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Escuage Voiages Royal Wardships and Aide Pour file marier pour faire fitz Chivaler livery ouster le maine all Statutes repealed concerning the same all Tenures hereafter to be created by the King his Heirs or Successors shall be in free and Common Socage Provided that that Act extend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
the States of Holland West-Freisland did by a Publique Decree order that omnia Instrumenta Feudalia publica Feudalia Scrinia should be searched put kept in order And in his Epistle Ded. unto the Estates aforesaid Judges of the said Feudal Court Dated no longer ago then in the Month of Sept. 1665. from Alemar saith likewise that de qua Intromissa saepissime quaerebatur denuo instaurata fuisset adeo ut vos the Estates qui hoc tempore ejusdem reminiscentis Feudalis Curiae Senatores sive pares estis negligereaut aliis postponere non posse And yet they do think Themselves at this day to be as free a people as any in the World with an high and mighty Hoghen Moghen into the bargain And the Framers and Voters of that overturning as much as it could of our ancient Monarchy many of whom as House of Commons Members in that Parliament were Knights Baronetts Knights of the Bath and Knights Batchelors might have been something more cautious then they were and taken more care of the fatall Consequences that might and would inevitably happen yea more then by Chance by an unavoidable necessity or for the liberties of 10000 manors in England and Wales and a great many of manors liberties in Ireland which had no other originall or Foundation then Monarchy or the unrebellious Feudall Laws and it and their continuance for what could they imagine but Confusion and Villany would follow in the order of Baronetts Created by King James in the 9th Year of his Reign limited at the first unto the number of 200. now supernumerated unto almost 1500. to hold by the tenure of maintayning 30. foot-Soldiers at 8d per diem for 3 Years for the regaining of the Province of Ulster in Ireland what for any of the Honourable Knights of the Garter that have no priviledge of Peers in Parliament what for the Knights of the Bath that are to be made at the Creation of every Prince of Wales being the King of Englands eldest Son what for such as our Kings have honoured or shall be pleased to Dignify with the honor of Knighthood or the Sword or to be an Eques Auratus what care was taken in that levelling Act in the effect of turning the Tenures in Capite and by Knight Service into free and Common Socage for the honour and degree of Knighthood or of that more meritorious extraordinary one of Knight Banneretts Was it ever intended they should go all to Plow with some ill brewed Ale to wet their Whistles with their sword and guilt spurrs promiscuously some with blew or red Garters or ribbons and the rest without and could there be no Exception or proviso's inserted in that Act for those Honourable degrees which appertained so only to the Sovereign or a power derived from them as our Queens Regent in their Incapacities of wearing or brandishing a sword or personal fighting are by themselves or others commissionated by them only to grant or give those Priviledges which are not a Few and can have no other derivation or reason for their Commencement then a Militando not as Common Soldiers but ex strenua continuata militia tantum adipiscatur honor when by the Imperiall Laws Knights ex Jure concessione principis prescriptione consue 〈…〉 dine were anciently at the receiving of that honourable o 〈…〉 to swear not to reveal any thing by solemn Oath or Vow 〈◊〉 concerneth his Sovereign or his Countrey never to put on Armour against his Prince never to forsake his Generall never to fly the field of his Enemy c. had Jus Annulorum as the Equestris Ordo were amongst the Roman Knights used to be honoured with when at the Battle and overthrow of them at Cannes there were gathered amongst the slain 2 Bushell of Rings in England and other Northern Kingdoms had jus Imaginum Coate Armorius and besides what Sr Edward Coke cannot deny to be an ancient priviledge due unto Knighthood as hath been before said to be free ab omni Tallagio a Knight is not to have his Equitature or Horse distrained and taken in Execution although it be for the Kings Debt a Knight accused of any Crime Treason shall not be examined but before his Competent Judge against a Knight in warr no prescription runneth neither shall he be compelled to be Guardian to Children except they be the Children of Knights shall not suffer any Ignominious Corporall Punishment as hanging upon a Gibbet unless first Degraded nor be set at any ransome but such as he shall be able after to maintain his Degree And in time of peace hath been so much valued and esteemed as 3 Knights Associated in the Kings Commission of Oyer and Terminer might hear and determine forcible Entries and outrages in the same Country or Province A Coroner formerly an especiall officer of the Crown was to be a Knight a Sheriffs Certificate and return of the Tallies of the Kings Creditors and Monies paid as due unto them is to be accompanied with the hands of 2 Knights a Sheriff cannot remove a plaint out of an Inferiour into a Superior Court without the testimony of 4 Knights Knights and no other are to be sent by the Sheriffs to make the View de malo lecti the Knights of the shires elected to be members of the House of Commons in Parliament ought to be gladiis cincti and the Commons have in Parliament Petitioned the King and obteyned a grant that it might not be otherwise Ou autrement tiel notables Esquiers Gentilhomes del nation des mesmes les Counties come soyent ables d'estre Chivalier noul home destre tiel Chivaler que estoite enles degrees de vadlet ou Varlet saith Mr Selden de south an Infant holding his Lands in Capite or by Knight Service shall not be in Ward after he is Knighted a Knight inhabiting in any City or town Corporate shall not be Impannelled in a Jury for the Tayal of a Criminall in a Civil Action for Debt or the like wherein any of the Nobility are plaintiffs or defendents 2 Knights are to be Impannelled on the Jury A Knight shall not be distrained to serve in person for Castle guard although he do hold Lands by that Tenure A certain number of Knights are to elect a Jury in a Writ of grand Assize and none but a Knight should be permitted to wear a Coller of S. S. or Golden or Guilt Spurrs And the Dignity of Chivaler or Knight hath been in England so honorable as Earls besides their Greater Titles would many times use the Title of Chivaler only and at other times desire to receive the Honour of Knighthood from the King after they were Earls and our Kings have sometimes sent their Eldest Sons to be Knighted by other Kings And a Villain which Sr Edward Coke stileth a Sokeman or one that holdeth in Socage is not by the Law of Nations and Arms to
disobliging unto any of them was to fall foul or out of the favour of all their great Alliances Friends Kindred numberless Tenants Servants Retainers Dependants and well-Wishers many of which being their own Relations Friends or Kindred might either help on and bring upon them a most certain and inevitable Ruine or put their small and fainting Estates into a languishing Condition when any the least Offences taken or given would be sure to effect it in the Displeasure of those who until the Reign of King Edward the First and some Ages after were so high and potent As that Ferrers Earl of Darby an Opposite to King Henry the Third in the Baron's Wars had Twenty Lordships in Barkeshire Three in Wiltshire in Essex Five in Oxfordshire Seven in Warwickshire Six in Lincolnshire Two in Buckinghamshire Two in Gloucestershire One Herefordshire Two Hantshire Three Nottinghamshire Three Leicestershire Thirty-Five Derbyshire One Hundred and Fourteen Staffordshire Seven of which was Chedley a parcel whereunto that part of Staffordshire appertained and besides had the Castle and Borough of Tudbury in that County together with many Advowsons Patronages c. and Knights Fees holding of him in those and other parts of England An Ancestor of Gilbert de Gaunt a partaker of the Norman Conquest another Opposite of King Henry the Third had in the Conquerors Survey One Lordship in Barkshire Three in Yorkshire Six in Cambridgeshire Two in Buckinghamshire One in Huntingtonshire Five in Northamptonshire One in Rutland One in Leicestershire One in Warwickshire Eighteen in Nottinghamshire One Hundred and Thirteen in Lincolnshire with Folkingham which was the Head of his Barony besides Knights Fees of those that held of him Patronages and Advowsons Fairs Markets Assize of Bread and Beer Pillory and Tumbrel c. Symon de Montfort Earl of Leicester was in the right of Amicia one of the Sisters and Co-heirs of Robert Fitz Parnel a Norman Earl of Leicester Lord high Steward of England in Fee an Office of Large Authority and Esteem had in Warwickshire Sixty-Four Lordships in Leicestershire Sixteen in Wiltshire Seven in Northamptonshire Three in Gloucestershire One besides many Knights Fees of those that held of him Advowsons Patronages Fairs Markets and the priviledges of Pillory Tumbrel and the Assize of Bread and Beer The Earl of Gloucester and Hartford had Thirty-Eight Lordships in Surrey Thirty-Five in Essex Three in Cambridgeshire Halling and Bermeling Castle in Kent Haresfeild in Middlesex Sudtime in Wiltshire Leviston in Devonshire Ninety-Five in Suffolke besides Thirteen Burgages in or near Ipswich of which Clare was one from whence that Family took their Surname or it from them had the Town and Castle of Tunbridge in Kent the Castle of Brianels in the County of Gloucester and whilst the King and his Son Edward were Prisoners at Lewis obtained a Grant under the Great Seal of all the Lands and large Possessions of Iohn Warren Earl of Surrey to hold at the King's Pleasure except the Castles of Rigate and Lewis was one of the Chief that extorted a Commission from the King authorizing Stephen Bishop of Chichester Symon Montfort and himself to nominate Nine as well Prelates as Barons to manage all things according to the Laws and Customes of the Kingdom until the Determinations should be made at Lewis and others which they better liked should take Effect Awbrey de Vere in the general Survey of William the Conqueror had Cheviston now Kensington Geling and Emingford in com Hunt Nine Lordships in Suffolk Fourteen in Essex whereof Colne Hengham and Bentley were part in Warwickshire Six in Leicestershire Fourteen in Northamptonshire Six in Oxfordshire Two and in Wiltshire Ten a Descendant of whom had in the Raign of King Stephen together with Richard Basset Justice of England custodiam Comitatus and executed the Sheriffs Offices of Surrey Cambridge Huntington Essex Hartford Northampton Leicester Norfolk Suffolk Buckingham and Bedford had by the Grant of Maud the Empress and King Henry the Second her Son by inheritance the Earldom of Oxford granted unto him and his Heirs and Mannor and Castle of Caufeild in the County of Essex and the Office of Lord Great Chamberlain of England in Fee with the Castles of Hengham or Hedingham and Campes to be holden by that Service and divers other Lands and Possession of a great yearly Value had before the Fourth Year of the Raign of King Henry the Third by the Marriage of the Daughter and Heir of the Lord Bulbeck many Mannors and Lands in the Counties of Buckingham and Cambridge and by the Marriage of the Daughter and Heir of Gilbert Lord Sanford the Inheritance of divers Mannors and Lands in the Counties of Essex and Hartford and a Grant in Fee to be Chamberlain to the Queen die Coronationis suae with divers Priviledges and One Hundred Knights Fees holden of them one whereof was by the Heirs of Mordaunt for Lands in Essex to come compleatly Armed as Champion to the Heir of the Family and Earls of Oxford in the great Hall of Hedingham Castle upon the day of his Nuptials to defy and fight with any that should deny him to be Earl of Oxford and another for the Mannor of Horseth in the County of Cambridge holden by the Family of Allington now the Lord Allington of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Service of holding the Earl of Oxford's Stirrop die nuptiarum which was actually performed in the Raign of Queen Elizabeth the day of the Marriage of Edward Earl of Oxford with the Daughter of the Lord Burghley Roger Bygod in the Conquerors Time did possess Six Lordships in Essex and One Hundred Seventeen in Suffolk had a Grant in the Raign of King Henry the Second of the Mannors of Ersham Walsham Alvergate and Aclay and the Honour of Eye in the County of Suffolk the Custody of the Castle of Norwich and a Grant of the Office of high Steward of England to hold and enjoy in as ample manner as Roger Bygod his Father had held it in the time of King Henry the First was Earl Marshal of England by Inheritance and had thereby a great Command and Authority in the King's Armies and all his Martial Affairs registred in his Marshals Rolls those many Thousands who as Tenants in Capite came into the Army to perform their Service by which also they were enabled to receive Escuage after of those that were their Under-tenants and held of them and did not come to do their Service was in times of Peace as in War to appease Tumults to Guard the King's Palace distribute Liveries and Allowances to the Officers thereof attend at the doing of Homages have a Fee of every Baron made a Knight and to receive of every Earl doing Homage a Palfry and Furniture Hugh de Montfort Ancestor of Peter de Montfort one of the Twenty-Four enforced Conservators for the Kingdom in the said Raign of King Henry the Third had in the general Survey Twenty-Eight
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-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
conservandas quidem statim quid inventum fuit quod valdè cum Feudo convenit Genes ' 14. 4. 2. paralip 36. 13. Jerem. 52. 3. Xenophon Cyropaid ' l. 2. pr ' Nec tamen Feudum fuit sed Clientela res apud Turcas hodiè notissima qui non alio modo multos Reges principes sibi nexos cogunt de Germanorum moribus Predidit Tacitus lib. 1. 14. Quod principem defendere tueri praecipuum Comitum fuerit saramentum Et hi Exigunt principis sui liberalitate illum bellatorem Equum illam Cruentam victricemque frameant Feudum vetus feudum novum Vetus quod ab abscondentium aliquo Novum quod ipse ab aliquo adquisivit Caesar intelligitur apud Germanos in hoc feudo semper Exceptus 2. F. 56. apud Gallos Rex in Ligio pater non exceptus quia id datur ab eo qui Superiorem non agnoscit cui si insidiatur vasalli pater Domino subiectus crimen perduellionis Principibus comittit Vasallus Domino Reverentiam Honorem debet ejusque Commodo augere atque damna infecta avertere obligatus est In Feuda Concedendis Ordo hominum non attenditur nam Superiores ab inferioribus Feuda accipiunt Et per vicariam personam Insiurandum accipiunt inter politicos Caesar Reges Feuda dare possunt Duces Marchiones Principes Comites Barones Feuda dare possunt etiamsi Caesari aut Regi subjecti sunt Maiora sunt autem Regalia quae ad statum reipubl ' administrationem nec non summi Principis decus pertinent and à Cicerone are said to be Iura Majestatis à Livio Jura Imperij sunt autem majora Regalia Leges condere easque si dubia sint Interpretari Lib. 8. Sect. 1. C. Duces Principes Comites Barones Equites Nobiles Creare l. 5. de Dignat ' facere Notarios Doctores Comites Palatinos Spurios facere Legitimos Novel 89. 9. veniam oetatis indulgere constituere summum tribunal Justitiae à quo appellari non potest Jus vitae necis pardonare Jus Civitatis dare Monetam cudere plenissimam Tuitionem tribuere quam Sauvegard dicunt instituere Cursores publicos qui Celeriter dispositis Equis Epistolas ferunt nunc Postas vocant Bellum indicere Pacem cum hoste foedus cum Exteris pangere Academias vel Vniversitatem literarum condere Legatos mittere ad alios principes Magistratus creare eosque confirmare Jurisdictionem atque Imperium tà m merum quà m mixtum dare Comitia universorum Imperij aut reipub ' ordinum Indicere l. 1. pr ' F. Religionis Orthodoxae tuitio Concilia Synodos cogere Ecclesiae Ministros Instituere confirmare malè viventes removere indicere â—â—rias Habent etiam Regalia Minera quae sunt Commoda quae ex rebus publicis ratione Imperij capiuntur Armandia id est Potestas fabricandi arma armamentariorum cogendi viae publicae cum ratione Tuitionis contra Latrones tum ratione Refectionis tum ratione Jurisdictionis tum quoque ejus quod in illis nascitur Flumina publica navigabilia ex quibus fiunt navigabilia modo quo viae publicae ad regalia pertinent Portus vel Vectigal quod pro Ingressu in portum aut portus transitu pendunt Ripatica sive vectigalia pro riparum earumque munitione vectigalia quae hodiè Tollen Conveyen Licenten dicuntur quae praestantur pro mercibus exportandis importandis bona vacantia bona damnatorum ob Perduellionem aliudâ—e crimen ex quo hodiè publicatio eorum fit Angariae Parangariae id est Praestationes operarum Currum nec non navium quae ad usum publicum rusticis subiectis imperantur extraordinaria Collatio sive Contributio Argentariae id est auri Argentique fodinae quae in provincia sunt Piscatio in flumine publico nec non Venatio utriusque concedendi Potestas Decimae ex Carbonum lapidumque fodinis Salinarum reditus omnis Thesaurus vbique repertus Judaeos recipere Fodrum pro Exercitu principis Anergariae sive hospitium Militum Aulicorum condere Illustria Gymnasia condicere Dividitur Feudum in Ligium non Ligium illud est quando vasallus domino fidem adpromittit contra omnes nullo excepto mortali Non Ligium est si Excipiuntur nonnulli contra quos dominum adiuvare non cogitur De Jure Domini directi Dominus directus Jus ratione seudi tà m in re quà m ad rem sed amplius personam habet Vasallus operas praestare suis sumptibus debet si à Domino monitus fuerit ad Jus dominij Laudemium pertinet est honorarium quod principis dominio administris penditur All which Regalia and Prerogatives of our Kings and Soveraign Princes have been founded upon the feudal Laws attending the Monarchy of England And so greatly were our Kings and Princes in this our Monarchy of England sollicitously careful to maintain and conserve their Subjects Tenures of their Lands immediately or mediately holden of them and the Dependencies and Obedience of their Subjects unto them and therein their own as well as their Soveraigns Good and Preservation as King Henry the Second caused throughout the Kingdom a Certificate to be made not by the Hear-say or slight Information of the Neighbourhood or partialities of Juries but by the Tenants themselves in Capite or by knight-Knight-Service whether Bishops Earls Barons and great or smaller Men by how many whole or parts of Knights Fees they held their Lands and by what other particular Services and what de veteri novo Feoffamento and caused those Certificates to be truly Recorded in the Court of Exchequer in a particular Book called the Red-Book which either as to its Original or several exact and authentick Copies thereof as Sir William Dugdale hath assured me were not burnt or lost in the dreadful Fire of London in Anno 1666. and those Tenures and Engagements of those Tenants were so heedfully taken Care of as our Kings ever since the Raign of King John had Escheators in every County the Lord Mayor of London being alwayes therein the Kings Escheator who amongst other particular Charges and Cares appertaining to their Offices have been Yearly appointed to look after them and the Bishops Earls and Barons especially since the Constitution and Election of the Court of Wards and Liveries by King Henry the Eighth were not without their Feodaries in the several Concernments of their private Estates as our Kings had in every County as to their more universal or greater which together with the respites of Homages which the Lord Treasurers Officer of the Remembrancer in the Court of Exchequer was to Record as appeareth by a Statute or Act of Parliament made in the 7th Year of the Raign of King James and our Learned and Loyal Littleton who was a Justice of the Court of Common-Pleas in the 14th Year
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
ad loquendum or as King Henry the 3d. in the 36th Year of his Reign did call the Londoners to Westminster about taking upon them the Cross and attending him in those Wars representing in that particular only their own Estates or Qualities When in a Parliament holden by the Queen and her Councell in his absence in France in the 38th year of his Reign though Mathew Paris and Mr Daniel have given us no intimation of a Parliament then holden wherein do not appear to have been any Commons or House of Commons the Lords gave an aid by themselves the Clergy doing the like as is evidenced by the 2 following Records in these words viz. Rex dilecto fideli suo Willielmo de Oddinggeseles salutem Cum Venerabilis pater B. Cantuariensis Archiepiscopus Episcopi provinc Cant. R. Com. Cornub. frater noster R. Com. Glouc. alii Com. Barones in quindena sci Hillarii jam praetoriti apud London coram dilecta Regina nostra Consilio nostro Commorante in Anglia constituti nobis promiserunt liberaliter benigni facere auxilium decens perutile viz. quidam prelati in propriis personis quidam in pecunia Comites vero Barones in propriis personis suis potenter contra Regem Castelliae qui terram nostram Vasconiae in manu forti in quindena Pasche proxime futur hostiliter est ingressurus vos ex toto corde requirimus quod sicut supradicti Commites Barones nobis promiserunt quod erunt London A die Paschae prox futur in tres septimanas parati bene muniti sine ulla dilatione versus Vasconiam ad nos personaliter movere vos ad dictas diem et locum modo consimili veniatis omni occasione dilatione postpositis ad tendendum versus portesmum cum praefatis Magnatibus ad transfretandi cum eisdem ad nos in Vasconiam et hoc in fide qua nobis tenemini vobis firmiter injungimus sicut honorem nostrum indempnitatem corporis nostri diligitis T. per Reginam 5. die Febr. Et mand est per Henr. 3 Regem in An. 38. regni sui Archiepiscopis et Episcopis totius Angliae quatenus cum festinatione omni convocent omnes Abbates et Priores suae Diocesis cujuscunque sint ordinis inducentes modis omnibus quod nobis in praesenti necessitate subveniant manu lar 〈…〉 lua ne per defectum ipsorum vel aliorum corporis incurramus periculum et terrae nostrae jacturam quod absit quia id verteretur in vestrum ipsorum opprobium sempiternum sic igitur vestra vigilet discretio circa praedictum auxilium tam a vobis deferendum quam a subditis vestris per quirendum quod futuris temporibus vobis ipsis simus non immerito obligati Proviso quod praefatum auxilium habeamus apud Westmonasterium in quindenam Pasche proxime futuram sine defectu hoc sicut nos honorem nostrum nec non indempnitatem corporis nostri diligitis non omitatis Dirigitur etiam litera ista Archiepiscopo Cantuar cum hac clausula quod ordinariam jurisdictionem exercetis vacante sede in Episcopatu Linc. vos requirimus affectuose quatenus officiariis vestris et Archiediacono ejusdem Episcopatus scribatis attente quod tempestive convocent omnes Abbates Priores ejusdem Episcopatus cujuscunque sine ordinis ad certos dies locum abducentes eos nudis omnibus quod in hoc necessitate vestrae concilium nobis faciant subventionem And the failing to perform Military services was afterwards by the Statutes of 6. E. 1. ca. 4. 13. E. 1. ca. 21. made so Penall and fixed upon them as after a Cessavit per Biennium in the performing of their service the King or Chief Lord might by writs ordained to be granted out of the Chancery demand and prosecute to recover the same and such Tenants after Judgments had against them were to be for ever barred to demand or enjoy the same and where either the King demands Escuage of his Tenants or the mean Lords demands Escuage of their Tenants it was to be assessed in Parliament and Proved or disproved by Certificate of the Marshall of the Kings Host who is enabled thereunto by his Roll kept for that purpose When in Parliament the members of the house of Commons either holding Lands in Capite or of mesne Lords by Knights Service were not upon denying to grant Subsidies or Aydes to the King to forfeit or lose their lands according to the aforesaid Acts of Parliament or otherwise And such kind of Courts for lands holden in Capite or by Knights service should not by the most ordinary and mean Capacities be understood to be one and the same with the great Court or Councell of Parliament which many times by the Power and Authority of the King in that his Highest Court corrects and rectifies the defaults of the other Our high Courts of Parliament having the Judges of the Land subordinate to their Prince whether they have lands holden in Capite or no land summoned by his writs to give their Councell and advice as to matters of Law and the ancient customs of the Kingdom wherein the King is attended with his great Ministers or Officers of State as the Lord Chancellor Treasurer Privy Seal great Chamberlain of England Lord Steward and Chamberlain of his houshold and Lord Admirall whether of the degree of Barronage or holding of him in Capite or not with other great solemn formalities becoming the honour and State thereof with which that most honourable assembly is accompanied greatly different from those lesser Courts or Councell of summoning and calling together those that were only proper or obliged to actions of war or to know how their services were performed when our Parliaments being summoned to treat and advise of matters concerning peace and the defence of the Church and de quibusdam arduis only and have sometimes no matters of war consulted thereon Those military Councells anciently summoned for service in war and defence being in a very different form from Parliamentary Councells as for further satisfaction may be manifested by the writs aforesaid And was no more then what every Earl and Baron had in their Courts and Jurisdidictions when they summoned the Tenants holding of them by Knights service to their Courts of honour or their honorary Possessions which were in our records frequently stiled as the honors of Eagle Eye Leicester Hedingham Penerel Arundel c. to which purpose they had their Escheators Feodares and Stewards to preside or officiate therein subordinate unto them when they called their Tenants together either to ayd ride or go along with them in the wars and service of their Prince and Country or to pay them their reliefs or ayds pairfile marier which the Law Interpreteth to be only the elder or to make the eldest Son a Knight or to do their
