had of Proclamations appears by these Words of a Statute made in the one and thirtieth year of King Henry the VIIIth Forasmuch as the King by the Advice of his Councel hath set forth Proclamations which obstinate Persons have contemned not considering what a King by his Royal Power may do Considering that sudden Causes and Occasions fortune many times which do require speedy Remedies and thaâ— by abiding for a Parliament in the mean time might happen great prejudice to ensue to the Realm And weighing also that his Majesty which by the Kingly and Regal Power given him by GOD may do many things in such Cases should not be driven to extend the Liberties and Supremity of his Regal Power and Dignity by wilfulness of froward Subjects It is therefore thought fit that the King with the Advice of his Honorable Councel should set forth Proclamations for the good of the People and Defence of his Royal Dignity as necessity shall require The King only can give Patents in case of Losses by Fire or otherwise to receive the charitable Benevolences of the People without which none may ask it publickly The King by his Prerogative is Vltimus Haeres Regni and the Receptacle of all Estates when no Heir appears For this cause all Estates for want of Heirs or by Forfeiture escheat to the King All Spiritual Benefices for want of Presentation by the Bishop are lapsed at last to the King All Money Gold Silver Plate or Bullion found and the Owners thereof not known belong to the King and so do all Wayfs Strays Wrecks not granted away by him or any of his Predecessors All Wast Ground or Land recovered from the Sea all Land of Aliens dying before Naturalization all things the property whereof is not known and all Gold or Silver Mines in whose Ground soever they are found belong to the King In the Church the Kings Prerogative is very great He only hath the Patronage of all Bishopricks None can be elected Bishop but whom he hath first nominated None can be consecrated or take possession of the Revenues of any Bishoprick without his special Writ or Assent He is the Nursing-Father of the Church and hath Power to call a National or Provincial Synod and with the Advice and Consent thereof to make Canons Orders Ordinances and Constitutions relating to the Government and Polity of the Church wherein as it was affirmed by Christopher Wray Speaker of the House of Commons in the thirteenth year of Queen Elizabeth the Princes Power is absolute The King has Power upon Causes only known to himself to dispence by Non Obstantes with General Laws made in Parliament and with the Penalties for transgressing them where such Penalty is appropriated to himself alone to mitigate the Rigor of the Laws where Equity and Conscience require Moderation to alter or suspend any particular Law that he judges hurtfull to the Commonwealth to pardon a Man legally condemned to grant special Priviledges to particular Persons Colledges and Corporations and if any Doubt arises concerning such Priviledges he only has Right to interpret them To him and the Judges constituted by him does it belong to interpret all Statutes and to determin and pass Sentence in Cases not defined by Law These are some Branches of that Jus Coronae of that Regal Prerogative of the name whereof however some persons are afraid yet may they assure themselves that the Case of Subjects would be desperately miserable without it since the Kings just Rights are the best Preserver of the Peoples Liberties being an impregnable Bulwark against all popular Invasions and illegal Powers Nor have there ever been found any greater Oppressors of the People than those who under pretence of asserting their Liberties have endeavored to lessen the Royal Authority Thus in the great Contest between Henry the IIId King of England and the Barons about the pretended Liberties of themselves and the People the King being forced at length to yield the Lords instead of that glorious Freedom which they promised the Nation ingrossed all Power into their own Hands under the Name of the twenty four Conservators of the Kingdom behaving themselves like so many Tyrants acting all in their own Names and in Juntoes of their own wholly neglecting or else over-ruling Parliaments But then not agreeing among themselves four of them viz. the Earls of Leicester Glocester Hereford and Spencer defeated the other twenty and drew the entire Management of Affairs into their own hands Yet it continued so not long Leicester getting all into his own Power who being slain in Battle the King recovered his Authority and the People their true Liberty Many of these Prerogatives those especially that concern Justice and Peace are so essential to Royalty that they cannot be separated from it but by the destruction of the Monarchy it self Not without reason therefore did the Estates of England assembled in Parliament in the Reign of King Edward the IIId declare that they could not tho the King himself should desire it assent to any thing which tended to the Disherison of the King and his Crown whereunto they were sworn The King therefore as he is by his Office Debitor Justitiae obliged to administer Justice to his People so is he in Conscience bound to maintain the Rights of the Crown in possession and to endeavour the recovery of those whereof it has been dispossest And how dismal the Effects have been whenever any King neglecting the religious observance of this part of his Duty has been prevailed upon to give way to the lessening of his Royal Prerogative we have a sad Example in his Majesties Father of Blessed Memory who parting tho but only Pro illa vice with his absolute Power of dissolving Parliaments and giving it to the two Houses they never ceased farther incroaching upon his Prerogatives till he himself was barbarously murthered the Government wholly subverted and all the Liberties of the People trampled under foot To him therefore that shall seriously consider the many fatal Mischiefs and Inconveniences which necessarily follow the Diminution of the Kings Prerogative it will seem no Paradox to affirm that it is the Subjects great Interest to be far more sollicitous that the King maintain and uphold his own Prerogative and Preeminence than their Rights and Liberties which as they had no other Original but the Grace and Bounty of the Prince so must they of necessity perish when he is no longer able to protect them It is not thefore to be wondred that a right Apprehension of such pernicious Consequences made his Sacred Majesty refuse his Royal Assent to a Bill presented him for the raising of the Militia tho it was if passed into an Act to have continued in force but six Weeks Because the Tendency of the Bill being to put out of his Possession the Posse Regni or absolute command over the Forces of the Realm he could not answer unto GOD by whom alone he is intrusted with his Regal Power
Vlpian for a Rule of the Civil Law Princeps Legibus solutus est The Prince is not bound by the Laws Agreeable whereunto is what is said in the Laws of England Potestas Principis non est inclusa Legibus The Power of the Prince is not included in the Laws Hence no doubt it was that Mr. Grivel in the Thirty first year of Queen Elizabeth said in Parliament That he wished not the making of many Laws since the more we make the less Liberty we have our selves Her Majesty not being bound by them Yet is not this so to be understood that Kings have hereby a right to do Injury but that it is Right for them to go unpunished by their People if they do it The King cannot be impleaded for any Crime No Action lieth against his Person For the Writ goeth forth in his Name and he cannot arrest himself If he should which God forbid violently seizâ— upon the Estate of any Subject having no Title by Law so to do the only Remedy is by Petitioning him to amend his Fault which if he shall refuse to do it will be Punishment sufficient for him to expect that GOD who has given him his Prerogative of being above all Laws for the good only of them that are under the Laws and for the Defence of his Peoples Liberties will severely avenge the Cause of oppressed Loyal Subjects But altho whatever the King shall do he is not questionable for it by his Subjects yet there are divers things which he cannot do Salvo Jure Salvo Juramento Salva Conscientia sua For by an Oath taken at his Coronation the King obliges himself and indeed without any Oath he is by the Law of Nature and Christianity as are all other Christian Kings obliged to procure the Safety and Welfare of his People to protect and defend them against their Enemies to maintain and preserve them in their Properties just Rights and Liberties to administer upright Justice with Discretion and Mercy and in order thereunto to consent to the enacting of good Laws and repealing of Bad. Thus the King can do nothing unjustly nor can he divest himself or his Successors of any part of his Regal Power Prerogative and Authority inherent in the Crown and necessary for the Government and Protection of his People Two things there are especially which having somewhat of Odium in them the King doth not usually do without the Consent of his Parliament that is make new Laws and impose new Taxes the one whereof seems and does but seem to infringe the Peoples Liberties and the other to entrench upon their Properties To take away therefore all Occasions of Disaffection to the Anointed of the Lord stiled in Holy Scripture the Breath of our Nostrils and the Light of our Eyes the Wisdom of our former Princes his Majesties Royal Ancestors has contrived that for both these there should Petitions first be made by the People to the King Tho these and divers other Prerogatives do rightfully belong unto and are enjoyed by the Monarch of Great Britain yet doth he ordinarily govern his people by the known Laws and Customs of his Kingdoms making use of his Royal Prerogative for the Benefit not Damage of his Subjects in some rare and extraordinary Cases only Hereunto may be added a singular and Miraculous Priviledge enjoyed by the Kings of Great Britain quatenus Kings conferred first by the Divine Benignity upon that Blessed King of England St. Edward the Confessor and ever since continued to his Successors which is by the Imposition of their Sacred Hands to drive away and cure that stubborn Disease called the Struma or Scrofula and by us commonly from this supernatural manner of its Cure the Kings Evil. Upon certain dayes almost every Week during the cold Seasons his Majesty graciously permits all that are afflicted with that Disease having been first carefully viewed and allowed by his Chirurgeons to be brought into his Royal Presence Where an appointed Form of Divine Service consisting of some short Prayers pertinent to the Occasion and two Portions of Holy Scripture taken out of the Gospel being read the King at the pronouncing of these Words They shall lay their hands upon the Sick and they shall recover gently draws both his Hands over the Sore of the sick person the same words being repeated at every Touch. And at these Words This was the true Light which enlightneth every Man that cometh into this World he putteth about the Neck of each Sick person a piece of Gold called from the Impression an Angel being in value about eleven Shillings Sterling This evident Cure is by many malignant Nonconformists those true Sons of Belial daily despising and speaking evil of Dignities ascribed to the Strength of Fancy and exalted Imagination but little do they reflect upon how many tender Infants no way capable of such Transports this stupendious Cure is effectually performed Respect In consideration of these and many other transcendent Excellencies to no Prince or other Potentate in Christendom is done more Honour Reverence or Respect than to the Monarch of Great Britain All his Subjects at their first Addresses kneel unto him At Table he is served on the knee All persons the Prince or other Heir apparent not excepted are bare-headed in his Presence In the Presence Chamber tho the King be not there all men are not only uncovered but do or ought to do Reverence to the Chair of State The Kings only Testimony of any thing done in his presence is of as high a Nature and Credit as any Record And in all Writs sent forth for the Dispatch of Justice hee useth no other Witness but himself viz. Teste meipso As the King of Great Britain is thus reverenced and respected at home so is he no less honored and esteemed abroad For if he be regarded solely as King of England we shall find that the Emperor was accounted Filius major Ecclesiae the King of France Filius minor and the King of England Filius adoptivus That in General Councels the King of France took place on the Emperors Right Hand the King of England on his Left the King of Scots having Precedency next before Castile And that tho since the time of the Emperor Charles the Vth. the Kings of Spain have challenged the Precedency of all Christian Princes which nevertheless they have within this twenty years yielded to France yet in the time of our King Henry the VIIth Pope Julius gave it to the English before the Spaniard But if looking upon him as succeeding to the ancient British Kings whose true and undoubted Heir he is by Lineal and unquestionable Descent we shall consider the Antiquity of his Predecessors either as Kings Reigning here above a thousand years before the coming in of the Romans His Majesty now regnant being from the first British Kings the hundred thirty nineth Monarch or as Christians this Island having not only shewn to the World the first Christian King
