in their pretensions to a Crown to which they were not 〈◊〉 no great Inducement certainly for any one to bepersuaded to personate the Royal Heir to set up for a Lambert or a Perkin only for their misfortune and fate Lastly I shall conclude my remarks upon this Kings Reign with an Animadversion upon a Paragraph or two that conclude his piece very pertinent to this place since it relates to the times of which we treat and that is the resolution of the Judges upon the Case of this their King that the Descent of the Crown purged all his defects and attainder This their opinion he refutes as Frivolous Extrajudicial and here Impertinent but I hope to show this Point a most material one the Resolution to be a good Judgment and their reply much to the present purpose First sure it was a matter and that of a high Nature to know how he was qualify'd to sit in the House that was to preside in it as the head And tho he might in some sense be said to have won the Crown with Arms yet he knew it would wear much Better sit much Easier if setled and establish't according to Law and tho a Conquerer that has the Sword in his hand can soon capacitate himself to sway the Scepter yet he 'l soon find the most regular Proceedings tend most to the Establishment of his Reign this made Henry the Seventh who had a Triple Plea for the Crown and that one by discent from the Lancasters consult his Oracles of the Law how far an Attainder past in the Reign of the Yorks would still taint his Blood and make it less Inheritable Secondly their Resolution that all preceding defects were purg'd in the discent was a Judgment both equitable and reasonable for 't was sure but equal that an Heir to whom an Inheritance and that ofa Crown was allowed to discend should be qualify'd to take too for if he was a King no Bill of Attainder could touch him that was past too when he was none And if he was no King all the concurrence of the Lords and Commons cou'd never have made him an Act for his being so there being no Royal Authority to pass it into Law and nothing by the very constitution of our Government can be made a Law without so that such a resolution certainly was highly reasonable and unavoidable that that should purge its own defects which no power had perfection anough to purge wou'd he have a King pass an Act with his two Houses for the reversal of his own Attainder or the two Houses reverse the Attainder of their King If the first the allowing him to pass such an Act supersedes the end for which it should be past and makes him de Facto capable whom they would capacitate if he allows the Latter then he must an Interregnum too extinguish that Monarchy for a while of which the very Maxim says the Monarch can't dye and place that Supream power in the People which all our Fundamental Laws have put in the King Thirdly this Resolution is very pertinent to the present purpose to which 't is commonly now apply'd and that is the Bill of Exclusion But his passion and prejudice would not permit him to Examin the little difference there is between them For certainly that ability that can discharge any attainder is as efficacious for the voiding and nulling any Bill that shall hinder the descent for a Bill of Exclusion would have been but a Bill or an Act of the House for disabling the next Heir And an Attainder can do the same and is as much the Houses Act and to distinguish that in an Exclusion the Discent it self is prevented by a Law makes just no difference for whoever is Attainted has his Discent prevented by a Law too and that antecedently also before the Descent can come to purge him so that they only differ in this formal sort of Insignificancy In an Exclusion the Discents prevention would be the sole Subject of the Bill in an Attainder it is by Consequence and Common Law prevented and so the disability being but the same in both the defects by the same means may and must be purged The president the Judges cite to justify this their Opinion is not only applicable to their Case for which 't was cited but much more so to the very project of Exclusion which I 'll prove too from this Sophisters own reasoning It is the Case of Henry the Sixth who by Act of Parliament was Disabl'd to hold the Crown which was as particular an Act for the depriving him of his presum'd right as this their Excluding Bill would have been of an unquestionable one Town one of the Justices that debated and argued this point vouch't this H. 6. Case as an Attainder but was Corrected by the rest and told that he was not attainted but Disabled to hold the Crown but even that that was void assoon as he came again to wear it and seem to conclude that then à fortiori that an Attaindere would be purg'd away by the Descent and sure if this was then Law and that even for the Line of Lancaster who had Defects of Title to be purg'd besides of tainted blood 'T is strange to me why a York now and such an one too in whom both those so long disputed Titles Terminate and Concenter should be Disabl'd for ever by that Expedient which was resolv'd unable to prevent the Succession so long agon For Argument that an Attainder hinders the Crowns Discent has this presumptious Interpreter of the Law brought the most impertinent piece of Application that the defect of sense could suggest and so has as little reason as Truth to tell us that this Judges Resolution on Attainder is not to the present purpose pertinent for that a discent is insufficient to purge attainted Blood he cites the Sense of the King of France and the Learned advice that was given him to send his Son Lewis Because King John's Blood was corrupted but he might as well have told us because John is said to make over his Kingdom to the Moor we are all now Subjects to the King of Morocco the true reason of the French mans sending of his Son is what will at any time incapacitate the Crowns Discent and that is the Rebellion of the Subjects and yet those very Barons that Rebell'd never insisted on his corruption of Blood never made it so much as a Plea for their Rebellious Insurrection nay themselves thought him so far from being disabl'd by it that they prefer'd him even to the very right Blood which was incorrupted in his Nephew Arthur but allowing it then Law this resolution that such Corruption is purg'd was made long since and must now be as Legal tho the Contrary before had been never so much Law so that here he has only taken the pains to be impertinent and that too for the telling of a Lye But as his Villanous
