from the Life of any other though of one then vested with the Sovereignty if he was not sole and alone Sovereign But to advance to my second Answer to the forementioned Objection I do say that at some Times and upon some Occasions the executive Power of the Government hath been by Acts of Parliament transferred unto and settled upon those who had no Share or Portion in the Sovereignty and Regal Dignity I will not enquire whether it was done either wisely or legally it being enough for my purpose that it has been done and that oftner than once Of which the first Instance and Example I will assign is that of the 10th Year of Rich. 2. and the 20th Year of his Age For a Parliament being then held and having found that during his Minority there had through the ill Council and Advice of some Persons that were much in his Favour and Confidence been many and great Miscarriages in the Government they thereupon prepared a Bill which upon their obtaining the Royal Assent unto it became an Act or Statute wherein they awarded a Commission to Twelve several Peers and others of great Wisdom and Fidelity giving them Power and Authority in all Things concerning the King's Houshold Courts of Iustice Revenue and every thing else that concerned the good of the Realm to put in execution and finally determine for the Honour of the King Relief of the People and the better Government of the Peace and Laws of the Realm and this Commission to remain in force for a Year at the end whereof the King would be of Age. Now I suppose that no Man will have the Folly as well as the Impudence to say that the Sovereign and Regal Power was vested and inherent in those Commissioners and yet they were possessed of and had thereby given unto them the whole executive Power of the Government So that how much soever this was or at least looks like a Derogation of the Crown an Usurpation upon the Royal Power and a Disherison of the King yet we find it hath been awarded authorised and enacted by a Parliament which demonstratively sheweth That the executive Power of the Government has not only been thought separable but has been actually separated from the Sovereignty and Regal Dignity And consequently that the Prince of Orange's having the full and the sole Exercises of the Regal Power given unto him by the Act of Settlement and his having in the virtue thereof issued out the Writs for the calling of this Parliament doth not entitle it to a Continuance or a Right to sit after the Death of the late Princess there being now a Change and Alteration in the Sovereignty of what it was at the time of calling the said Parliament and before the Death of Mary Forasmuch as the Regal Dignity which was then incorporated in two natural Persons though only one political is now become vested in one single Individual one But the second Instance which I shall mention is yet both more plain and more directly home to the Matter and Subject which I am upon and that is the Statute of the 17 Car. 1. for the calling and holding Triennial Parliaments in which it was ordained and enacted That if the King did not by such a time as was there expressed issue out his Writs for the calling and assembling of a Parliament that then upon such a Failure of the King 's in the executive Part of the Government the Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper for the time being and so onwards to others till in case of the Neglect of all those whom they there mention and do both empower and require to do it they give Authority to the Freeholders themselves to meet at or before such a day and to chuse and elect Members Now it will not be denied but that as the Right of calling Parliaments is one of the most noble inherent and essential Prerogatives of the Crown so the exertion of this Sovereign Royal Power in the sending forth of Writs for the actual chusing and assembling of one is one of the most eminent and illustrious Acts and Exercises of the executive Power of Government And here by a Statute introductive of a new Law which had no Foundation in the Common Law and which was besides very derogatory to the Crown was there a Power of issuing out Writs for the calling and assembling of a Parliament transferred unto and devolved upon such as had nothing of the Sovereignty and Regal Dignity Now if through the King 's failing to call a Parliament within the time which was prefixed and limitted by that Act the Lord Chancellor or any of those that were empowered to call it upon the King's neglect to do it should have issued out Writs in persuance of the said Act for the calling and assembling of one all which in fact might very well have been seeing we are to suppose nothing in Statutes to have been idle and impertinent Yet any such Parliament and so called would have been as much and as really dissolved by the Death of the King as if the Writs for the calling of it had been issued out by himself and by his own Personal