indeed be in any Monarchy any Authority but what is derived from the Monarch in opposition to the pernicious Doctrine of Coordinacy daily by the Ringleaders of the Faction dispersed amongst the People and endeavored to be justified by the Author of Plato Redivivus and T. H. the former of which speaking of the late Parliamentary Rebellion saith This is certain that whereever two Coordinate Powers do differ and there be no Power on earth to reconcile them otherwise nor Umpire they will de facto fall together by the ears And the latter not only tells us in express terms that the Parliament derive their Power and Authority from the same Original the King derives His but by affirming that there are Treasons of State other than those that are declared by the Statutes and such as the King cannot pardon would prostitute the Lives of all his fellow Subjects to the Arbitrary Power of any prevailing Faction which may at any time happen to be in the two Houses of Parliament or perhaps in the House of Commons alone the onely part if we will believe the Author of Plato Redivivus which is now left intire of the old Constitution And because the Heads of the Faction that they might leave no Stone unturn'd which might be made use of for the battering down of this Hereditary Monarchy have essayed to subvert it by impeaching the Descent of the Crown in the Right Line I have treated upon the of late much controverted Point of the Succession which I have demonstrated to be unalterable by any Statute or Act of Parliament whatever and as such to have been acknowledged by all our Ancient Parliaments that were neither over-awed by Force nor seduced by Faction Having thus with what Brevity I could handled these foregoing matters I conclude this Part with a short account of the present Monarch of Great Britain Our Soveraign Lord the KING now Reigning whom GOD long preserve to the Consolation and Happiness of this Island of his Queen and the Princes of his Royal Blood And because the ill-willers to the Peace of this our Israel have raised in the minds of the unthinking Vulgar terrible Fears and Apprehensions of his Royal Highness whom the readilier to stir up against him the Animosity of the people they have audaciously loaded with all the Calumnies and Scandals which the Malice of Men or Devils could invent I have endeavoured by a true tho imperfect Representation of his Gests and Character to remove that Prejudice which these horrid and malicious Falsities may have created against him in the Spirits of the unwary If these my Endeavors shall prove useful for the reducing of any of my deluded Countrymen to that natural Obedience which we owe to our Soveraign I shall repute my self abundantly satisfied for my pains and shall be encouraged to compleat the rest of my designed Work THE TABLE A ABsoluteness of Paternal Jurisdiction 57 Act of Parliament in Scotland declaring the unalterableness of the Succession 241 Adam Monarch of the Universe 53 Adraste a Goddess of the Britains 27 Agricola Governour of Britain 103 Air of Great Britain 9 St. Albanus Protomartyr of Britain 131 Ambrosius King of the Britains 154 St. Amphibalus Martyred 132 Arbitrary Power necessary in all Governments 58 St. Aristobulus in Britain 119 Armor and Weapons of the ancient Britains 48 Arms of King Lucius 178 of King Vortigern ibid. of King Aurelius Ambrosius ibid. of Vter Pendragon ibid. of King Arthur ibid. of Cadwalladar ibid. of the King of Great Britain since the Union of England and Scotland 179 of the present Queen of Great Britain 268 Attire of the ancient Britains 42 B BAngor a Seminary of Learning 129 Baptism of the King 248 Bardiacus a Garment of the ancient Britains 43 Bards 28 Beauty of the British Women 41 Belerus a God of the Britains 27 Belisama a Goddess of the Britains ibid. Bill of Exclusion 236 Birth of the King 247 of the Queen 266 Boadicea Queen of the Iceni in Britain 101 Brachae a Garment of the ancient Britains 43 Britain quitted by the Romans 143 British Bishops at the Councel of Arles 139 at the Councel of Nice 142 British Monarchy restored by King James 156 Buildings of the ancient Britains 48 C CAligula's Attempt against Britain 93 Cassibelan 87 Chariots of the ancient Britains 49 CHARLES the Ist King of Great Britain murdered by his Phanatical Subjects 170 Children of King CHARLES the Ist 269 Christianity first brought into Britain 117 restored by Constantin 135 Cimbri first Inhabitants of Britain 20 Claudius Drusus the Emperor in Britain 98 Climate of Great Britain 3 Coming of the King into Scotland 251 Commodities of Great Britain 12 Community of Women amongst the ancient Britains 37 Computation of time by the ancient Britains 51 Conquest of Britain by the Romans 94 Constantius Chlorus the Emperor in Britain 133 Conversion of King Lucius to Christianity 123 Cornage 111 Coronotion of the King 260 Covinus 49 Court of the King when Prince of Wales 248 Cure of the Kings-Evil 219 D DEparture of the King out of England 250 Descent of King James from Cadwalladar 158 Diet of the ancient Britains 41 Dimensions of Great Britain 3 Discovery of Britain by the Romans 77 Disorder of popular Government exemplified in the Roman Democracy 69 Distinction of Monarchy into Despotical and Paternal groundless 57 Divinity of the King 212 Division of Britain 2 of Great Britain 5 Dominions of Princes anciently small 64 of the King of Great Britain 180 Druids 29 E EDucation of the King 249 End of Government 67 Episcopal Sees in Britain 125 Escape of the King from Worcester 252 Essedum 50 Excellency of Monarchy 67 Excommunication used by the ancient Britains 38 Extent of Britain taken in the largest Sense 1 F FRontinus Governour of Britain 103 G GAlgacus General of the Britains 108 Gauls in Britain 20 Gaunacum a Garment of the ancient Britains 43 Genealogy of the King 245 of the Queen 263 Giants in Britain 32 Gods of the ancient Britains 26 Government 52 of Britain always Monarchical 73 Government of Britain under the Romans 112 Civil as ordered by Constantin 113 Military 114 after the Romans Depature 144 present of Great Britain 172 Greeks in Britain 21 H HArdiness of the ancient Britains 37 Hesus a God of the Britains 26 Hues a God of the Britains ibid. I St. JAmes the Apostle in Britain 118 JESUS CHRIST the Saviour of the World born 116 Inhabitants of Great Britain 19 Invasion of Britain by the Romans 84 Jointure of the Queen 267 St. Joseph of Arimathea in Britain 120 Julius Caesar in Britain 77 Jurisdiction of the Druids 30 K KIng sole Legislator 204 supreme Landlord of all Lands within His Dominions 206 King supreme Administrator of Justice 209 has the sole Power of the Sword 211 L LAnguage of the ancient Britains 39 Laws of the ancient Britains 23 Limited Monarchy 62 M MAnners of the ancient Britains 35 Manner of Fighting used by the
reach up to Heaven But to shew how vain all humane Designments are which think to contest with the Dispensations of Divine Providence the Almighty sent amongst them a Confusion of Tongues and dispersed those who were congregated into one place over the Face of the whole Earth By this Dispersion there were according to the generally-received Opinion seventy two distinct Nations erected all which were not confused Multitudes left at Liberty to choose what Governors or Government they listed but so careful was GOD even in that Confusion to preserve the Paternal and Monarchical Authority that he distributed the Diversity of Languages according to the Diversity of Families having Fathers for Rulers over them This appears plainly in the sacred Text where after the Enumeration of the Sons and Grandsons of Japheth immediately follow these Words By these were the Isles of the Gentiles divided in their Lands every one after his Tongue after their Families in their Nations So again of the Children of Ham it is said These are the Sons of Ham after their Families after their Tongues in their Countreys and in their Nations And again of the Children of Shem These are the Sons of Shem after their Families after their Tongues in their Lands after their Nations The Conclusion of the whole being thus These are the Families of the Sons of Noah after their Generations in their Nations and by these were the Nations divided in the Earth after the Flood However therefore the Manner used by Noah in the Distribution of the Earth amongst his Posterity be uncertain yet most certain it is that the Division it self was by Families from Noah and his Children over which the Fathers were Rulers enjoying as absolute an Authority and Dominion as ever any Monarch since the Creation pretended to Agreeably to this Account of the Original of Monarchy delivered in in holy Scripture doth Plato in his third Book of Laws affirm that the true and first Reason of Authority is that the Father and Mother and simply those that beget and ingender do command and rule over all their Children Groundless therefore is that Distinction which some men make of Monarchy into Despotical and Paternal since no Master has Right to exact a more absolute and unlimited Obedience from his Slave than is due from the Child to the Father Of the Absoluteness of this Paternal Jurisdiction Examples are frequent in Holy Writ Thus we find that Abraham commanded an Army of three hundred and eighteen Souldiers of his own Family and that Esau met his Brother Jacob with four hundred Men at Arms. Thus Abraham concluded a Peace with Abimelech and ratified the Articles by Oath Thus Judah sentenced Thamar his Daughter-in-Law to be burnt for playing the Harlot Which three Acts of making War concluding Peace and giving Judgment of Life or Death are the chief marks of Soveraignty that can be found in any Monarch As the Original therefore of Monarchy was of Divine Institution so its Power was uncontrollable nor can it be otherwise without the Destruction of the Government it self Rightly then whatever Milton in his Justification of the blackest Treason that ever Eye beheld sayes to the contrary is a King defined by Salmasius He who has the Supreme Power in the Kingdom accountable to none but GOD who may do what he pleases and is free from the Laws Ridiculous then if not Malicious are the clamors of those who daily fill the World with Outcries against Arbitrary Power For there never was nor ever can be any People governed without a Power of Legislation which Power must of necessity be Arbitrary and is an inseparable Concomitant of the Supreme Governor or Governors and must therefore in a Monarchy reside in one The Question then is not whether there shall be an Arbitrary Power without which not any Government can one Moment subsist but who shall have this Arbitrary Power whether one man or many that is in effect whether the Government shall be Monarchical or not Nay it has been seen that those very Persons who clamored so much and with so little reason against an Arbitrary Power in their Prince have themselves exercised the Height of Arbitrary Power over their fellow Subjects punishing them by Imprisonment and other Penalties not for the Breach of any known and certain Laws but of unknown and uncertain Priviledges and ascending to that Excess of Insolence as even against all Law Reason and Equity to declare it Criminal for any one to lend Money to his King It is an antient Tradition which has every where obtained Reputation that Noah as Lord of all was Author of the Distribution of the World and of private Dominion and that by the appointment of GOD himself he confirmed this Distribution by his last Will and Testament left at his Death in the Hands of his Eldest Son Shem by which he warned all his Sons that none of them should invade any of their Brothers Dominions because Discord and Civil War would thence necessarily follow Thus we find that in all Nations the Princes were at first Lords of the whole Lands as well as of the whole Inhabitants amongst whom they divided such part thereof to be held by such Tenures and Services as they judged most convenient Instead then of Empires being founded in Property as some men love to speak the Natural dominion of the Prince was the Original of all Propriety Monarchs at first governed by no stated Rule or Law but by immediate Edicts or commands of their own Wills as they in their own Judgments thought fit But when Kings came to be so busied with Wars and distracted with publick Cares that private persons could not have access to them to learn their Pleasure upon every occasion then did they both for the Ease of themselves and their people set down Laws by which they would ordinarily govern reserving to themselves nevertheless Liberty to vary from them as oft as they in their Discretion should think fit Afterwards Princes graciously condescended to call to their Councels several of the Chief men of their Kingdoms and in time to admit likewise of Deputies from their People without whose Advice and Consent they would neither make new nor abrogate old Laws Thus all those Rights and Priviledges which licentious people make their pretence of contesting with their Soveraigns had no other Original but the Gracious Concessions of Princes which tho they are so far bound to keep as that when in a setled Kingdom the Prince leaves to govern according to Law he is guilty of very great Injustice yet where he sees the Laws rigorous or doubtful he may to the Peoples great Happiness lest otherwise Summum jus should prove Summa injuria mitigate and interpret them And whenever any powerful Faction shall by making ill use of the Grace and Bounty of the Prince endanger the Subversion of his Government the Safety of the People whom GOD has committed to his Care being the Law-paramount over all others obliges him
agree As for Peace it is well known that no people ever enjoyed it without Monarchy The Lacedaemonians preserved themselves by warring and when they had gotten the Empire were presently undone for they could not live at rest knowing no better Exercise than that of War And whereas the main Preservatives of Peace are the Durability and Order of the Government if we examine the most flourishing Democracy that ever was in the World viz. that of Rome we shall find that the Duration thereof from the expulsion of Tarquin to Julius Caesar was but four hundred and eighty years whereas both the Assyrian Monarchy lasted without interruption at least twelve hundred and the Empire of the East fourteen hundred ninety five And from Order they were so far that during these four hundred and eighty years there was not any setled Form of Government in Rome for having once lost the Natural Power of Kings they could not find whereon to rest They first chose out of the Senators annual Consuls who had during the short Time of their Government full Regal Power About sixteen years after the first Creation of Consuls the Commons by Sedition prevailed and chose among themselves Tribunes of the People to preserve their Liberty About fourty years after they left Tribunes and Consuls and chose ten Men to make them Laws These after three years they displaced and set up Tribunes and Consuls again Not long after they demanded that one of the Consuls might be chosen out of the Commonalty which after a Dispute of threescore and eighteen years they carried by the stubbornness of the Tribunes who for five years together hindring the Election of the greater Magistrates forced the Nobles to yeild to their Request lest an Anarchy should destroy them all Sometimes they chose Dictators who were Temporary Kings sometimes Military Tribunes with Consulary Power One while the Senate made Laws another while the People In fine such and so frequent were their Alterations in Government that the best Historians are not able to find any perfect Form of Regiment in so much Confusion And if the Government of Rome may be said to have been for some time popular yet it was so to the City of Rome alone all the rest of the Dominions being shared into Provinces over which their Proconsuls Propraetors and Legates exercised Regal Authority so impossible it is to govern a Kingdom much more many Kingdoms by the whole or greatest part of the People And tho Rome in the time of her Popularity bred many admired Commanders several of which were but very ill requited by the People by whose Conduct she gained such Victories abroad as amazed the World yet even then did the Tragical Slaughter of her Citizens at home deserve Commiseration from her vanquished Enemies Nor were all of them able to support her in times of danger but in her greatest Troubles she was forced to create a Dictator whose Authority was absolute and unappealable testifying thereby that the last Refuge in Perils of State is to have recourse to Regal Authority And whatever may be pretended to be the Inconveniences of Monarchy yet cannot it be denied but that they are all outweighed by the Sedition which necessarily attends Popularity There not having been a quarter of the Blood shed in Rome by the Cruelty of all her Tyrannical Emperors as was by Seditions in the last hundred years of her glorious Common-wealth when the Blood was suckt up in the Market-places with Spunges the Current of the River Tyber stopt