our Kings took this power upon him is utterly false from these several instances First the very first King of his name in the Saxon succession left it so to his Son to succeed And Athelstan whom above this Gentleman recommended to the City of London for a Mon. and Illegitimate against the sense and silence of all Historians was declar'd King by the Command and last Will of his Father Edward the elder in the Reign of the Danes Canutus did the same bequeath'd Norway to Swain his eldest and England to his youngest Son and for the Norman Succession the very first King and who had the most right to do so from the Sword left to Rufus the right but of an Heir Testamentary tho followed by his Son Henry the first And Richard that had less reason so to do for his Daughter Maud by the Law of the Land would have been his Heir without the Legacy and so would to the latter his Nephew Arthur and tho both were by Rebellion rejected yet still sure their right remain'd But for this Edward the 6th disposing it by Will it was not only against the Customary Discent of the Realm in a right blood but of an Express Entail in several Acts of Parliaments I am so far of this Authors opinion that I believe it was no way warrantable but never the sooner for his Parliaments settlement had it not been at last upon the right Heirs for tho those Princes of ours heretofore took upon them to leave Successors by Will they still nominated those that by Blood were to succeed without such a Nomination so that the bequest was more matter of Form then Adoption only to let the Subjects know whom they look't upon to have the right of Succession rather than to superadd any thing of more right and that 's the reason or ought to be that we properly call the next in Blood the Kings Successor but the Crowns Heir 'T is a little prodigious Paradox to me that it must be such a receiv'd Maxim that a Parliament can do no wrong and that in plain Terms they tell us it can do any thing mollifying it only with an Exception that they can't make a Man a Woman yet that they bid pretty fair for too in these Presidents of Harry the 8th when they made Bastard Females of those that were Legitimate and then Legitimis'd again the same Bastards and 't is as mighty a Miracle to men unprejudic'd that our Parliament Patriots should contend for the disordering the Succession of the Crown who still labour for the Lineal Discent of their own Common Inheritance 〈◊〉 I will appeal to the breast of the most 〈◊〉 contender for this Power whether an Act made for the disabling one of their own Sons or design'd Successors would not by themselves be look't on as 〈◊〉 if not utterly defeasible and then 〈◊〉 sure prodigiously strange where so many Learned Heads tell us of a sort of 〈◊〉 from a power Divine where the 〈◊〉 Custom of the Kingdom has 〈◊〉 a constant course of Lineal Discent 〈◊〉 as has been shown a perfect 〈◊〉 interven'd And where themselves 〈◊〉 this sort of Succession has 〈◊〉 sometimes by Statute entail'd yet 〈◊〉 they should think that but Justice 〈◊〉 their Kings Successor which they 〈◊〉 resent as an Injury to their own 〈◊〉 they may vouch for it the common 〈◊〉 of Recoveries from a right Heir with too Cunning sort of vouching and 〈◊〉 too much practis'd but I am sure no way agrees with the Laws of Forraign Nations and has been a little 〈◊〉 by some learned Heads in our own 〈◊〉 some that have brought it into 〈◊〉 seem to have rais'd a Devil not soon to be put down in their Dialogue but however this Objection is 〈◊〉 analagous nothing of a Parallel 〈◊〉 for here is a Complication of both 〈◊〉 Concern'd and concluded upon 〈◊〉 both their Consents and where shall 〈◊〉 find the perfect Proprietor of 〈◊〉 and Scepters and when God has told us 〈◊〉 that by him they Reign that bear 〈◊〉 and they 'l hardly vouch the 〈◊〉 for a piece of Injustice But allowing for once a meer Human Constitution 〈◊〉 in their bandied Authority of Saint 〈◊〉 an Ordinance of Man and the 〈◊〉 Consent with his Parliaments to 〈◊〉 the Point yet still the great 〈◊〉 would call for a little longer 〈◊〉 than a Common Recovery 〈◊〉 not presently to cut off the right of Heir to three Kingdoms only 〈◊〉 commonly done at Westminster of 〈◊〉 to so many Cottages and besides 〈◊〉 that has been practis'd so long and 〈◊〉 the test of Time and this their 〈◊〉 would have been the first President And at last what has silenc'd their Advocates for ever the non-concurrence of the King and his Lords whose consent was by themselves suppos'd to be necessary because requir'd and will like those recognitions of some of our former Parliaments for an Hereditary Succession perpetuate that right in spight of the Laws of others that were made for altering it and should the Commons ever get such a Bill to pass 't is enough to say 't was once rejected by the Peers unless they can prove that the Question was put again Whether the lower House should take advice of the Lords in the Legislative power and that 't was Resolved that the House of Peers was useless dangerous and ought to be abolish't and Order'd that an Act be brought in for that purpose Queen Mary succeeds her Brother Edward with all the Right of Blood with all the Law of God and Man too on her side for whatever the Parliament pretended they could never 〈◊〉 that which was begotten in Matrimony celebrated according to the Laws of the Church and the Realm for whatsoever defect there was found subsequent to the Consummation of the Marriage in common reason and equity ought not to have extended to the making that Issue spurious which had all the requisites to the making it truly Legitimate 〈◊〉 perhaps the subsequent discoveries 〈◊〉 be sufficient to cause a Divorce and in the too Common Case of Adultery 't would be severe far from Equity to make Bastards of all that were born before the Conviction of the Fact but it may be reply`d to this That these were such Impediments as related to the Contract ab Juitio and where that 's 〈◊〉 there the Children begotten after 〈◊〉 be suppos'd Lawful Heirs when the Contract it self is against Law but tho 〈◊〉 I shall look upon that as a rigorous resolution when I think Innocents and Infants ought to be more favour'd especially when there is a Maxim in the Law even in the like Cases that the fact may be valid tho the doing of it can't be justifi'd and besides there being a Rule that obtains amongst Civilians That Marriage contracted without any preconceiv'd Impediment tho it after 〈◊〉 to be dissolv'd as unlawful yet 〈◊〉 begotten in such a state are reputed truly Legitimate and tho Appeals