homages or pay for the respite of them and to give the Lord to understand what alienations had been made of the lands holden of him whereby to Entitle him and those that did hold of him to the benefit of the Statute of Quia Emptores terrarum And altogether dissimular to that of the Parliament first begun with those few of the Commons which adventured to come unto it in Anno. 49. H. 3. when he was a Prisoner in the custody of Montfert Earl of Leicester a powerful rebell discontinued and interrupted as rebellious designs ought to be after his release untill King Edw. the 1. found it convenient to make use of that kind of writ of Summons to ballance the then swelling power of some of his over-Unweildy Baronage For in the former or those great Councells or Parliaments that were before the 49th Year of the Reign of King H. 3d. the Lords Spiritual and Temporall took upon them the care charge of the Commons as included in themselves as their Subjects they being by that then first kind of Writ only Elected to consent yield Obedience to such things as the Lords not themselves should ordain for had it been as it never was otherwise it would have been altogether ungatory and ridicule to allow a power to the Commons to ordain when they were impowred only to assent unto and obey and cannot at all be understood to obey and be subservient to that which themselves had Decreed the Lords Spirituall and Temporall untill the King had given unto what was advised by them his Royall sanction and assent being not at all obliged to any Obedience thereunto And untill the statute de Tallagio non concedendo without the Assent of the Lords Spirituall and Temporall and the Commons in Parliament Assembled was by King E. 1. assented unto had nothing to do in the granting of ayds and subsidies in Parliament Concurrently with the Lords Spirituall and Temporall in the aforesaid Writ of 18. H. 3. is said to be for to supply their own necessities as well as the Kings But in the Military Courts which were as aforesaid Summoned by King John or any other of our Kings before 49. H. 3. the Knights or those that held in Capite or knights-Knights-Service that should fail to do their Services was to forfeit their Lands so holden and be in the Kings Mercy or pay Escuage which though it were to be assessed by Parliament was not then Understood to be a Parliament Composed of an House of Commons but a Parliament after the Ancient way consisting only of the Lords Spirituall and Temporall the Kings Great Officers of State Judges and Councell Which our Kings and their Councell both generall and speciall were not ignorant of either as to its right use or necessity for publique good or preservation When King John being rightly informed and in fear enough of an Invasion intended by the King of France his profest and known enemy et de omnibus quae in transmarinis partibus agebatur edoctus did not only inbreviare omnes naves universis portubus totius Angliae per brevia sua sed alias literas universis Vicecomitibus regni sui misit et direxit sub hac forma Johannes Dei gratia Rex Angliae c. Summone per bonos Summonitores omnes Barones Milites omnes liberos homines servientes vel quicunque sint vel de quocunque teneant qui arma habere debent vel arma habere possint qui homagium nobis vel ligeantiam fecerunt quod sicut nos seipsos omnia sua diligunt sint apud Doveram ad Instans clausum Paschae bene parati cum equis armis cum toto posse suo ad defendendum caput nostrum capita sua terram Angliae quod nullus remaneat qui arma portare possit sub nomine Culvertagii perpetuae servitatis when both in England and France nihil magis quam opprobrium significavit Et unusquisque sequatur dominum suum qui terram non habent arma habere possint illuc veniant ad capiendum solidatas nostras tu omnem attractum victualium omnia mercata ballivarum tuarum venire facias ut sequantur Exercitum nostrum Ita quod nullum mercatum de ballivis tuis alibi teneatur tuipse tunc sis ibi cum predictis Summonitoribus scias quod scire volumus quomodo venerint de ballivis tuis qui venerint qui non videas quod tu Ita efforciate venias cu 〈…〉 equis armis haec Ita exequatis ut inde ad corpus tuum nos capere debeamus tu inde habeas rotulum tuum ad nos certificandum qui remanserunt Whereupon saith that Historian his ergo literis per Angliam divulgatis convenerunt ad maritima in locis diversis homines diversae conditionis et aetatis sed cum per dies pauces tantae multitudini victus defuisset remiserunt ad propria principes militiae ex inormi vulgo copiosam Multitudinem milites solummodo servientes liberos homines cum Balistariis sagittariis juxta maritima retinentes omnibus igitur congregati ad pugnam aestimati sunt in exercitu apud Barham dâ—nam inter milites electos servientes strenuos bene armatos sexaginta millium virorum fortium quibus si er ga Regem Angliae defensionem patriae cor fuisset anima una non fuisset princeps sub coelo contra quem regnum Angliae se non defenderet And it was no mervail to the people of England who then had not learned to be affraid or make Bug-bears of publique good or kick and winch at every thing that tended that way when King Edward the first in the 24th Year of his Reign Citari fecit omnes qui sibi servitium debebant caeterosque omnes qui viginti libratas terrae amplias tenebant ut parati essent Londoniis in festo sancti Petri ad vincula cum equis armis transfretaturi cum eo Regis stipendiis militaturi And do very much differ from a Writ to Summon the Lords Spirituall and Temporall to Parliament as ad colloquium or consulendum does from coming parati cum equis armis which the Ancient cares and usage of Parliaments since that over-powerfull and unhappy designs of some unruly Barons coming in Arms to the Parliament at Oxford in the 42. Year of the Reign of King Henry the 3. and the sad consequences thereof taught our Kings to take heed of it ever after by prohibiting the coming to Parliaments with Arms and differs no less from the purpose tenour or purport of the Writs or Commissions to elect Knights of the Shires Citizens and Burgesses which had their first Originall and Commencement to come to our Parliaments in Anno. 49. of King Henry the 3. when that King was a Prisoner to an Army of Rebells was not
then untill after a long intervall of time in Anno. 22. E. 1. re-continued sub eadem fo 〈…〉 a which was in no other Tenour or to any other purpose then ad faciendum consentiendum iis to those matters or things which the King by the Councell and advice of the Peers viz. the Lords Spirituall and Temporall should ordain and although there have been ab ultima antiquitate great Councells or Parliaments Now although not formerly called Parliaments in this Nation or Kingdome yet they were not materially or formally the same and if it could be proved that the members thereof consisted of 3. Estates besides the King their Sovereign Lord before the 49th Year of the Reign of King Henry the 3. which all our Parliament Records do deny yet they that were admitted or came under the Elections illegally forced Writs and designs of Montfort and his rebellious partners by their then only newly contrived House of Commons can never entitle themselves to the same Origene Identity purpose and usage of our former Parliaments before that House of Commons in Parliament were admitted to consent unto and do what the King by the advice of his Lords Spiritualand Temporall therein should Ordain And there might be allways reason enough found that there should be a distinction betwixt the great Councells of Parliament which were not only for extraordinary emergencies touching the defence of the Kingdom and Church and redress of grievances in Civill affairs and contingencies and that which was for Military aids and services for saith our old and learned Bracton in Rege qui recte regit necessaria sunt duo haec Arma videlicet leges quibus utrumque tempus Bellorum pacis recte possit gubernare utrumque enim illorum alterius indiget auxilio quo tam militaris res possit esse in tuto quam ipsae leges usu Armorum praesidio possint esse servatae Si autem Arma defecerint contra hostes rebelles indomitos sic erit regnum indefensum sic autem leges sic exterminabitur Justicia nec erit qui rectum faciet Judicium And our Kings whose Royal Progenitors had heretofore all the Lands in England holden of them in Capite might in their greater concernments better deserve to keep their seperate and particular Military Courts for aids and services then those many of their Subjects do that would be unwilling not to be allowed to do it in their own Estates which had no other fountain or originall then the bounty and indulgence of their Kings and Princes and Bracton hath inform'd us that quod ille homagium suum facere debet obtentu reverentia quam debet domino suo adire debet dominum suum ubicunque inventus fuerit in regno vel alibi si possit commode adiri Et non tenetur dominus quaerere suum tenentem And in the homage Secundum quosdam there is to be salva fide debita domino Regi haeredibus suis. Et quod faciet servitium debitum domino suo haeredibus suis non debet homagium facere privatium sed in loco publico communi coram pluribus in Comitatu Hundredo vel Curia ut si forte tenens per malitiam homagium vellet dedicere possit dominus facilius probationem habere de homagio facto servitio recognito Which with the aid of tenures and feudall Laws and the homage services due from the Subjects to the Crown their Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and our many and excellent Laws for self-preservation and publique safety did so firm and fix the Militia and Jus gladii in our Kings and Princes ordained and appointed by God for the execution of Justice Defence and Protection of the People their Religion Persons Lives Laws Liberties and Estates as they that would by perverted wrested and falsly concluded arguments overturn our Government and have Labour'd by all the Shifts and Falsities which the Devill and his Imps could contrive and furnish to Propagate their Designs and Principles of Wickedness and Confusion may find that all the Laws Records Annalls and Historians of the Kingdom do assert and prove the Jus gladii to appertain to none but our Kings and that the attempt to take it from them hath been ever accompted and punished as a Rebellion And that they are not Masters of their Wits or are Lunatiques without intervalls that can think their Industry and Pains well bestowed to go about to prove that there ought to be or ever was an Allegiance Oath or Homage made or taken to the People universally considered or was unto them due or could be by any right rule of Law Custom or Right Reason claimed by them or any way appropriate unto them Unto which well known and allways due Rights of our Kings and Princes were very subservient those great aids and support of the Kingdom the Knights fees and lands held of our King in Capite the strength and honour whereof could neither well be preserved called upon or certified unto our Kings in their Exchecquer as the book called the Red-book in that Court kept only for that purpose will inform us without an often Summoning those necessary and useful Courts or keeping them from a disuse which heretofore were wont to serve as Prognostiques or Indications or a feeling of the strength and pulse of the Kingdom by our Kings and Princes the careful Phisitians thereof the neglect whereof by the dissolution of the Abbies Monasteries and religious Houses and those large quantities of lands being no less then a fourth part of the Kingdom and the parcelling thereof into small quantities afterwards granted with a tenure in Soccage and our Kings granting of other great quantities of the Monastick Manors and lands to be holden in free and Common Soccage of the King as of his Manor of East Greenwitch together with the carlesness of the Court of Wards and Liveries and the Eascheators and Feodaries of the after ages so little minding their Duties and Oaths as if one parcell of lands were by a Jury found to be holden in Capite they were well content to suffer all the rest to pass with a per quae servitia ignorant and the carelesness in the levying of Fines and not suing out of Writs in such cases accustomed called per quae servicia which if the tenures in Capite and by Knight service had not been so ever to be lamented unhappily exchanged for a moyety after the Kings decease of a corrupt and unwholsome Drunken Excise those Terms in Capite with their Military aids and services the quondam strength and glory of our Kings and Nobility would have dwindled and shrunk into a consumption and Tabes of our heretofore Gigantine body politique and have for a great part by themselves without the so often murmuring and unwilling taxes and assessments been too weak or feeble to preserve their grandeur and protect and defend them and their peoples properties trades and
the Common Laws of England some part of the Civil and Canon Laws and a great part of the Records of the Kingdom and much honoured for his love and care of Justice But being a Judge in those Times and seduced by another of that Rank to take such a place upon him upon the pretence of keeping up and supporting the Law and was upon his Majesties Restauration advanced into an higher degree seemed notwithstanding not to have been so much or so well read as he might have been in the Feudall Laws excellent constitution and frame of the Monarchick Government of this Realm when in that House of Commons either in a cool neutrality or over perswaded by by his fears of or desire of living in safety or to preserve the Common Law when against his will and well known Integrity he was in that house of Commons in Parliament heard by another Member that Sat next unto him to say or declare his opinion that the King was trusted by the People wherein he might have better considered that two parts of our Laws most precious and necessary both to and for the King and his People which were the Summoning and calling of Parliaments or Great Councells and the Tryals of his Subjects Guilts or Innocencies per Pares with Reliefs Herriots due to our Kings and Princes and unto Ten thousand Lords of Manors or thereabouts Subordinate unto their Kings in England and Wales with Fines and Amercements Felons and Out-Laws Goods Annum diem vastum cum multis aliis c. were solely and principally derived from the Feudall Laws Which with some of the Usages and Customs of the Nation and our Statutes and Acts of Parliament from Time to Time after made and added thereunto were the Laws which many of our Kings and Princes took an Oath at their Coronations to Protect and Defend as also the leges Consuetudines quas vulgus elegerit who if our Feudal Laws had not been so very ancient as they have been would not want such as would heartily desire and make choice of them to have Lands given to hold of their King in Capite and enjoy to them and their Heirs under his more especiall protection and was in the Reign of our famous Arthur King of Brittain esteemed so great an happiness as Consensu Historicorum eruditorum of that Age and Time Leland hath informed us Utherus Pendraco fuit pater Arthuri cujus Gorlas Corinnae regulus beneficiarius erat a Notion or Title anciently used of such as held their lands in Capite or by Knight Service And therefore howsoever the learned Bracton's Pen might seem to have erred in his expression or words of Fraenare Regis it might as it ought consonantly to the Proper and Genuine Sense Intention and Meaning of all his Arguments through the Context and Tenor of his whole Books being no little one be accepted and taken to be no otherwise then a restraining him as Kings and great and good men have usually been by good advice and Councell of friends or Servants as Naaman the Syrian's Servants did in their Lords returning back in an anger from the Prophet Elisha who came near unto him and perswaded him to wash in Jordan in order to his recovery from his Leprosy when otherwise that harsh word or phrase of fraenare Reges could not without great danger damage or forfeiture be used or any forcible perswasion put upon a free Prince by Authorities coutrary to their Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy Justly and Truly descending from the Feudall Laws which commandeth all men holding of them in Capite to do otherwise And although some of our Ancient Historians have informed us that in a Parliament holden at Merton in the 20th Year of the Reign of King Henry the 〈◊〉 upon the Bishops endeavouring to have a Law made that according to the Canon Law the Children born before Marriage illicitis amplexibus should by a subsequent Marriage of the Parents be esteemed legitimate the Temporall Lords restiterunt and laying their hands upon their Swords Jurarunt quod noluerunt leges Angliae mitare it was not any plain absolute deniall of the Kings Decisive and Legislative Power but only an Altercation Debate or Dispute betwixt the Spirituall and Temporall Lords in Parliament concerning that matter And neither the Bishops or the house of Commons or any of the Commons represented or not could not so much as attempt to force or bridle their King by Commotions or force of Arms which by the Feudall Laws and the most of our Laws and Customs derived from thence would have been legally adjudged a Rebellion and Fraenare Regis in that undecent expression si quod rei fecerit aut neglexerit quod Dominum contempsisse dicitur aut si Dominus per consequentiam laedatur persona cujus existimationem sartam tectam manere Domini interest for Concilio auxilio Domino adesse debet which was the Cause and ground of right Reason that in the Reign of our King Edward the 2. the Lord Beaumont or de Bello monte was in Parliament Fined for refusing to come to Parliament and give the King his advice or Councell And it is not many Years since that the Emperor of Germany Seised and Imprisoned Prince William of Furstenburgh a feudatory for appearing in Person at a Treaty betwixt the Emperor and the King of France against his Lord the Emperor And our Mesne Lords holding their Lands Jurisdictions Courts Baron and Courts Leet notwithstanding that Act of Parliament for dissolving the Court of Wards and Liveries and the tenures in Capite supporting it did from the 24th Day of February in the Year of our Lord 1645 when in the height of their Wars against their Sovereign they had but Voted the Dissolution of thrt Court and the Tenures in Capite for at that Time there appeared not to have been any Act of Parliament although an Act made in the Time of Oliver Cromwell might be an usher or used as a pattern in the drawing of that by a learned Judge of those Rebellions Times wherein the Reliefs Herriots were found necessary to be reserved unto his now Majesty his Heirs and Sucessors Which may sadly be believed to have been a Decapitation or cutting off the head of the Body-Politick or Government as a Prologue to the Tragicall and Direfull Murder in the cutting off the Head of their most Pious better Deserving King No King or Prince in the World Christian or Heathen black or white that had all their Subjects except their Nobility and the Bishops and such as hold their Lands by the Honorary Services of grand Serjeanty or by the tenures of Copyhold or by Copy of Court-Roll unto which our Littleton giveth no better a name or Title then tenure in Villainage or any service incident thereunto which being originally derived from the tenures in Capite were not many Years ago very nigh a fourth Part of the Kingdom that had so