with the slaughtered Bodies of Citizens and the Common Privies stuffed full of them For the Cruelty of Tyrants rarely extends any farther than to some particular persons that offend them so that a King can never be so notoriously vitious but he will generally favour Justice and maintain Order except in the particulars where he is swayed by his inordinate Passion For the Multitude of People and the abundance of their Riches whose Bodies do him service in War and whose Goods supply his present Wants being the only Strength and Glory of every Prince Natural Love to himself if not Affection to his People will make him desirous to preserve the Lives and protect the Goods of his Subjects which as it cannot be done without Justice so if it be not done the Princes Loss is thereby the greatest But in a popular State every man knowing that the Publick Good does not depend wholly upon his Care they all mind chiefly their private Benefit none taking the Publick to be his own Business whence it follows that every man as it is said of Israel when they had no King does that which is right in his own Eyes And this is the Original of that unnatural State of War which some are pleased to miscal the Natural Liberty of Mankind where every man pretending a Right to every thing there is none that can have the least Security of any thing he enjoyes nor yet of his very Life since he may be deprived thereof by any one that shall prove stronger than hinself The Island of Great Britain has alwayes had that happiness Britain alwayes Governed by Monarchs as never to be subject to any other Government but the Monarchical Not that the whole Island was always under the Command of one Monarch which as some say it never was till since the Uniting of the Crowns of England and Scotland by King James there being at Caesars Arrival here no fewer than four Kings found in Kent alone But that these were so many Soveraign Princes reigning absolutely over their own small Dominions who at the Invasion of the Romans joyned together in a Confederacy for their mutual Defence of which they made by common Consent Cassibelan their Head The Words of Caesar are Summa imperii bellique administrandi communi consilio permissa est Cassivellauno from whence some would infer that the Britains had no King in time of Peace but that Cassibelan was by Consent of a great Common Councel chosen King and General against his Landing Contracting herein Caesar himself who not only affirms that there were four Kings within the County of Kent whose Names he likewise gives us but also describes Cassibelans Territory to have been bounded by the River Thames which divided it from the Maritime Provinces and to have extended eighty Miles from the Sea telling us withal that whereas before his Arrival Cassibelan was in continual Wars with the Neighbouring States the British Princes in this common danger of forreign Invasion united in a defensive League and unanimously chose him for their Leader Nor was Britain brought under the Power of the Romans till that the Popular State of Rome being after manifold Alterations ruined by its own Strength Civil Contentions had at last resetled the Government into a Monarchy And altho the Invasions of Forreigners the ill Conduct of our Kings the Ambition of the Princes of the Blood the Faction of the Nobility and the Sedition of the Vulgar have
that as their Persons were sacred and Spiritual so it was no less a part of their Duty to take care of the external Regulation and peace of the Church than of the Civil Government of their States Yet were there antiently none anointed but the two Emperors of the East and West the Kings of France England Sicily and Hierusalem amongst whom the Monarch of Great Britain may lay as ancient a Claim to this Holy Unction as any other Prince of Europe the very first Kings of this Island after it was freed from the Jurisdiction of the Romans having been anointed By reason of which Unction it was in the Reign of Edward the IIId declared that the Kings of England were capable of Spiritual Jurisdiction Of this Sacred Person of the King of his Life and Safety so singular a Care is taken that the Laws of both the Realms whereinto this Island is divided do herein agree that it is High Treason only to imagin or intend the Death of the King And because likewise by imagining or conspiring the Death of the Kings Councellors or Great Officers of his Houshold the Death of the Sovereign may ensue and is usually aimed at all such Conspiracies tho never taking effect are punished with Death tho in all other Capital Cases no man is put to Death unless the Act follow the Intent Nay in so high an esteem is the Kings Person had that to offend against those Persons and Things whereby he is represented as to kill some of the Crown Officers or any of the Kings Judges executing their Office to counterfeit the Kings Seals or his Moneys is made High Treason because by all these his Sacred Person is represented And so horrid is this Crime of High Treason that besides the Loss of Life and Honour the Criminal forfeits all his Estate Real and Personal his Wife loses her Dower his Children their Nobility and all their Right of Inheritance to him or any other Ancestor and are to be ranked amongst the Peasantry and Ignoble till the King shall please to restore them For so heinous is this Offence that the Law can hardly endure to see the Posterity of the Offender survive him And rather than Treason against the Kings Person shall go unpunished the Innocent shall in some cases suffer for if an Ideot or Lunatick who having no Will cannot possibly be said to offend shall during his Ideocy or Lunacy kill or go about to kill the King he shall be punished as a Traytor tho not being Compos mentis he can neither commit Felony Petit Treason or any other sort of High Treason So tender a Regard is moreover had of this most precious Person of the King that no Physick ought to be administred to him but what his Physicians prepare with their own Hands and not by the Hands of any Apothecary nor are they to use the Assistance of any Chirurgeons but such as are sworn Chirurgeons to his Person This Person of the King in his Natural as well as Politick Capacity is every Subject to defend with his own Life and Limbs For the King being Father of his Country it should seem a pleasant thing to every Loyal-hearted Subject to lose Life or Limb in defending him from Conspiracies Rebellions or Invasions or assisting him in the Execution of his Laws The Office of the Monarch of Great Britain and indeed of every Christian Prince Office was by the Holy Roman Bishop St. Eleutherius described to our first Christian King Lucius Which Description recorded in the Laws of St. Edward the Confessor King of England is as followeth A King being the Minister and Delegate of the Supreme King is appointed by GOD for this end that He govern this Earthly Kingdom and People of our Lord and above all that he govern and venerate his Church defending it from all who would injure it That he root out of it and utterly destroy all Evil-Doers For the better enabling themselves to discharge this great and weighty Office to the just and upright Performance whereof every King at his Coronation obliges himself by solemn Oath Prerogatives the Monarchs of Great Britain have reserved as inherent in their Crown certain extraordinary Powers Preeminences and Priviledges commonly called Royal Prerogatives some of the most remarkable whereof in which as being necessary for the Preservation of the Government and the Safety and Interest of the People the Laws of both Kingdoms agree do here follow The King solely and alone has by his Royal Prerogative without any Act of Parliament the absolute Power of declaring War making Peace sending and receiving Ambassadours entring into and concluding Leagues and Treaties with any Forreign Prince or State He has the sole Disposing and Ordering of the Militia by Sea and Land raising Forces Garrisoning and Fortifying Places setting out Ships of War and Pressing Men if need require He alone disposes of all Magazins Ammunition Castles Fortresses Ports and Havens and has the laying out and employing as he pleases of all Publick Monies or the Revenues of the Crown and Kingdom He appoints the Metal Weight Purity and Value of Money and may by his Proclamation make any Forreign Coin to be lawful and Current Money within his Dominions By his Royal Prerogative he may of his meer Will and Pleasure convoke adjourn prorogue remove and dissolve Parliaments and may to any Act passed by them give or refuse without rendring any Reason his Royal Assent without which a Bill is but a meer Cadaver a lifeless and inanimate Lump He may at his pleasure increase the number of the Members of Parliament by creating new Barons and bestowing Priviledges upon other Towns to send Burgesses to Parliament Yea he may call to Parliament by Writ any one whether Alien or Native whom he in his Princely Wisdom shall think fit and may refuse to send his Writ to some others that have sat in former Parliaments His Majesty alone hath the Choice and Nomination of all Magistrates Councellors and Officers of State of all Bishops and other high Dignities in the Church of all Commanders and other Officers at Sea and Land the bestowing of all Honors of the higher and lower Nobility the Power of determining Rewards for Services and Punishments for Misdemeanors He may by his Letters Patents erect new Counties Bishopricks Universities Cities Burroughs Hospitals Schools Fairs Markets Courts of Justice Forrests Chases and Free-Warrens He hath by his Prerogative Power to enfranchise an Alien and thereby to enable him to purchase Houses and Lands and to bear some Offices He hath Power to grant Letters of Mart or Reprisal Safe Conducts c. No Proclamation can be made but by the King Between which and a Statute as the Difference originally was not great the King making the latter by the Common Councel of the Kingdom whereas in the former he had but the Advice of his great Councel of the Peers or of his Privy Councel only So what Judgment Parliaments have formerly
for the Safety and Well-Government of his Subjects the abandoning tho for so short a time the Protection and Defence of the People committed to his Charge Whatever things are proper unto Supreme Majesty Scepters and Crowns Soveraignty the Purple Robe the Globe or Golden Ball and Holy Unction have as long appertained to the British Monarch as to any other Prince in Europe The Antiquity of anointing Kings in Britain has been already shewn out of Gildas and as for the other four they are by Leland a famous Antiquary ascribed unto King Arthur who began his Reign in the Year of our Lord 506. Which was as soon as they were ordinarily in use with the Roman Emperors The King of Great Britain is an absolute and unaccountable Monarch a Free Prince of Soveraign Power not holding his Kingdom in Vassallage nor receiving his Instalment or Investiture from another Nor does he acknowledge Superiority to any but to GOD alone He is not only the Supreme but sole Legislator within his Dominions The Power of making Laws whatever some Antimonarchists pretend to the contrary rests solely in him And altho the Gracious Condescension of our Kings has been such as to render the subordinate Concurrence of the Estates of each Realm a Condition requisite to the making of new or abrogating of old Laws within the respective Kingdoms yet are they not thereby admitted to any Share in the Soveraignty their Power being wholly derivative from the King who is Caput Principium Finis Parliamentorum the three Estates when assembled in Parliament being as much his Subjects as every particular Man of them is when the Meeting is dissolved All Bills passed by them are but so much dead matter till quickned by his Royal Fiat which alone gives Life and Form to all their Proceedings Nor is it ex debito Justitiae but of his Special Grace that he passes such Acts as are presented to him Thus Henry the IIId begins his Magna Charta with Know ye that WE of our meer and free Will have given these Liberties Thus we hear King Edward the Ist saying The King of his special Grace for Redress of the Grievances of His People sustained by his Wars and for the Amendment of their Estate and to the intent that they may be the more ready to do him Service the more willing to assist and aid him in time of need Grants 28. E. 1. c. 1. And altho of later times Laws are said to be made by Authority of Parliament yet if we look into our antient Statutes we shall find the meaning to be that The King Ordains the Lords advise and the Commons consent Those then are much mistaken who affirm the Parliament to be at the least as Essential a Part of the Government as the Prince Which if it were true whenever the Parliament is dissolved the Government would be so too But this with the Pernicious Maxim of Coordinacy or sharing the Soveraign Power between King Lords and Commons with other treasonable and Antimonarchical Doctrines daily dispersed amongst the People and with the utmost of his Art industriously asserted by the Author of a late seditious Book entituled Plato Redivivus together with his audacious Proposals aiming to take all the Flowers out of the Imperial Diadem of the British Monarch are most fitly to be answered in Westminster-Hall as tending no less to the subversion of our Government which being purely Monarchical may be without the two Houses whereas they cannot be without the King than those traitorous Designs for which Coleman and his Accomplices paid their forfeited Lives to the Justice of the Laws The King of Great Britain is Lord Paramount supreme Landlord of all the Lands within his Dominions all landed men being mediately or immediately his Tenants by some Tenure or other By the Laws and Ordinances of ancient Kings saith Sir Edward Cook in the first part of his Institutes and especially of King Alfred it appeareth that the first Kings of this Realm had all the Lands of England in Demesne and the great Manors and Royalties they reserved to themselves and of the Remnant they for the Defence of the Realm enfeoffed the Barons of the Realm with such Jurisdiction as the Court Baron now hath The King as it is evident by the Rolls of the Chancellery in Scotland which contain their eldest and fundamental Laws is Dominus omnium bonorum and Dominus directus totius Dominii the whole Subjects being but his Vassals and from him holding all their Lands as their Over-lord Thus none but the King hath Allodium and Directum Dominium the sole and independent Property in any Land Upon this Ground no doubt it was that Serjeant Heal in the three and fortieth year of Queen Elizabeth said in Parliament He marvelled the House stood either at the granting of a Subsidy or time of Payment when all we have is her Majesties and She may lawfully at her pleasure take it from us and that She had as much Right to all our Lands and Goods as to any Revenue of the Crown And he said he could prove it by Precedents in the time of Henry the IIId King John and King Stephen And upon the same Ground was it resolved by the Judges in the beginning of the Reign of King James when there was a purpose to have taken away Tenures by Act of Parliament That such a Statute had been void because the Tenures were for the Defence of the King and Kingdom And altho since that the Tenures which gave a Dependency upon the Crown and were the greatest Safety to the King and People have been taken away and thereby a great Blow given to Monarchy yet let those who have the Fee the Jus perpetuum and the Vtile Dominium have a care lest by following the mischievous Advice of Plato Redivivus and abusing the Grace and Bounty of the Prince by endeavoring to draw the Soveraignty to themselves they necessitate not their King for the Preservation of himself and People to have Recourse to his Prerogative which is a Preheminence in Cases of Necessity above and before the Law of Property or Inheritance For the Prevention whereof it is to be wished that either by an Act of Resumption of the ancient Demesns of the Crown which was a sacred Patrimony and by Law unalienable or by such other way as the Wisdom of the Nation shall think fit a Royal Support adaequate to the Charges of the Crown be made for the King to defend his Kingdom and protect his People so that he may not be reduced to the Infelicity of having a precarious Revenue out of the Peoples Purse and to be beholden to a Parliament for his Bread in time of Peace which is no good Condition for a Monarchy As the Legislative Power is solely in the King so he alone has the Soveraign Power in the Administration of Justice and Execution of the Law He is the Fountain of all Justice which by his Judges and