had not the Queen if such a thing could have been expected from a Sister of that Church so Zealous done much better had she refused the Bills of both Houses brought her for introducing the Pope's power and Supremacy your selves Seditious Souls reproach this Royal Assent with Reflections so scurrilous upon her Memory that the worst of Monarchs could never Merit and then only give but Loyal Ones leave to think that your Excluding Bill tho never so much the General Desires might have been as much cursed by posterity when it had entailed upon it Misery and Blood the common Consequences of a debar'd Right To come now after this Ecclesiastical point of the Church to that Civil one of the State that other thing this Lawyer Labors for the Descent of the Crown Shall the Peoples general Desires in this too terminate the Will of the Prince why then that Monster of Mankind as well as Monarchs did mighty well too to pass that Murdering Bill presented by both Houses of Parliament to make good his own Title to the Crown by the Butchering of those Babes in the Tower for no less could be expected when it was once taken up by the Tyrant than their Destruction for the Maintaining it so that this Peoples Desires dispatch'd them in the Senate before ever they were strangled by Tyrril in the Tower Had it not been a much greater Honor to the Prince to have refused such a Barbarous Bill than turned Usurper and a Butcher for it's acceptance Had it not left a less Blot in our English Chronicle as well as upon the Nation less Blood Did not both Houses exhibite a Bill even for the making Elizabeth the best of their Queens a Bastard And does Mr. Hunt say this desire of the People too did mighty well to prevail as it always ought upon the King Did not that Royal Assent so blacken his Person and brought the Nations repute so low that the very Protestant Princes left him out of their League whom they had designed for its Head and look'd upon our England as a lump of Inconsistancy whom such Vnanimous Leaguers could not Trust And was it not in his Reign That a Zealous Papist said It was the Parliaments Power to make a King or deprive him a fortiori then a Popish Principle to destroy or exclude his Successor But as bold as this Gentleman thinks himself when he dares to say Never any King denyed to pass those Bills which the People pitcht upon to present 'T is none of his own Politick asseveration tho it be but a piece of Sedition It is no more than what a Seditious Senate told their King long agon A Senate that sate brooding on the pure Elements of Treason and of which Pryn himself was a principal Member A Senate that sowed so much Sedition in one age that all the Succeeding will hardly eradicate A Senate that sate drawing out the Scheams and Platforms of a Common-wealth A Senate that assumed to themselves indeed the Legislative the Nomothetical Disposition of the Law but they proved such a Confounded sort of Architects in the State that they drew a perfect plan a confus'd Ichonography for Rebels to build upon their Babel Those told us in plain Terms what these more cautious Coxcombs insinuate with a silly Circumlocution That the King is bound by His Coronation Oath to grant them all those Bills their Parliament shall prefer And that they gather from their contradictory conclusion that bandy'd Banter they have Box'd about in both Reigns for almost these two Ages the VULGUS ELEGERIT I am sorry to find these Seditious Souls not only to want Sense but Grammar Lilly would have told them more of the Law and his Constrctuion and Concord made a better Resolution than their Coke upon the Case But as the People when they have got the Power will soon decide on their side the Supremacy so these Times did here assoon turn the Tenses and transfer the past Laws into the Future and 't is no wonder that those that did the Statutes of their Prince could dare to break the Head of a Priscian Is not the perfect Tense much more agreeable to Sense and Reason here than the Future The question is Whether it shall be meant of those Laws the People shall Chuse or have Chosen I won't object here Our Kings being absolute and compleat Monarchs without so much as taking such an Oath without so much as being Crowned which is the Time it is to be taken tho of that the Law has in several Cases satisfied the most Seditious and so resolved their silly Suggestion The resolution I shall give is the Strength of Reason and that must at least be as Strong as the Law Let it be but once allow'd That their King by this Clause is obliged to pass all Bills that shall be brought why truly then he Swears with an implicite Faith to Repeal all the Laws if the People please for the bare possibility in such a sort of Argumentation may be supposed and we as well imagine for my Lord Coke tells us we have had Mad Parliaments such a Senate may prefer Bills for the Repealing all the Old Laws as well as for the passing any single New and I am sure 't is no more than what has actually been done in one since that Learned Lawyer lived even to the Subversion of all the Statutes of the Land so that this positive Oath in their sense may Labour under an implicite contradiction for while he swears in the latter Clause to confirm all the Bills they shall bring It may be extended to cancel all Custom and Common-Law he is in the former sworn to defend Mr. Hunt's General Desire of the People may be for the Repealing the 35th of Edward as well as that of Elizabeth and leave no Law in the Land to punish Treason as well as Recusants only that they may commit it with impunity for one of those Bills has twice been brought into the House and both may be to save their Bacon And should the King with their Elegerit be obliged especially so mild an one with an anticipated Mercy to Pardon Villains 〈◊〉 the cutting of his Throat and leave no Law to punish perhaps a Rumbold or the Ruffians at the Rye certainly were his Right not in the least Divine this would contradict all Sense and Reason Suppose Richard the Second took this Oath as well as the rest of his Successors since and afterwards the general desire of his Parliament we all know was that he would depose himself Senseless Sots was that King sworn too even in his Coronation to confirm his own Deposition In short must not this senseless Suggestion put upon the Royal Authority the greatest absurdity against all Sense and Reason must it not make him swear to confirm those Laws that have not so much as BEING and that before he knows whether they will be good
Beautefeu of both Kingdoms contrives a most silly canting ridiculous Speech and said to be spoken by Shaftsbury in the House of Lords the substance of it being a declaiming against the Sufferings of Scotland many Copies of which were as Seditiously sent thither so animated and incensed the zealous Scots that they soon after set upon the Bishop of St. Andrews barbarously Murder'd him and our Seditious Senate the Lower House seconding that Lord's Speech with a Remonstrance against Lauderdale they soon resolv'd for open Rebellion and that they begin at Ragland in Scotland where they come and Proclaim the Covenant burn Acts of Parliament attack'd Glascow but the result of that was that by Bothwel Bridg the Rebels were defeated all running away upon the playing of the King's Cannon in a perfect Rout and Confusion At the Sitting of the late Parliament at Oxford there was some intimation given the King of a Plot and Design to have seiz'd his late Majesty and kept him confin'd till by that he had been made complyant to pass the Bill of Exclusion his Majesty was