Selected quad for the lemma: land_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
land_n	hold_v	lord_n	rent_n	2,560	5	9.6389	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A67700	A discourse of government as examined by reason, Scripture, and law of the land, or, True weights and measures between soveraignty and liberty written in the year 1678 by Sir Philip Warwick.	Warwick, Philip, Sir, 1609-1683.	1694 (1694)	Wing W991; ESTC R27062	96,486	228

in a Politick body be the Government Monarchical or Aristocratical c. are but as single men in respect of the Head or Soveraign power for even these in respect of him or them are to be reputed even in their Politick Body but as single or private men so can no more resist the soveraign person or persons than a private man This I believe to be Apostolick doctrine And this the Recognitions made to our own Kings in Acts of Parliament warrant us to say Now a Prince that is thus secured in his Temporals by his own Church or by the Christian faith in relation to this doctrine had need give some very good account of the advantage he makes in his Spirituals by removing from this communion but I am assured his loss is equal in both Government examined by the Law of the Land IF this be the nature of Government in general and of Soveraign Persons What the law of England requires about subjection to whom Government is intrusted let us in the next place examine how the Laws of this our own Nation determine the cases We all know that our Government is a mixt Monarchy and yet by all Foreigners as Bodin Grotius and others is reputed an absolute Monarchy for limitations which transfer not the power unto any other but require only the consent of some other divest it not of the title of Monarchy or of the Kings being an absolute tho' not an arbitrary Monarch as hath been endeavoured to be proved in the foregoing sheets Our Laws say then that Axioms of Law All Persons are under the King and the King under none or omnis sub Rege ipse sub nullo He hath no Peer in his Kingdom nor any Superior but God or Satis ei erit quod Dominum habet ultorem then no Judge over him Allegiance sworn to him not only by single men but by the three Estates Allegiance is to be sworn to him and homage paid not only by every single person through the Kingdom but by every single member of his two Houses of Parliament for not one of them can sit there before he hath taken the oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and he that reads either of these oaths needs not seek where the Soveraignty is lodged And tho' these oaths were formed principally to disclaim Papal jurisdiction yet that abated they are but the old Legal oath of obedience Nay the three States of Subjects in the Kingdom viz. Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons as a politick body make the same recognition See the recognitions made to the ancient Kings even the Saxons and those to Edward 4. Henry 7. and Henry 8. Q. Elisabeth and especially to King James Great say they to him in an Act of Parliament are our blessings by uniting the two ancient Kingdoms or rather the two Imperial crowns c. and upon the knees of our hearts we agnize our most constant faith obedience and loyalty to your Majesty and your Royal Progeny And in this high Court of Parliament where all the whole body of the Realm and every particular member thereof either in person or by representation upon their own elections are by the laws of this Realm deemed to be personally present Sir Edward Coke observes by the laws of King Alfred as well as by those of the Conqueror the ancient Kings who were Saxons had all the lands of England in demeasnes Inst fol. 58. and the Barons and Lords of Mannors were by the Conqueror enfeoft with all which the King held not but they held it for defence of the Realm under the King and consequently they were to support it in time of danger This evidenced the Conqueror had seized the whole land by way of conquest So as the King was the grand Lord or Lord paramount and the Nobility and Gentry but the mean Lords and all the rest held in vassalage under the King or them Freeholders came in by the Nobilities ill husbandry and by their selling part of their land and enfranchizing of it But still the land was held by some tenure which obliged the Owner Lord or Commoner more or less as in Capite or free Soccage after the conquest for the defence of the land for indeed that is the ground-work of all society For every man is naturally bound with his All to defend the body Politick and the constitution of the Government tho' the quotum and the manner of the raising it had the Subjects consent that it might be the more equally laid and the more cheerfully paid and the more orderly levied and as an evidence the Government was not despotical but the people free and yet thus under subjection The limitations of the Kings prerogative The raising of money or taxes is one of those particulars wherein our Monarch is limited for he cannot raise money upon the Subject but by his Commons and with the consent of the Lords or by concurrence of them both yet the Commons can raise no money but to give unto the King or as the King accepts it for such a use Which is conviction enough that all the taxes of the long Parliament were illegal and their power an usurpation Many other instances there are of the Kings single Supremacy but without mentioning more for all are embowell'd in these few we will conclude with Sir H. Spelmans assertion in his Glossarium Omnis Regni justitia solius Regis est In the next place The Monarchy absolute in Parliament we will consider him in a Parliament and here his prerogative is unlimited or he is in his Zenith or he is entirely Soveraign for here the purse and the sword are joyned together Here or with consent of his Lords and Commons he makes what laws he finds necessary for publick weal which are the two great cases wherein Monarchical prerogative is limited for lives and liberties are secured to Subjects by the Common and Statute Laws of the Realm for we are a free People or we know the Law we walk by And yet in Parliament in matters wherein the publick safety is concerned or the Princes Person a new Law may declare that a treason which before that new law was not so But complication of Acts which were known before and acknowledged of an inferior species to treason before the making such a law cannot be made treason by that law tho' the person for them may suffer as a Traytor The great Act of Treason says nothing should be accounted treason which was not therein particularly named yet all this caution was to exclude inferior Courts from so denominating it but not the King in Parliament Indeed here prerogative is unlimited because here whatever is determined may justly be supposed well weighed and so provided as it may not entrench upon liberty in general tho' for example sake it fall severe on an individual Person But if a Prince be here importuned nay violated or his Houses advices be prest upon him by