other inferior Officers as so many Crystal Pipes he conveyeth to his People We will saith Edward the I st in his Book of Laws written at his appointment by John Briton Bishop of Hereford that our own Jurisdiction be above all Jurisdictions in our Realm so that in all manner of Felonies Trespasses Contracts and all other Actions Personal or Real We have Power to render or cause to be rendred such Judgments as do appertain without other Process whereever we know the right Truth as Judges All Jurisdiction say the Scotch Laws stands and consists in the Kings person by reason of his Royal Authority and Crown and is competent to no Subject but flows and proceeds from the King having Supreme Jurisdiction and is given and committed by him to his Subjects as he pleases The King then is the sole Supreme Judge all other Judges being his Deputies to whom whatsoever Power is by him committed yet is the last Appeal alwayes to be made to himself who may therefore as his Predecessors formerly have done sit in any Court and take Cognizance of any Cause but in Treasons Felonies c. the King being Plaintif sits not personally in Judgment but doth perform it by his Delegates From the King of Great Britain who being the only Supreme Head is furnished with Plenary Power and Jurisdiction to render Justice to every Member within his Dominions there lies no Appeal in Ecclesiastical Causes to the Bishop of Rome whose Authority ever since the Reformation has been here wholly abrogated nor in Civil Matters to the Emperor who for above twelve hundred years has not had the least Shadow of Pretence to any Jurisdiction within this Island nor in either to the people who both in themselves and by their Representatives in Parliament as well Conjunctim as Divisim are his Subjects and ow Obedience to his Commands To Legislation and Judicature which are solely and supremely in the King is necessary the Power of the Sword without which all other Power is nothing for forcing Obedience to the Laws and Judgments given both in Criminal and Civil Causes This having in virtue of their Soveraignty been alwayes indisputably enjoyed by the Monarchs of this Nation till the time of the late Rebellion was since his Majesties Restauration by a Parliament as truly zealous for the happiness of their King and Country as ever this Nation saw in proper and express Terms declared to be the Right of the King only without either of his Houses of Parliament the contrary Position thereunto asserted by the rebellious Members of the Parliament of 1640. having been the chief Means of overturning our Government and bringing Confusion and Misery upon this flourishing Kingdom Divinity So great was the Veneration shewn to the ancient Christian Emperors by their Subjects that they gave them tho imperfectly only and Analogically the Titles of Your Everlastingness Your Divinity and the like belonging essentially and perfectly to GOD alone Who to shew the great Power by him given to Soveraign Princes and to beget in the Hearts of their People an higher Esteem and more reverend Awfulness of them which failing all Confusion Impiety and Calamity break in upon a Nation is himself pleased as is manifest in Holy Writ to bestow upon them the Title of Gods as being his Vicegerents and representing his Majesty and Power upon Earth Nay so excessive was the Respect of the good Christians of those times that they were wont to swear by the Majesty of their Emperor as Joseph sometimes did by the Life of Pharaoh And this Custom seems to be justified by Vegetus a learned Writer of that Age being practiced only to create in the Subjects a greater Reverence for these Earthly Deities In like manner the Laws and Constitutions of this Monarchy attribute to the King whom they regard as GOD upon Earth divers Excellencies which belong properly to none but GOD. Thus as GOD is perfect so the Law will have no Imperfection found in the King No Negligence no Folly no Infamy or Corruption of Blood all former Attainders tho even made by Act of Parliament being ipso facto purged by the Accession of the Crown To the King is attributed Infallibility and Justice in the Abstract The King cannot erre The King can do no wrong To the King is likewise ascribed a Kind of Immortality The King never dies as being a Corporation in himself that lives for ever For all Interregna being unknown in these Kingdoms the same Moment that one King dies the next Heir is fully and absolutely King without any Coronation Ceremony or Act to be done The King is also in some sort said to be Omnipresent He is in a manner every where in all his Courts of Justice in all his Palaces Therefore it is that all his Subjects stand bare in the Presence Chamber wheresoever the Chair of State is placed tho the King be many Miles distance from thence He hath also a kind of Universal Influence over all his Dominions His Fatherly Care is extended to preserve feed instruct and defend the whole Commonweal His War His Peace His Courts of Justice and all His Acts of Soveraignty tend only to preserve and distribute to every person within his Territories their particular Rights and Priviledges By his Power of creating to the highest Dignity and annihilating the same at pleasure and much more by his Prerogative of pardoning those whom the Law has condemned he is invested with a kind of Omnipotency whereby he can restore to life those that are dead in Law And this Power of pardoning condemned Criminals is of such Benefit to the Lives and Estates of the People that without it many would be exposed to die unjustly The King alone in his own Dominions can say with GOD whose Representative he is Vengeance is Mine For all Punishments proceed from him in some of his Courts of Justice it not being lawful for any Subject to avenge himself The King alone is Judge in his own Cause tho he delivers his Judgment by the Mouth of his Judges But in nothing doth the King more resemble the eternal Deity than in the Plenitude of his Power to do what he pleases without being opposed resisted or questioned by his Subjects Nemo quidem saith Bracton de factis ejus praesumat disputare multo minus contra factum ejus ire Let none presume to search into his deeds much less to oppose them Nor is this a Priviledge belonging only to the King of Great Britain but a Prerogative inherent in every Soveraign Prince by vertue of his Soveraignty Where the word of a King is there is Power and who may say unto him what dost thou saith the Spirit of God by the mouth of the Royal Prophet Salomon For Kingly Power being by the Law of God hath no inferior Law to limit it The Emperor saith Saint Augustine is not Subject to Laws who hath Power to make other Laws Accordingly it is delivered by the great Lawyer
BRITANNIAE SPECULUM OR A Short View OF THE Ancient and Modern State OF Great Britain And the adjacent Isles and of all other the Dominions and Territories now in the actual possession of His present Sacred MAJESTY King CHARLES II. Treating of Britain in General LONDON Printed by Thomas Milbourn for Christopher Hussey at the Flower-de-Luce in Little Britain M.CD.LXXXIII THE PREFACE THis little Treatise is but the first Part of an intended larger Work the Design whereof as appears in the Title-Page is to exhibit as in a Mirror a view of the ancient and modern State not only of this our Island of GREAT BRITAIN but also of Ireland and all other His MAJESTIES Dominions and Territories not by writing a continued Chronicle or History of all the Kings or Princes reigning successively in them but only by giving an Account of such signal Mutations as made any considerable Change in the Administration of the Government either in Church or State In this part which treats of Britain in general after a short Description of the Island and a brief Account of the ancient Inhabitants thereof from whom not only our present Cambro-Britains but those also of Armorica or little Britain in France are descended is inserted a Discourse which tho it may seem a Digression is neither long nor impertinent touching the Original and Excellency of Monarchical Government to which and none other this our Island has been so fortunate as to have been Subjected from its very first being inhabited to this very Day Hereunto I was forced by the audacious Scribles of certain profligate Wretches who that they may the easilier instigate the Vulgar to a contempt of the Sacred Authority of their Prince and thereby make way for the overturning of this famous Monarchy and the introducing of Popular Tyranny in its place endeavour to debase Monarchy it self affirming the most High and Sacred Order of Kings which is the Ordinance of GOD himself founded in the prime Laws of Nature and clearly established by express Texts both of the Old and New Testaments to be a meer human Creature taking its Original from the Consent of the People by whom Soveraignty is conveyed unto Kings in trust only and by Communication and consequently that the People may whensoever they please resume this Power and call their Trustees to an account These are the pernicious Maxims which so lately intoxicated the three Kingdoms and are now again for the like purpose taken up by our present Republicans and daily disperst by the scurrilous Pamphleteers of these times one of which who insolently presumes to dedicate his treasonable Libels to a most Noble and Loyal Peer falls foul upon the Learned Sr. Robert Filmer for deriving the Regal Authority from the paternal instituted by GOD himself tho this verity be not only expresly delivered in the Holy Scriptures which declare that the first Government in the World was Monarchical in the Father of all Flesh but was by the very glimmerings of Natural Reason discovered by Aristotle who speaking of the Original of Monarchy saith The first Society made of many Houses is a Village which seems most agreeable to nature as being a Colony of Families which some call Foster-brethren or Children and Childrens Children Therefore at first Cities were and now also Nations are Governed by Kings because such came together as were under Kingly Government For the eldest in every House is King and so for Kindred sake it is in Colonies that is in more Families which are descended from the same House whence Homer saith Every man gives Laws to his Wives and Children Hence it is by all ancient Writers acknowledged that the first Commonweals were governed by Monarchs nor indeed was there any other Government known in the World for above three thousand years till some ambitious Fellows among the giddy Grecians a People alwayes delighted in Novelties rebelled against their Soveraigns and usurped their Authority as was lately here done by the Rump-Parliament and is now again aimed at by the Factors for the Good-Old-Cause The better to excite my fellow Subjects to a dutiful Submission to our common Father the King I have reminded them that all those Rights and Priviledges to the Preservation whereof tho neither infringed nor in danger of being so the popular Demagogues pretend to call them forth when their real design is utterly to destroy and take away both the Regal Prerogative and the Peoples Liberties are originally the Concessions of their Princes and therefore that as it is the height of Ingratitude to employ the Favours of their Soveraign to the disturbance of his Government so it is an excess of Folly to think to secure their Liberties by the pulling down or weakning that Authority which as it first gave them so is alone capable to protect and maintain them This tho it may seem strange to those that have their Heads filled with the Chimerical Conceits of the natural Freedom and Equality of Mankind and the first founding of Government by the Multitude upon such Terms and Conditions as to their Wisdoms seemed fit is yet clearly manifest from the Histories and Records of all Ages and Nations and particularly of this Kingdom of England of which it was well observed by the late Lord Keeper Bridgman then Lord chief Baron at the Tryal of the Regicides It is true we have as great Liberties as any People have in Christendom in the World but let us own them where they are due We have them by the Concessions of our Princes Our Princes have granted them and the King now He in them hath granted them likewise After this Account of the Original and Excellency of Monarchy to which Government alone I briefly shew that this Island has been alwayes subjected I proceed to the Conquest thereof by the Romans and thence to such other Mutations as hapned therein unto the time of Cadwalladar who in the Year 689 quitting his Kingdom of which the Saxons had gotten the best part a Period was put to the British Monarchy the very Name of King of Britain not being so much as heard of till the happy Vnion of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland by the Succession of His Majesties Grandfather King James of famous Memory to the Crown of England whose Genealogy from Cadwalladar I have here set down clearly demonstrating his present Sacred Majesty to be the true and undoubted Heir of the said British King as he is also of the Saxon Norman and Scotish Kings and consequently to have a clearer Right to this Monarchy than any private man can pretend to his Estate After this Relation of such Mutations as concern Britain in general I give a general Account of the present Government of this Island And here according to my Duty and the Oath of Supremacy which declaring the King to be the only Supreme Governour admits neither Equal nor Superior I assert the Soveraignty of our Lord the King and shew that there is not in our nor can
