attend him to the King one of his Royal Masses or Maces Crowned usually born before our King as Ensigns of Majesty to attend him during the time of his Speakership at home or abroad in the House of Commons in Parliament or without whether it continue for a short or long time as many of our Parliaments have done with an allowance of five pounds per diem for his House-keeping and Table-provision whereof many of their Members do not seldom partake the Lord Steward of the Kings Houshold having likewise a large Allowance of Expences by the King for his Table to entertain such of the Nobility and others as during the time of Parliament will come to eat with him besides many large Fees in the making of Orders and passing of Bills or Acts of Parliament for Laws Naturalizations c. which could not be legally taken without the Kings Tacit permission the late illegal and unparliamentary way never used in any Kingdom Senate or Republick or in this Kingdom to suffer their Speaker or his Clerks to make a great weekly gain by the Printing and Publishing to be sold at every Sationers or Booksellers Shops and cryed up and down the Streets in London and Westminster by Men Women Girls and Boys all that is or hath been done in the Commons House of Parliament to the no small profit of their Speaker excepted or that when any person not of that House who have not by any supposed Priviledge any Serjeant Lictor Catchpole or Messenger fastes or secures to attend them or any particular Prison allotted unto them who by their Commissions Elections or Trusts reposed in them by their King and Countries may search and never find any power or Authority lodged in them who never were or are any Court of Judicature to Seise Arrest or Imprison any of their Fellow Subjects but since that late Incroachment which hath no older a Date than about the latter end of the Raign of our King James the First who upon his observation of some of their Irregularities jestingly said that the House of Commons in Parliament were an House of Kings it never being intended by those that Elected them or our Kings and Princes that admitted them that they should have or exercise any power to Seise or Imprison or any place or Prison allowed by our Kings as their particular Prison and though it appears that they had in the latter end of the Raign of King Henry 6. a Clerk yet it was by the grants of our Kings by themselves have by the Kings permission appointed Door-keepers but upon any occasion or cause of Imprisonment or punishing any offenders could find no other means Praesident or way unto it than to make use of the Kings Serjeant at Arms attending their Speaker who arresteth and either carrieth them to Prison to the Tower of London which is no Prison appropriate to matters of Parliament either to the House of Peers who are to consult and advise their Soveraign or the House of Commons to Assent and obey the Tower of London being only the Kings Prison for special offenders and more than ordinary safe Custody the Marshallsea for the Courts of Kings-Bench and Marshallsea the Fleet for the most of the Courts in Westminster-Hall that was anciently the Kings House or Palace every County or City in England and Wales and the Court of Admiralty having their particular Prisons appertaining to their Coercive Power subordinate to their King every Prison being alwaies stiled and said to be prisona nostra or prisona domini Regis the Prison for or of the King whereby to restrain offenders of their Liberties and keep them in the Custody of the Law until they can be tryed and give Satisfaction to the Law so as if there were no other cogent arguments or evidences amongst multitudes of those that in our Annals and Records and the whole frame and constitution of our Kingly government to support and justify the Soveraignty thereof that only one of our Kings allowing their Speaker the attendance of one of their Serjeant at Arms with his Mass or Mace as an Ensign of Royal Majesty with a pension for his support and House keeping and an allowance of large Fees as aforesaid might be sufficient to proclaim a most certain Soveraignty and Supremacy in our Kings and Princes and none at all in the House of Commons who may do well to take more heed in their ways and incroaching upon Regal Authority which in the Raigns of King Edward the third and King Richard the 2d
unarbitrary in their procedures is so always ready to succour the Complaints of People as it never willingly makes it self to be the cause of it And cannot misrepresent the House of Peers to the King and his People in the Case of Mr. Fitz Harris or any others when that honourable Assembly takes so much care as it doth to repress Arbitrary Power and doth all it can to protect the whole Nation from it and many of the House of Commons Impeachments have been disallowed by the King and his House of Peers in Parliament without any ground or cause of fear of Arbitrary Power which can no where be so mischievously placed as in the giddy multitude whose Impeachments would be worse than the Ostracisme at Athens and so often overturn and tire all the wise men and good men in the Nation as there would be none but such as deserve not to be so stiled to manage the Affairs of the Government subordinate to their King and Soveraign To all which may be added if the former Presidents cited to assert the Kings Power