Train in the way of his Progress rather then fail to offer hasten to the River and bring as much water as he could in his hands and with a Cheerfull Countenance Wishes and Prayers for his health present it unto him Nor was so altogether appropriate to those Eastern Countries where God speaks first unto his people and the Sun of his righteousness did arise but was long ago practised in England where the custom was as Gervasius Tilburiensis who wrote in the Reign of K. Henry the 2. informs us that in the Reign of King Henry the 1. upon all addresses to the King quaedam in rem quaedam in spem offerre to present the King with some or other presents either upon the granting of any thing or the hopes that he would do it afterwards and so usually as there were Oblata Rolls or Memorialls kept of it in the Reign of King John and some other the succeeding Kings and Queens who seldom escaped the tender of those Gratitudes of Aurum Reginae Mony or Gold presented unto them as well as unto their Kings and was a Custom not infrequent in the Saxon Times as appeareth by our Doomesday Book the most exact and generall survey of all the Kingdom and so little afterwards neglected as it was paid upon every pardon of life or member and so carefully collected as it was long after in the Reign of King Henry the 3d by an Inquisition taken after the Death of Gilbert de Samford who was by Inheritance Chamberlain to the Queens of England found that he had amongst many other Fees and Profits due unto him and his Heirs by reason of his said office Six pence per Diem allowed for a Clark in the Court of Exchequer to Collect and gather that oblation or duty For if there were no Damage to a Prince in his Dignity and Sovereignty as it must needs be of no small concern it can be of no small Importance in matters of profit and other Necessaries appertaining to his Regality and the necessary protection and defence of himself and his people as hath been truly calculated and made demonstrable And when Homage hath been defined by our Learned Lawyers Littleton and Sr Edward Coke to signify no more then Ieo deveigne vostre home Et mutua debet esse dominii homagii fidelitatis Connexio Ita quod quantum homo Domino ex Homagio tenentis tantum illi debet Dominus ex Dominio praeter solam reverentiam and Sr Edward Coke citing a part out of the Red book of the Exchequer saith omnis homo debet esse sub Domino de vita memibris suis terrenio honore observatione consilii sui per honestum utile comprehended in the words Foyall Loyall salva fide deo terrae Principi and servicium is by him defined in Liege Angliae regulariter quod pro tenemento suo debetur ratione feodi sui and the manner of doing homage and fealty declared or appointed to be taken in 17 King Edward the 2 was that he should hold his hands together between the hands of his Lord our Littleton long after writing his book saith he shall be ungirt his head uncovered his Lord shall sit and he shall kneel before him upon both his knees and hold his hands Joyntly together betwixt the hands of his Lord and say I become your man from this day forward of life and limbs and earthly worship and shall owe you my faith for the Lands which I hold of you saving the faith which I owe unto my Lord the King and to mine other Lords Et homo Homagium saith Sr Henry Spelman sunt verba feudaliam in fundamentis Juris illius and after the Osculum or kiss of the Lord received ariseth and taketh the Oath of Fidelity to be faithfull and true unto him and saith Bracton homage becometh to be ex parte Domini protectio defensio Warrantia ex parte Tenentis reverentia Subjectio And our Littleton defining fealty as it is amongst the Feudists a fidelitate saith that it is to be true and faithfull to his Lord for the Lands which he holdeth of him and shall faithfully do unto him the service which he ought to do And Gervasius Tilburiensis cited by Sr Edward Coke might have added to the definition of homage on the King or Lords part something more from the Tenant or Homager then reverence and subjection and not have omitted the greatest Tie and Obligation which was gratitude for the Lands at the first given to his Father and Ancestor for that only Service The Tenant holding his lands services under a forfeiture but the King or Lord not simili modo but reteyning and holding his propriety directum dominium without any limitation the utile dominium appertaineth unto the Tenant untill he forfeits and then the Lord may enter upon the utile and annex it unto his directum and dispose of it as he pleaseth And Sr Henry Spelman saith licet non Juratum est in homagio sed in fidelitate Intelligendum est quod fidelitatis praestatio individue sequitur homagium Et in nostro Jure fidelitas est de Essentia Homagii nam si quis fidelitatem remiserit cassum facit ipsum Homagium And in the language of our Old Records Writs and rescripts of our Kings and Princes Homage and fealty do so often go together as they may be seem to be adjuncts each unto the other and are in effect as to the Subjection and service but Synonimous and Consignificant differing only in the Ceremonies as our Littleton saith in doing the same which in the direction and stile of our Kings mandates unto one that hath actually done his homage the Word Fidelis is many times used without any mention of Homage dilecto fideli suo as comprehending Homage fidelitas autem particularis apud Anglos individue comitatur omnes Tenuras etiam dimissiones ad brevissimum tempus nunc dierum quamvis nunc dierum parcius exigitur relaxari tamen nullo modo potest sine tenurae interitu And Homage and Fealty being such inseparable Concomitants as not to be separated Homage in the Capite and Knight Service conjoyning unto it Fealty which is the reality effect and service thereof and Homage in those Tenures the only Ceremoniall part thereof which would be to little purpose without the faith fidelity and service which can subsist and perform its services without it And was so understood by our Kings and Princes in their Writs of Summons to their Baronage to their Parliaments when making no mention of Homage which is often respited commands them infide qua nobis tenemini to appear and be present For howsoever amongst Kings and Princes those great concerns of them and their Subjects may be allowed to insist upon punctilio's of Honour and very necessary Concernments which might be consequentiall thereunto which caused our great
and prudent King Edward the First when he did his Homage to the King of France for the Dutchy of Acquitaine carefully to except his ancient right to the Dutchy of Normandy and the French Kings denying his brave and victorious Grandchild Edward the 3. to do his Homage by proxy made him so Inquisitive into his own better Title unto that Kingdom as the French King paid dear for it and the English King at length the owner of that great and flourishing Kingdom When Fealty is conjoyned with the Oaths of Allgeance and Supremacy the true born only Legitimate Issue and Children of the Feudall Laws they will be like a 3 fold Cord not at all in Reason or Justice to be broken And in matters touching Inheritances Nobility Titles of Honour womens Dower of the 3 part of Lands and Tenements fees tenures in Capite and by Knight Service Rents Escheats Fines Felonies Forfeitures tryall by battell cum multis aliis c. our Laws being not only founded upon them but supported and guided by them It may be wondred it should be so unknown to our Common Lawyers whom a carefull reading of our Glanvil Bracton Britton and Fleta and a better acquaintance with their mother the Civill and Caesarean and Feudall Laws with a due inspection into the ever to be valued Records of the Kingdom might better instruct then the malecontent and ill affected Sr Edward Coke and some other of the later School or Edition of those which are called Common Saviors as not to believe with great assurance that that which they call so generally the Common Law is for the most part if not all the Feudall Law which they are pleased to call the Praerogativa Regis declared and acknowledged in Anno 17. E. 2. and likewise that of the view of Franck pledge the next Year ensuing and that it was therefore not unfitly wished by a Late Learned Author supposed to be a post-hume of Sr Henry Spelman that Some worthy Lawyer would diligently read the Feudall Laws and shew the severall heads from whence those of our Laws are derived wherein saith he the Lawyers beyond the Seas are diligent but ours are all for profit And An Act of Parliament in Anno 1662. made by King Charles the 2. for the Settlement of the Kingdom of Ireland wherein notwithstanding that it was in the â—3th Year of his Reign ordained that all lands and Tenements in England and Ireland should be holden of him his Heirs and Successors in Free and Common Socage there is a Proviso and Exception that all lands tenements and Hereditaments in Ireland setled or to be setled on the Soldiers who are out of said Act and not provided for shall be held of the King his Heirs and Successors by Knight Service in Capite and it is well known that our unruly Neighbours in Scotland that could never be satisfied with the Fat and plenty of our Land of Goshen untill the lean kine had eat up the fat and they had set our before happy Kingdom on fire with their Hypocriticall dissembling Illegall wicked Covenant did not in all the mischiefs and Miseries which they brought upon us and themselves in those their Rebellious Designs make it any part of their desires to change their ancient tenures in Capite and by Knight Service into free and Common Socage which by unhinging the Government would have set all the wild Beasts of the Forrests loose and at Liberty and made the otherwise unruly and never to be governed numerous vassalls so masterless as to tear in peices their Lords Lairds or Superiors and turn that Monarchy to do as well as it can amongst a herd of rudeness and Incivilities in their Plads and Blew Capps And the Hollandiae Zelandiae Frisiaeque principes terra marique potentes heretofore nullo externo usi milite ex veteri Longobardorum Consuitudine sub certa quadam feudalitiae necessitudinis lege hoc est mutuae inter dominicum patrocinum ac Fiduciariam Clientelam veluti pactionis nexu beneficiarii instituerentur qui Conceptis verbis interposita Juratae fidei religione pro beneficio accepto patrono suo militarem operam praeberent navarentque ut scilicet quoties usus posceret parati in armis essent id quod Jure Feudalistico proprium Feudatariorium munus atque officium est Et cum praediorum defectu in these Provinces which ingenio soli quod natura depressum ac uliginosium were naturally scituated cum incilibus passim fossis lacubusque ac paludibus intercussum haud sane faciles aditus ostentat confisa turbas Seditionum praemia converteret and therefore to untie those obligations betwixt the Lords and Tenants and enervate those strengths and promptitude to a confidence in their own Power Charles the 5th Emperour Edicto perpetuo Anno Domini 1518. officia haec militaria vulgo servitia dicta in universum abragavit vassallisque omnibus remisit Ea tamen lege ut fundi Clientelares functionibus publicis quibus hactenus Imunes fuissent in posterum non secus atque patrimoniales obnoxii existerent and having so farr inticed them out of their old into a much worse constitution with Taxes and the Spanish Inquisition managed by the Duke D'Alva in a most tyrannical arbitrary Goverment so desperated them as after a long time expended in Intercessions without any redress obteyned and those their discontents heightned and made use of by the Policies of their neighbours the English and French who had reason to fear the ambitious encrochments and evil designs of the King of Spain to oppress them that were his neighbours and by the assistance of his late Conquest of the West Indies with their Gold and Silver Mines endeavouring to make himself to be as it were the Atlas of the World and extend his Dominions to a Fifth Monarchy and a Ne plus ultra All which concurring and put together with the Conduct and Adventurous successfull care of the then Prince of Orange assisted by the united Seven Provinces whereof Holland Zealand and West Freisland were the greatest Incouragers of the other caused that faedus ultrajectinum which in a long series and continuance of Time of Years making those netherland Belgick Provinces to be a Campus Martius and field of Bloud hath with an intermission only of 12 Years Truce after that Centnry ended occasioned greater ruines effusion of blood then the Wars Joyned all together between Rome and Carthage and Caesar and Pompey in the Pharsalian Fields So long and fatall from the beginning to the ending hath been that unhappy project of the dissolving the Hollandish Zealand and West Freizland ancient Feud 〈◊〉 Laws by the altering their Tenures in Capite and by military service which howsoever they had so continued depressed during the heat and fury of that Spanish War been laid aside and intromitted saith Neostadius haec olim celeberrima Feudalis Curiae quam Oraculum Bataviae was wont to be called the Lords
pertineaut And that great King was so more then ordinarily carefull of the rights and Honor of his Crown and Regall authority which had been too much depressed and misused by the Rebellion of Simon Montfort and some Rebellious Barons and his fathers Imprisonment with the Wars and Hardships put upon them did so well provide against any the like troubles and Convulsions of State as in his return through France and abode for some time in Aquitain where he was Sumptuously feasted by the King of France he took an especiall care when he did Homage to him for Aquitain and some other Dominions he held of him in that Kingdom to limit it only unto them and except Normandy where he expended much time in the Setling of his affairs But howsoever Summus ille viz our Mr Selden was of opinion that so remarkable a provision and Monarchical Resolution of our King Edward the first and so many Emperors and Christian Kings and Princes to conserve the rights of their Crowns reported by Fleta was Prodigious and taken too much upon trust and an over facile credulity of our Carceratus Fleta as he termed him because resumptions of the Sacred Patrimonies aliened had been used here in England long before and not used at or about the same Time by Rodulphus primus the Emperor of Germany when he granted to Pope Gregory the 10th Bononia in Italy et latifunda circum quaque amplissima quae ante Imperii Romani pars insignis and permitted to be aliened to the Pope who was not then so easy to be resisted and that Choppinus and those many great and learned Doctors of the Law that had written and argued so much concerning those kind of alienations and our own Historians had been altogether silent therein yet that Decus Anglorum gentis might in his great recherches of our English Records Laws and Annalls have found that our King Edward might have been believed to have taken such Councel either from his former calamities in his his fathers Time or by a generall Consult with some or all of those Christian Princes or their Legates for that he was no sooner arrived in his own Kingdom and Dominions but he began to busy himself as much as his other great Cares and Variety of troubles would Suffer him to do in the allaying the Unquietness of the Disturbances which Humfrey do Bohun Constable of England Rigor Bigod Earl Marshall of England Gilbert de Clare Earl of Glocester and many other the remains of his fathers more then Cammon Distresses and in his Wars with Scotland and annexing the Rights and Superiority of it to his Crown of England in the placing displacing of the Kings and Heirs thereof a Regality Superlative not to be neglected and an effect pertinent enough to that Monarchick Universall consult when in the fourth year of his Reign an Enquiry was made of all the Manors and Lands Tenements Parks Buildings Woods Tenants Commons Pastures Pawnage Honey Herbage and all other profits of Forrests Waters Moors Marshes Heaths Turbury and Wasts and how much it was worth by the year Mills Fishings Common and severall Freeholders and Copyholders by what Service they did hold their Land by Knight Service or in Socage and what reliefs what Customary Tenants and by what works or Service they did hold what rents of Assise what Cotages and Curtilages and what rents they do pay by the Year what pleas and exquisites of the Counties and of the Forrests and what they were worth by the Year what Churches of what Yearly value and who was the Patron with the yearly value of Herriotts Fairs Markets Escheats Customes Services fore Time Works and Customs and w 〈…〉 tâ—e pleas and perquisites of Courts Fines all other Casualties were worth by the Year or may fall by any of those things an Inquisition much resembling that of the Norman villains enquest in the Book of Domesday or that which long before preceded it called the Roll of Winchester and in his elaborate recherches of all the Ancient Records Annalls Historians Manuscripts and Memorialls of the Brittish Saxon Scotish and English Nations for the clear Evidence and manifestation of his Undoubted Right to Jus Superioritatis oftke Kingdom of Scotland And in the same Year what things a Coroner should enquire of purprestures or usurpation upon any of the Kings Lands and that they should be reseised A Statute of the Exchecquer touching the recovery of the Kings Debts made in Anno 10. E. 1. A Cessavit per Biennium to be brought by the Chief Lord with a forfeiture upon him that neglecteth to do his service by the space of 2 Years In Anno 17. Fined 10 of 12 of his Judges accused and indicted of taking Bribes and very great summs of Mony Statute of quia Emptores terrarum that the Feoffs shall hold his lands of the Chief Lord and not of the Feoffer And afterwards caused the Judges at their return out of their Circuits to rectify in rolls of Parchment all Fines and amercements due unto him and ordered them to receive only their then small Wages thereout curbed the Clergy that denied to give him Aids and forbad them to come to his Parliament which was holden untill their Submission with a Clero Excluso and granted his Writs contra Impugnatores Jurium Regis made 2 Statutes of Quo Warranto in 18. E. 1. that every man should shew cause how he claimed or held his Liberties Ordinatio de libertatibus perquirendis 27. E. 1. Statute of Wards and Reliefs Anno. 28. E. 1. Another Statute of Quo Warranto Anno. 30. E. 1. Ordinatio Forrestae Anno. 33. E. 1. So that pace tanti viri with all the honor and reverence that can or ought to be given to Mr Selden that Dictator of Universal Solid Learning it may be said that our Fleta which was by him so well esteemed as to have been published and caused to be printed with his learned dissertations and Comment thereupon might well have escaped his scruples and distrust when in that great Kings travail from Hierusalem or out of Aba homewards he was royally feasted by the King of Sicily one of the aforesaid Confederate Christian Kings the Pope and divers Princes of Italy And when the Pope had afterwards demanded 8 Years arrears of him for an Yearly tribute of 1000. Marks for the Kingdom of England and Ireland enforced from King John did by his letter answer that the Parliament was dissolved before his letter came unto his hands and that sine Praelatis Proceribus no Commons therein mentioned comunicato Concilio sanctitati suae super praemissis non potuit respondere Jurejurando in Coronatio sua prestita fuit astrictus quod Jurat regni sui servabit illibata nec aliquid quod Diadema tangit regni ejusdem no such Oath or Promise being in the Coronation Oath ut nihil abusque illorum requisito Concilio
faceret And that greatly learned man could not but acknowledge that there were afterwards resumptions of Crown-Lands in the Reign of King Henry the 2. the alienation of some of the Crown-Lands severely charged upon King Richard the 2d Anno. 33. H 6. by an Act of Parliament and in the reign of King Edward the 4th at the request and upon the Petition of the Commons and were much more needfull then those that had been before in the Reign of King Henry the 2. made Leoline Prince of Wales to come and do him Homage and Baliel King of Scotland attending in our Pâ—rliament to arise from his State placed by the Kings and Stand at the Bar of the House of Peers whilst a cause was pleaded against him And it might not be improbable that that League betwixt that King and the aforesaid Christian Princes might be entred not amongst the Common Rolls and records of England but of Gascoigne where it was most proper and that some Vestigia of his great Actions might be there found of it as well as that of the 22th Year of his Reign of a Summons of divers English Barons to come to his great Councell or Parliament in England and it could not be unknown to that great man of learning that as Authors and Writers have learned and Writ one out of another so have many Wrote that singly and alone which many of the Contemporaries have either not been Informed of or did not think fit to Mention the dreadfull plagues of Egipt and the most remarkable that ever were in so short a Time inflicted by God upon any Nation of the Earth since the universall Deluge destroying all but the Righteous Noah his Family the several Kinds of Creatures perserved with him the passage of Moses thorough the Red-Sea in his conduct of the People of Israel into the land of Canaan were not to be thrown out of the belief of Christians all others Venerating the Sacred Scriptures because Plato or Pythagoras travailing into Egypt in the inquest of learning have given us no particular accompts thereof and it will ever be as truly said as it hath been that Bernardus non videt omnia the ancient institution rites ceremonies of the most Honourable Garter is not to be suspected because our Law and Statute books have not made such Discoveries Recherches or a worthy and most elaborate Record thereof as the learned and Judicious Mr Elias Ashmole hath lately done or our Glauviles Book de legibus Consuetudinibus Angliae is not to fall under the question whether he was the Lord Chief Justice of England that Wrote it because there hath not been so much heed taken of him as ought to be by our Common-Law Year-Books or Memorialls of Cases adjudged in our Courts of Justice and later Law Books when the learned Pancirollo in his Book de deperditis Ac etiam de novis repertis and the exquisitely learned Salmuthius in his Comment or Annotations thereupon or the learned Pasquier in his Recherches and our ever to be honored Mr Selden in his rescuing from the Injuries of Time those many before hidden truths which he in his history of Tithes Jauus Anglorum Analett Brittanniae Titles of honor de Synedriis Judeorum uâ—or Jus naturae Gentium Historia Ead mei cum multis aliis and those very many discoveries of learning and Truth which the world must ever confess ought to be attributed to his walking in unknown paths nullius ante trita pede have very Justly escaped any such suspicions and that long and Eminent Treaty for Peace at Nimiguen for divers Years last past managed by most of the Monarchs of Europe and their concerns wherein the care and mediation of our King in the charge of his Plenipotentiaries have not wanted gratefull Testimonialls of the many very much concerned Kings and Princes in the putting a stop to the Warrs effusion of Blood and devastation of so great a part of Christendom is not or ought to be placed amongst the non liquets or Doubtings of after Ages because which by some Incuria or neglect of our Recording of it amongst our Archives which the more is to be pittied is not much unlikely to happen it is not to be met with amongst our Records or Historians When the so much Deservedly admired speculations and Experiments of the excelently Learned Sr Francis Bacon Lord Verulam in his Philosophy more then Aristotle and many others had made those Discoveries of des Cartes Depths and Investigations of our Sr Kenelme Digby into the most abstruse parts of Learning and that great addition now every where allowed to be true to that most necessary and usefull Art or Faculty of Physick of the circulation of the Blood in the Bodies of men first Discovered and made apparent by our late Learned Doctor Harvey though the Egiptian Arabian and Grecian Doctors and the greatly Famed Galen and Hypocrates had in all their labors knowledge and Practice not so much as taken notice of it were never the worse but rather much the better that former ages and men in the length of Art and the short Curriculum of their lives often intermitted with Sickness and the Cares and Troubles of the World had no sooner communicated it neither ought the Truth and value of our allways highly to be esteemed Seldens Labours in the vindication of our Kings Sovereignty in our Brittish Seas suffer any abate because no Englishman before had undertaken it or of his learned Observations and Comments upon Sr John Fortescues Book de laudibus Legum Angliae because he did not mention or had Discovered that that over-tossed and turmoiled worthy and learned Chancellor was after the Expulsion of the 3 Henrys 4. 5. 6th of the House of Lancaster under the later of whom he had Faithfully served from the Inheritance of the Crown of England by King Edward the Fourth with his better Title enforced publickly to beg his Pardon and with much ado and by Writing and delivering unto him a Book contradicting the Title of those former Kings and asserting that of his own which appeareth in that Act of Parliament in the 13th Year of that King for the Reversall of his Attainder And those disturbers and misuses of our Fundamental Laws might do well to sit down and consider that our uncontrolled every where in England venerable Littleton can certify us that if a man hold Land of his Lord by Fealty only for all manner of service it behoveth that he ought to do some service to his Lord for if the Tenant ought to do no manner of service to his Lord or his Heirs then by long Continuance of time it would grow out of memory whether the Land were holden of the Lord or his Heirs and thereupon the Lord may loose his Escheat of the Land or some other Forfeiture so it is reason that the Lord and his Heirs have some service done unto them to prove