Authority and Command For through their being called by an Exertion of the King 's Regal and Sovereign Power though applied and exercised by one distinct from him and through the Writs being issued forth in his Name whosoever were the Issuers of them and through the Members being chosen in the Virtue and Persuance of those Writs and through their coming together entrusted by the Electors to confer with the King about the quadam ardua Regni such a Parliament upon the Death of the King in whose Name and Time it was chosen could not escape the being dissolved So that nothing can be more alien to the Matter under debate as well as weak in it self then to pretend because the Prince of Orange is yet Living in whom the Exercise of the Government was at the time of the issuing forth of those Writs by which this Parliament was called that therefore the Parliament it self remains still in Being and is in Law indissolved Seeing in this Case it is not in whom the Right and Power resided to put forth exercise and apply the Sovereignty that the Duration Continuance and Existence of a Parliament does bear and depend but in whom the full and entire Sovereignty and Regal Dignity was then vested and settled preclusive of all others And I am sure that no Man who stands not a Candidate for a Preferment in Bedlam will say That the whole and full Sovereignty was then in William to the barring and excluding of Mary But to add a third Answer to the foregoing Objection I do say That the very placing of the Exercise of the Royal Power in the Prince of Orange in the manner it was done by the Convention and as it stands expressed in the Act of Settlement and is confirmed by this Parliament does beyond all contradiction
some Judges eluded and we have not had the speedy and full Benefit of them but there was never a Law before these unhappy and disloyal Parliaments made one by which we were to be robbed of our Liberties without a Forfeiture of them and be made Prisoners without cause For by those Repeated Acts by which they suspended the Habeas Corpus Law they turned every English Man out of his Birth-right and stript him of the most valuable Blessing and Privilege of which he stood vested and possessed by the Fundamental Laws of the Government And by the Authority which they took upon them to conveigh to the Usurper a Power of imprisoning some and detaining them in Custody without either shewing Cause or allowing the Injured those Reliefs reserved for us in the Constitution he and his Ministers might have imprisoned One hundred thousand if they had pleased to say they suspected so many And that more were not thrust into Goals than there were was not from a narrowness of Power given to the Prince of Orange to whom they never gave any Thing confined within the bounds of Discretion and Modesty no more than of Justice but from a Scarcity of honest Men at that time in the Nation to merit his Jealousy And it doth deserve your Observation That by their suspending the Habeas Corpus Act they not only also suspended Magna Charta and the Petition of Right but they shut us out both from the Benefit of the whole Common Law so far as it related to Liberty and from all the Succours and Advantages to which we stood entitled by the Essentials of the Constitution upon which the Common Law is only a Comentary For by all these we had a Right either to sue out a Habeas Corpus or to betake our selves to some of the other Methods as those de homine repleviendo de odio atia c. which the Laws had provided for the Vindication and Recovery of our Freedom But by one Blow we were barred the relief and help of all the Laws of England and were not only brought into a State of Bondage and Villainage but were put into a worse Condition than Bondsmen and Villains are Seeing the Lord of a Villain could not command another to imprison his Villain without cause as appears in the two Book Cases of the 7 Ed. 3. fol. 50. and 32 Ed. 3. fo 253. But the Prince of Orange had a Power given him to require his Secretaries or the Members of his Privy Council to imprison whomsoever he or they pleased without the assigning of his Cause for it save that they thought fit to suspect them And whereas Villains when thrown into Prison by their Lords were not barred the suing out of a Habeas Corpus or of using some other legal means for the Recovery of their Liberty many of the Peers Gentry and Free-men of England have by two several Acts of these Revolutional Parliaments been precluded from all ways and means of regaining their Freedom in a course of Law and thereby were reduced during the time of the force and operation of those Statutes into a worse State than that of Slaves and Bondmen And it would seem they had a mind by those Acts to establish and confirm the Usurper's Conquest over the Kingdom and to make us as much his Vassals as the Lloyds and Burnets have endeavoured to render us and to the disgrace of the Nation have