of Pardoning as well after an Impeachment made by the Commons in Parliament as before and after an Impeachment made by the Commons and received by the Lords in Parliament or made both by the Lords and Commons in Parliament be not not sufficient that of Hugh le Despenser Son of Hugh le Despenser the younger a Lord of a great Estate which is thus entred in the Parliament Roll of the fifth year of the Raign of King Edward the Third ought surely to satisfie that the Laws and reasonable Customs of England will warrant it Anno 5 E. 3. Sir Eubule le Strange and eleven other Mainprisers being to bring forth the Body of Hugh the Son of Hugh le Despenser the younger saith the Record A respondre au prochein Parlement de ester au droit affaire ce de liu en conseil soit ordine mesuerent le Corps le dit Hugh devant nostre Seigneur le Roi Countes Barons autres Grantz en mesme le Parlement monstrent les L'res Patents du Roi de Pardon al dit Hugh forisfacturam vite membrorum sectam pacis homicidia roborias Felonias omnes transgressiones c. Dated 20 Martii anno primo Regni sui Et priant a n're Seigneur le Roi quil le vousist delivrer de las Mainprise faire audit Hugh sa grace n're Seigneur le Roi eiant regard a ses dites L'res voilant uttroier a la Priere le dit Mons'r Eble autres Main pernors avant dit auxint de les Prelatz qui prierent molt especialment pur lui si ad comande de sa grace sa delivrance Et voet que ses Menpernors avant ditz chescun d'eux soient dischargez de leur Mainprise auxint le dit Hugh soit quit delivrers de Prisone de garde yssint si ho'me trove cause devors lui autre nest uncore trove quil estoise au droit And the English Translator or Abridger of the Parliament Records hath observed that the old usage was that when any Person being in the Kings displeasure was thereof acquitted by Tryal or Pardon yet notwithstanding he was to put in twelve of his Peers to be his Sureties for his good Behaviour at the Kings pleasure And may be accompanied by the Case of Richard Earl of Arundel in the 22 year of the Raign of King Richard the Second being Appealed by the Lords Appellant and they requiring the King that such Persons Appealed that were under Arrest might come to their Tryal it was commanded to Ralph Lord Nevil Constable of the Tower of London to bring forth the said Richard Earl of Arundel then in his custody whom the said Constable brought into the Parliament at which time the Lords Appellants came also in their proper Persons To the which Earl the Duke of Lancaster who was then hatching the Treason which afterwards in Storms of State and Blood came to effect against the King by the Kings Coommandment and Assent of the Lords declared the whole circumstances after the reading and declaring whereof the Earl of Arundel who in Anno 11 of that Kings Raign had been one of the Appellants together with Henry Earl of Derby Son of the said Duke of Lancaster and afterwards the usurping King Henry the Fourth against Robert de Vere Duke of Ireland and Earl of Oxford and some other Ministers of State under King Richard the Second alledged that he had one Pardon granted in the Eleventh year of the Raign of King Richard the Second and another Pardon granted but six years before that present time And prays that they might be allowed To which the Duke answered that for as much as they were unlawfully made the present Parliament had revoked them And the said Earl therefore was willed to say further for himself at his peril whereupon Sir Walter Clopton Chief Justice by the Kings Commandment declared to the said Earl that if he said no other thing the Law would adjudge him guilty of all the Actions against him The which Earl notwithstanding would say no other thing but required allowance of his Pardons And thereupon the Lords Appellant in their proper Persons desired that Judgment might be given against the said Earl as Convict of the Treason aforesaid Whereupon the Duke of Lancaster by the Assent of the King Bishops and Lords adjudged the said Earl to be Convict of all the Articles aforesaid and thereby a Traytor to the King and Realm and that he should be hanged drawn and quartered and forfeit all his Lands in Fee or fee-Fee-tail as he had the nineteenth day of September in the tenth year of the Kings Raign together with all his Goods and Chattels But for that the said Earl was come of noble Blood and House the King pardoned the hanging drawing and quartering and granted that he should be beheaded which was done accordingly But Anno 1 Hen. 4. the Commons do pray the reversal of that Judgment given against him and restoration of Thomas the Son and Heir of the said Richard Earl of Arundel Unto which the King answered he hath shewed favour to Thomas now Earl and to others as doth appear The Commons do notwithstanding pray that the Records touching the Inheritance of the said Richard Earl of Arundel late imbezelled may be searched for and restored Unto which was answered the King willeth And their noble Predecessors in that Honourable House of Peers the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament long before that videlicet in the fifth year of the Raign of King Edward the Third made no scruple or moat point or question in Law whether the power of pardoning was valid and solely in the King after an Impeachment of the Lords in Parliament when in the Case of Edmond Mortimer the Son of Roger Mortimer Earl of March a Peer of great Nobility and Estate the