and testify that the Land is holden of them and that without taking away the Fealty and repealing the Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy the Duty and Oaths of the Subjects remained as they did whilst they held their Land in Capite and by Knight Service Which probably as may sadly be lamented could never have hapned if the later men of the Law in England had not by the space of something more then Forty Years last past leaped over as it may be feared they have overmuch done the successive learned labours and Books in a long process of Time in the Reign of our Regnant Kings and Princes divers Judges and Sages of our Laws Recording from Time to Time Cases Judgments Decrees and Dicisions maturely and Deliberately adjudged therein But too much neglected those guidings better guides and faithfull Directors the Civill and Feudall Laws and suffred their Studies and practice to be imployed and incouraged in the Factious Seâ—iâ—ious Rebellious principles of those Times by following the gross Mistakes of Sr Edward Coke in his Discontent malevolence and Ill will unto the necessary and legall Regalities of the Crown and Idolizing as he did those grand parcells of forgery and Imposture entitled the Mirrour of Justice and the Modus tenendi Parliamentum and their neglecting the readings of Glanvile Bracton and Britton and other good Authors And the Civil Law was the Parent and Mother of many of the maximes and principles of that which is now called our Common Law And those men of the Law who without Books subsistence or Estates when they went beyond the Seas with their Sovereign and had not there the opportunities of the Knowledge or help of the Records of the Kingdom that might have been their best Instructers were for the most part but Young Gentlemen Born and Bred in the times of our Distempered Parliaments as those were that Tarried here who walked along with the Rebellion too much adhered unto them and came Weather-beaten again with his Majesty had understood as they might have done the Originall Foundation and Continuance of our Monarchick Government But King Edward the 1. who had passed over and overcome so many Hardships Difficulties Misfortunes and Storms of State was so unwilling to be afraid of a part of his Unquiet Baronage or to Humour the popularity and ignorance of any of the Common People or to be in fear of them or of any their Factious or Seditious Machinations making what hast his affairs would permit to return into England where his father having by his Death escaped the restless conflicts of a long and troublesome Reign and his Exequies and Ceremonies of buriall performed Róbertus Kilwarby Cantuariensis Archiepiscopus Gilbertus de Claro Comes Gloverinae a man that had been in Armes and opposite enough against his father and himself in the former convulsions of State and John Warren Earl of Surrey saith Samuel Daniel went up to the High Altar cum aliis Praelatis ac Regni proceribus Londiniis apud novnm Templum convenerunt Edwardum absentem Dominum suum Ligeam recognoverunt paternique Successorem honoris ordinaverunt assensu Reginae non Populi and before his return into England John Earl Warren and Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester in the Abby Church of Westminster sware unto him Fealty without asking leave of the People and proclaimed him King although they knew not whether he were Living or Dead caused a new great Seal to be made and appointed six Commissioners for the Custody of his Treasure and Peace whilst he remained in Palastine where by an Assassin feigning to Deliver Letters unto him he received 3 Dangerous Wounds with a poysoned knife then said and believed to have been cured by the Love of his Lady that Paragon of Wives and Women who sucked the Poyson out of the Wound when others refused the adventure and after 3 Years Travail from the time of his setting forth many conflicts and Disappointments of his aids and Ends left Acon well fortified and manned and returned homewards in which as he travailed he was Royally feasted by the Pope and princes of Italy whence he came towards Burgundy where he was at the foot of the Alpes met by Divers of the English Nobility and being Challenged to a Tournament by the Earl of Chalboun a man of extraordinary Renown Successfully hazarded his Person to manifest his valour thence came again into England with the great advantages of his Wisdom Courage and Reputation assisted by the memory of the fortunate Battle at Evesham and his Actions in the East SECT XVIII Of the Methods and Courses which King Edward the 1. held and took in the Reformation and Cure of the Former State Diseases and Distempers KIng Edward the 1st was together with his Queen Crowned at Westminster by Robert Archbishop of Canterbury Alexander King of Scotland and John Duke of Britanny attending that Solemnity which being finished he shortly after forced Leoline Prince of Wales who had taken part with Montfort against his Father King Henry the third to do him Homage and after a Revolt imprisoned and beheaded him did the like to his brother David and United Wales as a Province to England made the Statute of Snowden considered and perused their Laws allowed some repealed others collected some and added new as he well might there do for the Prince or King which Governed Wales had always used so to do and appointed one to give his assent to the Election of Bishops and Abbots And when The Pope demanded 8 yeares arreares for the rent or tribute of the Kingdoms of England and Ireland enforced from King John did by his letter answer that his Parliament was dissolved before it came and that sine Praelatis et Proceribus communicato concilio sanctitati suae super praemissa non potuit respondere et Jurejurando in coronatione suam praestito fuit obstrictus quod jura Regni sui servabit illibata nec aliquod quod diadema tangat Regni ejusdem no such clause or promise being in the Coronation Oath ut nihil absque illorum requisito concilio faceret Sent to Franciscus Accursius Docto of laws resident at Bononia in Italy the son of the famous Accursius the Civil lawyer to come with his wife family into England by his writ to the Sheriff of Oxfordshire commanded him to deliver unto the said Doctor Accursius the King 's manor house and castle of Oxford then no mean place for him and his wife to Inhabit Did so imitate the wisdom and providence of the Roman and Caesarean laws as Augustus Caesar and other of the Succeeding Emperours had done as he gave unto men learned in the laws which was more for the peoples good then in their suits and actions at law to court and live under the protection and humours of their popular Patroni's libertatem respondendi to give councell and advice to their clients in their concernments at law and
instance of the great men of the Realm hath granted provided and ordained that the Feoffees or Alienees shall hold of the chief Lord of whom the Lords were holden Ca. 2. If part of the lands be sold it is to be apportioned and it is to wit that this Statute extendeth but only to lands holden in fee simple and for the time coming and is to take effect at the Feast of St. Andrew next In the Statute of Quo Warranto liberties are holden our Lord the King of his especial grace and for the affection which he beareth unto his Prelates Earls and Barons and other of his Realm hath granted In a 2d Statute of Quo Warranto to the same Effect hath Established In the Statute de modo levandi fines it is to be noted that the order of the Laws will not suffer a finall accord to be leavyed in the Kings Court without a Writ Original In the Statute of Vouchers made in the 20th Year of his Reign Our Lord the King by his Common-Councell hath ordained In another of the same year concerning wast committed by Tenant for life Our Lord the King hath ordained In the Statute de defensione juris Hath ordained and from henceforth commanded In a Statute de non ponendis in Assisis made in the 21st year of his Reign Our Lord the King hath ordained By an Act of Parliament made in the same year de malefactoribus in parcis Our Lord the King hath granted and commanded In the Statute or Act of Parliament de Consultatione made in the 24th Year of his Reign Willeth and commandeth In the Confirmation of the great Charter and the Charter of the Forest in the 25th Year of his Reign Granteth and Willeth In Ca. 2. That Judgements given against them should be void it is said We will The like in Ca. 3 and 4. In Ca. 5. We have granted In Ca. 6. That the King or his Heirs will for no business whatsoever take aids or prizes but by consent of the Realm and for the Common profit thereof saving the Ancient aids and prizes due and accustomed it is said Moreover we have granted In Ca. 7. for a release of Toll taken by the King for Wool without consent as aforesaid saving the custom of Wools Hides and Leather granted by the Commonalty it is said that the King at their request hath clearly released and granted The King hasting into Flanders to aid his Confederate the Earl thereof against the Continued envy malice and designs of the King of France his malignant Neighbour constituted without License of Parliament his Son Edward then being under age the Custos or Guardian of the Kingdom and appointed Richard Bishop of London William Earl of Warwick nec non milites Reginaldum de Gray Johannem Gifford Alanum Plukenet viros emeritae militae providos discretos to be his Assistants and Councellors who in the Kings absence with much ado and with nullam aliam sentire vellent obtained a Peace to be made with the Earl of Hereford and Earl Marshal that the King should confirm the great Charters with the aforesaid Articles added in the 2. 3. 4. and 5. of that Parliament and to the 6. of Nullum Tallagium but by the consent of the Realm and for the Common profit thereof saving ut supra releasing the Tolls of Wool Which being sent unto the King were returned sub sigillo suo tanquam saith the Historian ab eo qui in Arcto positus erat cedendum malitiae temporis censuit upon the confirmation whereof the populus Anglicanus concessit denarium nonum bonorum suorum But the King being returned in the 26th Year of his Reign was pressed in Parliament by the aforesaid Earls the Constable Marshal because the Charters were confirmed in a Forreign Country to do it again for that the Bishop of Durham and the Earls of Surrey Warwick and Gloucester had promised that obtenta victoria against the Scots he should post ejus reditum do it and in the 27th Year of his Reign being again in a Parliament holden in London urged by the said Earls to do it post aliquas dilationes was willing to do it with an addition of Salvo jure Coronae with which the Earls being displeased and leaving the Parliament revocatis ipsis ad quindenam Paschae ad votum eorum absolute omnia sunt concessa Which begot the Statute said in the printed book of Statutes published by Mr Poulton to be incerti temporis E. 1. but it is to be beleived for the Reasons aforesaid to have been made in the 27th year of his Reign in those only words that no Tallage or Aid shall be taken or leavied by us or our heirs in our Realm without the good-will and assent of Arch-Bishops Earls Barons Knights Burgesses and other Freemen of the Land In the Statute of Wards and Reliefs 28. E. 1. Who shall be in ward and pay relief which seemeth to be a declaration of the King alone being for the most part of matters concerning himself and his undoubted casuall revenue it is to Wit when in the Statute immediately following touching persons appealed it is said the King hath granted ordained and provided In the Statute called Articuli super Chartas ca. 1. in the confirmation of the great Charter and the Charter of the Forest in the later end and close thereof are these words viz. And besides these things granted upon the Articles of the Charters aforesaid the King of his especial grace for redress of the grievances which his people hath sustained by reason of his Wars and for the amendment of their Estate and to the intent that they may be the more ready to do him service and the more willing to assist him in the time of need hath granted certain Articles the which he supposeth shall not only be observed of his Leige People but also shall be as much profitable or more then the Articles heretofore granted That none shall take prices but the Kings Purveiors or their Deputies it is said to be Ordained with a Nevertheless the King and his Councell do not intend by reason of this Estatute to diminish the Kings right for the ancient prizes due and accustomed as of Wines and other goods but that his rights shall be saved unto him whole and in all points Declaring of of what things only the Marshall of the King's House shall hold plea c. It is Ordained And in Another Act Entituled Common Pleas shall not be holden in the Exchequer it is said moreover no Common Pleas shall from henceforth be holden in the Exchequer contrary to the form of the Great Charter That no Writ concerning the Common Law shall be award under any Petit Seal The authority of the Constable of the Castle of Dover touching hold pleas and distresses That the Inhabitants of every County shall make choice of their Sheriff being not of Fee it is said that the King hath granted
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
being crowded into King John's Charter were never either granted or confirmed by King Henry III. Edward I. or any of our succeeding Kings nor as Sir Henry Spelman repeating the same omissions saith is therein that of paying the Debts of the Deceased probably of those that died leaving their Heirs in Ward to the Jews and others although Matthew Paris so much mistakes as to affirm that those Charters of King John and his Son Henry III. were in nullo dissimiles Which well-interpreted could signifie no more than that King John in his great necessities and troubles pressing upon his Tenants in capite the great Lords and others by taxing them proportionably according to their Knights Fees they endeavoured by those Charters all that they could to restrain him from any such Assesments which should go further then a reasonable aid unless in the cases there excepted and aim'd at no more then that a Common-Councel which was not then called a Parliament should be summon'd not annually of all Archbishops Bishops Abbots Earls and greater Barons and all the Tenants in capite being those that were most concerned therein nor as our Parliaments now but only as to their aids and services as Tenants in capite were upon forty days notice to appear at the same time and place given in general by the King's Sheriffs and Bailiffs sic factâ submonitione negotium procedat ad diem assignatam secundum consilium eorum qui prae sentes fuerint quamvis non omnes submoniti venerint and could not be intended of our now House of Commons in Parliament many years after first of all and never before introduced or constituted that praefiction of Forty days probably first creating that opinion which can never arrive unto any more then that every summons of such a Councel or Meeting was to be upon so many days notice or warning which Mr. Pryn upon an exact observation of succeeding Parliaments hath found to be otherwise much of the boisterousness haughty and long after unquiet minds of some of those unruly Barons being to be attributed to the over-strained promises and obligations of William the Conquerour before he was so to his Normans and other Nations that adventured with him upon an agreement and Ordinance made in Normandy before his putting to Sea which the King of France had in the mean time upon charges and great allowances made unto him undertaken to guard and long after by the command of King Edward III. then warring in France in the 20th year of his Reign was by Sir Barth Burghersh and others sent from thence in the presence of the Keeper or Guardian of England and the whole Estate declared in Parliament as a matter of new discovery and designs of the French happened in the traverse and success of those wars which probably might make the Posterity of some of them although the Ancestors of most of them had been abundantly recompenced by large shares of the Conquest Gifts and Honours granted by the Conquerour to a more than competent satiety extended to the then lower Ranks of his Servants Souldiers or Followers as that to de Ferrariis the Head afterwards and chief of a greater Estate and Family in England than they had in Normandy and might be the occasion of that over-lofty answer of John de Warrennis Earl of Surrey in his answer to some of the Justices in Eyre in the Reign of King Edward I. when demanded by what warrant he did hold some of his Lands and Liberties he drawing out a rusty Sword which he did either wear or had brought with him for that purpose said By that which he helped William the Conquerour to subdue England so greatly to mistake themselves as to think which the Lineage of the famous Strongbow Earl of Pembroke and some eminent Families of Wales in the after-Conquest of Ireland never adventured to do that the Ancestors of them and others that left their lesser Estates in Nòrmandy to gain a greater in England to be added thereunto had not come as Subjects to their Duke and Leige-Lord but Fellow-sharers and Partners with him which they durst not ever after claim in his life-time or the life of any of his Successors before in the greatest advantages they had of them or the many Storms and Tempests of State which befel them but might be well content as the words of the Ordinance it self do express That they and their Progenies should acknowledge a Sovereignty unto the Conquerour their Duke and King and yield an Obedience unto him and his far-fam'd Posterity as their first and continued Benefactors And those their Liberties and Priviledges freely granted by those Charters and not otherwise to be claimed were so welcome and greatly to be esteemed by the then Subjects of England as they returned him their gratitude and thankfulness for them in a contribution of the fifteenth part of all their Moveables with an Attestation and Testimony of the Wiser more Noble and Powerful part of the Kingdom viz. the Archbishop of Canterbury Eleven other Bishops Nineteen Abbots Hubert de Burgh Chief-Justice Ten Earls John Constable of Chester and Twenty-one Barons men of Might and great Estates amongst which there were of the contending and opposite Party Robert Fitz Walter who had been General of the Army raised and fighting against his Father the Earls of Warren Hereford Derby Warwick Chester and Albemarl the Barons of Vipont and Lisle William de Brewere and Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester and Hertford who afterwards fought against that King and helped to take him Prisoner That those Charters were given and granted unto them and other his Subjects the Free-men of his Kingdom of his own free will and accord And as to that of being not condemned without Answer or Tryal which in the infancy of the World was by the Creator of all Mankind recommended to its imitation as the most excellent Rule and Pattern of Justice in the Tryal and Sentence of Adam and Eve in Paradise are not to be found enacted or granted in King Edward the Confessor's Laws or the Charters or Laws of King Henry I. the people of England having no or little reason much to value or relie upon the aforesaid Charters of King John gained indirectly by force about two years after his as aforesaid constrained Resignation of his Kingdom of England and Dominion of Ireland to hold of the Pope and Church of Rome by an yearly Tribute being not much above Thirty years before and not then gone out of memory SECT V. Of the continued unhappy Iealousies Troubles and Discords betwixt the discontented and ambitious Barons and King Henry III. after the granting of his Magna Charta and Charta de Forestâ ALmost two years after which the King in a Parliament at Oxford declaring himself to be of full age and free to dispose of the affairs of the Kingdom cancelled and annulled the Charter of the Forests as granted in his
Bathenia propriae familiae omnem indignationem omnem rancorem quem erga ipsum Henricum pro quibuscunque transgressionibus usque ad diem Dominicam proximam post festum translationis beati Thomae Martyris anno c. tricesimo quinto ita tamen quod pro remissione illa dabit nobis praedictus Henricus duo millia marcarum unde solvet nobis ducentas marcas per annum videlicet in Festo Sancti Michaelis anno eodem cent ' marc ' ad Pasch ' prox ' sequen ' cent ' marc ' sic de anno in annum ad eosdem terminos cent ' marc ' donec praedicta duo millia marc ' nobis fuerint persoluta si forsitan contigerit quod praefat ' Henr ' medio tempore in fata concesserit antequam praedicta pecunia nobis fuerit persoluta haeredes sui eandem solutionem facient ad eosdem terminos sicut praedictum est perdonationis eidem Henr ' amerciamentum in quod incidit per attinctam quam Thomas de Muleton arramavit versus ipsum de ten ' in Holbech Querpilan ' idem etiam Henr ' juri omnibus de eo conqueri volentibus etiam nobis in Curia nostra secundum Legem Consuetudinem Regni nostri in cujus c. Teste Rege apud Wodestock octavo die Julii T. Johanne Mansel Richardo Fil Nicholai In the mean time Lewis King of France warring in the Holy-Land and being taken Prisoner the Pope solicited him to take upon him the Cross to rescue him Alphonsus the King of Castile undertaking to accompany him and the captive King offering to restore Normandy to the King of England for his assistance which the French disdaining and undertaking themselves to procure his Ransom upon the Pope's granting a Tenth to be leavied upon the Clergy and Laity for three years the King undertakes notwithstanding the Cross upon the hopes of getting the money which saith Matthew Paris being collected would have amounted unto 600000 l. as was then believed more than to perform his promise Whereupon shortly after a Parliament was holden about the Tenth granted by the Pope for the recovery of the holy-Holy-Land where the Bishops notwithstanding that he had for the ease of his Subjects severely accused in Parliament Henry de Bathonia one of his Justices for receiving of Bribes were first dealt withal absolutely denied it and the Lords alledging they would do as the Bishops did the City of London was again compelled to the contribution of 2000 l. The Gascoigns likely to revolt if a speedy remedy were not provided general Musters were made and command given that every one that could dispend 13 l. per annum should furnish out an Horseman which together with his extreme wants occasioned another Parliament who finding it to be better for the people to do it in the usual way than force him to those extravagant as they call'd them courses which he took were after fifteen days consultation in the 37th year of his Reign although they could not be then ignorant that he had but lately grievously punished and expelled the Caursini the Pope's Bankers or money-Collectors and Brokers and could not deny his own wants which appeared in the pawning of his Jewels and Ornaments and in the end as Sir Robert Cotton if he were the Author of the short view of that King's Life and Reign hath recorded it had not means to defray the diet of his Court but was constrained to break up House-keeping and as Mat. Paris saith with his Queen cum Abbaâ—ibus Prioribus satis humilitèr hospitia prandia quaerere to satisfie the King's necessities but so as the reformation of the Grievances and ratification of their Laws might be once again solemnly confirmed A Tenth was granted by the Clergy for three years to be distributed by the view of certain Lords and three Marks Scutage for every Knights Fee to be charged upon the Laity for that year insomuch as those often-confirmed Charters were again agreed to be ratified in the most solemn and religious way that Relion and State could ever devise to have it done after this manner viz. the King who in all Excommunications was with the Lords Temporal by the Laws and reasonable Customs of England to give their assent before it could sortiri effectum or have any validity with many of the great Nobility of England all the Bishops and chief Prelates in their Reverend Ornaments with Candles or Tapers in their hands walking in a direful Procession through Westminster hall into the Abbey-Church of Westminster there to hear the terrible Sentence of Excommunication pronounced against the Infringers of the aforesaid Charters granted by him At the lighting of which Candles the King having received one in his hand gave it to a Prelate that stood by him saying It becomes not me being no Priest to hold the Candle my heart shall bear a greater Testimony and withal laid his hand upon his breast the whole time that the Sentence was reading which was pronounced autoritate de omni potentis c. Which done he caused the Charter of King John his Father granted by his free consent to be likewise openly read and the rest of the company throwing away their Candles which lay smoaking on the ground all cried out So let them who incur the Sentence be extinct and stink in Hell The King with a loud voice saying as God me help I will as I am a man a Christian a Knight a King Crowned and Anointed inviolably observe those things which Ceremony ended the Bells rung out and all the people shouted with joy But it is not to be forgotten although Matthew Paris Samuel Daniel and all other Writers but Mr. William Pryn make no mention of it in this astonishing and dreadful Ceremony in the like whereof never were Laws saith Mr. Daniel amongst men except the Decalogue from Mount-Sinai promulgated and pronounced with more Majesty of Ceremony to make them heeded reverenced and respected than were those that wanted Thundring and Lightning from Heaven acompanied with an Earth-quake shaking the very Foundations thereof The King did not desert his own regal Rights and Preheminencies but did at the same time when in that dreadful manner he joyned in the Pronunciation of that Sentence of Excommunication with his own mouth publickly except out of it all the Ancient and Accustomed Liberties of the Realm and the Dignities and Rights of the Crown and the same day caused a Record thereof to be made yet extant in the Tower of London in these words viz. Noverint Universi quòd Dominus Henricus Rex Angliae Illustis R. Comes Norf. Marshallus Angliae H. Comes Horeford Essex J. Comes de Warren Petrus de Sabaudia caeterique Magnates Angliae concesserunt in sententiam Excommunicationis generaliter latam apud Westmonasterium tertio decimo die Maii Anno Regni Regis predicti 37. in hac forma scilicet quòd vinculo