so far satisfied of it that he Dissolv'd them as suddenly and so frustrated the Design This was proved afterward upon Oath at a special Commission of Oyer and Terminer at the Tryal of Stephen Colledg the Joyner at Oxford who was sworn to have imparted it to the Evidence and that he rid down for that purpose thither Arm'd for which and several other Treasonable contrivances he was Arraign'd upon full Evidence Convicted Condemned and accordingly there suffer'd That Plot being prevented at Oxford by the Providence of God and the Kings the Faction still pursu'd the Conspiracy for which many Consults were held at the late Lord Shaftsbury's House which upon suspicion was searcht and himself upon Information and Evidence to the King and Council was seiz'd the result of which was they found a Paper in his own 〈◊〉 Intituled An Association the Plot and Design of which was that since they could not Exclude the next Heir of the Crown by Bill and an Act of Parliament they would get Subscriptions to do it among themselves that is set their Hands and Seals to a Rebellion for the concluding Clause was absolute Treason and oblig'd them to Swear Obedience to their Fellow-Subjects and that they would Obey the Major part of Members after the dissolution of the Parliament for this he was Indicted as also for designing to compel the King to pass the Bill at Oxford for conferring with Booth Hains Smith and other of the Evidences in Treasonable Consults for saying The King ought to be Deposed and that he would never desist till he had brought England to a Common-wealth All agreeable to the very Principles he profest to the Practises and Designs he had before Engag'd in and the Discoveries of his Treasons that have follow'd since but the Grand Inquest being pact by Papilion a Partial Sheriff and compos'd of Jurors as much prejudic'd the Bill of Indictment was brought in Ignoramus an apparent Rebel acquitted and carried off in Triumph with the Shouts and Shoulders of the Rabble In July 1683. was Discover'd the bottom of all these Preliminary Plots and Conspiracies in the Design of the most barbarous Butchery of the best of Kings our late Sovereign Charles the Second with the Assassination of his Royal Brother our present Sovereign For this they had engag'd in the Consults Men of all sorts of Conditions Lords Knights Gentlemen Lawyers Malsters Olymen Clergy and Lay the first Contrivance was for Assassinating the Royal Brothers as they past by the Rye the House of one Rumbald coming from New-Market but Heaven turn'd a Judgment even into an act of Mercy for their Deliverance and the Fire hapning there made them prevent the Rebels in their return Then the Play-House was propos'd to be the Shambles for this Butchery and several other places but the Conspirators disagreeing in their Approbation hinder'd its execution so soon upon the Discovery of one Keeling an Accomplice touch'd with remorse or apprehension of danger All the Conspirators fly from whom Shaftsbury that Arch-Rebel was before fled some were afterward found out came in for Evidence upon which several were afterward Convicted and Executed At the Tryal of my Lord Russel the very Morning he was Arraigned the Earl of Essex Committed for the same Conspiracy whether out of sense of Ingratitude to his Royal Sovereign by whom he had been preferr'd to the highest station of a Subject even that of being his Vice-Roy or whether out of fear of his fate and fearful of an Ax dispatcht himself with a Razor For Defaming of the Government the next Plot is to make this a Murther of State and one Braddon out of Seditious industry deals with one Edwards a School-Boy to Testify he saw a Hand throw a Razor out of the Window with this matter well manag'd King and Council Sir Henry Capel and then the whole Kingdom must be canvast for and he having an Indefatigable Desire to fasten a Scandal on the Government as well as an Impudence not to be baffl'd or defeated to solicite the business farther one gets Speke a known Favourer of any thing that is Factious a warm spark that would be soon hot in any such pursuit to lend him a Letter of Recommendation to a Country Knight but with both their bold fronts they could put no such bad face upon the business for it was Discover'd to be the basest Design the most malicious Miscreants could undertake and they both Try'd upon an Information of High Misdemenor and Subornation that is the Pimps to Perjury for which one was Fin'd one thousand pounds and the other two To second this Unsuccesful Plot about Christmas last they disperse the most Divilish and Malitious Libel that Falshood and Folly could Invent leave it at the doors of the Loyalists and its Design the same with those Suborners to fasten a Murder upon the late King our present one and some Ministers of State with such silly Insinuations as of themselves do defend them from that Villany they would affix first from their being then walking in the Tower and can the most Factious Fool Imagine Can but bare Humane Sense be so silly as to think the Contrivers of such a suppos'd 〈◊〉 would be present at its Execution and look upon it as the likeliest way to keep it private was to appear in it publickly Preposterous Sots Do not contradict the best Evidence that of Common sense tho' you would the Coroners Another is from the Discovery of one Haly that was found Murther'd to be the Warder in whose House the late Lord of Essex lay upon which the Libeller in a long tedious impertinent Discourse Iasinuates the probability of that Fellow 's being dispatch'd for fear of telling Tales but how does Heaven infatuate those Fools that it would destroy The 〈◊〉 perjur'd Wretch is forc'd to beg the World Pardon in his own Postscript and to
believe the Legend for a Bible and his History for the Revelations But yet this Prince though by Conquest and Composition he got half the Kingdom and upon Edmunds Death the whole foresaw what Power the pleas of Right and Succession might have for animating an Interest in the defence of the poor injured Heirs and therefore took all the ways to ingratiate himself with his wavering People his young and unexperienced Subjects and all manner of means for preventing the Lawful Heirs for attempting for their Right sticking at neither Murder Malice and Treachery and in order to the first he made a shew of governing with more Justice then he conquered and took mildness for the best means of his Establishment and to let the Nation know he designed only to subdue them sends away his Mercenaries ships away his Navy and for a popular Specimen of an Heroick Kindness to the memory of the Saxons he succeeded as a Satisfaction to their injured Dust prefers Edricks perjured Head to the highest place on the City Gate and with that Expedient reconciled himself at once to his own promise deserved Justice and the Peoples favour and yet for securing himself