in situation and so well stored with every thing necessary for the support of Human Life that if the World had been by its omnipotent Creator fashioned like a Ring as it is like a Globe she might well have been esteemed the only Gemme therein it is no wonder that she has been possest by many Nations and coveted by many more and that whereas some Countries are still held by their Aborigines or the first that laid claim to them it should be a matter of no small difficulty to find out the first Inhabitants of this Island The first Inhabitants of the Island now called Great Britain had their Original as may be reasonably conjectured from their calling themselves Kumero Cymro and Kumeri which Name was so ancient amongst them that Cymro and Cymri doth now signifie as much as Aborigines from the Cimbri of the Continent who are supposed to be the Relicks of the ancient Cimmerii that proceeding from Scythia into the Countries afterwards called Sarmatia and Germany and establishing themselves upon the Sea-coasts of Gaul passed over into this Island likewise and here seated themselves But in process of time and before the Dayes of Caesar the Germans Valor decreasing the Gauls increasing in Number and Power recovered their antient Seats and proceeded into Britain also and invaded part of the Cimbri who had long before placed themselves in this Island and altho they obtained the Sea-coasts and entred far into the Inland parts and so by long possession came to be called Britains yet they were by the more antient Inhabitants who esteemed themselves the only Aborigines of the Island looked upon only as Incroachers Soon after if not contemporary with the Cimbri are the Phaenicians supposed to have been in this Island who being in the first Ages of the World the best if not only Navigators passing through the Straits to discover the Western Seas first of all the Inhabitants of the Mediterranean found out these Islands arriving first at the Isles of Scilly which finding to abound with Tynn they called in their Language Bratanac which the Greeks by a Word of like signification rendred Cassiterides The Phaenicians afterwards discovering the Western parts of this Island now called Cornwall and Devonshire the same name was communicated thereunto and by Degrees to all the Islands situated in the Western Ocean The Usefulness of those excellent Commodities brought by the Phaenicians from Britain rendred the Greeks very curious in search of the Place from whence they came which the Phaenicians as studiously concealed from them Yet Colaeus having discovered the Western Seas the Greeks found out these Islands where they setled vast Colonies landing first at Man and Anglesey and introduced into the whole Island a great number of their Religious Ceremonies and other Customs In the Year of the World 3913. Julius Caesar being offended with the Britains for having under-hand assisted his Enemies the Gauls invaded this Nation but may be said rather to have discovered it than conquered it from which he was so far that Lucan sayes positively of him Territa quaesitis ostendit terga Britannis But afterwards in the Time of Claudius the Southern Parts of it were made a Roman Province The Britains being thus partly subdued by the Romans some of them impatient of subjection sheltring themselves behind the Cheviot Hills and Mount Grampius infested the Roman Colonies and retaining the ancient Custom of painting themselves when the other Britains now civilized had left it off were distinguished by the Name of Picts those only being called Britains who were under the Romans Jurisdiction These Picts inhabited the more Southern Parts of so much of the Island as was left unconquered by the Romans the more Northern parts being long before possest by the Scots who Anno mundi 3641. coming out of Ireland seated themselves there and called it Scotland In the Decay of the Roman Empire the Britains deserted by the Romans and weakned by the many Armies they had drawn from them and infested by the Scots and Picts did in the Reign of King Vortigern call in the Saxons to their Assistance who by degrees possest themselves of all the flourishing parts of the Island driving the Britains into the mountainous Parts of Wales and Cornwal Of the Laws Laws whereby the Antient Britains were governed the most remarkable that have come to our knowledg are seven said to have been made by Molmutius Dunwallo translated out of the British speech into the Latin by Gildas and afterwards into the English Saxon by King Alfred They are these that follow 1. That the Temples of the Gods should enjoy such Priviledges that whatever Malefactor should fly thither for Sanctuary should not be forced from thence till he had obtained Pardon for his Crime 2. That the Wayes leading to the Temples and the Roads of great Cities should have like Priviledges 3. That Plows Oxen and other laboring Cattle should enjoy the like Immunities lest the Ground being untilled the People might perish for want of Bread 4. That a certain number of Plows should be used in every County of the Land with severe Penalties to be inflicted upon those that should lessen the Number 5. That no Oxen or laboring Beasts should be seized for Debt 6. That Buying and Selling should be by certain set Weights and Measures 7. That Thieves and Robbers should be severely punished Religion The great Goodness and Wisdom of GOD having created Man for the Enjoyment of himself and all other things for the use and service of Man in order to his attaining of this sublime End it is but just that Man should pay a Soveraign Adoration and Respect to this bounteous Creator and a punctual Obedience to all his Commands The true Manner of performing this Adoration was by Adam who received it of GOD himself taught his Posterity but they deviating from his Precepts and becoming guilty of all sorts of Impieties the Almighty sent an universal Deluge which washt away all Mankind eight Persons only excepted from off the Face of the Earth The Posterity of Noah who with his Wife his three Sons and their Wives alone escaped this common Calamity too soon forgetting the severe Punishment inflicted upon the former Generation of Men for their Irreligion left the Service of the true Deity adoring the Inventions of their own Heads and the Works of their own Hands so that amongst all the Inhabitants of the Earth there were antiently none but the Jews who Worshipt the true GOD in the true manner No wonder then that the Religion of the antient Britains was Paganish Superstition they having many Idol-Gods the chief whereof were these that follow 1. Taramis or the Thunderer the same with Jupiter to whom as to many other of their Gods they offered human Sacrifices 2. Tutates or Mercury who was esteemed the Inventor of all Arts and Sciences and particularly of Letters and the Sickle as also the Leader in in all Journeys and Guide in all Wayes and whose
Pieces some of which had a figure of a Shield embost and on that side a certain Image the Device being within which kind of Coin was in use in no other part of the World except in some places belonging to Greece Buildings The Buildings of the Sea-coast Britains were many and like to those of the old Gauls The Inlanders had no Houses but certain cumbersome Woods stood them instead of Cities and Towns for when they had by felling of Trees encompast a spacious round plat oâ— Ground and fortified it with Rampires and Ditches they built there for themselves Huts and Cottages and for their Cattel set up Stalls and Folds making thither their Retreat and Resort to eschew the Invasions of their Enemies Arms. The Britains being as we have observed a People very swift of foot never burdened themselves with an Armor which they could not a their pleasure fling off Their Defensive Arms were only Shields for Offensive Weapons they had short Spears at the lower end of which was fastneâ— a round Bell of Brass which at thâ— beginning of a fight they shook with great Courage conceiting that such a ratling Noise did dismay the Enemy They had also Daggers and Swords which those who went naked girt about their Bodies with Iron Chains The different Interests of the many petty Princes Manner of Fighting amongst whom this Island was divided keeping them in continual Wars the Britains must of necessity be well-experienced Souldiers But their Manner of fighting was so peculiar to themselves that Caesar related it for a Wonder in the Western Parts They fought in a Body called Caterva or Caturfa as the Romans had their Legion and the Macedonians their Phalanx Their usual manner of fighting was in Chariots of which they had several sorts the most remarkable whereof were the Covinus and the Essedum The Covinus was a sort of Chariot carrying no men at all but only him that guided it It was exceedingly well harnassed and armed having at both Ends of the Axletrees Hooks and and Scyths fastned so that driving furiously into the Enemies Battel they made whole Lanes of slaughtered men the Scyths cutting off those in the middle who did not speedily make way and the Hooks catching up those that had escaped the Scyths The Essedum carried many persons who as the Charioteer rode through all the parts of the Battle bestowed their Darts which with the terrible appearance of the Horses and the ratling Noise of the Wheels usually brake the Ranks of their Enemies When they had wound themselves in amongst their Enemies they leapt out of their Chariots and fought on foot the Charioteers in the mean time driving out of the Battle and drawing up their Chariots whither they retired when over-powered by the Enemy In the managing their Chariot-Horses daily Practice had rendred them so expert that driving forcibly down a steep Hill they could stop and turn short in the midst of their Career run upon the Beam stand upon the Harness and skip presently back into their Chariots The Horses used by the Britains in their Chariots were small and swift their Harness was not only substantial but also curiously wrought engraven as may be gathered from these Words of Propertius Esseda caelatis siste Britanna jugis The Britains began their day at Sun-set Computation of Time which Custom they are supposed to have learnt from the Phaenicians who as all other Eastern Nations used the same manner of Computation which they received from the Jews who were taught by Moses that the Evening and the Morning were the first Day Thus what the Romans called Septimana is in the British Tongue to this day called With-nos and in English a Sennight the Abbreviation of Seven Nights From the same Original also was their Observation of the New Moon in whose first Quarter they began not only their Months and New Years but their several Ages likewise which were comprehended in a Cycle of thirty Years CHAP. IV. Of Government of Monarchy its Original and Excellency Britain alwayes governed by Monarchs Government OF Government there neither are nor can be more than three Species For the Soveraign Command of a State must either reside in one which is Monarchy or in some principal persons which is Aristocracy or in the whole Body of the People which is Democracy Monarchy Of these the best and only perfect not to say only lawful kind of Government is the Monarchical not only as having the nearest Resemblance of the Divinity but as being the first and only Natural Government of Mankind and under which the Subject has ever found the greatest Happiness and suffered â—he fewest Inconveniences Original The Original and first Institution of this most excellent Government was from GOD himself who having created Adam commanded him to multiply and replenish the Earth and subdue it and to have Dominion over all Creatures constituting him thereby Monarch of the Universe The Posterity of Adam had no Right to possess any thing but by Grant or Permission from him or Succession to him who when his Children grew up and came to have Children of their own over whom they also had a Command and Power assigned them their distinct Territories by Right of private Dominion yet still with Subordination to himself who was Lord-paramount over his Childrens Children to all Generations Absurd therefore is the Fancy of those who imagin an independent Multitude having a natural Right to Community A thing which never had any Being but in the Chimaerical Brains of the Assertors An Opinion this is which cannot be maintained without the great Scandal of Christianity and opening a Door to Atheisme by denying the Creation of Adam Adam then was Father King and Lord over his Family a Son a Subject a Servant a Slave were then one and the same thing Nor was he tied to govern by any Laws but that which was by his Creator implanted in his Breast called therefore the Law of Nature which if he transgressed he as all succeeding Monarchs was accountable to GOD alone from whom he received it From Adam this Right of Soveraignty was to descend to his eldest Son to whom GOD himself even in his Fathers Life-time speaking of his younger Brother said Vnto thee shall his Desires be subject and thou shalt rule over him This was the Foundation of Government before the Universal Deluge which washing away all the rest of Mankind from the face of the Earth left this Universal Soveraignty to Noah who with his Wife his Sons and their Wives only remained alive By Noah was the whole World divided amongst his three Sons From one of which their Sons or Nephews scattered abroad after the Confusion of Babel do most of the civilest Nations of the Earth labour to deduce their Original The Posterity of Noah to secure themselves as they thought from being destroyed by another Flood went about to erect a Tower the Top whereof they intended should