complaint of the Gascoigns who were under the Government of the Prince that their Wines were taken away by the King's Officers without due satisfaction and the Prince thereupon addressing himself to his Father in their behalf and the Officers in excuse of themselves informing the King that the Prince took upon him to do Justice therein when it belonged not to him the King was put in a great rage and said Behold my Son and my Brother are bent to afflict me as my Grand-father King Henry II. was And being put to his shifts to supply his necessities came himself into his Exchequer and with his own mouth pronounced and made Orders for the better bringing in of his Revenues Farms and Amerciaments under severe penalties that every Sheriff which appeared not yearly there in the Octaves of St. Michael with his money as well of his Farms and Amerciaments as other dues for the first day should be amerced five Marks for the second ten for the third fifteen and for the fourth should be redeemed at the King's pleasure all Cities and Freedoms to be amerced in the same manner and the fourth day making default were to lose their Freedoms the Sheriffs amerced five Marks for not distraining upon every man that having 20 l. Lands per annum came not to be made Knight unless he had before been freed by the King And by examinations of measures of Ale and Wine Bushels and Weights got some small sums of money and about the time of Richard Earl of Cornwal's going to Germany where he was by the privity and approbation of the Councel of State in England elected King of the Romans called a Parliament where bringing his Son Edmond clad in an Apuleian-habit he said Behold my Son Edmond whom God hath called to the dignity of Regal Excellency how fitting and worthy is he of your favour and how inhumane were it in so important a necessity to deny him counsel and aid and shewed them how by the advice and benignity of the Pope and the Church of England he had for the obtaining of the Kingdom of Sicily bound himself under the penalty or covenant of losing the Kingdom of England in the sum of 150000 Marks and had obtained the Tenth of the Clergy of all their Benefices for three years according to the new rates without deduction of expences besides their first-fruits for three years whereupon after many excuses of poverty they promised upon the usual condition of confirmation of Magna Charta to give him 32000 Marks But that not satisfying The next year another Parliament was holden at London where he pressing them again for money to pay his debts the Lords told him plainly They would not yield to give him any thing and if he unadvisedly bought the Kingdom of â—icilly and was deceived in it he was to blame himself therein And repeating their old grievances the breach of his promise contempt of the power of the Church and the Charter which he had solemnly sworn to observe with the insolency of Strangers especially of William de Valence who most reproachfully had given the lye to the Earl of Leicester for which he could not upon complaint to the King have right done him how they abounded in Riches and himself so poor as he could not repress an Insurrection of the Welsh The King thereupon promised by his Oath taken upon the Tomb of St. Edward to reform all his errours But the Lords in regard the business was difficult got the Parliament to be adjourned to Oxford and in the mean time the Earls of Gloucester Hereford the Earl Marshal Bigod Spencer and other great men confederated and provided by strength to effect their desires The King driven into necessities did the better to appease those often-complain'd-of grievances when his own were burthen enough by his Writs or Commissions sent into every County of England appoint quatuor milites qui considerarent quot quantis gravaminibus simpliciores à fortioribus opprimuntur inquirent diligenter de singulis querelis injuriis à quocunque factis vel à quibuscunque illatis à multis retroactis temporibus omnia requisita sub sigillis suis se cùm Baronagio ad tempus sibi per breve praefixum certificent which by any Record or History do not appear saith Sir Henry Spelman to have been ever certified And to obtain money procured the Abbot of Westminster to get his Convent to joyn with him as his surety in a Bond for 300 marks sent Simon Paslieu his trusty Councellor with Letters to other Monasteries to do the like but they refused And the Prince participating in the wants of his Father was for want of money constrained to mortgage the Towns of Stanford Benham and other Lands to William de Valence So that upon the aforesaid adjournment and meeting of the Parliament at Oxford in the 42d year of his Reign brake out those great discontents which had been so long in gathering whither the Lords brought with them great numbers of their Tenants by Knights-Service which were many followers dependants and adhaerents upon a pretence of aiding the King and going against the Welsh where after they had secured the Ports to prevent Foreign aids and the Gates of the City of London with their oaths and hands given to each other not to desist until they had obtain their ends began to expostulate their former Liberties and require the performance according to the Oaths and Orders formerly made the Chief-Iusticiar Chancellor and Treasurer to be ordained by publick choice the twenty four Conservators of the Kingdom to be confirmed twelve by the election of the Lords and twelve by the King with whatsoever else might be advantageous for their own security Whereupon the King seeing their strength and in what manner they required those things did swear again solemnly to the confirmation of them and caused the Prince to take the same Oath Of which Treasonable Contrivances Matthew of Westminster an ancient English Historian of good credit hath recorded his opinion in these words Haec de provisionibus imò de proditionibus Oxon dicta sufficiant And here yet they would not rest the King's Brethren the Poictovins and all other strangers were to be presently removed the Kingdom cleared of them and all the Peers of the Land sworn to see it done The Earl of Cornwal's eldest Son refusing to take the Oath without leave of his Father was plainly told That if his Father would not consent with the Baronage in that Case he should not hold a Furrow of Land in England In the end the King's Brethren and their followers were despoiled of all their fortunes and banished by order under his own hand with a charge not to pass with any Money Arms or Ornaments other than such as the Earls of Hereford and Surrey should allow and appoint with an injunction to the City of Bristol or any other Ports not to permit any strangers or Kinsmen of
of the said Earl of Leicester's actions and courses a Writ was sent unto him in the King's Name as followeth Rex Gilberto de Clare Comiti Gloucestr ' Hertford ' salutem Cùm hac instante die Jovis in Crastino Cinerum super liberatione Edwardi Primogeniti Nostri finalem habere velimus tractatum vobis mandamus in fide homag dilectione quibus Nobis tenemini firmitèr injungentes Quòd omnibus aliis praetermissis sitis ad Nos die Jovis praedictâ Nobiscum super hoc tractaturi consilium vestrum impensuri ne retardatio liberationis ipsius vobis per moram absentiam vestram ad diem illum meritò possit vel debeat imputari quòd nullatenùs velle deberetis hoc sicut Nos Honorem nostrum vestrum ac tranquillitatem Regni Nostri noc non praedicti filii Nostri Liberationem diligitis nullo modo omittatis Teste Rege apud Westmonasterium decimo sexto die Februarii The 25 th day of that February a Memorandum was entred in the form following viz. Die Mercurii prox post festum S â—i Petri ad Cathedram recepit Dominus Rex sigillum suum à Magistro Johanne de Chishull Archidiacono London illud commisit Thomae de Cantilup sicut continetur in Rotulo patentium hujus anni Teste Rege apud Westm ' 25. die Februarii The 3 d of March next following Roger de Mortuomari for a small time pretending to submit ad pacem Domini Regis as they that had disturbed it would have it to be believed had Writs to the Subjects of Herefordshire and Shropshire not to molest him or his Tenants viz. Rex Vicecom ' Heref. salutem Cùm Rogerus de Mortuomari nuper ad pacem nostram venerit propter hoc hominibus suis in guerra in Regno Nostro super mota secum existentibus gratiam sacere velimus tibi praecipimus quòd omnes homines praedictos quos pro eo quòd in guerrâ praedictâ cum ipso fuerunt capi vel attachiari fecisti sine dilatione deliberari fac Nec ipsos de caetero ob causam praedictam occasionari fae nisi ipsos pro aliquo delicto ante Guerram vel post Guerram praedictam seu pacem Nostram proclamatam ab eisdem commisso ccperis vel attachiari feceris pro quo secundum consuetudinem Regni Nostri deliberari non debeant Teste Rege apud Westm ' tertio die Martii Eodem modo mandatum est Vicecomiti Salop. pro hominibus ejusdem Rogeri Per Regem consilium Robert de Ferrers Earl of Darbie a man of great Power and Revenue not keeping pace with their designes but falling roughly upon some of his Tenants that adhered unto them Ada de Tybetot complaining had by the King concilio Baronum the Mannor of Thorpe in Leicestershire restored unto her for that it was never the Intention of the Barons as they said that any Women especially Widows not being guilty should suffer in that Warr by a Writ sent unto Nicholas de Hastings who held the Lands of the said Earl of Darby upon seizure and sequestration sub hac forma of the date aforesaid viz. Rex Nicho. de Hastings Custodi terrarum Roberti de Farrar Com. Derb. salutem Monstravit nobis Ada de Tibetot gravitèr conquerendo quòd praefat ' Com. occasione Turbationis habitae in regno Nostro Manerium praedictae Adae de Thorp cum suis pertinentiis in Com. Leic. occupavit sibi detinuit ad ejus grave dampnum jacturam manifestam quod quidem Manerium unà cum aliis terris praefat ' Com. nunc est in manu Nostra ut dicitur quia verò Nostrae nunquam extitit intentionis aut Baronum nostrorum quòd aliquae Mulieres praecipuè Viduae dampnum aliquod vel jacturam incurrere deberent occasione Turbationis praedictae nisi illae quae turbationis illius Participes extiterint vobis de Concilio Baronum praedictorum mandamus quòd inquisita super hoc plenius veritate si praefatam Viduam de Manerio suo praedicto per eundem Com. ejectam inveneritis ut praedictum est si ipsa de praedicta turbatione in nullo culpabilis extiterit tunc eidem Viduae de eodem Manerio cum suis pertinentiis Sesinam suam rehabere fac Teste Rege apud Westm ' 3. die Martii per Iustic P. de Monteforti R. de S ti Johanne Adam de Novo Mercato The 5 th day of that March the like Writ was sent to the said Nicholas Hastings to restore the Princess Elianor Wise to the Prince the Mannor of Ashford in the Peake which being assigned to her the said Earl had entred upon for that it was never the King 's and the Barons intentions that Women not guilty should suffer by these Wars in which they had not offended in the form following Rex Nicho ' de Hastings Custodi suo terrarum Roberti de Ferrar Comitis Derb. Salutem Cùm Edwardus filius noster karissimus dudum ante turbationem habitam in Regno Nostro Manerium suum de Arkeford in Pecco cum pertinentiis Elianor ' Consorti suae ad cameram suam assignaverit quod quidem manerium praefatus Comes occasione turbationis praedictae nuper occupavit ac Nostrae nunquam extitit Intentionis vel Baronum nostrorum quòd Mulieres quae participes non extiterint praedictae turbationis dampnum vel jacturam aliquam debeant incurrere cùmque praedicta Elianora in nullo culpabilis sit de turbatione praedicta vobis de Consilio praedictorum Baronum mandamus quòd eidem Elianorae de Manerio praedicto quod unà cum praedictis terris praefati Comitis nunc est in manu Nostra ut dicitur Seisinam suam rehabere fac Teste Rege apud Westmonasterium quinto die Martii Per Consilium The 16 th day of that March Mandates were sent by the King to Roger de Shurland Guncelin de Badylmer Simon de Crey quibusdam aliis to come to him upon Palm-Sunday wheresoever he should then be in England viz. Mandatum est Rogero de Shirland in fide dilectione quibus Regi tenetur firmitèr injungendo quòd modis omnibus sine omni dilatione veniat ad Regem it à quòd sit ad R. die Lunae prox ante instantem diem dominicam Palmar ' ad ultimum ubicunque tunc Rex fuerit in Anglia cum Rege locutur ' hoc nullo modo omitt Teste Rege apud Westmon ' 16. Martii Eodem modo mandatum est Gunselmo de Badilmer Simoni de Crey quibusdam aliis Roger de Mortuo Mari and other Lords of the Marches of Wales being by the King at his being at Worcester de Consilio Baronum qui sunt de consilio Regis ordered to go into Ireland at Christmas next following according to the Instructions given by the King and his Barons which time was afterwards Prorogued until Mid-Lent and
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
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
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
Christianity in this our British Isle whither with divers good Authors we believe that King Lucius who is said to lie buried at Winchester did in the year 156 after the Birth of our Redeemer or in the year 185 186 or 187. write his Letter to Pope Eleutherius to transmit unto him the Roman Laws it is allowed by Sir Henry Spelman to have been written Rege Proceribus Regni Britanniae and that Faganus and Dervianus two Doctors being sent by Eleutherius to King Lucius Baptized him cum regulis populum Baptizant Clerum ordidinant 3. Metropolitanos 28. Episcopos instituunt Rex Ambrosius Aurelius ut memoriale Procerum Britanniae quos Hengistus Saxonesque sui complices nefanda proditione in monte Ambrosij qui nunc vulgò Stohenge dicitur trucidaverant 480. Consul ' Barones aeternum fieret praegrandes Lapides qui ibidem in borum memoriam usque in praesens positi sunt ab Hybernia cum magna manu Germano suo Uther illuc transmisso deportari fecit qui câ—â—n allati fuissent congregati sunt in monte Ambrosij edicto Regis magnates eum Clero cum magno honore dictorum nobilium sepulturam prepararent In the Charter of King Aethelbert confirming his Grant of the Land given to the Church of St. Pancrase in the Year 605. It is mentioned to have been done consensu venerabilis Augustini Archiepiscopi ac Principum suorum Et Decreta judiciorum ordinavit juxta exempla Romanorum concilio sapientum and when Edwin King of Northumberland was perswaded to be a Christian it is said that he consulted cum principibus conciliariis suis. Anno Dominicae incarnationis Aethelbertus Rex in fide roboratus Catholica unà cum beata regina filioque ipsorumque Eadbaldo ac Reverendissimo praesule Augustino caeterisque Optimatibus terrae solemnitatem natalis Domini celebravit Cantuariae convocato igitur ibidem communi concilio tà m Cleri quà m populi In Anno Domini 673. a Parliamentary Councel was holden at Hertford presentibus Episcopis ac Regibus Magnatibus universis but not any Knights Citizens Burgesses or Commons as we read of saith Mr. Pryn. A great Councel or Parliament was held at Becanfeld where Wythred King of Kent was present Anno 694. In like manner where none but the Peers were present The like Anno 710. at Worcester but without any Commons The like in the Councel at Cliff Anno 747. holden by Ethelbaldus King of Mercia omnibus Regni sui principibus ducibus being present but not one Knight or Burgess mentioned The like in Anno 787. at Colchuth coram Offa Rege suis magnatibus convenerunt omnes principes tà m Ecclesiastici quà m seculares Anno Domini 793. King Offa held a Councel at Verulam wherein the King suorum Magnatum acquiescens concilio took a journey to Rome Anno 794. after his return Celebrated two Councels the one at Colchyth where were present nine Kings twenty-five Bishops twenty Dukes but no House of Commons the other at Verolam Congregato apud Verolamium Episcoporum Optimatum concilio About the year 796. Cynewolf King of West Sex held a Councel where he wrote to Lullus Bishop of Mentz touching matters of Religion unà cum Episcopis suis nec non cum caterva Satraparum Anno 800. Kenulf King of Mercia called to the Councel at Clovesha omnes Regni sui Episcopos Duces Abbates cujuscunque dignitatis viros where there was no mention of any Commons Anno 816. at the Councel of Colechyth Caenulf King of Mercia was present cum suis principibus ducibus optimatibus but not a Syllable of Knights or Burgesses present About the year 822. in the Councel of Cloveshâ— where Beornulf King of Mercia Wilfred Archbishop Omniumque dignltatum optimates Ecclesiasticarum Secularium were present but no Knights of Counties or Burgesses Anno 824. another Councel was held by the same King at the same place assidentibus Episcopis Abbatibus Principibus Merciorum universis but no Commons for ought appears the King Archbishops Bishops and Dukes Subscribing their Names to the decrees there made About the same time a Councel called Pan-Anglicum or for all England was holden at London Praesentibus Egberto Rege West Saxonum Withlasio Rege Merciorum utroque Archiepiscopo caeterisque Angliae Magnatibus who Subscribed it Anno Domini 838. a Concilium Pan-Anglicum was holden at Kingston where King Egbert and his Son Ethelwolph were present cum Episcopis Optimatibus but not a word mentioned of the Commons Assent or Dissent Anno 850. A Councel was holden at Beningdon Praelatis proceribus Regni Merciae under King Bertulf when Lands were Setled and Confirmed by them to the Abbey of Crowland without the Assent or Mention of any Commons Anno Domini 851. In a Councel held at Kingsbury under King Bertulf Praesentibus Ceolnotho Archiepiscopo Doroberniae caeterisque Regni Merciae Episcopis Magnatibus without Knights or Burgesses Anno 855. There was a Councel or Parliament of all England held at Winchester where Ethelulf King of West-Sex Beorred King of Mercia and Edmond King of East-Sex were present together with the Arch-Bishops of Canterbury and York Caeterisque Angliae Episcopis Magnatibus wherein King Ethelwolf Omnium praelatorum principum suorum gratuito concilio without any Knights or Burgesses gave the Tithes of all the Lands and Goods within his Dominions a matter of no small Concernment to all his Subjects in their Estates and Proprieties to God and the Church which hath continued ever since in Force through all England Betwixt the Year 871. which was the beginning of King Alureds Raign and the end of which was in Anno Christi Domini 900. that excellent and prudent Prince Collected and Corrected divers Laws made by the Saxon Kings his Predecessors omitting others consulto sapientum Prudentissimorume suis consiliis usus edicit eorum observationem which was probably so done in a great Councel or Councels which were afterwards called Parliaments which in that so generally an unlearned age cannot be understood to be less than the Magnates of the Kingdom Bishops and Barons And the like is to be said of the Prudentum concilium given to Edoard who began his Reign in Anno 900. and ended it in Anno 924 and as much is to be believed of the Councel or Parliament of King Aethelstan who began his Raign in Anno 924 and ended it in the year 940. who besides what is mentioned in the making of his Laws that he did it prudenti Ulfheline Archiepiscopi aliorumque Episcoporum suorum concilio did about the year of our Lord 930. by his Charter give divers Lands to the Abby of Malmesbury in one of which Charters or Grants there was a Postscript or Subscription in these words Sciant sapientes Regionis Nostrae non has prefatas terras me injustè rapuisse rapinas Deo dedisse