hitherto escaped the being impeached for it And as these Parliaments have in their Actings towards the People trangressed all the Bounds to which they were circumscribed and confined by the form and quality of the Constitution so they have departed more extravagantly from all the Fundamental Rules of our Government in those Things which they have acted traiterously and rebelliously against the King Nor is there so much as one step that they have taken in their Behaviour and Proceedings towards him but what is directly repugnant unto and utterly subversive of the Constitution It is true that by the Nature Kind and Quality of our Government every King of England ought to rule over us as over Free-men and according to those Laws which should at any time be enacted by our Sovereigns by and with the consent of their great Council but it was withall provided and taken care for in the very Mould and Frame of our Constitution that the Person of the King his Crown and Royal Dignity should be always sacred and inviolable I do not say that it was made Lawful for a King to oppress us or to treat us in what manner he pleased but instead of that he was taught by the very Form of our Government that he was to rule over us for our Safety and Good and to govern by such Laws as we should chuse Nor can any King do otherwise without becoming guilty before God both of great Injustice and of Infidelity in the Trust that was reposed in him But in case that through any intellectual and moral Defects in himself or through the Influence and Advice of evil Men about him he should be misled and carried to do otherwise all that is then allowed us is to address God by Prayers and him by Petitions and after our refusing to be our selves the Instruments in executing his Arbitrary and Illegal will both to complain of those that are and to persue all the Methods of Law for getting them punished We always may and ought to pray that our Kings may be good but we are to bear with and patiently to suffer under them if they be bad Bonos voto expetere qualescunque tolerare as Tacitus expresses it And he must be a very weak and unwise King that will not study to carry so as that his People may not wish another in his room But should they either be such bad Men themselves as be inclined in their own Natures to oppress their People or should they be so weak as to be the meer Properties of bad Men admitted into their Confidence like him of whom Tacitus says Cui non Iudicium non odium â—rat nisi indita Iussa who did nothing on his own Judgment and Choice but every thing at the Pleasure and Instigation of his Minions Yet we are to endure it and only to refer the revenging of our Condition to God who can make those Kings that are hurtful to their People either a terrour to themselves through inward Vexation and Horrour while they are here or take them hence and call them to a severe Account at his own impartial and righteous Tribunal Accordingly it hath always been the Opinion of our Lawyers save in Rebellious Times That though the King be under the Directive Power of the Laws yet he is not under the Coercive And suffer me to cite a Passage of Bracton's to this purpose where speaking of the King of England as he is and ought to be by the Constitution he says Nec potest ei necessitatem aliquis imponere
Existence of the present pretended Parliament upon other Reasons and Grounds than those of Illegalities in the manner of Election of Members and in their Actings when assembled we might also upon those Motives strangely shake the legal Being of it And to name but one which lately fell out since the Death of the late Princess in this Assembly which persevereth to call it self by that Name namely That when a Question was started by the Earl of Nottingham in the House of Lords whether since the Demise of Mary this was a Parliament or not How it was replied by the Earl of P. That it was not a Question fit to be mentioned and less fit to be debated Which besides it importing in it a debarring a Liberty of Speech without which a Parliament cannot be a legal Parliament because not a free Parliament It likewise imported in it That though this Parliament was in Law dissolved yet it must still sit and no Man be allowed to question the Lawfulness of its doing so because of Reasons of State And so the whole Constitution and all the Laws of England must be sacrificed to the Lunatick and Disloyal Bigottry of keeping King James out of his Dominions and from reascending his Throne For that is the whole Paraphrase of the Text of the Necessity of its continuing to sit in order to raise Money for carrying on a vigorous War against France But it being dissolved by the Death of the late Princess before any Bills had passed for the granting of Money it will argue great Sottishness as well as Tameness in the People of England if this Government be not disappointed in that end of their keeping it on foot For those