received Hostages he commanded his Navy to sail round Britain whilst himself with slow Marches that he might aw the new-conquered Nations by his Delay in passing placed his Men in their Winter Quarters His Fleet having prosperously and speedily compast the Isle put in at the Port Trutulensis now Richborough neer Sandwich from whence it first set out Agricola envied by the Emperour Domitian in the fourth year of whose Reign Anno CHRISTI 86. this Victory was gotten was soon after recalled leaving his Province to his Successor quiet and secure The Roman Province in Britain extended thus by Agricola as far as Glota Bodotria or the Friths of Dunbritton and Edenborough was by the Emperour Hadrian following the Advice of Augustus and Tiberius to gird the Empire within moderate Bounds reduced to a narrower Compass For he giving the Northern Nations no longer now called Britains but henceforth first Caledonians afterward Picts Scots more Room to Inhabit quitted the colder and more barren Soils reserving only the most delicate Part of the Island which to hinder the Caledonian Boars from breaking in and rooting it up he inclosed like a precious Garden-Plot with a mighty Wall of fourscore Miles in length from the Bay of Itun or Solway-Frith on the Irish Sea to Tinmouth on the German Ocean Which Wall decayed by the Injuries of Time and the Incursions of the Enemy was reedified by the Emperor Septimius Severus who fortified it with a deep Trench and many Turrets erected at such convenient Distances that the Sound of a Trumpet tho against the Wind might be heard from one to another In the same Wall also is said to have been artificially set a Brazen Trunk which running from Tower to Tower served upon the Invasion of the Enemy to give speedy and secret Intelligence But this Wall now lying along and no Pipe remaining many Tenants at this day hold Farms of the King in Cornage whereby they are obliged by winding of an Horn to give Notice to their Neighbours of the Enemies Approach Agricola having thus conquered all the Southern Part of this Island abrogated most of the antient Rites and Customes of the Britains in the Room whereof the Roman Laws Usages and Learning began here to Flourish Their humble Cottages he changed into fair Houses and stately Palaces superb Porticoes and sumptuous Baths Their Diet was now more curious and their Apparel more magnificent Their cumbersome Chariots were turned into the Coaches and delicate Litters of Rome and for the Convenience of Travel Roads and Causies began to be made through the whole Island and paved with Stone CHAP. VI. How Britain was governed under the Romans BRITAIN not being annexed to the Roman Empire till after the Division of Provinces made by Augustus had this Priviledge above other Nations that it was never subject to any Consular or Proconsular Deputy after the manner of other Provinces but was alwayes esteemed to be Praesidialis or under the immediate Protection of the Emperor held by his Garrisons and governed by Lieutenants sent and recalled at his sole Will and Pleasure The Britains had also even within the Roman Pale for a time Kings of their own the last of which was Lucius surnamed Lever-maur who flourished in the time of the Emperour Commodus Antoninus This tho it carried with it a certain shew of Liberty was yet only the usual Method of the Roman State first practiced in the Time of their Democratick Government when their Insolence was such as to make Kings the Instruments of their Ambition whom they first drew up with Plumes of Majesty and seemed even to adore but when their Turns were once served with as great Contempt and Ingratitude according to the constant Humor of Commonwealths they trampled upon them For the governing of Britain one Legat was thought sufficient till the Emperor Septimius Severus finding by experience that it was a Province too great and powerful to be trusted in the hands of one Man first divided it into two Governments committing the North part thereof to Virius Lupus and the South to Heraclytus From the Time of Constantin the Great there were no more Propraetors or Lieutenants in Britain For he having ordained four Prefects of the Praetorium viz. of the East of Illyricum of Italy and of Gaul and two Leaders or Commanders of the Forces the one of the Foot the other of the Horse in the West whom they termed Praesentales ordered the Government of Britain in this manner For Civil Government there ruled over Britain the Prefect of the Praetorium in Gaul whose Vice-gerent was the Vicar General of Britain honored with the Title Spectabilis and having under him according to the number of the Provinces two Consular Deputies and three Presidents who had the hearing of Civil and Criminal Causes For Military Affairs there ruled the Leader or Commander of the Foot in the West under whom were the Count of Britain the Count of the Saxon Coast along Britain and the Duke of Britain every one of which was likewise stiled Spectabilis The Count of Britain seemeth to have ruled the Inland parts of the Island having with him seven Companies of Foot and nine Troops of Horse The Count of the Saxon Coast along Britain who defended the Maritime parts against the Saxons and is by Ammianus called Comes tractûs Maritimi had for Defence of the Sea-coasts seven Companies of Foot two Guidons of Horse the second Legion and one Cohort The Duke of Britain who defended the Frontiers against the Barbarians had the Command of thirty eight Garrison-Forts wherein fourteen thousand Foot and nine hundred Horse kept their Stations so that in those dayes according to the Computation of Pancirolus Britain maintained about nineteen thousand two hundred Foot and seventeen hundred Horse in ordinary Besides these the Comes sacrarum largitionum who managed the Emperors Finances had under him in Britain the Rationalis or Auditor of the Sums or Revenues of Britain the Provost of the Augustian Treasures in Britain and the Procurator of the Gynegium in Britain where the Cloaths of the Emperor and his Souldiers were woven The Comes rerum Privatarum had also his Rational of private State in Britain to say nothing of other inferior Officers CHAP. VII Of the first introducing of Christianity into Britain The Conversion of King Lucius The Persecution under Dioclesian The Establishment of the Christian Faith by Constantin AS the rude and barbarous Manners of the Britains gave place to the Roman Civility so the Bloody Cruelties of their Idolatrous Superstitions were abrogated by the Introduction of Christian Religion for the admittance whereof a Passage was opened by means of the Correspondence between Britain and the rest of the Roman Empire It was in the Year of the World 3966. the two and fortieth of the Emperour Augustus fifty three Years after the first Arrival of Julius Caesar in Britain and the third Year of the British King Cunobelyn the whole World then enjoying a generall Peace
by the Conversion of many of the chiefest Roman Senators began to hearken to the Admonitions of such as taught that Religion here in Britain the Fountain whereof understanding to be at Rome and not knowing of any Ecclesiastical persons in Britain of Authority sufficient to establish here a New Church sent Elvanus of Avallonia and Medwinus of the Province of the Belgae with Letters to St. Eleutherius then sitting in St. Peters Chair desiring from him more perfect Instruction and a greater Authority for setling the common Affairs of Christianity St. Eleutherius together with the same Messengers one of which to wit Elvanus he is said to have consecrated a Bishop sent over to him two Reverend Prelates whose Names were Phaganus and Diruvianus commissionating them not only to instruct and Baptize the King and such others as should embrace the Christian Faith but also to order and establish all Ecclesiastical Affairs in the Kingdom But whereas the King desired that his Messengers might bring with them the Roman Laws according to which he would order the Civil State of his Kingdom the holy Bishop sent him word that those Laws were not necessary for the Constitution of a Christian Common-Weal since that in them many things were established that ought not to be observed by the Professors of Christianity These Messengers being arrived the King his Queen his Sister St. Emerita and his whole Family were washt in the Laver of Baptism whose good Example a great number of his People soon followed A Testimonial of this Conversion is yet remaining in the Library of Sir John Cotton being a Coin of this King bearing his Image his Name LVC and the Sacred Sign of the Cross the common Badge of Christianity This done these four holy Men employd themselves in Preaching the Gospel of CHRIST through all the Provinces of the Kingdom disputing daily with the Druids and by the help of the Kings Authority and Zeal abrogating their abominable Superstitions whose horrid Sacrifices of humane Blood had caused the Romans long since to prohibit them in Gaul and consecrating Priests and Bishops and designing for Episcopal Sees those Places where formerly the chief of the Druids whom by a Title borrowed from the Romans our Historians writing in Latin frequently term Flamines and Archiflamines had their Residence The Names of the Cities that were then in Britain compassed with Walls and fortified with Towers and Gates for each of which a Bishop was intended are as followeth 1. Cair Guintwick now Winwick in Lancashire 2. Cair Mincip Verolam near St. Albans 3. Cair Liqualid now Carlile 4. Cair Meguaid now Meivod in Montgomeryshire 5. Cair Colun now Colchester 6. Cair Ebranc now York 7. Cair Seiont afterwards Cair Custeint near Carnarvon 8. Cair Caradoc in the Borders of Shropshire 9. Cair Grant now Cambridge 10. Cair Maunguid now Manchester in Lancashire 11. Cair Lundein now London 12. Cair Guorthigirn in Radnorshire 13. Cair Ceint now Canterbury 14. Cair Guiragon now Worcester 15. Cair Peris now Portsmouth 16. Cair Daun now Doncaster in Yorkshire 17. Cair-Legio now Westchester 18. Cair Guricon now Warwick 19. Cair Segeint now Silcester in Hampshire 20. Cair-Leon on Usk in Monmouthshire now quite demolished 21. Cair Guent now Winchester 22. Cair Britto now Bristol 23. Cair Lerion now Leicester 24. Cair Draiton now Dragton in Shropshire 25. Cair Pentavelcoit now Ilchester in Somersetshire 26. Cair Urvac now Wroxcester in Shropshire 27. Cair Calemion now Camelet in Somersetshire 28. Cair Lindcoit now Lincoln Three of these were designed to be Metropolitical Cities the Title of Archbishops not being then in use viz. London York and Cairleon upon Vsk the first whereof was York being at that time not only a Colony of the Romans but the Place where the Emperours Palace and Courts of Judicature were kept The first Metropolitan of London was St. Theanus for whom the King built a Church in the place called Cornhil which was consecrated to St. Peter In the Year of CHRIST 186. the holy Prelates Phaganus and Diruvianus going to Rome obtained a Confirmation of all they had done in Britain from St. Eleutherius from whom at their Return hither they presented the King with an hallowed Crown These Holy men being now come back there were more Churches built particularly that of Westminster which which was even from its first Foundation deputed for the Burial of our Kings and that of Winchester to which the King granted great Immunities setling on it ample Revenues and placing therein Monks living according to the Rule delivered by St. Mark the Evangelist Nor was the Devotion of King Lucius content only to build Churches and Monasteries but he erected also Seminaries of Learning of which that of Bangor was most remarkable wherein at the coming of St. Augustin into England there were more than two thousand Monks Christian Religion being thus setled in Britain King Lucius out of his Zeal to propagate the Gospel is said to have relinquished his Crown and passed over into Bavaria and Rhaetia together with his Sister St. Emerita where being Crowned with Martyrdom he was buried at Curia or Chur after whose Death the Romans suffered no more British Kings within their Province St. Phaganus and Diruvianus travelling over the whole Island teaching and baptizing the Inhabitants visited the Isle of Avallonia where they built another Oratory dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul and having established there a Succession of twelve persons in memory of St. Joseph and his Companions are supposed there to have ended their Dayes Anno Domini 191. Persecution under Dioclesian The Christian Faith thus setled in Britain flourished here unmolested by any Persecution till the Year of our Lord 286. when Dioclesian being now in the third year of his Reign took for his Companion in the Empire Marcus Valerius Maximianus These two Emperors the former whereof assumed the Surname Jovius as the other did Herculius designing wholly to extirpate Christianity out of the World raised a more dismal Persecution against the Professors thereof than ever any of their Predecessors had done and this their supereminent Cruelty they extended so far that the Isle of Britain which in former persecuting Emperors times had been exempted from participating with the Sufferings of other Nations was now made a Scene of Blood and the very first Theatre whereon these bloody Emperours began to Act those Tragedies whereat Mankind stood amazed The first that suffered under their cruel Edicts was our glorious Protomartyr St. Albanus who being an Inhabitant of Verulam descended of an illustrious Roman Family and the Emperors Procurator in Britain courteously tho himself yet a Pagan entertained a certain reverend Christian Priest named Amphibalus then newly come from Rome into Britain by whom being converted to the true Faith he lent him at his departure his own Military Cassock woven with Gold that he might the better escape for which being accused before the Judge constituted for that purpose and owning himself
Insinuations have continually labored to disquiet the Minds of the People with pretended Fears of Popery and ungrounded Jealousies of I know not what Arbitrary Power have so far of late prevailed that the Loyalty of many unthinking persons has been strangely staggered and their Spirits so exasperated that several of the English Commonalty have by the Artifices of these Seditious Boutefeus been brought to such a forgetfulness of the Duty which by all Divine and Humane Laws they ow unto their Prince that some Parliaments have of late seemed perfect States of War wherein a prevalent Faction in the House of Commons instead of readily affording their Assistance to their Soveraign for the strengthning and supporting of his Government against Forreign and Domestick Enemies have under Pretence of securing the Priviledges and Liberty of the People been tugging and contending to ravish away the Regal Prerogatives from the Crown and by importuning his Majesty contrary to his often-declared Resolutions of never consenting to so great an Injustice to alter the Succession of the Crown from its lineal and legal Descent to subvert this ancient and hereditary Monarchy by ruining its firmest Foundation But the Intrigues of the Faction having been laid open by his Majesties Gracious Declaration of the Reasons inducing him to dissolve the two last Parliaments and by the seasonable Publication of that Horrid Association a Copy whereof was produced at the late Proceedings against the Earl of Shaftsbury in whose Closet it was proved to have been found the Mists which these Religious Juglers for the better concealing their damnable Designs had cast before the Eyes of the People are so far dissipated that whenever his Majesty shall in his Princely Wisdom think fit to call another Parliament it may well be hoped that the People from whose Eyes the Scales which have so long blinded them begin now to drop off will choose themselves such Representatives as in their Testimonies of Loyalty and Submission to their Soveraign will eagerly strive to outgo the very best of their Predecessors such as will by their unanimous Acknowledgment of the unalterableness of the Succession as has been lately done in Scotland assert the Sacredness of the British Monarchy by their Care to put a Stop to the Debauchery of the Press whose prolifick Womb daily teeming with new Monsters fills every Corner of the Nation with Seditious Pamphlets will take away those continual Incentives to Rebellion by undeceiving the deluded Vulgar will free us from that Charm under which we have now almost these four years lain as it were bewitched and by readily complying with all his Majesties just and honorable Desires and Designes will enable him to vindicate his own and the Nations Honor against all external Oppositions or internal Rebellions And then it will not be easy to comprehend what great things his Majesty so Loyally assisted may attempt and effect especially if we shall but consider how the mighty Power of the King of England before the Conjunction of Scotland and total Subjection of Ireland both which were usually at enmity with him has been notoriously known to the World and sufficiently felt by our Neighbor-Nations The Island of Great Britain is by a present learned Writer to whose Collections I am not a little indebted not unfitly said to resemble a great Garrison-Town not only fenced with strong Works her