sed sic eas accepi quemadmodum judicaverunt omnes Optimates Regni Anglorum to wit in a full Parliament which then consisted only of the King and his Nobility Anno Domini 944. King Edmond granted many large liberties and the Mannor of Glastonbury to the Abby thereof cum concilio consensu Optimatum suorum made it seems saith Mr. Pryns in Parliament and a clear evidence that the Nobles of that age were the Kings great Councel and Parliament without any Knights Citizens or Burgesses of which he found no mention in History or Charters Anno 948. there was a Parliament or Councel holden at London under King Edred Cùm universi Magnates Angliae per Regium edictum Summoniti tà m Archiepiscopi Episcopi Abbates quà m caeteri totius Angliae Proceres Optimates Londini convenissent ad tractandum de negotiis publicis totius Regni in which Parliament no Knights Citizens or Burgesses are said to have been present Anno 965 or 970. King Edgar with his Mother Clito his Successor the King of Scots both the Archbishops caeterisque Episcopis omnibus Regni proceribus Subscribed his Charter granted to the Abby of Glastonbury communi Episcoporum Abbatum Primorumque concilio generali assensu Pontificum Abbatum Optimatum suorum concilio omnium Primatum suorum without any Commons present assistants and attendants only excepted Anno 975. King Edgar and his Queen Elferus Prince of Mercia Ethelinus Duke of the East-Angles Elfwold his Kinsman Arch-Bishop Dunstan cum caeteris Episcopis Abbatibus Bricknotho Comite cum Nobilitate totius Regni held a Councel at Winchester without any Commons Anno 977. in the Councel of Calne under King Edward omnes Anglorum Optimates were present together with the Bishops and Clergy but no Knights or Burgesses for ought is Recorded Anno Christi 1009. by King Ethelreds Edict Universi Anglorum Optimates at Eanham acciti sunt convenire not the Commons A Parliament was Summoned by King Edward the Confessor concerning Earl Godwyn at Gloucester where Totius Regni Proceres etiam Northumbriae Comites tunc famosissimi Sywardus Leofricus omnisque Anglorum Nobilitas convenêre Et Anno 1052. at London Rex omnes Regni Magnates ad Parliamentum apud London tunc fuerunt Mr. Pryn declaring his Opinion That the former and ancient Parliaments consisted of our Kings and their Spiritual and Temporal Lords without any Knights Citizens or Burgesses Summoned to Assist or Advise with them or to Assent unto what they Enacted or Ordained In the 25th Year of his Raign granted Lands and Liberties to Saint Peters Church at Westminster Cum concilio decreto Archiepiscoporum Episcoporum Comitum aliorumque suorum Optimatum And from the Conquest until that forced something like but not to be accounted a Parliament in the 49th Year of the Raign of King Henry the Third divers Learned good Authors Summae incorruptae fidei no diminishing or additional Record-makers have assured and given Posterity and after Ages such an exact Account of our Parliaments as will leave no ground or foundation of Truth or Reason for any to believe That an Elected part of the Commons were before that Imprisonment of King Henry the Third in the 49th Year of his Raign made or Summoned to be a part of our English great Councels or Parliaments The Charter of William the Conqueror to the Abby of Battel was made Assensu Lanfranci Archiepiscopi Cantuariensis Stigandi Episcopi Cicestrensis Concilio etiam Episcoporum Baronum suorum And that great Conqueror had in the 4th Year of his Raign Concilium Baronum suorum confirmavit Leges Edwardi Confessoris posteaque Decreta sua cum Principibus constituit In the 10th or 11th Year of his Raign Episcopi Comites Barones Regni Regiâ potestate ad universalem Synodum pro causis audiendis tractandis convocati fuerunt Separated the Courts Temporal from the Spiritual and Ecclesiastical Communi concilio concilio Archiepiscoporum suorum caeterorum Episcoporum Abbatum omnium Regni sui and in the Register of Winchelsey Arch-Bishop of Canterbury it is Recorded That Rex Angliae Gulielmus Conquestor in concilio Archiepiscoporum Abbatum omnium Procerum Regni did forbid the Leges Episcopales to be used in any Hundred or other secular Courts And in the 21st Year of the Raign of King Edward the Third Mr. Selden saith There is mention made of a Great Councel holden under the said King William wherein all the Bishops of the Land Earls and Barons made an Ordinance touching the Exemption of the Abby of Bury from the Bishops of Norwich In that great and notable Pleading for three Dayes together at Pynnendon in Kent in the Raign of King William the Conqueror who as Mr. Selden repeats it out of the Leiger Book or Register of the Church of Rochester Anglorum regnum armis conquisivit suis ditionibus subiugavit in the great Controversy betwixt Lanfranc Arch-Bishop of Canterbury and Odo Bishop of Baieux and Earl of Kent the Conquerors half Brother for many great Mannors Lands and Liberties of a great yearly Value which Lanfranc claimed to appertain to his Arch-Bishoprick of which that potent Norman Bishop and Earl had injustly disseized him the King commanded the whole County without any delay to Assemble together as well French as English and more especially such as were well Skilled and Learned in the ancient Laws and Customs of England as Gosfridus Episcopus Constantiensis qui in loco Regis fuit justitiam illam tenuit Elnothus Episcopus de Rovercestria Aegelricus Episcopus de Cicestria Vir antiquissimus legum terrae Sapientissimus qui ex praecepto Regis advectus suit ad ipsas antiquas legum Consuetudines discutiendas edocendas in una Quadrigâ Ricardus de Tonebregge Hugo de Monte Forti Gulielmus de Acres Haymo Vicecomes alij multi Barones Regis ipsius Archiepiscopi aliorum Episcoporum homines multi whose Decisions made by many Witnesses Evidences and Reasons being certified to the King Laudavit laudans cum consensu omnium Principum suorum confirmavit ut deinceps perseveraret firmitèr praecepit Upon a Rebellion of Rafe de Guader a Norman made Earl of Norfolk by the Conqueror Confederating with some discontented English whilst he was absent in Normandy upon Notice thereof given hasted into England where omnes ad Curiam suam Regni Proceres convocavit legitimos Heroes in fide probatos Unto which may be added That in the Agreement betwixt King William Rufus and Robert Duke of Normandy his elder Brother touching his Claim to the Kingdom of England being of great Concern to the People wherein the King assured to the Duke All that he could Claim from his Father except England it is said Pactum juramento confirmârunt duodecim Principes nomine Regis and 12. Barones nomine Ducis In the 2d Year
unto the now Duke of Beaufort and by men leavyed and sent unto him from Wales in his Majesties March as far as Shrowsbury towards him the better to enjoy and be near the great assistance which he promised and performed without which and the Ancient and Legall aid and help of his tenures in Capite and by Knight-service he could not have made any defence for Himself or his Loyal Subjects but might have been taken and Imprisoned by the Sheriffes of every shire or County thorough which he was to pass in his Journey to York with his eldest Son the Prince whom they would likewise have seised upon when he was by the Faction and their Hunters driven and pursued as it were thither for Refuge as a Partridge hunted upon the Mountains from his Parliament when he had no Provision of Arms Men or Money And the Rebell-Party of that Parliament had formed and beforehand made ready a great and powerfull Army without any manner of want of Money and a seduced party of his People to march against him And our Feudall Laws were so little despised unknown or unusuall in this Kingdom as our Magna-Charta and Charta de Foresta more then 30 times confirmed by Acts of Parliament and the Petition so called of Right will appear to have no other source or Fountain as to the most of the many parts thereof then the Feudall Laws And they must be little Conversant in the reading practice and usage thereof demonstrable in and through our Records and Authentique Annalls and Historians that will not confess and believe it when they shall so manifestly almost every where see the vestigia and tracks thereof and our Saxon Laws faithfully translated and rendred unto us by the labours and industry of our learned Lambard and Abraham Whelock Arabick professor in the University of Cambridge and the glossary of our Learned Sr Henry Spelman may aboundantly be found to declare that they had for the most part no other Progenitors And could not be understood to amount unto no less then the greatest and strongest Fortifications that any Kingdom could have though not so guarded by the Sea as our Islands of Great Brittain are and have been when Seventy Thousand Horsmen gravi Armatura or not meanly Armed should as the manner of those Times were without much disturbance to their other affairs be sodainly ready upon any Emergencies of Wars Intestine or Forreign without Pay or Wages under the greatest obligations Divine and Humane to defend their Kings themselves and their Estates which in more valiant and plain dealing Times did in no longer part of time commonly determine the fate or fortune of a Kingdom as to a great part of the Event or success of a War And was so necessary to the Defence of the King and People as our William the Conqueror that did not bring but found the Feudall Laws here in England may be thought to have been very willing to have strengthend his Conquests here when he distributed amongst his great Officers in the Army his Soldiers as much of his Conquered Lands as Ordericus Vitalis hath related it Seventy Thousand Knights Fees who in regard of their service for the defence of the King had a Privilege by the Kings Writ for them and their Tenants to be free ab omni Talagio from all Taxes which priviledge or acquittal saith Sr Edward Coke discontinued Of which our Feudall Laws the Brittains the more ancient Inhabitants of England as well as the Brittains in America in France now known by the name of the Duchy of Brittain cannot be believed to have been Ignorant when the Father of our Victorious Arthur King of Brittain was a Beneficiarius and held his Lands in Cornwall of the King in Capite unto whose Kingdom were appendant the large Dominions of Norway and the Islands ultra Scanriam Islandiam Ireland Curland Dacia Semeland Winland Finland Wareland Currelam Flanders omnes alias terras Insulas Orientalis Oceani usque Russiam Et iu Luppo etiam posuit orientalem metam Regni Brittania multas alias Insulas usque Scotiam usque in Septentrione quae sunt de appendicis Scaniae quae Noricena dicitur and that Kingdom of Brittain had so large an Extent and the King of Brittain such a directum Dominium therein that upon an exact Search and inquiry into the Memorialls Antiquities Annalls and Historians thereof it was evident that in the Times of Ely and Samuel after the Siege and Destruction of Troy Brute came into this Island called it by his name and divided his Kingdom to his 3 Sons Loegria now called England to his Eldest Albania since called Scotland came to the 2 and Cambria or Wales unto his 3 Son Camber after whom was Arthurus Rex Britonium famosissimus Who subdued a great part of France and those his Noble Acts were not unknown unto some of the Roman Poets and Historians and the Laws used here in his Time may with great reason be understood to have been the same which the English or Saxons our later Ancestors Fletibus Precibus with supplications washed in Tears obtained of the Norman Conqueror to be left unto them as King Edward the Confessors Laws for his Justice and Holiness reputed to have been a Saint and together with the Mercenlage or Laws made by Mercia a Queen of Mercia or the Borders or Confines of Wales ought to be esteemed the same aggregate Laws which K. William the Conqueror of the Brittains Saxons and Normans after they had began to Intermarrie and were become as it were Populus unus Gens una were certified by the greatest most universall and most Solemn Jury and verdict that ever was Impannelled or made use of in England and under the strictest and severest Charge not by Judges delegate but by the King himself and a Conquering King that had omnia Jura et terras in manu sua which he did Consilio Baronum suorum in Anno quarto Regni sui cause to be Summoned through all the Shires Counties of England of out of the Nobiles sapientes et in Lege cendites ut eorum Leges et Jura et Consuetudines ab ipsis audiret Whereupon in singulis totius patriae Comitatibus a Jury of 12 men qualified as aforesaid Jure Jurando coram ipso Rege before the King himself no ordinary Judge but the Highest under God quo ad possent recto tramite incidentes neither turning on the Right hand nor the Left legum suarum Consuetudinum suarum patefacerent neither omitting or adding any thing by fraud or praevarication yet the King seeming better to approve of his Norway and Danish Laws which in many things affinitate Saxonum seemed to be the same with the Norway Laws except in some small difference in the heightning of the Fines and Forfeitures which when the King had heard read unto him maxime appreciutus est proecepit ut Obsequerentur per
his Subjects Untill in that much mistaken Erroneous Act of Parliament said to have been made in Feb. 1645. by some of the Lords Commons of that which should not have been called a Parliament when they made War had like strange Subjects and Advisors beaten away their King neither had there been any design of abrogating the Tenures in Capite or of that kind in all the Brittish Roman Saxon Danish or Normam times to annull or dissolve so strong and solid a Foundation as our Feudall Laws nothing in the Rebellion Force and strange unkingly restrictions Articles and agreements put upon King John at Running Mede no grievance by the Tenures in Capite or by Knight-service certified upon any the Writs sent by King Henry the 3. unto all the Sheriffs of the Counties and Cities of England and Wales to Elect 4 Knights of every County and City to certify to the King and his Baronage their Grievances nothing in the forced Parliament and Oaths upon King Henry the 3. and his Son Prince Edward in the 42. Year of his Reign nothing in his direfull procession and waâ—king with his Parliament of Praelates and Nobility throuâ—h Westminster Hall unto that Abby Church with burning Tapers Curses and Anathema's against the Infringers of Magna Charta and Charta de Forresta then and yet holden in Capite with many of our Liberties Fundamentall and Feudall Laws therein contained nothing desired or ordered to be taken away of them or any of them no mention of them in the arbitration or award made by the King of France betwixt that King and his Rebell Barons or when Simon Montfort and his Partners kept him in their powerfull Army a Prisoner about a Year or a Quarter no Complaints or grievances against those Tenures in Capite in all those multitudes of other supposed grievances nothing in the Petition of Right and 30 times confirmation of Magna Charta and Charta de Foresta as if they could never have enough of them nor Reformation desired in and through all the Clownish Rebellions and Insurrections in England in the Times of Wat Tiler John Ball Jack Cade Ket and others And therefore whilst these Underminers of our long lived Monarchy and in that their own happiness have gratified their fond feavourish fancies in procuring a Dissolution of as many as they could of our Tenures in Capite for all if any they could not with the Costly expence of 48. Millions sterling in mony besides an uncomptable and unvalued damage of four hundred thousand Men Women and Children slain or Massacred whole families ruined or for ever Crpled Heaven angry and incensed Hell gaping Religion torn in more then one hundred pieces and all for want of the Care Provision and Protection that the despised Mother Church of England like the Voice that was heard in Ramah Rachel mourning for her Children that they were not our Shames Published in the Streets of Gath and Askalon in the Time of its peace and the Sins of Rebellion and Witchcraft have as the Egiptian Locusts covered overspread the face of our heretofore fruitfull Island And the Protection and Provision usually made by our Tenures in Capite for Younger Children as well as the Eldest affords them no better a care then to leave them when the Mother is after the Fathers Death by some Debaucht Rooking or Gamiug Coxcomb made a fool of and Married again as very often they will are like Lambs left as a Prey unto the Wolves or Foxes the Second Husbands who if the Mother have Children by him will be as too many are well content to help to Fricasse the first husbands Children to make Portions or Estates for the Second so as if it be Enquired where is now the Court of Wards and Liveries which hath been so pretendedly without any Just Cause at all complained of they may find every where a Court of Wards and Liveries lamentably governed by the Fathers in Law of England Wales and Ireland They might do well to make more hast then they have done to repentance consider how much more then nothing at all the Nation was beholding to those overtures as much as they could of the Monarchy Tenures in Capite have been to those Commonwealth Erecters have deserved of the People and those whom they pretended to represent in Parliament when instead of bread they have given them Stones and of Fishes Scorpions and to shew the profoundness of their wisdom did as wisely as those that attempâ—ed to drown the Eel when upon a great serious consult they may Easily discover no better effects or fruit of their overchargeable expences enforced upon the people to their own great and Villanous gain and the ruin spoil and inestimable damage of our 3 before that most happy flourishing redoubtable Kingdoms When that Act of Parliament for taking away the Tenures in Capite doth but as much as it could convert them into Free and Common Socage without any mention of pro omnibus servitiis and the Law made by King Ina who Reigned here from the year of our Savior 923. untill after some part of the Year 940. which is not specially repealed by that Act of destroying as much as it was able the Tenures in Capite and by Knight Service did ordain that Scutarorum nullus ex pelle ovina Scutafabricatur qui secus fecerit 30 solides mulctator pro singulo quoque aratrobinos alat quisque ornatos atque instructos Equites and in a Tenure in Free and Common Socage Fealty is a duty and service inseparable as Littleton saith and signifieth although as he putteth the Case is in the Ceremony of the doing thereof sometimes different from homage for when the Tenant doth fealty unto his Lord he shall hold his hand upon a Book and shall Swear that he shall be faithfull and true to his Lord and shall bear him faith for the Lands which he holdeth of him and fealty is derived a fidelitate Feltman bestowing upon an originall of the like nature a fide and Escuage draweth unto it homage and Homage draweth unto it fealty for fealty is incident to every manner of Service unless it be in the Tenure of Franck-Almoigne and the Tenures in Capite and by Knights Service some only excepted being transferred into Free and Common Socage without saying per fidelitatem tantum pro omnibus servitiis may notwithstanding the forebidding or rejection of of Homage and all other Incidents of Tenures in Capite and by Knights Service render the fealty incident unto free and Common Socage by our Laws to amount unto as much as that which the framer of that Act of Parliament hoped to extinguish by Converting those Tenures in Capite as much as he could into Tenures in pede which should have been beleived to have been very fundamental and dangerous to alter when the wisdom of the English and Scottish Commissioners authoris'd by an Act of Parliament in the Reign of King James
who had a great desire to unite the Kingdoms of England and Scotland in their Laws and Religion as well as they were in their neighbourhood and to have them to be in Subjection under one and the same King and Sovereign were after long and learned Conferences and disputes constrained to forsake that impossible to be atchieved Enterprize and our great Incendiary Mr John Pym could in the Year 1641. harangue in that unfortunately seditious Parliament that our Laws which he might or should have known as to a great part of them to have been composed and derived unto us from our German and Northern Progenitors Feudall Laws intermingled with the Civill and Cannon Laws with some municipall Laws Consuetudines non Malos in se as Gavel kind and the Rescripts Edicta mandata principum Responsa adjudicata Judicum prudentum not dissonant or contradicting each other the Laws of God an rules of Right Reason were the Peoples Birth-Right and our persecuted untill he was Murthered blessed Martyr King Charles the First did in the 3. Year of his Reign when he signed that which they stiled the Peoples Petition of Right declare unto them that his maxime is that the Peoples Liberties strengthen the Kings Prerogative and that the Kings Prerogative is to defend the Peoples Liherties and may when all is done if well and truly weighed in the Ballance of Right reason and understanding and what hath hapned and may come to pass hereafter easily discern that in England there never was such a Confusion and overturning of our Laws and Ancient Monarchick Government through all the Successions of our Brittish Saxon Danish and Norman Kings as hath been in England since the beginning of that famously infamous Rebellious Parliament and their Undermining of our Laws and Libeties and turn all into an Anarchy that they might gain a power to enrich themselves by the spoil of 3 Kingdoms and ruining of as many as would not be as Wicked Rebells as they had been And that when his Majesty had Released unto them the arrears of his profits by his Tenures and Court of Wards and Liveries a Million and a half Sterling and in his pourveyances Nine Hundred and Fifty Thousand Pounds It was hugely praejudiciall to the King and beneficiall unto his Subjects too many of whom had Rebelled against his Royall Father persecuted and Murthered him Hunted and would have extirped his Royall Posterity And that it can be no otherwise accompted to be then a most Barbarously Ingratefull and unworthy Act of the Nation and People of England after many Knights fees and Lands freely given and granted by the Kings Royall Progenitors to their forefather and their Heirs to be holden by Knight-service and in Capite of which if the Sixty Thousand Knights fees and more reckoned by some Authors should be no greater a number then ten thousand and valued but at 20l. per Ann. as they may be conjectured to have been accompted in Anno. 1 Edwardi 2. they would amount unto 200000l per Ann. and if each of them have since increased but unto 300l per Ann which may be thought to be now the least improvement might amount in yearly value unto 3 Millions Sterling and if that should be multiplyed 60 times more as Ordericus Vitalis reckonet it the Yearly value thereof might swell unto one Hundred Eighty and 3 Millions Sterling besides great quantities of other Lands freely granted in the severall Reigns of his Majesties Royal progenitors unto others of them their heirs to be holden of them in Socage besides 200000l per An. or a very great Yeerly sums of Mony necessarily expended upon his Military Guards for the defence of himself his people against Sedition and Rebellion-mongers more then his Royal Father progenitors needed to have done if he had kept entire his said eminent and Legall Rights of Tenures in Capite and by Knight Service to endeavour to extinguish the Right use of them and forget their great and very great obligations to their Prince and Common parent and Royall progenitors and take away from our Kings the means whereby they should protect and defend themselves and their Subjects from damage and Injuries forreign and domestique And those Tax improvers and Advantage Catchers can as if that were not sufficient make it as too many of their Actions and business to cozen and beg all they can from him and instead of never ceasing to give him thanks for breaking the barrs of an Hell of Arbitrary power and slavery wherein their Counterfeit Commonwealth's men by their perjuries and Hypocriticall Rebellion had brought them And their Cheating Man of Sin Oliver Cromwell had by his Instrument of his own making lockt and bolted them fast enough as he hoped with a Domine quid retribuam what shall we render for all his benefits make it the greatest of their care and Imployment not only to take and keep from him all they can even at the same time when they had obteyned of him an unparalleld Act of Indempnity and Oblivion to pardon and forget all their Treasons and offences committed against him and his blessed Father which in a small kind of Calculation may not unprobably be believed to amount unto Sixteen Millions Sterling in arreres of his own Revenue and 2 or 3 Hundred Millions Sterling at the least for the forfeitures which our Laws would have given him with some Mercy and Moderation to boot for so small a Recompence as during his life in the Moyety or one half of the Excise to his Heirs and Successors to be drawn out of the Groans Tears Complaints and sorrows of which the main part of the Common People who never did or are like to hold any Lands of our Kings in Capite or by Knight Service And should not have forgotten how they promised him to be his Tenants in Corde and with what a Princely and Fatherly affection he told their Representatives that he was sorry to see so many of his Good People come to see him at Whitehall and had no Meat to feed or entertain them yet when he had bereaved himself of that grand and continuall part of the strength and support of his Crown Power and Dignity and those entire Rights of his Monarchick Government which our prudent second Fabius ever to be praised and remembred from Generation to Generation the late George Monke Duke of Albemarle for his military wary Conduct thorough almost insuperable Difficulties without hearkning to the Syren songs of those that pretended to be for a Common wealth or being tempted or deluded to restore his Majesty to a Cripled Monnarchy as the men of the Rebellious Rump or no Parliament with their Jugling Covenant or as many Faces as they should have occasion to impress or stamp upon it would have perswaded him to have done and that great Hero denyd to do And that ill advised framer of that Unhappy Act of Parliament to cut or take away the Arteries