without any wiser Body to regulate or take care of their Actions would deem it to be a brave Sport and Liberty to play with the Fire until they had set the whole House on fire and burnt themselves into the bargain and if after he had by his practice and study of the Common Law which was nothing but our Feudal Laws too much forgotten or unknown unto those that would be called our Common Lawyers and gaining 10000 l. per Annum Lands of Inheritance made his boast that he had destroyed the so fixed and established Deeds of Entail and the Wills and Intent of the Donors as nothing of Collusion Figments or other Devices should prejudice and no Gentleman or Lover of Honour Gentry or Families would ever have had an hand in such a destruction Levelling Clowning Citizening and Ungentlemanning all or too many of the Ancient Families of England And if he could have lived to have seen or felt the tossing plundering and washing in Blood three great and flourishing Kingdoms would have wept bitterly and lamented or with Job have cursed the hour or time of his birth that he should ever have given the occasion or been Instrumental in the promoting or being a Contributor unto those very many dire Confusions and Disasters that after happened for if he had well read and weighed the History and Records both before shortly after the gaining of that Act of Parliament de Tallagio non concedendo without the consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in Parliament Assembled and how much that great and prudent Prince King Edward the first was pressed and pinched when his important affairs caused his sudden transfrecation by the overpowering party of three of his greatest Nobility viz. Bohun Earl of Hereford and Essex Constable of England Clare Earl of Gloucester and Hertford and Bigod Earl of Norfolk Earl Marshal of England all whom and their Ancestors had been advanced to those their Grandeurs by him and his Royal Progenitors had so catched an advantage upon him and were so merciless in their demands as they not only would not allow him a saving of his Jure Regis very usual and necessary in many of our Kings and Princes grants as well in the time of Parliaments as without but enforced an Oath upon him which he took so unkindly as he was constrained shortly after to procure the Pope to absolve him of for that it had been by a force put upon him which a Protestant Pope might have had a Warrant from God Almighty so to have done but did after his return into England so remember their ill usage of him as he seized their three grand Estates and made the two former so well to be contented with the regaining of his favour as Bohun married the one of his Daughters and Clare the other without any portions with an Entail of their Lands upon the Heirs of the Bodies of their Wives the Remainder to the Crown laid so great 〈…〉 Fine and Ransom upon Bigod the Earl Marshal as he being never able to pay it afterwards forfeited and lost all his great Estate and be all of them so well satisfied with his doings therein as they were in the 34th year of his Raign glad to obtain his Pardon with a Remissimus omnem Rancorem And they and Sir Edward Coke might have believed that that very prudent Prince might with great reason and truth have believed his Regality safe enough without a Salvo Jure Regis when the Law and Government it self and the Good and Interest of every Man his Estate and Posterity was and would be always especially concerned in the necessity aid and preservation of the King their common Parent appointed by God to be the Protector of them And our singularly learned Bracton hath not informed us amiss when he concluded that Rex facit Legem in the first place Lex facit Regem in the second giveth him Authority and Power to guard that Regality which God hath given him for the protection of the People committed to his charge who are not to govern their King but to be governed by him and should certainly have the means to effect it for how should he have power to do it or procure his People to have a Commerce or Trade with their Neighbour People or Princes if he as their King had not any or a just Superiority over them c. and must not for all that have and enjoy those Duties Rights and Customs which not only all our Kings Royal Progenitors but their Neighbour Princes and even Bastard and self-making Republiques have quietly and peaceably enjoyed without the Aid and Assistance of any the Suffrage of the giddy Rabble and vulgar sort of the People controuling in their unfixt and instable Opinions those of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the wiser and more concerned part of the People of which and the Rights and Customs due and payable to our Kings and Princes Sir John Davies a learned Lawyer in the Raign of our King James the first hath given us a learned full and judicious Account which well understood might adjudge that Petition of Right to deserve no better an entertainment than the Statute of Gloucester made in 15 E. 3. which by the Opinion of the Judges and Lords Spiritual and Temporal was against the Kings Praerogative and contrary to the Laws and Customs of the Realm of England and ought not to have the force and strength of a Statute and Sir Edward Coke might have remembred that in the Raign