Port-Towns and environed with a vast and deep Ditch the Sea but guarded with excellent Outworks the strongest and best built Ships of War in the World and so abundantly furnished within with Men and Horses with Victuals and Ammunition with Cloaths and Money that if all the Potentates of Europe should which GOD forbid conspire against it they could hardly distress it Insomuch that we may well be permitted to affirm that as her own Natural Commodities are sufficient to maintain her so nothing but her own unnatural Seditions is capable to destroy her Thus admirable is the Defensive Strength of the Monarch of Great Britain nor can his Offensive Puissance but be formidable to the World when it shall be considered that being Master of the Sea as if he be not wanting to himself or his Subjects to him he must be he may in some sort be said to be Master of every Countrey bordering thereupon and is at liberty where when and upon what Terms he pleaseth to begin or end a War for the carrying on of which he is well able whenever he shall think fit so to do to raise of Englishmen besides Auxiliaries of valiant Scots and Irish two hundred thousand Foot and fifty thousand Horse so many having been computed during the late Rebellion to have been in Arms on both sides and that without any considerable miss of them in any City Town or Village whose natural Agility of Body Patience Hardiness and Resolution is so great and their fear of Death so little that scarce any Nation of the World upon equal Terms and Number has ever been able to stand before them either at Sea or Land For the transporting of an Army his Majesty hath at command neer two hundred Ships of War and can hire as many or more stout English Merchant Ships not much inferior to Ships of War all which he can soon Man with the best Sea Souldiers if not the best Mariners in the World And for the maintaining so vast a Fleet sufficient Money may for a competent Time be raised by a Moderate Land-Tax and for a long time by an easy Excise to be laid only upon such Commodities as naturally tend to the occasioning of Pride Idleness Luxury Wantonness and the Corruption of good Mannâ—râ—s Person That the Persons of Monarchs have in all Ages of the World been esteemed sacred and as such received a more than ordinary Respect and Veneration from their Subjects is so manifest from the concurrent Practice of ancient and present Times that it cannot with any shew of Truth be contradicted The Patriarchs of the old World were not only Kings but Priests having in themselves all Fulness of Jurisdiction and taking no less Care for the instructing of those whom GOD had subjected to them in the manner of performing their Adorations to their Creator than in teaching them the Laws and Institutes of a Civil Life And tho the Almighty was pleased amongst his own peculiar People the Israelites after their Departure out of the Land of Aegypt to separate the Spiritual and Temporal Functions entailing the Priesthood upon Aaron and his Posterity into whose Office it was not lawful for their Kings themselves to intrude yet were they in all Civil matters subject to the Kings Authority who was as were also the Priests anointed with Oyl to intimate the Sacredness of his Person When the Kings and Princes of the World began to submit their Crowns and Scepters to the Cross of our Redeemer and instead of Persecutors to become Protectors of the Church this sacred Ceremony of Anointing was again restored and Monarchs thereby admonished
named Lucius whence the Title of Primogenitus Ecclesiae rightfully belongs to the King of Great Britain but given to the Church the first Christian Emperor even the famous Constantin here born of there-nowned British Lady St Helena by whose Example and Encouragement the Faith was generally received throughout the whole Empire The Independency and Absoluteness of his Authority holding of none but GOD and having in his own Dominions neither Superiour nor Equal The Eminence of his Royal Dignity State and Titles his Realm not having been only stiled an Empire and his Crown Imperial but this Island both in antient and later Times having been regarded as another World whereof the Monarch is sole Lord and Emperor The Martial Exploits and Achievements of his Ancestors abroad amongst whom is the first Christian Worthy and first Founder of Martial Knighthood the famous King Arthur in whose Heroick Acts there is Truth enough all that is thought fabulous being rejected to render him renowned to all posterity The Gallantry and and Stoutness of his People arising from their Freedom the Plentifulness of their Country and Generality of their Wealth His long-lined Royal Extraction wherein His Majesty now Reigning excels all the Monarchs of the Christian if not of the whole World The Hospitality and Magnificence of his Court than which no Court in Christendom is served with more punctual Attendance and State The Diversity of Nations and differing maternal Tongues subject to his Command The admirable Laws and Constitutions of his Government The Greatness of his Power by Sea and Land both Offensive and Defensive These and many other his Prerogatives considered We may well be permitted to affirm that besides the Preeminence he may challenge by his just Right to the Crown of France the Monarch of Great Brittain except the Precedency which he as all other Christan Princes acknowledges to the Emperor if he go not before yet at least ought not to come behind any King whatsoever CHAP. XII Of Succession to the Crown of Great Britain THE Monarch of Great Brittain has Right to the Imperial Crown of this Island by Inheritance according to the Laws of GOD and Nature and the fundamental Constitutions of the Realms of England and Scotland which both agree in this That upon the Death of the King the next of Kindred tho born out of the Dominions of Great Britain or born of Parents not Subjects of Great Britain is immediately King before any Proclamation Coronation Publication or Consent of Peers or People The Rule of Inheritance given by GOD himself to the People of Israel is this If a man dy and have no Son then he shall cause his Inheritance to pass unto his Daughter And if he have no Daughter then ye shall give his Inheritance unto his Brethren Agreeably to which Rule the Crown of Great Britain descends as an inalienable Heritage from the Father to the eldest Son and his Heirs for want of Sons to the Eldest Daughter and her Heirs for want of Daughters to the Brother and his Heirs and for want of Brethren to the Sister and her Heirs And so unalterable is this Course of Descent that no Act no Crime no Attainder of Treason can bar the next of Blood from being King in the instant of Time his Predecessor does not so much dye as by a State Metempsychosis transmit his Life his Breath or his Soul into the Nostrils the Body of his Successor For Hereditary Monarchy being as it has been clearly demonstrated an immediate Ordinance of GOD founded in the Prime Laws of Nature and the Laws of GOD and Nature being as all Christians acknowledge absolutely immutable it is a Madness to think that any Act of Parliament can change this unchangeable Law or with the least Color of Justice alter the Right of Succession This was well known to all our ancient Parliaments that were neither over-awed by any prevailing Faction seduced by designing Intreaguers nor yet vainly flattered themselves with an Omnipotent Power to create and annihilate Kings In one of which the States of the Realm unanimously answered King Edward the IIId asking their Advice in matters relating to the Crown That they could not consent to any thing in Parliament that tended to the Disherison of the King and his Heirs or the Crown whereunto they were sworn From whence Sir Edward Cook concludes That it is a Law and Custom of Parliament that no King can alien the Crown from the right Heir tho by consent of the Lords and Commons And elsewhere affirming King Johns Resignation of the Crown to the Pope to have been utterly void he alledges this Reason Because the Royal Dignity is an Inherent inseparable to the Royal Blood of the King descendable to the next of Blood to the King and cannot be transferd to another And altho by the Treasons and Conspiracies of ambitious disloyal and designing Persons the Crown has now and then been transferred from one Family to another yet does it appear in Story that since the time of the Norman Conquest the right Heir was never yet kept out beyond the second Descent And to the Honor of English Parliaments we can aver that never any Usurper tho armed with Power laid claim to the Crown in Parliament but by pretending to be of the Right Line nor did ever the Parliament allow of such Pretence if false but when awed by Fear and a vast Army And whenever the Terror of such armed violence being removed the true Heir was enabled to claim his Right the Parliament notwithstanding all such pretended Acts readily submitted themselves to their legitimate Prince as being bound thereunto by the Laws of GOD and Nature Thus altho Henry Duke of Lancaster backt by an Army of fourty or fifty thousand men under Pretence of a feigned Title from Edmund Crouch-back forced his Natural Soveraign King Richard the IId first to resign and afterwards to be deposed from his Crown which waving his former pretended Title he caused to be entailed upon himself his four Sons and the Heirs of their Bodies by Act of Parliament whereby he thought to have secured it to his Posterity for ever Yet notwithstanding these cautious Provisions seconded by the Valor and prodigious Success of that noble Prince Henry the Vth. when in the year 1460. this Entail was alledged against Richard Duke of York laying claim in Parliament to the Crowns of England and France as being the next Heir to Lionel Duke of â—larence elder Brother to John of Gaunt of whom the House Lancaster was descended the Duke of York unanswerably replied That if King Henry the IVth might have obtained the said Crowns of England and France by Title of Inheritance Descent or Succession he neither needed nor would have desired or made them to be granted to him in such wise as they be by that Act Which said he taketh no place neither is of any force or effect against him that is right Inheritor of the said Crowns as accordeth with the Laws
of GOD and all Natural Laws Which Answer of the Duke of York and h s Claim to the Crown was by the same Parliament expresly recognized and declared to be Good True Just Lawful and Sufficient And when in the same year Edward Earl of March eldest Son to the said Duke of York upon the death of his Father took possession of the Crown by the Name of King Edward the IVth his Title was in full Parliament by all acknowledged in these Words Knowing also certainly and without doubt and ambiguity that by GODs Law and the Law of Nature He viz. the said King Edward and none other is and ought to be true R ghtwise and Natural Liege and Soveraign Lord And that he was in right from the Death of the said Noble and Fam us Prinee his Father very just King of the same Realm of England And so little Respect was given to the aforementioned Act of Entail that it was not so much as repealed being esteemed from the very beginning null and void in it self Nor indeed were any Acts of Henry the IVth Vth. or VIth stiled Kings in Deed and not of Right deemed to be in force but such as were expresly confirmed by Edward the IVth in the same manner as his Sacred Majesty now reigning confirmed the judicial Proceedings of the late Usurpation As little Success had that Monster of Nature Richard Duke of Glocester who being by the Interest of several factious Lords chosen Protector to his Nephew the young King Edward the Vth having by that means gotten into his hands the military Force of the Nation pretending that the Children of his Brother King Edward the IVth were illegitimate laid claim to the Crown which he not only entailed by Act of Parliament upon himself and his Issue but the better to secure it in his Line caused the Innocent young King and his only Brother the Duke of York to be barbarously murthered in the Tower yet did he within three years lose both his Crown and Life to Henry Earl of Richmond on whom and his Heirs it was again by Act of Parliament entailed which yet would little have availed him or his Posterity had he not prudently acording to his promise by which several of the Nobility were induced to assist him married Elizabeth eldest Daughter of King Edward the IVth and immediate Heiress of the Crown whereby happily turning his Usurpation into a lawful Sovereignty he secured himself in the Throne But that his Issue by any other Lady could not have had better Success against the Princely House of York than Adonijah had against Salomon may more than probably be presumed if we shall consider what Fate attended the many mad Acts made by Henry the VIIIth about the Succession This haughty Prince whose capricious Humor none of his Parliaments durst gainsay having after above twenty years Cohabitation divorced his Queen a chast and vertuous Lady did in the twenty fifth year of his Reign disinherit by Act of Parliament the Lady Mary his Daughter by her settling the Crown by special Words for want of Issue Male on his Issue Female by the Lady Anne Bullen To the observation of which Act the whole Nation was obliged by an Oath imposed the year following the Refusal of which Oath was adjudged Misprision of Treason And yet in the twenty eighth year of his Reign he bastardized and made illegitimate to all intents and purposes as he had done formerly the Issue of Queen Katherine the Issue betwixt him and the Lady Anne Bullen barring them to claim challenge or demand any Inheritance as Lawful Heir or Heirs to him by Lineal Descent making it Treason for any one notwithstanding their former Oath by Words Writing Printing or any other exterior Act directly or indirectly to call any of the Children born under the unlawful Marriages of Katharine and Anne Bullen legitimate and enacting that in case he had no Issue by Jane his then Queen he might dispose of the Crown to whatsoever person or persons he pleased the whole Nation being bound to the observance of this Law by the Sanctimony of an Oath the refusal whereof was made High Treason After all this in the thirty fifth year of his Reign he by another Act entailed the Crown on himself Prince Edward and the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth without repealing the former Acts or taking the least notice of their being so signally bastardized and for default of Heirs of their Bodies on such person or persons as he should nominate by his Letters Patents under his Great Seal or by his last Will in writing signed by his most Gracious Hand the whole Nation being again sworn to observe his pleasure herein Consequently whereunto he by such his last Will and Testament solemnly bequeathed the Crown upon failure of his own Issue to the House of Suffolk being the Issue of his younger Sister Mary excluding by that means from the Throne as much as in him and his Act of Parliament lay the Issue of his Elder Sister whose Royal Blood he affirmed the cold Air of Scotland to have frozen up in the North. Yet when after the Death of his three Children reigning successively these disinheriting Statutes the last whereof was confirmed by Act of Parliament in the first year of Queen Elizabeth in whose thirteenth year there passed also an Act That it should be Treason during her Life and a Praemunire afterwards to assert that the Imperial Crown of England could not be disposed of by Act of Parliament came to the Test they had not the Honor to be repealed but were held null and void from the beginning as being notoriously repugnant to the Laws both of GOD and Nature and the common Customs and Constitutions of the Realm And the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons assembled in Parliament notwithstanding all these unrepealed Acts having confest the Inestimable and unspeakable Blessings accrewing from the Vnion of England and Scotland under one Imperial Crown in the Person of King James lineally rightfully and lawfully descended of the most Excellent Lady Margaret Eldest Daughter of the most renowned King Henry the VIIth and the high and noble Princess Queen Elizabeth his Wife eldest Daughter of King Edward the IVth proceeded to the Recognition of his Title in these Words We being bounden thereunto both by the Laws of GOD and Man do recognize and acknowledge that immediately upon the Dissolution and Decease of Elizabeth late Queen of England the Imperial Crown of the Realm of England and all the Kingdoms Dominions and Rights belonging to the same did by inherent Birthright and lawful and undoubted Succession descend and come to your most Excellent Majesty as being lineally justly and lawfully next and sole Heir of the Blood Royal of this Realm And that by the Goodness of GOD Almighty and lawful Right of Descent Your Majesty is under one Imperial Crown of the Realms and Kingdoms of England Scotland France and Ireland the most potent and mighty