to his people that they shall have Election of their Sheriff in every Shire where the Shrievalty is not of Fee if they list which would have been very prejudicial both to the King and his people as to the collecting of his revenue and Executing his Justice by his Mandates Writs and Process if the confirmation allowance or disallowance thereof had not been by Law lodged in the King and his Supream authority What persons shall be returned in every Jury the King Willeth and Commandeth For a remedy against Conspirators False Enformers and Embracers of Juries the King hath provided a remedy Against Mainteynors of Suits it is said the King willeth but it may not be understood hereby that any person shall be prohibited to have Councel of Pleaders or of Learned Men in the Law for his Fee or of his Parents or next Friends What distress shall be taken for the Kings debts and how it shall be used the King willeth What sort of Persons the Commons of shires shall chuse for their Sheriffs forasmuch as the King hath granted it is said the King willeth That Baylewicks and Hundreds shall not be let too dear to charge the people with contribution In summons and attachments in plea of land the writ shall contain 15 daies it is in like manner to be understood In like manner against false retornes of writs The King willeth that the Statute of Winchester shall be read 4 times in the year and put in execution The King willeth that Escheators shall commit no wast in Wards lands In an act of Parliament declaring in what cases the owner shall have his lands delivered out of the King's hands with the issues it is said the King willeth In an Act of Parliament that vessels of gold shall be assayed it is said to have been ordained and that notwithstanding all those things before-mentioned or any point of them both the King and his Councell and all that were present at the making of that Ordinance meaning the Judges and Assistants of that Honourable Court will and intend that the right and prerogative of his Crown shall be saved to him in all things In the Statute de Escatoribus 29. E. 1. at the Parliament of our Lord the King at Lincoln in his Councell it was agreed and also commanded by the King Himself and this order shall be held from henceforth in the Chancery notwithstanding a certain ordinance lately made by our Lord the King concerning lands and tenements taken into his hands by his officers and not to be delivered but by the King himself and as it is conteined in a Certain dividenda or indenture made betwixt the King himself and his Chancelor whereof one part remaineth in the Custody of the Chancelor In the new Statute of Quo Warranto made Anno 30. E. 1. it is recited that the King himself in the 6 year of his Reign providing for the wealth of his Realm and the more full administration of Justice as to the Office of a King belongeth the more discreet men of the Realm as well high as of low degree being called thither it is provided and ordained but in the writs framed to enquire by what warrant the Liberties were granted to the people they are said to be in Parliamento nostro per nos concilium nostrum 31. E. 1. In an ordinance for Measures it is said that by the consent of the whole Realm of England the King's measure was made In the Statute of 33. E. 1. Touching protections granted by the King it is said to have been provided In the ordinance or definition of Conspirators made in the aforesaid Year it is declared that this ordinance and final definition of Conspirators was made and aworded by the King and his Councell in Parliament In the Statute of Champerty made in the 33d year of the Reign of the aforesaid King it is recited that whereas in our Statute it was contained and provided by a common accord the writ framed thereupon mentioneth that law to be the Kings Ordinance In the Ordinance for enquests made in Parliament the same year it is said to have been agreed and ordained by the King and all his Councell In the ordinatio Forestae made in the year aforesaid whereas certain people have by great men made request to our Lord the King that they may be acquitted of their charge and the demand of the Foresters our Lord the King answered that when he had granted Pour lieu he was pleased it should stand as it was granted albeit the thing was sued and demanded in an evill point Nevertheless he willeth and intendeth that all his demeasne lands which have been of the Crown or returned unto it by Escheat or otherwise shall have free chase and free warren and in right of them that have lands and tenements disafforested for the said Pourlieus and such as demand to have Common within the bounds of forests the intent and will of our Sovereign Lord the King is c. And if any that were disafforested would rather be in the Forest it pleaseth the King very well and our Lord the King willeth and commandeth the Justices of the Forest c. In Anno 34. of his Reign there being an Ordinance for measuring of Land In the same Year the King by his Letters-Patents with the Teste meipso certifying the Statute de Conjunctim Feoffatis declared that it was no new thing that among divers establishments of Laws which he had ordained in his time upon the great and heinous mischiefs that happen in Writs of Novel disseisin chiefly above others he as if he neither did know or believe any co-ordination or that he was to be tutored by a Conservatorship had devised a more speedy remedy then was before and willeth and granteth that that Statute shall take his effect the morrow after the feast of St Peter ad Vincula next coming In the Statute for Amortising of Lands tempore E. 1. the King commandeth c. In Ca. 4. Which seemeth to be about the 27th Year of that Kings Reign in the confirmation of all our Laws Liberties and Customes it is said that the King willeth and granteth if any Statutes have been made or any customes brought in contrary thereunto that such Statutes and Customes shall be void for evermore And for the more assurance of this thing we will and grant that all Archbishops and Bishops for ever shall twice in the year cause to be openly read in their Cathedralls the said Charters and denounce curses against the willing infringers thereof and the Archbishops Bishops c. have voluntarily Sworn to observe the tenor thereof In the ordinatio pro Statu Hiberniae made by him at Nottingham by the assent of his Councel there being in Ca. 6. in what cases the Justices of Ireland may grant pardon of Felony c. and where not there is an exception so always that there
records or Historians or even of our Neighbor nations find or make any but Fools or Knaves or Criminals of the highest nature believe that any Law was ever made in England or concerning any part of its dominions or teritories without their Kings regal Assent Will or Dictate untill that House of Commons made that most damnable ever to be abhorred wicked Vote or Order which they would have called a Law for the Murder of K. Charles the First Two of the principal Contrivers whereof Cromwell and Bradshaw have since had their Carcasses by a just Judgment of God thrown and buried under Tyburn a Common place of Execution for Theeves and Traytors the worst of Criminals and Malefactors in mankind but lest the over hast of the designs of those that would make a gain thereby should Gallop them into Errors of no small dangers or mischiess to the publique they may be pleased to take a little breath pause and consider the true meaning acceptation and extent of the words Constitute Convince Colloquium so often and necessarily used in the Writs and Mandates of our Kings and Princes in summoning or calling a part of their subjects unto their great Councels or Parliaments For Constituere convenire Significat conveniendo obligat se ad id quod jam debitum est sic constituere pecuniam est jam ante debitam absque stipulatione promittere Theophil in Sect de const non solum pro alio sed pro seipso quis recte constituat Sect. de constitut inst de act debitum autem oportet esse quod instituitur constituere possunt qui bona vel peculia habent cum libera administratione Gad. l. 182. de verb. res Signif constituimus nudo consensu eoque sufficiente ad actionem producendam Sect. 9. de just act constituere in dignitate munere Briss. ex F. C. constituere quaestionem est decernere ut judicetur Constitutio in generali nomine dicitur jus quod a principe conditur Theophil Sect. F. de jur natur Constitutum i. e. decretum Constitutus dies dies praefinitus Lex Lengobard si talis causa fuerit quam deliberare minime possit paenas constituat distringat hominem illum de judiciaria sua i. e. diem constituit lib. 1. 2. tit 21. And it was the duty and interest of the Commons Elected to come unto Parliament to consent unto such things as the Lords of whom they held their Lands and stood in great awe of to gain their loves or avoid their ill-wills should advise which with their Oath of Allegeance to the King their Superior Lord and their Homage and Fealty done to the Mesne Lord might perswade them to be as unwilling to forfeit their Lands as they would be to injure their Judgments and Consciences And though in some of the Writs for the wages of the Commons in Parliament assembled it hath by the mistaking or inadvertency of Clerks been sometimes said that they came and tarried ad consulend tractand yet the Tenor and intention of the most part of the Writs of Election for the Commons have been since the 21st Year of the Reign of King Edward the 1. as many as almost 20 for every one in the purpose Tenor and commanding part of it no more then ad faciend consentiend and sometimes ad loquendum and at another time ad audiendum faciendum upon which and no other account they came thither and were returned as Subjects not King-makers Law-makers Governours Disposers or Deposers and whilst they remained there or in veniendo redeundo and tarried at home were nor could be no otherwise then Subjects And in that and no other manner certainly did King Edward the 3d understand it when in a Parliament holden by him at Westminster in the 45th Year of his Reign there had been a great mistaking in the designed manner of levying an aid granted to the King of 22 s. and 3 d. out of every parish of England as hath been before mentioned Upon the examination whereof after the Parliament was dismissed the King and his Privy-Councel finding that that rate upon every Parish would fall much short of the summ intended and not supply the publique occasions did by an extraordinary special Writ directed to the Sheriff of every County command them to Summon only one Knight Citizen and Burgess of each County City and Borough serving in that Parliament especially named by the King in those Writs to avoid trouble and expences to appear at a Councel to be holden at Winchester to advise how to raise the intended summ of Money and directed the Sheriffs to enquire and return the number and names of all the Parishes Churches Chappell 's and Prebendaries within their respective Counties in the hands as well of Lay-men as of Clerks and Religious persons who accordingly meeting in the said Councel of Winton which continued sitting but 9 days as the Writ for the Knight of Southamton expresses and for Sussex Berks Oxon Wilts only for 11 days and to others in like proportions each of those Knights Citizens and Burgesses though they received their expences for going to tarrying at and returning from the Parliament at Westminster which granted that aid to the King and were specially again Summoned to that Councell to rectify their great mis-calculation in the aid intended and number of Parishes had their expences by the Kings Writs allowed unto them for that purpose for repairing to continuing at and going home from that Councell and in that and no other sense or manner did the Commons in that Parliament understand it Neither did the Commons in Parliament when upon the grant of the Lords in Parliament in the 13th year of the Reign of that King of the 10th Sheaf of all the corn in their demesnes except that of their bound Tenants the 1â—th fleece of wool and the â—0th lamb of their own Store to be paid in 2 years They made answer that they knew and tendred the Kings estate and were ready to aid the same only in this new device they durst not agree without further conference with their Countries and so praying respite untill another time they promised to travell their Countries think themselves to be Kings or Sovereigns over their fellow-Subjects or that they themselves were any other then Subjects And Sr Edward Coke having affirmed it to have been as it were a Law or Custom of Parliament hath likewise informed us that in the 42 year of the Reign of that King it being declared to the Parliament by the Arch-bishop of Canterbury that in a Treaty between the Kings Councel and David le Bruce of Scotland the last offer of the said David was that he was willing to have so as he might freely enjoy to him in fee the whole Realm of Scotland without any subjection or any other thing which might be accompted a perpetuall charge concerning which the Lords and Commons being willed to give their advice
Petition They pray that the Customs of the Merchants cease and they make their own conduct To which was answered le Roys ' avisera and thereupon will answer in convenable manner Anno 13. E. 3. they pray that a Justice of the one Bench or the other may come twice a year into the Counties beyond Trent To which the King answered as touching this point l' Roys ' avisera Which amounted not to a denyal for the Judges went Circuit thither afterwards Anno 37. E. 3. They pray that none be impeached for making Leases for Life in time of Pestilence nor hereafter for Lands holden in Capite without Licence of Alienation To which the King answered This requires a great deliberation and therefore the King will advise therein with his good Councel how this right may be saved and the Grands and Commons of this Land eased Anno 45. E. 3. they Petition for the free passage of Woolls To which was answered Estoit sur avisement Anno 50. E. 3. They pray that a Fine levied by Infants and Feme Coverts may be reversed within three years after they come to years or their Husbands Death To which the King answered le Roys ' avisera tanque al procheine Parliament de changer le loy devant used And it was the observation of Mr. Noy that faithful and learned Attorney of his late Majesty that in the Raign of King E. 3. in whose time the Answers of le Roys ' avisera first began by reason of his being continually in War beyond the Seas the King or his Councel had no leisure or at least no will to answer so in time s' avisera became as bad as a denyal and no other Answers given to such Petitions shewed that the King was not pleased to grant them The Commons alledging that notwithstanding the Statute made concerning Lands seized into the Kings hands by his Escheators the Lands after Enquest taken and before it can be returned into Chancery are granted to Patentees and before the Tenant can be admitted to traverse the Lands are many times wasted do pray that none be outed by reason of such Enquests until they be returned into the Chancery and the Occupiers warned by Scire facias to answer at a day to come when if they do not appear and traverse and find Sureties to answer the profits and commit no wast if it be found for the King and that if any Patent be granted or any thing done to the contrary the Chancellor do presently repeal the same and restore the Complaint to his possession without warning the Patentee or other occupier as well for the time past as the time to come The Answer unto which was The King willeth and Commands upon great pain that the Escheators hereafter do duly return all their Enquests in the Term and upon the pain heretofore ordained by the Statutes And further it is accorded by the Lords of the Realm if it please the King that before such Enquests be returned into the Chancery the King shall not hereafter make any Patent of such Lands in debate unto any c. And that the King of his abundant grace will abstain one month after such return within which time the party may traverse the Office and that the King will not make any Patent of such Lands unto any Stranger and if after any be made it shall be void But touching that which is demanded of Patentees made hereafter le Roys ' avisera It being observed by that worthy Observator that as he conceived the first part was answered by the Kings Councel and by them reported to the Lords who added the rest of the Answer if it please the King And yet the said Answer is vacated upon the Roll being Crossed all over with a Pen and the reason thereof given in the margent with a contrary hand to that of the Roll which sheweth that it was done after the Parliament was ended and after the said Roll was ingrossed viz. Quia dominus noster Rex noluit istam responsionem affirmare sed verius illam negavit pro magna parte dicens soit usez come devant en temps de ses nobles progenitors Roys d Angle terre out ad estre use Et ideo cancellatur damnatur And there can be no question but this answer in the affirmative was allowed at the least not denyed at the time of the Royal assent and that afterwards when the Statute was to be drawn up the King taking advantage of the words si plest au Roy did deny it and so the Roll was vacated And the Councel which ought to be intended the Kings Privy Councel for the Lords were the Kings great Councel and they or any Committee of them assisted by the Judges whilst the Parliament was in being were at the dissolution or proroguing thereof all gone out of their former power or employ and nothing ought to debar a King from advising with his Privy Councel by whose Advice as the Writs of Summons do import his greater Councel was called to assist them as well as himself in the time of Parliament or after it was ended and whether the one or the other had just cause to advise the King not to grant that Petition for it omitted the finding of Sureties to commit no Wast and to answer the Issues to the King which the Commons offered in their Petition and the Lords if the King so pleased that no Patent be made to any stranger of the Lands in debate which the Commons never desired But the Councel were the willinger to let it pass because it was in the Kings Power to deny it afterwards as he did whereas had it been the practice of those times the Councel would rather have kept back the Answer and not suffered it to have been read at the time of giving the Royal Assent In the fame Parliament after the said Petition was granted and the Assent cancelled as aforesaid the Commons delivered openly in Parliament a great Roll or Schedule and another Bill annexed to the said Roll containing about 41 Articles one of which remains Cancelled and Blotted out And in a Petition do pray the King their Leige Lord and the continual Councellors about him which can be no otherwise understood than of his constant privy Councel that of all the said Articles comprised in the said Roll and Schedule or Bill which are in the file of other Bills in this Parliament good Execution and true Justice be done for the profit of the King our Lord and his whole Realm of England Whereupon after it was said by the Chancellor of England on the Kings behalf to the Knights of the Shires Citizens and Burgesses there present that they sue forth their Writs for their Wages the Praelates and Lords arose and took their leaves of the King their Lord and so departed that present Parliament And after the Parliament ended the Commons delivered unto the Lords two great Bills for