of King Edward the Third the Commons of England did in Parliament complain that Franchises had for time past been so largely granted by the King that almost all the Land was enfranchised to the great arreirisment estenisement of the Common Law which they might have called the Feudal Law and to the great oppression of the People and prayed the King to restrain such Grants hereafter unto which was answered The Lords will take order that such Franchises as shall be granted shall be by good Advice And that if by any Statute made in the 25th year of the Raign of King Edward 3. it was ordained that no man should be compelled to make any Loan to the King against his will because such Laws were against Reason and the Franchise of the Land that Statute when it shall be found will clearly also appear to be against our Ancient Monarchick Government Fundamentally grounded upon our Feudal Laws that our Magna Charta Charta de Foresta are only some Indulgence and Qualification of some hardship or Rigour of them that the Excommunication adjudged to be by the Statute of 25 E. 1. ca. 4. And the aforesaid dire Anathema's and Curse pronounced in that Procession through Westminster-Hall to the Abbey Church of Westminster against the Infringers of those our Grand Charters are justly and truly to be charged upon the Violaters and Abusers of our Feudal Laws and
Status pro Stallo Monachorum Cannnicorum in Ecclesia Galbertus in vita Caroli Com. Flandr n. 72. Status simul sedes Fratrum dejectae sunt Idem n. 98. Inter columnas quippe solarii specula Status suos ex scriniorum aggoribus cumulis scamnorum prostituerant Stephanus Tornacensis Epist. 12. Assignetis ei statum in Choro sicut habere solet sedem in Capitulo Locum in Refectorio statutum de Installatione Canonicorum Bononiensium in Morinis Assignaturque sibi status in Choro secundum qualitatem capacitatem recepti locus in Capituli For they must have no small influence upon the minds and reason of mankind as well as that which they designed to have upon the Estates of those that would be so credulously foolish as to believe them to be a third Estate to be added unto the former two very ancient Estates in times of Parliament viz. The Lords Spiritual and Temporal and it must be a strong and strange kind of delusion as much or more enchanting than the Magicians or Southsayers of Egypt that could not expound the meaning of Pharaohs dreams or far exceed the Art of the Painter that made Zeuxis Grapes so very semblable or like unto them as the Birds were made Fools and essayed to eat them or how should or would be self created Estates think themselves to be such Estates when if any such could have been or ever had been they must rather have been the Estates or such Estates that sent them but not to be such Estates but only as their Procurators Attorneys or Deputies or what an efficacious strange Art must it be that could when miracles have been long ago ceased make a shadow pass for a Substance those that are at home no such Estates but they that were only sent are no sooner once admitted in Parliament but suddenly and ex se they become parts of that they would call the third Estate when they that sent and helped to make them Members of Parliament know of no such Grandeur or title bestowed upon them how or by whom when they were in Drink or Fudled at the time of the Election or Drinking Cheating day of various and senseless bribing bargaining partialities shamefully exercised in those our late times of Rebellion and Confusion when some that were Electors the Sheriff of the County being not himself to be Elected but commanded to cause the Election fairly to be made of Burgesses for Cities or Towns justly sending Knights of the Shires Citizens or Burgesses to Parliament not having a freehold Estate under forty shillings per Annum is at the same time thrashing in another Mans Barn or at Plow or at some dayly servile labour and neither he or his High-Crown-Hatted-Wife knew of any such honour fallen upon them or how such an hic or ubique Estateship vested in him or how he that is represented should be less in degree or honour than he that sent and helped him to be Elected and it will be difficulty enough for the third Estate Asserters to assail them from Perjury and Treason in their endeavouring to usurp upon their Soveraign and to be coordinate with him or to free them from the forfeiture of their Lands and Estates unto their Mesne Lords And it is very probable that King Henry the third in the 52 year of his Raign and his Parliament did not intend to make the Common sort of People or smaller part of the Nation to be equal with the Archbishops Bishops Abbots Priors Earls Barons and Religious Men and Women who were by that Statute exempt from coming to the Sheriffs turn or being ranked with them as Estates the Sheriffs turns being as Sr. Edward Coke saith ordinarily composed of the Bayliffs of Lords of Manors Servants and other Common sort of people that Court having no Jurisdiction to try any Action other than under forty Shillings value And there could not certainly be a greater parcel of wickedness credulity and ignorance hardly to be decerned or distinguished how they or any of their Adherents can harbour or give any entertainment to the least Embrio or parcel of opinion that all or any of the Members in the House of Commons in Parliament are a third