from any danger from the Lawsul Heirs so politickly Cruel that all the Royal Blood felt of his Injustice sent the two Sons of his late Co-partner in the Kingdom to be murdered abroad and got his Brother to be butchered at home such an experienced truth is it that Powers usurpt Successions altered like the blackest Villanies can only be Justifyed and defended by committing more At his Death 't is true he disposed of his Crowns by Testamentary Bequest and well he might when there was so little known for Kingdoms of Feudatory Law and private Estates then far from being entailed yet in that very Legacy you can observe what Power the Consideration had with him of Right and Blood for he leaves his own Paternal Dominions Norway to his Eldest son Swayn and to his Youngest Hardicanute his conquered England considering his Mothers Blood which was Emma Wife to the late King Ethelred might as indeed it did give him some precedency to his middle Brother Harold the one having somewhat of Saxon in him the other all Dane especially if he was as some say Illegitimate tho' Baker calls him an Elder Brother by a former Wife so that upon the whole the Contest that rose about the Succession was but whether he had Right and when at last Harald was preferred 't was upon the Resolution of his being Legitimate so that here his own Inference contradicts the end for which 't was brought and instead of altering the discent shows they industriously contended to keep it in the right Channel and allowing they were mistaken in their Opinions of his Birth the Lords to make amends for their error streight on his Death fetch home Hardicanute who dying without Issue the Right of Blood prevailed again and the Saxon entred in Edward the Confessor Edmunds Son only being past by because his very being was unknown and so they can only be blamed for not seeking for the right Heir among the supposed Dead Yet when this Edward had found him out he designed both him and his Son Atheling for successive Monarchs whose very name imported Hereditary and next of kin as much as our Prince of Wales while the second Harold but usurpt upon him against the sense of the Clergy who even then lookt upon it as a Violation of the Right of the Heir and also of their Holy Rites and tho Harald suggested that Edward had appointed him to be Crown'd Historians say that it was only to make him during the Minority of this Edgar a Regent and not an absolute King and Mat. Paris speaking of Edgar Atheling in the very first Leafe of his History in these very words says that to him belonged the Right to the Kingdom of England and if Birth could then give a Right I don't see how then or now any Power can defraud a Prince justly of his Birth-right And now we 'l begin our Remarks on the Norman Line upon which the very first words of Baker are these There were six Dukes of Normandy in France in a direct Line succeeding from Father to Son and yet this Inquisitive Monarch-maker lays his mighty stress his weighty Consideration on the single Suggestion of Duke William's being a reputative Bastard be it so have we not here the Majority of six to one that succeeded 〈◊〉 Legitimately and is not these then like all the rest of their Objections against the Government rather industrious Cavil then real Argument or allowing it still is it not most impertinently applyed to his present purpose to tell us that William the Conqueror was himself Illegitimate and yet succeeded his Father in the Dutchy of Normandy And therefore must we have another Natural and Illegitimate Duke to wear the Crown of England or was the Suggestion only made because they had such a Duke in Readiness that had already run the Popular Gantlet of Ambition and been sooth'd into the Prospect of a Scepter with the false Tongues of Flatterers and Sycophants or else was the Nomination of the Normans to supersede the Fundamental Laws of our Nation And our England a Dependent a Tributary to that Crown before the Conquest these Paradoxes must be reconciled by Miracle before such a ridiculous Instance can pass for Reason or Common Sense or vindicate the false suggester from Folly and Impertinence But even here too his very Assertion fails him and this Pretender to Truth both abuses his Reader with false Application and telling a Lye For this Duke William tho' a Bastard Born was not illegitimated so as to be barred the Crown and incapacitated for Inheritance for it appears as Baker says by many Examples that Bastardy was then no Bar to Succession and by the Canon and the Law of the Church that then obtain'd the Children born before Wedlock were de facto truly legitimated if he afterward espoused his Concubine and this his Factious Assistant Hunt himself allows when the Wretch endeavoured to Bastardize the Progenitors of his Sovereign and this many Writers say was the very Case of our Duke William whose Father took his Mother Arlotte to Wife afterward The Donation to William Rufus was again clearly Testimentary which might be allowed sure to a Conqueror whose will only gave what his Sword had gotten but however as I observed above in the Legatory Disposition of Canutus the Dane where he gave his conquered Kingdom to his Youngest and Norway his Paternal Right to Swayn his Eldest to whom 't was most due so here this Third Conqueror of Old Britain observ'd the same sort of Bequest and left Normandy his Fathers Inheritance and his own to Robert to whom it appertain'd in Reason and Right both these Instances no small Demonstration shewing how the Precedency of Blood even in those days obtained and with those too whom our Factious Innovator would
heart had falsely forg'd before that the Learned in King John's time invited Lewis over only because they thought his Attainder had incapacitated him to take the Crown when all the while they made nothing but their Magna Charta and their priviledges the pretence for their Rebellion and would have been certainly glad of such a suggestion when they were so well Resolv'd to Rebel tho I look upon this Inviting in of the French-man rather as a Retribution of a Remarkable Providence that retaliated on his head the same sufferance from his Rebel Subjects which his Soveraign and own Father had suffered from himself as Rebellious a Son who sided against Henry the Second with Philip of France the Successor of a Lewis as these did with a Lewis a Philips Successor With the same falsehood and forgery would he have the world believe that the Line of Lancaster was so long approv'd only because that of Yorks was Attainted which when purg'd in Parliament he says they then presently forsook the Lancastrian But if he pleases to Consult my Lord Bacon he 'l find that Learned Historian tell him another tale and that the Lancaster Line was always the less esteem'd by the people and how the Parliament could purge the Duke of York only by declaring him Heir