in this kind how far an Episcopal Clergy as acknowledged and setled here in England exceeds all others through the whole world as best agreeing with Christ's institution and the Apostles practice judicious learned and Christian Examiners will best and soonest find out And we will conclude our remarks upon this Order of men with this experiment that in the year 1640 nothing raised so much the Rabble as did the Non-conformist Clergy who from all parts of the Kingdom came most up to the City and filled most of the pulpits and the Lecturers residing there and in this present year 1678 nothing so much secured the peace of that place nay we may say of the whole Nation for Whitehall had one kind of Guards and the Citizens true it is by the King's leave were their own Guards as did the Orthodoxy of the Clergy and the satisfactions the better sort of Citizens took in their own Ministers who so prudently preached down the then suspected designs against the Religion established and secured loyalty by Christian principles Nobility is or of old was usually the off-spring of virtue or valor or industry Nobility now it is more commonly the creature of the Prince for he is the fountain of honor Their order is like the lesser or planetary lights in the firmament which attend upon the sun they are to set forth the splendor or majesty of the soveraign throne yet sometimes they eclipse it If they withdraw their banks they often let in an inundation of Populacy and endanger the throne if they interpose their bodies they sometimes skreen the Populacy from the scorching heat of Soveraignty but they prey often upon both for as they are sometimes a restraint upon the Tyrant-Prince so they are often an encouragement to the giddy multitude to be contumacious and refractory and sometimes they have been so unnatural as to draw over the fickle multitude and to joyn themselves unto a forreign Prince against their true Soveraign as in the time of King John Which evidences that the body Politick like the Natural when the humors and gall overflow and the parts lose their temperament the whole looses its health If the Nobility be few and great they too often turn the scale of Government which they should keep upright if they be many or necessitous they first peel the Court and then are Court instruments to peel the people Nobility is a plant that will degenerate and though they often owe their fortunes as well as their qualities unto the Crown yet we have too many examples among us that the Sons and posterity of those Families which were wholly raised by the Prince employed themselves most to pull down the cloth of State Thus the noblest of men if they may but gratifie some violent passion or compass some present advantage they desert their station and the meanest things will be done by the greatest men When their numbers are many they appear but like a more splendid Gentry Henry the seventh did as it were undermine their greatness which in so mixt a Monarchy as ours is was not very compatible with Soveraignty in so few hands From that time this order of men in our Government hath not only been in the wain but may be supposed much to have degenerated for the ancient Nobility have much lessened their Estates and have made way for the principles of Oceana for cutting off the dependencies from themselves they made the Yeomanry free which bred our multitude of Freeholders who says Mr. Harrington have now the ballance of our land or land-land-rents and consequently in his opinion of our wealth and by his arguments consequently of our power but consult Mr. Wrenn and Oceana is drowned And our Reformation did as much for our Church-lands which seemed a fifth or sixt of the Kingdom All which contributed unto the late temporary subversion of our Government in our late good but unfortunate Prince's reign Charles the first God did restore us from this captivity but whether he be not drawing upon us for the abuse of that mercy the judgment we generally deserved as Regicides he knows whose ways are in the depth and past finding out This change had never been effected had not the Nobility forsaken that cloth of State they owed their dignity unto and ought to have protected but infirm must that palace be whose main beams shrink from the walls but down will those beams fall which are withdrawn from what ought to support them And when our Gentry do the like our very Soveraignty will fall to be among Mechanicks and not long after the vulgar Rabble will have a prospect for their ambition and when paltry Players both Clerical and Lay have got the habits of King and Priest and Nobles and Gentry the mock Comedy for some time will pass for a good form of Government But he that rules in heaven can only predict whilst an honest and condoling not upbraiding spirit may inoffensively because rationally forewarn Nobility in all nations as they have had more honor deferred unto them than other ranks of men so they have had more priviledges and immunities Boccalini I am sure hath the reflexion but I remember not whether I follow him step by step he resembles as I think Princes unto shepherds the Commonalty unto the sheep and the Nobility for Nobility were originally Soldiery unto the doggs This is not a derogatory term for it is but to follow a Metaphor So as says he if these be overawed that they may not bark and fight for their charge for they are to defend the shepherd as well as the sheep or if they be not armed with an iron collar of Generosity some extraordinary preheminence or priviledge but be awed and cowed by the shepherds boys or the rams of the flock both shepherd and sheep in a time of need or when some wolfish conquering King shall invade or a Home Usurper undermine both I say then such a sort of generous daring Spirits will be wanting and a bold Fellow that hath followed a loaden horse on foot will think he is as fit to ride on horseback and probably he may be so as the greatest Lord for a crab-wine is preferred to support the stomach before vinegar that sprang from a generous grape because turned If Nobility degenerate Princes should employ men who have the virtues not the titles of great men But if Nobles have both they are the sittest men to be employed for their extraction and their already being masters of moderate fortunes makes them have great advantages over men of natural and acquired parts though never so well exercised or experimented if new men for the tree is less envied that grows from a root and hath been long in growing than the mushroom that was not at night and shews a head in the morning Henry the seventh supposed he had strengthened the Crown when he cut the wings of the Nobility Henry the eighth vindicated the just rights of the Crown from the