Estate when they themselves did so little believe it as in their frequent Petitions in Parliament unto their Kings they could give themselves no greater a Title than your Pauvrez Communs your Leiges and being asked their advice in Parliament touching some especial matters denied to give it themselves but referred it unto the Councel of his Lords Spiritual and Temporal at another time refused because they had no Skill or knowledge in the affairs of Peace or War the principal parts of government and in the 13th year of the Raign of King Edward the third upon that Kings demand of an unusual Tax upon the Common people as they thought prayed leave to go into their several Counties to consult those that sent and returned again with an Assent and Answer And when King Henry the fourth appeared to be offended with them came sorrowfully before him and humbly begged his pardon could not as it appears in several of our Parliament Records when the protection of themselves their Posterities and Estates were deeply concerned give their Kings and Princes any Aids or Subsidies without the consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal that in the Raign of King Henry the fourth could not protect Sir Thomas Hexey one of their Members from an Accusation and Punishment by the King that in the Raign of King Henry the sixth could not support their own Clerk and in the Raigns of several of our Kings have been enforced to pray Aid of them by their Writs out of their Chancery to protect themselves and Moenial Servants in time of Parliaments That Queen Mary caused 39. of their Members to be indicted in the Court of Kings Bench for being absent from Parliament wherein none of them though Plowden a very learned Lawyer was one durst adventure to plead or insist upon any their pretended Soveraignty of Parliament or that they were a third Estate or part thereof That Queen Elizabeth one of the greatest and most vertuous of Princess that ever weilded a Scepter and sate in our English Throne could upon no greater an offence of Bromley and Welsh two of the Knights of the Shire for the County of Worcester then endeavouring to Petition the House of the Lords to joyn with them to supplicate her Majesty to declare her Successor did forbid them to go to the Parliament but keep their Chambers and shortly after committed them Prisoners in the Tower of London and did not long after sitting the Parliament Arraign and try in her Court of Kings-Bench for High Treason Doctor Parry a Member of Parliament and caused him to be drawn hanged and quartered and may read that in 16 R. 2. in an Act of Parliament made against Provisions at Rome under a Penalty of
Durham Earls of Northampton Arundel Warwick Oxford Suffolk and Hugh le Despenser Lord of Glamorgan to the whole so misnamed Estate of Parliament when the King could not be one of them not at all being present purporting that whereas the King at his Arrival at Hoges in Normandy had made his Eldest Son the Prince of Wales Knight he ought to have of the Realm forty Shillings for every Knights Fee which they all granted and took Order for the speedy levying thereof 25 E. 3. Sir John Matravers pardon was confirmed by the whole missettled Estates whereof the King could not be accompted any of them for he granted the pardon 28 E. 3. Richard Earl of Arundel by Petition to the King praying to have the Attainder of Edmond Earl of Arundel his Father reversed and himself restored to his Lands and Possessions upon the view of the Record and and the said Richard Earl of Arundels Allegation that his Father was wrongfully put to death and was never heard the whole Estates saith that ill Translator adjudged he was wrongfully put to Death and Restored the said Earl to the benefit of the Law which none could do but the King who was petitioned and having the sole interest in the forfeiture was none of those which were wrongfully called the whole Estates 37 E. 3. Where it is said that at the end of the Parliament the Chancellor in the presence of the King shewed that the King meant to execute the Statute of Apparel and therefore charged every State to further the same the King could not be understood to charge himself After which he demanded of the whole Estates so as before mistaken whether they would have such things as they agreed on to be by way of Ordinance or of Statute they answered by way of Ordinance for that they being to take benefit thereby might amend the same at their pleasure And so the King having given thanks to all the as aforesaid miscloped Estates for their pains taken licensed them to depart which should be enough to demonstrate that the Granter and Grantees were not alone or conjoynt and that the King giving thanks to the Estates did not give it to himself 42 E. 3. The Archbishop of Canterbury on the Kings behalf gave thanks to the whole in the like manner mis-termed Estate for their Aids and Subsidies granted unto the King wherein assuredly the Archbishop of Canterbury did not understand the King to be any part of the whole Estate which the King gave thanks unto The Commons by their Speaker desiring a full declaration of the Kings necessity require him to have consideration of the Commons poor Estate The King declared to the Commons that it was as necessary to provide for the safety of the Kings Estate as for the Common-wealth Anno 6. Regis Richardi 