Papers which are published under the Stile of Acts do oblige no Man in duty to pay nor can they authorise any Officer in case of Refusal to distrein They in St. Stephen's Chapel have no more legal Power to dispose of the Property of the Subjects than the Committee of Officers have who sit in the Guard-house by Whitehall And all those Acts of Assesments which they have emitted are but so many Denunciations of War against the People and proclaiming them obnoxious to arbitrary Executions upon their Estates real and personal Such who are so pusillanimous as to chuse to be robbed may submit to it but as no Warrants can legitimate the doing of it so all Men who have Courage to resist they have the Authority of all the Laws of England for the doing of it And as they have no Right of sitting as a legal Court so they cannot be said to take away Mens Goods by any better Name than that of a Company of Banditi nor do People use to be so silly as to part with any Thing to such but when they are too strong to be withstood And I think it was never yet known That Five hundred were powerful enough to rob and plunder above Five millions of Persons What a Noise a few Years ago did the Erection of a Court of Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes beget in the Nation and how strenuously was it improved for the driving the King from his Throne and Kingdom And do we now sit silent under a Company of Men erecting themselves into a Court of Legislation to vote away near the Moiety of every Man's Estate whether he be Laick or Ecclestastick Shall we who were so busy scandalously to Censure and traiterously to endeavour to redress the few and little Miscarriages of our ancient and legal Government suffer with a sottish Tameness those far more and vastly greater of an usurped unlawful and tyrannous one This hath not been the Practice of any People or Age till of ours and of us That of Tacitus being at all times heretofore an infallible Maxim namely That Novae aulae mala aeque gravia sed non aeque excusata a new Government doth not offend with that Connivance and Safety that an ancient might And it is now as much become our Interest to call home the King to relieve us as it is our Duty to restore him to his Right And as it was at no time unlawful to fly to force for rescuing our selves from the Power of an Usurper so it is now become necessary when meliorem in bello causam quam in pace habemus Our Condition will be better in a War than it is in Peace as Tacitus expresseth it And the Establishment of this Man into a King being done by an usurpation of Power which all the Laws of England precluded the Conventionists from that common Saying obtains That de facto factum potest de facto tolli What hath its Existence meerly by Fact may by Fact be lawfully overthrown And as we may be sure That the Prince of Orange who hath so abominably cheated and wronged us already cannot but detest and hate us for the future that of the same Author being unchangeably true viz. Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem laseris It is the Nature of Man to hate those whom he hath injured I will therefore bespeak my Country-men as Boadicea did the Ancient Brittains If they will not resolve cadere aut vincere either to perish or to vindicate their Liberties that then viverent servirent let them chuse to Live and be Slaves Only let me add for their Encouragement to assert their Laws and Rights That the Prince of Orange's Affairs in England do magis fama quam vi stare are upheld rather by that Opinion which Men conceived of him before they had an Opportunity to know him than by any Power Strength Interest or new Reputation he has to support himself or them Nay I will say That he is sunk into that Contempt as well as Impotency that all the Power he hath left is only to do hurt but that he hath neither Power nor Authority to do good or to hinder evil So that what Tacitus says of Otho is verified of William Othoni nondum auctoritas inerat ad prohibendum scelus jubere poterat That he may encourage and command Mischief but he is in no Capacity to discountenance and prevent it The very Mob whom by fictitious Lyes and Falshoods of a few Irish being every where burning Houses and cutting Throats he decoyed and enflamed into an insolent and brutal Rage against their Rightful King and who became the Ladder unto and the great Pillars of his Throne having now understood how they were cheated in that and in all Things else they have not only forsook but are justly enraged against him Nor are they only ready to do the same towards him that they did towards the King but they are fully prepared to treat him as the Rabble did Vitellius of whom Tacitus says Vulgus eadem pravitate insectabatur mortuum qua foveret viventem they are as forward to curse and tear him in Pieces as they were formerly to huzza and idolize him Yea even such as do most flatter him do it only in order to deceive and