the Reign of King Henry the 3d included in the King and the Lords Spiritual and Temporal the Tenants and Knights Fees of the Lords Temporal and Spiritual not a few were not represented when with those and their dependancies they so over-powered King H. 3. in a Parliament at Oxford as to inforce him to yield unto those Provisions which afterwards proved to be the fatal Incentives of an ensuing bloody War and the Seminary of many Commotions and Contests betwixt some of our Succeeding Kings and their Subjects in their after Generations those only excepted being Tenants Paravail who held their Lands subordinately of the Tenants that were mean to those that held their Lands of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal the Majores Barones holding of the King in Capite with multitudes almost innumerable of Copy-holders Lease-holders Tenants at Will or Sufferance Villani or Bordarii le menu peuple et de busse condition were exempted by Order of Parliament as represented by them and no other and always used to be so the almost numberless Herd of Monks Fryers and Religious Persons and their Revenues Servants Tenants and Dependants were not nor could be represented but freed by the Kings Orders in Parliament from payment of the Commoners Wages that came to Parliament by two several necessary sorts of Priviledges and Immunities instead of many more which they claimed the Religious and Monastick People of the Nation with their very large Possessions and Revenues before the dissolution of them in the Reign of King Henry the 8th and King Edward the 6th being rationally to be accounted little less than a full 4th part of the Lands of the Kingdom the Secular Clergy always giving Subsidies apart by themselves being almost 10000 were represented by the Bishops or Convocation of the Clergy the Tenants in Antient demesne or of the great number of the Tenants of the Kings Annaent demesne proper and largely extended Royal Revenue that should be which before they were Granted or Aliened away by our Kings like Indulgent Common Parents to their almost every days craving Subjects and People or in Rewarding and Incouraging publick and great Services done or to be done for the Common-wealth or Publick good which were very large and diffusive through all the parts of the Nation and the Clerks of the Chancery Beneficiate as most of them Antiently were and the Judges Kings Council and Officers attending the Honourable House of Peers in the like condition and should be exempted although by length of Time Custom Indulgence or Permission they have been since the Original of the House of Commons in the 49th year of the Raign of King Henry the 3d. which was then no more than our Embrio and from thence discontinued until the 22d year of the Raign of King Edward the first charged and made contributary to publick Aids and Necessities and the largely Priviledged County Palatine of Lancaster having heretofore comprehended in it the three great Earldoms of Leicester Derby and Lincoln with their largely extended Revenues was not at the first represented but did forbear the sending of Members the remainder whereof is now a great part of the Kings Revenue the whole County Palatine of Chester with Wales and its Provinces had none until the Raign of King Henry the 8th nor the County Palatine of Durham and the Burrough of Newark upon Trent until some few years ago Arch-bishops Bishops Abbots Pryors Religious Men and Women and all that have hundreds of their own as very many have by Grant from the Crown are by the Statute of 42 H. 3. exempted from coming to the Sheriffs Torn or County Court and so not intended to be Electors or Elected The Kings very large should be Demesne Lands and Crown Revenue and that of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the many other before mentioned exempted And the Records of the House of Peers in Parliament have often told us that many times when the Commons gave Subsidies they did it by the Assent of the Lords Spitual and Temporal And as a very Learned Divine of the Church of England there being many Pseudo-Protestant Divines that are not of it hath well remarked there is no Subject of the Kingdom of England represented in Parliament by the Commons thereof but as subordinate to the King and to join with him and the Lords in their As-Assent and Approbation not against him or either of them in our Kings and Soveraign Princes making of Laws for the good of the Kingdom For Repraesentare is no more than locum implore autoritate vel vicaria potestate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ita iotis est exhibere vi quà dam juris praesentiam ejus qui revera non est Budaeus definit esse repraesentationem per figuram facere imaginario visu rem ipsam repraesentare locum implere loco sistere loco praesentis sistere repraesentatio quaedam imaginaria And being but Commissioners special Attorneys or Procurators of some part of the Lay-Commonalty and Freeholders not of the Copy-holders Lease-holders Villains or Bondmen Servants or Apprentices could not by their Indentures Letters of Attorney or Procurations with any reason truth understanding or propriety of speech be believed to represent for them that never delegated or authorised them or to Act beyond the purpose or design of those that Elected sent or imployed them nor can make it to be any thing more than an aenigma or Riddle with some hidden and inveloped sense or meaning not to be comprehended in the genuine obvious or proper meaning sense or construction of the word Repraesent for who can without a great weakness failing or Error in his Judgment think that they could by any tentering or straining of the word make all the several kinds of people that sent them in obedience to the direction of their Kings Writs or Orders to impower them whilst they sate in the House of Commons in Parliament to Sentence Condemn Fine Arrest Imprison Banish or Sequester any of those that they pretended to represent when the Praedecessors of those that would be Masters of such a Latitude did in Parliament in the 42d year of the Raign of King Edward the third when a Tax or Aid was proposed for the King being the first and only end for which they were elected and sent make it their request to the King to give them leave to go home to their several Countries and places to advise before hand with those that sent them Otherwise the Pledges or Sureties which every Member of the House of Commons being to give their County and place whom they would represent as their Procurators or Attorneys are to be well heeded and cautiously taken for pledges or security well watched in their doings and not left to trick and purchase to themselves by unlawful Encroachments an Arbitrary and Illegal Soveraignty which the Laws of the Land never allowed them and their Masters the Counties and places that sent them
great wrong or Male Tolt set upon Wooll be revoked and that this grant turn not into a Custom That the keeping of the Kings Wards Lands may be committed to the next of the kin of the same Ward That Remedy may be found against such as dying past away their Lands to defraud the Lords of their Wardships The Commons made answer that they knew and tendered the Kings Estate and were ready to Aid the same only to this new device they durst not agree without further conference with their Countries and so praying respite until another time they promise to travel to their Countries Sundry of the Lords and Commons being not come the Parliament was continued from day to day until the Thursday following The Archbishop of Canterbury having been in the Kings displeasure humbled himself and desired his favour and having been defamed desired his Tryal by his Peers to which the King answered he would attend unto the Common affairs and after hear others A Proclamation was made for such as would exhibit any Petitions and a day given therefore Anno 25 E. 3. The Commons pray that process of Outlawry shall be in debt Detinue and Replevin To which was answered the like motion was in the last Parliament which had the same Answer and was then reasonably answered Anno 45. E. 3. it was agreed that ever Petition now exhibited may be by some of the Lords considered The Commons pray that the Extracts of Greenwax may mention at whose suit such Amerciaments were lost in what Term and what Plea and between what parties To which was answered let the same be provided the next Parliament which was not summoned until in Anno 47. E. 3. In Anno 47. of his Raign after Subsidies granted the Commons prayed answers to their Petitions which was granted after the Chancellor had in the name of the King given them great thanks he willed that such of the Commons that would wait on their Petitions might so do and the rest that would might depart and so the Parliament ended They pray that Right may be done to every mans Petition To which the King answered let that be observed which toucheth every private person our Kings and Princes having ever taken time to answer the petitions of their Subjects §. 30. That in those affairs peculiar only to so great and venerable an assembly which should not be Trivial or proper to Lower and Lesser Jurisdictions assigned for the determining of Lesser matters for the publick Ease and Benefit Our Kings and Princes have a greater burden and care upon them as Gods Vicegerents besides that of Parliaments to manage and take care of the Kingdom for the benefit and good of themselves and their People FOR our Kings and Supream Magistrates having many other as well necessary as ordinary and Common affairs to look after and have regard unto as the care of Peace at Home and Abroad Defence and Protection of their People Commerce Intelligence and Correspondence with Allies and Neighbour Princes guard of the Seas and reducing of Parliament Councels to speedy Actions could not admit a long consult which in our former and more happy Parliament Assemblies were seldom above forty days and many times with lesser periods of time found to be sufficient to dispatch the great and Important occasions thereof For the care of three great Kingdoms and a multitude of Accidents dayly hourly or oftner happening ordering and disposing Competent Magistrates and Officers therein observation of their well or ill managing their trusts rewarding and encouraging the good and punishment of the bad with the administration of fit Remedies to all that complain of grievances and oppressions committed by or amongst such a multitude of people with the very great difficulties of keeping Peace abroad with Neighbour Princes and preserving their own Subjects from being Injurious to theirs or receiving wrong from others may put a Prince into a necessity of having in his own person more than Argus his Eyes or Briareus hands and give him no or a very small time of rest to ask of God what Solomon did when he took upon him the government of Israel being a great People that could not be numbred or counted for multitude give therefore thy Servant an understanding heart to Judge the people that he may descern betwixt good and evil for who is able to Judge so great a People And with greater reason as being to govern a stubborn and Rebellious people high minded and proud with the riches gained thereby many of whom have perplexed and troubled him and themselves with their needless and destructive Fears and Jealousies without which the burden would not be so heavy as it is And can never seem light if those Fault-finders and Quick-silver Brained State Polititians would but consider how great it is in the dayly exercise of that government have hitherto made kept us happy all which put together might be enough to load an Atlas and would never be so well done or prove so effectual for dayly and publick good if they should tarry either for the coming of Parliaments or for long and perpetual or disagreeing Parliaments And cannot be deemed to be of little moment or concernment if an estimate be taken of the cares charge and troubles to preserve the publick Peace both by Sea and Land Leagues and Alliances Intelligence Correspondence and Amity with Forraign Princes and States the least breach of Peace with whom might disturb our Peace and Commerce abroad and transport Invasions and War upon us at home with sending and receiving of Embassadors giving audiences dispatches to theirs and sending Instructions with ours besides their sitting in Councel with their Privy Councel commonly three times in every Week of extraordinary concernments make not some addition thereunto Sundays scarce excepted and not that day or every day in every Week besides can pass but he is troubled either with petitions for grants or favours protection from oppressions and redresses for greivances either delivered by the petitioners themselves or by one or both of the two Secretaries or the four Magistri Supplicationum Libellorum Masters as they are called of Requests who by their monthly turns of waiting have commonly an audience twice in every moneth of our Kings and Princes who are as the mercy seat upon Earth the Pool of Bethesda the Asculapius Temple the Balm of Gilead Asylum sanctuary or refuge to help all the distresses and calamities of their people And that in all our Parliaments since the beginning of the Raign of King Edward 3. they have inter their quaedam Ardua taken alwaies into their care not only those of England but of Ireland Scotland Gascogney Guernsey Jarsey and the Isles though they have no Burgesses or any other representing for them as England hath had since the 48th year of the Raign of King Henry the third which considered with the many cares of collecting and gathering in his Revenue and well ordering
the Romans those Cordatissimi Mortales as the learned Pettus Cunaeus hath stiled them and most watchful of their Priviledges the wary long lasting Republick of Venice or the later Confederates of the United Provinces ever trouble themselves or any other with such reasonless incredible Whimsies it being impossible that Subject and Soveraignty should constare vel consistere in uno eodenque Subjecto neither when Jeroboam drew away the Ten Tribes of Israel from the Obedience of Rehoboam and made as the Holy Scripture saith all Israel to sin was there any such opinion amongst their Cabalistical Doctrines The Republicks of Venice Holland could not be capable of Leagues and Treaties with Monarch and Forreign Princes as unto War and commerce nor the little Common-wealths of Genoa and Geneva or those many Imperial free Cities or Towns in or near Germany or the Electors of the Empire or the Hanse Towns should they give entertainment unto such Fancies and Fopperies as a Soveraignty in the people neither would the Cantons of of Helvetia or Switzerland think themselves well used to be obliged to such a Parcel of unpracticable folly And if those Egregious Cavillators can find no way of retreat for those their notorious follies but to fly for Succour unto praescription that will if they could as they will never be able to prove it yeild them as little comfort for a Rebellious electing of some few Members into the House of Commons first formed as unto a small number of them during the Imprisonment of King Henry the third by Montforts Army of Rebels that would not mount unto a Prescription quia mala fide and if it could have come up to any thing like a Prescription there would be no reason or need for an Election of Members to be in the House of Commons in Parliament by the Sheriffs by the Mandate or Warrant of the Kings Writs or how could a party drawn out of such a pretended inhaerent Soveraignty in the people rationally subsist when those their untruly supposed Rights or Priviledges cannot upon the most exact enquiry be found or discerned amongst all the Records Charters and Patents of our Kings and Princes or those of any of our Neighbour Nations of Christendom or of any other Nation White Black or Tawncy but do plainly contradict it and declare the quite contrary and will manifest it to be the greatest Cheat and Villany that ever was put upon the Sons and Daughters of mankind either as unto a pretended inhaerent Soveraignty or a third Estate or the figment of a Modus tenendi Parliamentum Or how could any of our Kings Rightly and Justly stile them a third Estate when they could not choose a Speaker without their License nor leavy their Wages without his Writs directed to the Sheriffs for that purpose nor punish any that had arrested any of them or their maenial Servants whilst they attended the King in their Service for him and their own good and at all conferences either in their own House or in the House of Peers were to stand uncovered when the Lords sate covered could not grant Tax or Aid without the consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and in King Edward 1. His Raign and some of our after Kings have refused to intermeddle or give advice in matters of Peace and War but desired that the Councel of the Lords as the most able might be taken therein In the 34 and 35. H. 8. the Knights and Burgesses of Chester had no title of Estates but the same King in the Act of Parliament declaring in what Order and Manner the Lords should sit in the House of Peers in Parliament made no appointment for or concerning any of the House of Commons as if they had been no Essential part of Parliament that in the great case of Mr. George Ferrars a Member of the House of Commons as wel as a Servant of that Kings upon a complaint that he had been imprisoned and the Kings Serjeant at Arms attending their Speaker was beaten and abused the House of Commons in Parliament complained to the House of Lords who remitted it to them again and no remedy or punishment could be had until it came to the King himself who without any mention or Title given unto them of a third Estateship was pleased to grant it And in Queen Maries Raign 39. of their Members were Indicted by her for not attending the Parliament yet none either claimed a third Estateship or to be tryed by their Peers Queen Elizabeth imprisoned some and at several times charged them and their Speaker not to intermeddle with matters of Church or State but all the Masters of any Understanding Reason or Common sense ought to understand them to be no other than Petitioners and her Leige-men And it is well known that King James in his Instructions to his Son Prince Henry and his learned answer to Cardinal Peronius does assert the Jus Regium to be the Right of Kings from God immediately without any notice taken of a third Estate But if those Kingly Government or Monarchy Reformers would but give their contemplations and designs some little Respite they might easily perceive the frailty of the Materials out of which they mould would the Members of the House of Commons into a third Estate and might find Evidenee Records Reason and Law enough if they have not forsworn them to desist from such an impossibility And it might better become their own busying themselves in the government of the Kingdom wherein they have no manner of skill or knowledge to consult the consequences and the Events and having no knowledge of the causes Mediume contengencies or treacheries too much or too often attendant in Princes affairs not seldom also miscarrying for the Sins of the people or of some Jonas in the Ship deserving a punishment ought more seriously to weigh and consider how little the people of England will think themselves hereafter beholding or obliged unto them when in a popular and aboundance of Ignorance accompanied with sin and wiekedness they advised King Charles the Second to dissolve by Act of Parliament these Nerves and Sinews of the Crown which the Judges of England in the Raigns of King James the first and King Charles the first upon several consults have declared to be so inseparable to the Crown of England as the most potent and binding Act of Parliament that could be made will never be able to disunite them when they have thereby against their wills converted those Tenures of Honour and safety to their King and Protection peace and plenty to his people and the Releifs and Herriots due and payable to the King into a Chimney-Money granted afterwards by another Act of Parliament and what a profitable bargain they have made by forfeiture of all the Lands which they held by and under their Feudal Laws converted into Socage when by a Law made by King Athelstan ever plow Land in Socage was to find in Service
upon occasion of War binos ornatos atque instructos Equites when by converting all the Tenures in Capite that of the Peers and Grand Serjeants excepted into Socage they have given the King a greater Revenue than they intended far exceeding the Revenue of the tenures in Capite the honour of the King and safety of himself and the people excepted And that in those early times none were imployed in Commissions or Places of trust by our Kings and their Laws but Knights holding by Tenure in Capite immediately or mediately that King Henry the 2d in some of his Laws declared none to be liberi Homines but those that were Military and that if the Socage men or Tenants of all the Possessors of Lands and Tenements now in England and Ireland must be in no better a capacity than as Villani Servi Bordarii Cotarii and Tenants at will under domineering Landlords and be shut out of the blessings of our Magna Carta and Carta de Foresta and left as the people were in the Raign of William the Conqueror William Rufus and Henry the first to the dire punishments cases of Treason and Felony only excepted of plucking out of Eyes and cutting off the Genitals Legs or Noses of the Offenders And it might be a meet question among the Heralds upon what foundation more than 1000 Knights Baronets do now stand seeing that Ireland is turnd into a Socage Tenure when the first original of them was to find in Capite so many men at Arms in the Kings Service And having with the Prophet Jeremy called cried out and advised many of my friends stare super vias antiquds inquirere veritatem I lament and bewail that the Monarchy of England that for more than 1600 years last past hath been so great glorious amongst her Neighbour Nations and hath in this our last Century of years been so unhappy ever since the beginning of the Raign of King John when Hubert Archbishop of Canterbury had in his Oration at the Coronation of that infortunate King declared to the Nobility and people there assembled that he was created King by the Election of the people and being reprehended and blamed for it by some of the Nobility was at that Instant or before that Assembly forced to excuse that inadvised Speech as well as he could by saying he had so done it as knowing his force nature it might induce him to govern the more orderly although he might have known that the Kingdom of England was hereditary and that King Richard the first had by his last Will and Testament devised it unto him with all other his Dominions and caused the Nobility there present to swear fealty unto him Which poyson so thrown into our Body Politick and by degrees creeping into it may well be believed to have so fixed the venom thereof as it hath from age to age been the original Cause and fomenter of the very many mischiefs and discords some Intervals of quiet intervening that have until the late long Parliament Rebellion and the Murder of King Charles the first and ever since unto this very day by those unhappy discords hapned in our Parliaments General Consiliums Colloquiums or conferences betwixt our Kings and Princes and a select number of his Subjects for mutual Aids in a general and reciprocal concernment the best and most happy constitution that ever was or could be practised in any Kingdom if it could have escaped that Series malorum Concatenation of discords that have of late been too often their Concomitants either by some aversions to Loyalty or by the Grand mistakes in the practise thereof and by the Common people making the Parliaments of later times to be as their King and he that is and should be their King little more than an extraordinary fellow Subject A Right observation and accompt whereof may from one unto the other lead us to the late blessed Martyrs fatal Murther and that Pestiferous Doctrine that did over much intice the Vulgus and ignorant part of the people that there is and ought to be an Inhaerent Right of Soveraignty in the people it being not unuseful for after ages to know and understand the same with the beginnings and progress thereof which for ought appears had its first original from Thomas Becket Archbishop of Canterbury who had in the troublesome Raign of King Henry the second and at the time of the making the Assise and Constitutions at Clarendon such a peevish ambition and unwarrantable loftiness of Spirit as after the King had in the presence of the said Archbishop and all the Bishops Earls and Barons of England received their Recognitions and promises to perform and obey them they were sent unto the Pope to have his approbation who returned them to some with an hoc damnavit toleravit as unto others And Stephen Langton Archbishop of Canterbury promoted by the Pope against the will of King John discovering as a singular rarity the Charter of the liberties granted by King Henry the first did so please some discontented Barons as they swore upon the Altar they would live and dye in the obtaining those beneficial Laws and Liberties begot a Spirit of unquietness in them which could not be allayed until the said Avitae consuetudines recognized and all ratified by King Henry the second his his Grandson by the constitions â—at â—arendon which begetting some little quiet broke out again in a worse manner upon his Son King John in the constraint and unkingly force put upon him at Running Mede where those tumultuous Barons w 〈…〉 a great Army in battel Array the better to attain their said Charter of liberties had promised to pay debts but never intended it And were so faithless and unwilling to be his Subjects as what they by force extorted from that oppressed Prince could never truly and properly merit the name or title of a Charter although he himself had been constrained so to call it and the King of France in his Exception to his award made as aforesaid many years after had so stiled it yet those undutiful doings of theirs were disliked by divers of the Bishops that had been the Popes and those Rebellious Barons Favourites who it seems did so little intend what they ought to do and undertook as some of the Bishops could not deny to certify as followeth Omnibus Episc. sidelibus Stephanus De igra Cant. Archiep. Primas Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Card. Henr. Dublin Archieq Will. London Petrus Winton Joscelin Bathon Glaston Hugo Lincoln Walter Wigorn. Will. Coventr Richardus Cicestr Magister pond Domini papae Subdiaconus familiaris Salutem Noverit Universitas vestra quod quando facta fuit pax inter donum Regem Johannem Barones Angliae de discordia inter eas orta lidem Barones nobis presentibus audientibus promiserunt dom Regi quod quamcunque securitatem haberi vellet ab iis pace illa observanda ipsi