2. after Receivers and Triers of Petitions named Commandment was given that all persons and Estates which imported no more being rightly understood than conditions or sorts of men miscalled as aforesaid should the next day have the cause of summoning the Parliament declared 11 R. 2. The Parliament was said to have been adjourned by the common Assent of the whole Estates the first time of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal being called the Estates without or with the Commons joyned with them no such names or words appellations or Titles were either known or in use nor any such words or Titles as Estates being to be found in the Originals or Parliament Rolls before Anno 11 R. 2. for no more appeareth in the Original than in and under these expressions viz. Et mesme le vendredi auxint a cause ce fest solempnite de pasch estoit a progeno ii coveient le Roi les Seigneurs tautx autres entendre a devotion le Parlement coe assent le toutz Estats le Parlement estoit continez del dit vendredi tanque Lindy lendemain de la equinziesme de Pasch adonquez prochem ensuent commandez per le Roy a toutz les Seigneurs Communs du dit Parlement Quils seroient a Westminster le dimengo en la dite quinzieme de pascha a plustaid sur ceo noevelles briefs furent â—aiots a toutz les Seigneurs somons au dit parlement de yestre a la dite quinzieme sur certaine peine a limiter per les Seiguro qui seroient presents en dit Parlement a la quinzieme avant dite le quel Limdy le dit Parlement fust recommence tenat son cours selont la request des Communs grant de nostre Seigur le Roi avant ditz And then but the inconsiderate hasty new created word of the Clerks in a distracted time when the great Ministers of State in two contrary Factions to the ruin of the King and many of themselves as it afterwards sadly happened were quarrelling with each other and all the Bishops so affrighted as they were enforced to make their Protestation against any proceedings to be made in that so disturbed a Parliament In Anno 21. R. 2. The Bishop of Exeter Chancellor of England taking his Theme or Text out of Ezechiel Rex unius omnibus erat proved by many Authors that by any other means than by one sole King no Realm could be well governed For which cause the King had assembled the Estates in Parliament to be informed of the rights of his Crown withheld which Oration afterwards was to the same effect seconded by Sir John Bussey Knight Speaker of the House of Commons King Richard the second being as a Prisoner in the Tower of London made the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Hereford his Procurators to publish his Rem 〈…〉 of the Kingdom to the whole Estates Which whether at at that time distinguished or divided into three doth not appear viz. into Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons could not comprehend the King who was not to be present but gave the direction and authority to his said Procurators and could never have been understood to have been present or one of them himself or to have made such a prosecution against or for himself After the claim made unto the Crown of England in Parliament by Henry Duke of Lancaster and a consultation had amongst the Lords and Estates not expressing that the Commons were a 3d. or any part thereof it being then altogether improbable that King Richard the 2d or any other representing for him was there present and to make one of the said pretended Estates as much out of the reach of probability that King Richard himself was one or a Person then acting against himself the Duke of Lancaster himself then affirming that the Kingdom was vacant And when the Usurping King Henry the 4th openly gave thanks to the whole Estates wherein is plainly evidenced that himself neither was or could be understood to be then or at any other time one of the said Estates The first day of the Parliament the Bishop of London
the Kings Brother and Chancellor of England in the behalf of the King Lords and Commons declaring the cause of calling the Parliament and taking for his Theme Multitudo Sapientum learnedly resembled the Government of the Realm to the Body of a man the Right-hand to the Church the Left-hand to the Temporalty and the other Members to the Commonalty of all which Members and Estates the King not deeming himself to be one was willing to have Councel The Archbishop of Canterbury Chancellor of England by the Kings commandment declaring the cause of the Summoning the Parliament and taking for his Theme Regem honorificate shewed them that on necessity every Member of mans Body would seek comfort of the Head as the Chief and applyed the same to the honouring of the King as the Head And in that his Oration mentioning the Lords Spiritual and Temporal Knights Citizens and Burgesses giveth them no Title of Estates but the Kings Leiges In the presence of John Duke of Bedford Brother of the King Lieutenant and Warden of England and the Lords and Commons the Bishop of Durham by his commandment declared that the King willed that the Church and all Estates should enjoy their Liberties which could not include the King It was ordained that all Estates should enjoy their Liberties without the words Concessimus which could not comprehend the King who granted it to them but not to himself The Chancellor at the first assembling of the Parliament declared that