King And thereunto we most humbly and faithfully do submit and oblige our selves our Heirs and our Posterities for ever And some years after it was by all the Judges of England expresly resolved in Calvins Case That King James his Title to the Crown was founded upon the Laws of Nature viz. by inherent Birth-right and Descent from the Blood-Royal of this Realm All Acts of Parliament then for excluding from the throne the next Heir of the Blood Royal on whom the Crown descends by the Laws of God and Nature by inherent Birthright and undoubted Succession being ipso facto null and void it is not to be wondred that his present Sacred Majesty so constantly declared that he would never consent to alter the Descent of the Crown in the right Line as not being willing by shewing his People a Method of disposing the Succession to shake at the same time the Title of his own Possession Since it is evident that the Heir apparent or next of Blood hath the same Right to enjoy the Crown after his Predecessors Death as the Actual Possessor hath to it during his Life and consequently that the People have no more Right to disinherit the one than to depose the other Nor can any man be blamed for apprehending that some such thing might be aimed at by the first Projectors of the Bill for excluding his Royal Highness from the Succession if it shall be considered that the chief Sticklers for that Bill insisted on the Deposition of Edward the IId contrived by a leacherous Queen and disloyal Parliament and that of Richard the IId who was for pretended Misgovernment removed from the Throne by a Parliament over-awed by an Army of fourty or fifty thousand men and Henry the IVth substituted in his stead that during the Heat of these debates the Answer to the Great and Weighty Considerations wherein besides many other treasonable Passages the Author has these express words I hope there are very few in this Nation that do not think it in the Power of the People to depose a Prince who really undertakes to alienate his Kingdom or give it up into the hands of another Soveraign Power or really acts the Destruction or general Calamity of his People was publickly sold before the very Doors of Parliament and that the same House of Commons which was with so much eagerness hurried on to the passing of that Bill was also prevailed upon to importune his Majesty in behalf of the publisher of that pernicious Appeal from the Country to the City which by affirming that No Government but Monarchy can in England ever support or favor Popery endeavors not only to destroy the King but even Kingship it self But well fare the noble Lords of England who with a Nolumus Leges Angliae mutari rejected that abominable Bill which tho it would if passed into an Act have been of no greater Force or Validity than the Wild Ordinances of the Rebellious Parliament of 1640. yet might it as they were be made use of to induce the deluded Multitude to hazard their Souls Bodies and Estates by a damnable Opposition of their Lawful Soveraign and to raise up a Contest in this Nation not unlike to the old Yorkish and Lancastrian Quarrel the Thoughts whereof every good man must certainly dread when he shall seriously consider how that War lasted about sixty years and cost the Kingdom its whole Treasure and the Lives of above two hundred thousand of the Commons besides several Kings and Princes and Nobles without number So sensible was the renowned Queen Elizabeth of those fatal Consequences which necessarily attend so unjust an Act as that of altering the Succession that altho for Reasons obvious enough and needless here to be mentioned she yeilded to pass an Act whereby it was made Treason to say that she and her Parliament could not dispose of the Crown yet could she never be brought to give her Consent to the actual disposing thereof tho the next Heir then alive was not only a Papist but her own Rival to the Throne Nay she was so averse to any such Act that as Camden tells us She never heard any thing more unwillingly than that the Title of Succession should be called into question And therefore she sent Mr. Thornton Reader of Law in Lincolns-Inn to the Tower because in his Reading he called in question the Queen of Scots Title to the Crown And when the Lord Keeper Bacon was accused by the Earl of Leicester for having intermedled against the Queen of Scots Right to the Succession and for being privy to a Book wherein Hales went about to derive the Title of the Crown of England in case the Queen should die without Issue to the House of Suffolk Hales was therefore committed to the Tower and Bacon tho denying it was not without great difficulty restored to favor So likewise when in the eighth year of her Reign Bell Mounson and a great Number of the House of Commons thought it their Right as Representatives of the whole Kingdom whereof they do not in reality represent the sixth part to decide settle the Succession the Queen by a Prince-like Speech in the Parliament-House speedily suppressed their Insolence In like manner when in the thirty fifth year of her Reign Mr. Peter Wentworth and Sir Henry Bromley delivered a Petition to the Lord Keeper desiring the Lords of the Upper House to be Suppliants with them of the Lower to Her Majesty for entailing the Succession of the Crown for which they had a Bill ready drawn the Queen highly displeased hereat charged her Councel to call the Parties before them Whereupon Sir Thomas Henage sending for them commanded them to forbear the Parliament and not to go out of their several Lodgings They were after called before the Lord Treasurer Lord Buckhurst and Sir Thomas Henage by whom Wentworth was committed to the Tower Sir Henry Bromley and other Members of the House of Commons to whom he had imparted the matter being sent to the Fleet. So careful was this prudent Queen to keep the People from presuming to intermeddle with the Succession The same Consideration that the Altering or Diverting the Succession in an hereditary Monarchy where the Kings deriving their Royal Power from GOD Almighty alone do succeed lineally to the Crown according to the known Degrees of Proximity in Blood cannot be attempted without involving the Subjects in Perjury and Rebellion and exposing of them to all the Fatal and Dreadful Consequences of a Civil War not only caused the Estates of Scotland in their very last Sessions of Parliament from an hearty and sincere Sence of their Duty to recognize acknowledge and declare That the Right to the Imperial Crown of that Realm is by the Inherent Right and the Nature of the Monarchy as well as by the Fundamental and unalterable Laws of the Realm transmitted and devolved by a Lineal Succession according to the Proximity of Blood And that upon the Death of the
King or Queen who actually Reigns the Subjects of that Kingdom are bound by Law Duty and Allegiance to obey the next immediate and lawful Heir either Male or Female upon whom the Right and Administration of Government is immediately devolved And that no Difference in Religion nor no Law nor Act of Parliament made or to be made can alter or divert the Right of Succession and Lineal Descent of the Crown to the nearest and lawful Heir according to the Degrees aforesaid nor can stop or hinder them in the full free and actual Administration of the Government according to the Laws of the Kingdom but obliged also His Majesty for the preservation of the Peace and Tranquillity of that Kingdom with Advice and Consent of the said Estates of Parliament to declare That it is High Treason in any of the Subjects of that Kingdom by Writing Speaking or any other manner of way to endeavor the Alteration Suspension or Diversion of the said Right of Succession or the debarring the next lawful Successor from the immediate actual full and free Administration of the Government Nor is it to be doubted but that the Commons of England who now begin to grow sensible of those Precipices of Ruine whereinto they were ready to tumble through the Contrivances of of those malicious Incendiaries that by terrifying the People with panick Fears of Popery and Arbitrary Power endeavoured to kindle a Fire of Rebellion in this Nation will whenever it shall please His Majesty to call a Parliament shew themselves no less Zealous than the Scots have done to assist and defend according to their Oaths the Kings Rights and Priviledges the chiefest whereof upon which all the rest depend as on a Corner Stone is the unalterable Hereditariness of the Monarchy and thereby defeat the Designes of those cursed Achitophels who labor by involving us in Confusion to establish their beloved Democracy the very worst of Tyrannies CHAP. XIII Of the present Monarch of Great Britain His Name Surname Genealogy Birth Baptism Court Education Departure out of England Coming into Scotland Escape from Worcester Restauration Coronation and Marriage Name THe now-reigning Monarch of Great Britain is CHARLES the Second of that Name His Name of Baptism in Latine written Carolus in English CHARLES in the German Language Karle is contracted from Car-eal which is it self an Abbreviation of the old Teutonick Gar-edel and signifies All or wholly Noble Not improperly then was this Name given to this Prince whose Subjects may justly glory in the Enjoyment of that Happiness for which Salomon pronounces a Land blessed that their King is the Son of Nobles Surname Tho Surnames are neither used by Soveraign Princes nor necessary to them as they are to other inferior persons whose Surnames preserve the Memory of their Relations and Families yet as Bourbon and Austria which were but the Possessions of their Progenitors are now generally esteemed the Surnames of the Present French and Spanish Royal Familyes So Stuart or Steward the Abbreviation of the Saxon Word Stedeward signifying the same as Locumtenens in Latin and Lievtenant in French which was originally but the Name of Office to Walter Son of Fleance by the Daughter of Gruffyth ap Lhewelyn King of Northwales and Progenitor to Robert the IId King of Scotland from whom our present King is descended who was by King Malcolm Canmore created Grand Seneschal or High Steward of Scotland has by Prescription of Time and long Vulgar Error so far prevailed as to be accounted the Surname of the now-Royal Family of Great Britain and of many other Families descended from him Nor is this Name unfit for any King as being in his Kingdom the Steward Lieutenant or Vicegerent of Almighty GOD. Our Soveraign Lord the King Genealogy now reigning does for Royal Extraction and long Line of just Descent excell all the Monarchs of the Christian if not of the whole World being lineally and lawfully descended from and by Right of Primogeniture next Heir unto the British Saxon Norman and Scotish Kings and Princes of this Island his Grandfather King James who by along Descent of Royal Ancestors was was derived from Malcolm Canmor King of the Scots and the Lady Margaret his Wife Sister and Sole Heir of Edgar Atheling the last surviving Prince of the English Saxons joyning the Saxon and Scotish Titles to the British and Norman already united in the Person and Posterity of Edward the IVth King of England He is from the first British Kings the hundred thirty ninth from the Scotish in a continued succession for almost two thousand years the hundred and ninth from the Saxon the forty sixth since the Norman Conquest the twenty sixth from the Uniting of the Royal Families of York and Lancaster the eighth and since the Union of England and Scotland the third sole Monarch He is the first that was born Prince or Heir apparent of Great Britain and hath in his possession larger Domininions than any of his Royal Ancestors His Father was Charles the Martyr and his Mother the Princess Henrietta Maria Daughter to Henry the Great Sister to Lewis the XIIIth and Aunt to the present Lewis the XIVth most Christian Kings a Lady who needeth no other Character than what is found in the seventh Chapter of that unimitable Book compiled by him that best knew her From these two Royal Stocks he hath in his Veins some of all the Royal Blood of Europe concentred This most Excellent Prince was born on the twenty ninth of May 1630. at the Royal Palace of St. James's Birth near Westminster over which there was the same day at noon by thousands seen a Star impending and soon after the Sun suffered an Eclipse which was by some even at that time regarded as a sad Omen that the Power of this Prince should for a while be eclipsed and that some Subject signified by the Star should have more than ordinary Splendor Baptism On the twenty seventh of June following he was baptized by Dr. William Laud then Bishop of London afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury who was in the year of our Lord 1644. by a pretended Ordinance of the rebellious long Parliament barbarously murthered for his Fidelity to his Soveraign His God-fathers were his two Uncles the most Christian King Lewis the XIIIth and Frederick Prince Elector Palatine of the Rhine then called King of Bohemia represented by the Duke of Richmond and Marquess of Hamilton his Godmother being his Grandmother Maria de Medicis then Queen-Mother of France whose Substitute was the Dutchess of Richmond He had for his Governess Mary Countess of Dorset Wife to Edward Earl of Dorset In May 1638. he received the Order of Knighthood Court being immediately after made Knight of the Garter and installed at Windsor About which time he was by Order not Creation first called Prince of Wales having all the Revenews of that Principality with divers others Lands annexed and the Earldom of Chester granted unto