Apparent I cannot apprehend for whatever can be warrantably past by a Parliament to warrant Obedience must be what is past into an Act too unless one of their Order'd and Resolv'd shall resolve it self into a Law for such a Statute must tho it were for the declaring an Heir Apparent to the Crown have the Royal Sanction of some Lawful King which could never be Consistent here with this their most inconsistent Declaration for the granting the Duke of York to be their Heir Apparent in the same Breath pronounc'd Henry the Sixth an Usurper and the very words that declar'd York an Apparent Heir made him de facto their Lawful King for they must either allow that he was the Crowns Heir and then that had devolv'd to him long before by Blood and Inheritance from Lionel Duke of Clarence Elder Brother to John of Gaunt from whom the Lancasters claimed or else they declared their Lineal Lawful King an Intruders Vsurpers Heir it is an unavoidable Dilemma if the first then an acknowledgment of an irreparable wrong done to their Lineal Soveraign that had an unquestionable right if the Latter then most absur'd and contradictory in making him an Heir to the Crown from that Henry that himself never had the least Title to the wearing it From whence I conclude that any such supposed Act and it must be allowed that if not an Act that then it signified nothing too that purged Richard Duke of York from his Attainder could never have the Royal Assent unless most absurdly from one that was no King for either it must be past by Henry the fixth and then the thing he past un-King'd him or else by the Duke the declar'd Heir and then but a suppos'd Subject in the very Declaration or rather a Lawful and allow'd King in admitting him to pass a Bill and so superseded such a fuperfluous and Declaratory Act. Lastly even in this very point the Seditious Author supersedes the pains of any Loyal pen for the Confutation of the false Position he would prove and in the very same Paragraph baffles himself to prevent an Answer and tells us that Richard Duke of York's Corruption was purg'd when declar'd Heir Apparent by the Parliament and that therefore the People forsook the Lancastrians and set the House of York in the Throne shall the being declar'd but an Heir Apparent purge an Attainder And shall not an actual discent of the Crown take away the same defects shall here be thought the bare opinion of a Parliament sufficient to clear a Corrupted Blood And shall not for the same the resolution of all the Judges suffice But as this contradicts all right and reason so the very next Line all History and Truth for it appears from all the Chronicles that can be consulted that the house of York was rather own'd by the Parliament for fear of the People then that the People were prevail'd upon by the Parliaments opinion for this Parliament of his had not above half a year before at Coventry declar'd the Duke and all his Adherents Traytors Disinherited and Excluded him and his Heirs Ludlow a Town that belong'd to him sack't to the bare Walls and as a Member in the late Houses moved for the 〈◊〉 of Popish Women too so did the Parliamentary rigor of those Times extend also to that Sex and the Dutchess suffer'd then the same severe Exile with the Duke and as our Author says was spoiled of all her Goods yet 〈◊〉 rigorous as they show'd themselves in 〈◊〉 violent Votes against him and all that was his his Hereditary right was so rooted in the Peoples Hearts that it form'd for him an Army fought for him at Northampton and brought both the Usurper and his Parliament to a Composition for the Crown Thus much for the refuting of his little Reason and his less Law upon the Case And his Historical Inference that follows for its Justification fails him as much too for he tells us the Tale of Richard the Thirds letting the Children of his Brother Clarence live because their Father was attained in Edward the Fourths time and that it was the Resolution of his Parliament that his Issue was thereby disabl'd to Challenge the Crown And truly the Case will admit of no better defence the badness of his cause can never be made good but with such a Justification as is much worse He verifies that Aphorism of the Tragedian that to secure your self in your Villanies you must commit more and 't is the Politicks too of a Matchiavel as well as a Seneca and this the practise now of our present Republican who firstlays you down a Position perhaps truly Treasonable and then is forc't to fly to the Resolution of Traytors for the defence of the Treason and proves that the Crowns Discent does not purge Attainder because this Parliament of an absolute Usurper rather a pack of Rebels then a convention of States resolv'd it so Could it be imagin'd that those that had Bastardiz'd the Blood of their late Soveraign for him already would Boggle to Declare that of a Clarence and but their Kings Brother corrupt would those that promoted the spilling of the Blood of the two Nephews stick to Resolve that of the rest attainted the Malicious Impostor knows that they were then treating with a Tyrant that they themselves had advanc'd to the Throne and would he have had those demurred upon a point in Law to have argued of his Crown again which themselves knew against all the Laws of the Land they had plac't upon his head But this President if allow'd would still to the present purpose be as Impertinent as 't is Treasonable for
modelling of the Church and in that our modern Republican agrees with our Old Rebels for the depriving the Bishops of their Votes That was one of the Projects was set afoot as the very forerunner of our former Troubles that was publisht over again in several Papers and Pamphlets now besides in this very piece and could they condemn our Fears of a Subversion of the Government when their Libels in about 80 lookt only like the new Editions of those in 41 as if printed Rebellion was to suffer but a 〈◊〉 You shall see how they began with the Bishops just before the last War in their Libels and then how of late they began to War upon Episcopacy again in their Papers and Pamphlets you shall see how the Parliament Espoused the Peoples Quarrel to that Hierarchy then and how near our late House of Commons was for falling upon the Prelacy now Leighton a virulent Scotchman led the Dance with a Zeal like that the Nation it self shewed afterward against that Apostolical Order he told the People plainly they must Murder all the Bishops And in his canting Phraseology Smite them under the fifth Rib. 