the King willeth that all Estates should enjoy their Liberties which must be intended to others that were his Subjects and not to himself that was none of them The Archbishop of York Chancellor of England declaring the cause of Summoning the Parliament said the King willeth that all Estates should enjoy their Liberties in which certainly he well knew that the Person willing or granting was not any of the Persons or Estates to whom he willed and granted that they should enjoy their Liberties The Duke of Gloucester being made Guardian or Keeper of England by the King sitting in the Chair the Archbishop of York being sick William Linwood Doctor of Laws declaring the cause of summoning the Parliaâ—ent said that the King willed that every Estate should enjoy their due Liberties which properly enough might be extensively taken to Military men and Soldiers the Gentry Agricolis opificibus all sorts of Trades Labourers Servants Apprentices Free-holders Copy-holders Lease-holders single Women and Children Tenants at Will and which never were themselves Estates but the several sorts and degrees thereof wherein if any Law Reason or Sense could make the King to be comprehended an inextricable problem or question would everlastingly remain unresolved who it was that so willed or granted The King sitting in his Chair of State John Bishop of Bath and Wells Chancellor of England in the presence of the Bishops Lords and Commons by the Kings Commandment declared the causes of summoning the Parliament taking for his Theme or Text the words sussipiant montes Pacem Colles Justitiam divided it into three parts according to the three Estates by the Hills he understood Bishops and Lords and Magistrates by little Hills Knights Esquires and Merchants by the People Husbandmen Artificers and Labourers By the which third Estates by sundry Authorities and Examples he learnedly proved that a Triple Political vertue ought to be in them viz. In the first Unity Peace and Concord In the second Equity Consideration Upright Justice without maintenance In the third due Obeysance to the King his Laws and Magistrates without grudging and gave them further to understand the King would have them to enjoy all their Liberties Of which third Estates the Chancellor in all probability neither the King or they that heard him did take or believe the King himself to be any part The 15th day of August the Plague beginning to increase the Chancellor by the Kings Commandment in the presence of the 3 Estates the Clerks Translator or Abridger being unwilling to relinquish their Novelty or Errors of which the commonest capacity or sense can never interpret the King to be one Prorogued the Parliament until the Quindena of St. Michael The Bishop of Bath and Wells Chancellor of England in the presence of the King Lords and Commons declaring the cause of the Summons of Parliament said that the King willed that all Estates should enjoy thâ—â— Liberties which might intitle the King to be the Party willing or granting but not any of the Parties who were to take benefit thereby It was enacted by the whole Estates which may be understood to be the King Lords Spiritual and that the Lords of the Kings Councel none of theirs should take such order for the Petition of the Town of Plymouth as to them should seem best Letters Patents being granted by the King to John Cardinal and Archbishop of Canterbury of divers Mannors and Lands parcel of the Dutchy of Lancaster under the Seal of the Dutchy were confirmed by the whole Estates for the performance of the last Will and Testament of King H. 5. though it was severed from the Crown and was no part of the concernment thereof nor had any relation to the Publick or any Parliamentory Affairs the King himself that granted the Letters Patents could not be interpreted to be one of those whole Estates which were said to have confirmed them By the whole Estates were confirmed King Henry the 6th Letters Patents of the Erection and Donation of Eton Colledge and also of Kings Colledge in Cambridge with the Lands thereunto belonging which might well conclude the King although he being the Donor could not be believed to be any part of the whole Estates who by their approbation are said to have confirmed his Letters Patents The Chancellor in the name of all the Lords in the presence of the King protested that the Peace which the King had taken with the French King was of his own making and will and not by any of the Lords procurations the which was enacted And it was enacted that a Statute made in the time of King H. 5. that no Peace should be taken with the French King that then was called the Dolphin of France without the assent of the three Estates of both Realms should be utterly revoked and that no Person for giving Counsel to the Peace of France be at any time to come impeached therefore which may demonstrate that neither the Dolphin of France nor the King of England were then accompted to be any part of the several 3. Estates of the said Kingdoms The King by his Chancellor declared that he willed that all Estates should enjoy their Liberties it cannot be with any probability supposed that either he or his Chancellor intended that himself was one of the said Estates The Archbishop of Canterbury Chancellor of England in the presence of the King gave thanks in his behalf to the 3. Estates wherein no