'T is true the Government of Church and State stood yet so strong upon its Basis tho shaken with an undermining Plot that it dared to punish such an Execrable Villain with the Pillory and sentenced he was in the Star-Chamber to be stigmatised cropt and slit and tho the Parliament had not openly declared themselves against this good Government of the Church yet they had shown such Symptoms of their Disaffection to it that this Impudent Libeller could presume to make them his Patrons and present them with his Plea And I ha'n't found in all their Journal any Order for so much as the censuring him for such a piece of Presumption To exclude the Bishops from Voting in their Assembly the Confederates of Scotland drew up a Libel against them one in the Literal Sense full of Scandal and Reproaches But the denying them there their Rights in Parliament was soon seconded with the Robbing them of all too they had in the Church whom they had excluded they soon 〈◊〉 and then abolisht utterly the sacred Order so did also within two years after the good Parliament of England begin with the Prelacy too Pennington with his packt Petition of Prentices presented to them their Abhorrence of that Hierarchy the cunning and counterfeit Commons that Honse of Hypocrisie seemed a little dissatisfyed with an Alteration of the Church Government it self that is they did not care to pluck it up presently Root and Branch but fell upon another Argument somewhat more plausible tho to the Zealots less pleasing but what in truth was but Introductory to the same thing they more deliberately designed that they might proceed somewhat like Senators soberly to Sedition and that was about the Synod and Convocation Canons and Constitutions Ecclesiastical which they soon resolved to be against the Fundamental Laws of the Land But these Lay-Members were only mighty loth the Clergy should here have their Representatives as well as the Laick they must otherwise have seen that such a Resolution would upbraid them to their Faces with a Lye for this their Court of Convocation was as much founded upon Law and more too perhaps than even that of the Commons themselves who with their inconsistent Votes with Contradiction it self condemned it Exclude the Clergy and the very Foundations of your House must fall Did not former times allow you Representatives that every one might have an Hand in the Composuion of that which he had an Obligation to obey Banish the Bishops your Assembly and tell me by what Proxies the Church shall be represented and what shall tye her to the Observation of those Laws to whose Constitution she gives no consent For a Thousand Years before they had a being there were such Synods Assembled never called but by the King 's Writ and they have no other Authority for their own Sitting and might as well have Voted that their own Assembly as indeed it was afterward was against the Fundamental Laws of the Realm Prerogative of the King Property of the Subject Right of Parliament and did tend to Faction and Sedition And tho those Canons and Constitutions were streightned and limited in Henry the Eight's Time and it was provided that none for the future that had not the Royal Assent should be put in Execution yet such Reverence and Respect had the Parliament of those Times which I think was made up of a better sort of Reformers than what past their suffrages for the setting aside this Synod that notwithstanding that Limitation they put in an express Proviso that such Canons as were made before that Act so long as they did not contradict Law should be still in force after and this was at a time too when they were so far from being the Bigots of Rome that they were reforming from Her and acknowledged their Kings Supremacy even in several of those Convocations tho whatever Religion they were of Common Reason cannot make it a Crime the countenancing of the Churches Right but these Violators of her Privileges soon discovered their Design upon her Patrimony too for in the same Session and that soon after they that thus set aside the Churches Synod sent up an Impeachment of Treason against its Metropolitan and that by the Hands of Hollis a hot-headed Member whom his Majesty could have made appear and within a year after did demand for a greater Traytor too That Honoured Hollis that lived so long and so lately to Murder the Bishops once more in their Peerage as well as Person 〈◊〉 but having gone so far what they had scribbled down before with their Libels they soon damn'd with a Vote And in the same Year past that Bill that their Spiritual Lordships should have no suffrages in the Senate of Lords And when they were come to this once to deprive them of their prescrib'd Privileges and their Legal Rights to send twelve of them to the Tower only because they would not tamely forego the very Church's Birth-right but entered a Protestation against the betraying of their Trust you might think their Order it self tho never so Primitive never so much Apostolical was not like to be long liv'd for in the very next Year tho it was the good Kings giving one when Star-Chamber was abolisht the High Commission put down Ship Money relinquisht with six or seven several Acts besides for disclaiming Privileges still his Seditious Subjects had so little Sense of his Goodness that even in that very season of Grace a * Bill was brought in for Abolishing this sacred Order Root and Branch 't is true 't was then husht up in the House the provident Patriots understood how to time it better they had not yet come to covenanting and concluded with the Kirk but as soon as they had framed their Holy League
or bad Is it not Resolved and that upon Record in the King's Exchequer where the Words run with some Signification That the King keep the Laws and Customes which the Lords and Commons HAVE chosen c But grant them their own Sense that is Silliness That Oath these Malignants of our Monarchy object was made first for an absolute Usurper that came to the Crown by the Suffrages of such a Seditious Senate not much Inferior in Villainy to the late long Parliament that labored so much in this business of the Legislative or rather less Villains only in deposing a King whom the latter Murdered and why a Lawful King should be bound by that Oath did the Laws oblige him to take it which was first offered to an Vsurper I cannot apprehend That aspiring Prince swore too in his Coronation that he held his Crown by the Sole Consent of the People shall our present Soveraign do the same whom the Statutes acknowledge to hold from none but God But do not in that very Oath the Words they so much labor in confute them also in my poor Reason beyond reply is not Leges the Word Laws expresly used that it is Laws that the King swears to Confirm Corroborate Maintain and Protect And were the Commons ever allowed or presumed without a Rebellion to Elect LAWS There is not the least of a Bill mentioned in that Oath and sure they 'll offer to elect no more and in Gods Name let them chuse to send up as many of those as they please And sure then these Leges here must relate to those that are really so and have had the Royal Sanction already so that they must be reduced to this Dilemna If they 'll apply their Vulgus elegerit to the Lower House 't is certain they can make no Laws if to that of the Lords 't is as certain they can't be called Vulgus Lastly Laborious Drudges of Sedition let but these Laws ye long to subvert while you 'd seem to defend decide betwixt you and your King Is it not established by Statute it self that the King hath absolute power to Dissent to any Bill though agreed upon by both Houses But yet in spight of all this Reason and Law they tell us that the King cannot deny to pass any Bills for the publick good and which perhaps never can a good King for his Refusal of his Royal Sanction determines their Goodness and they cease to be necessary when the King thinks there is no need of them for if upon this their presumptive Goodness and the Prince as it is his undoubted Prerogative to do denying his Assent the People should presume they could with their Legislative because their King is refractory as they would call it pass some Bills into Law from their Assurance of their being good that power wou'd enable them to make bad ones too and allow their two Houses to Judge when to make but one Law they are as good Judges to make one thousand or as many as they please and no end of such a distracted Usurpation and that we saw when they began with that Ordinance for the Militia which was the first thing they presumed to make Law from their Kings as their Seditious absurd Phraseology would word it Refractory refusing i. e. that courageously maintaining his just Right when they had thus once broke the Damm no wonder if the deluge of an absolute Rebellion overwhelmed for upon the same ground the Lords might have Excluded both King and Commons for not concurring with them in what Bills and Acts they thought good and the Commons as indeed they did both King and Lords for being obstinate to such BILLS as themselves had offered But yet notwithstanding the Kings Refractoriness as our Republican Phrases it is now trumpt up again for the warranting the Peoples assuming as they would have it a sort of necessitated Power and that of calling themselves to Parliament for this the Lawyer in his Postscript Labors with his Innuendo's For this Plato tells us the Barons did well to put on their Armour that it is an Omission that ruins the very Foundations of Government and Hunt will not have them so much as discontinued for it renders such Conventions illusory Seditious Sycophants Your selves know this power of their Discontinuance and Dissolution is the best security the Crown has for its support Was it not miserably rent and torn from the Head but of our own Soveraign's Father and that only because he could not Dissolve them but had in effect signed his Destiny with their Bill of Sitting during the Pleasure of the two Houses Base Hypocrites 't is not a Parliaments Sitting you contend for but the Sitting of such a Parliament that good honest Parliament the late long and 〈◊〉 one which their virulent Villains Libelled for Popish Pensionary perhaps because it would not take the Peoples pay long enough might that have been discontinued or Prorogued wen ever heard then of the Statutes of Edwards and the Triennial Acts but their Pens were employed then to prove even that 〈◊〉 that discontents them now so much 'T is not above Eight years since their Pamphlets would demonstrate a Parliament dissolved for being but for Fiveteen Months Prorogued and were we but assured of having such another the Press had never been pestered for the calling one with their impertinnent prints nor any Petitions prefer'd for their Frequency Would you perswade the World your purses are so 〈◊〉 so free too that you long for a Subsidy to fill up the Kings Dissembling Souls the Parliament they clamour for can proceed from nothing else but a presumption of one to be their Patrons to patronize all their Irregularities and Refractoryness to the State to countenance all those gross abuses they put upon the Government they told us this to our faces and Menaced men to make them fear them Is this the way to have them Convencd to make them formidable For Gods sake can you credit that honorable Assembly with making them the pretended Abettors of all your Scandalous Actions The only felicity we have in such a Senate's sitting is That the King must summon them to sit they are Rebels by a Law if they convene without they must meet and Associate and the Kings happiness consists in his being able to Dissolve and Discontinue And this furious and indefatigable Scribler might have omitted the mentioning of those Statutes they have beaten so bare been baffled in so much and may now blush to bring upon the Stage but he shall have his answer here to this too That nothing of Mr. Hunt's like his managed Mungrel Julian may be call'd Vnanswerable For the First it is the 4th of this Edward And I confess in as few words That a Parliament be holden once every year and more often if NEED BE. It is all the Letter of the Law and every Line of it But they might as well tell us
tell us the truth in spight of his design to lye that this Unfortunate Fellow that was found Dead was none of this Warder that he meant and that only the similitude of the Name made the mistake then from the disagreeableness of Bomeny's Testimony with the other Informant because not verbatim he says the same therefore they must be both 〈◊〉 Seditious Sot Why so senseless too Will not Common reason for that very thing confirm them both to be the more truth for when there is a Conspiracy to make Affidavit of a lye there they can soon confer and commonly do too agree in words as well as substance and sense might well suggest they had learn'd their Lessons pretty perfect upon such a verbal Agreement But this Masterpiece of most Malicious Plot was with more sublimated Malice contracted into a Compendium only that it might be propagated the sooner spread the farther when in short of which Condensed or Abstracted Treason the Spirit and Essence of Sedition one Danvers was Discovered to be the Author a Villain whom the Devil in Design could not render more vile an Anabaptist for Profession an Officer of Olivers for Rebellion and now a Fugitive for fear of Apprehension for whom a Warrant was issued out Posted publisht in the Gazette and an Hundred pounds proffer'd for any to take him As these late Plots and Conspiracies were contriving all along in England so did the Scots carry on the same Treason Argyle an Hereditary Rebel that seem'd to have his Soul and Treason from Ex traduce being attainted by the Law of their Land for a Factious Explanation of the Test and tho' Justly Sentenc'd to Suffer yet the Government that had given him his Estate had no design upon his Life makes his Escape out of Prison in which in effect he enjoy'd his Liberty before gets over into Holland confers with our English Fugitives then sends Letters from thence to the Scots to incite them to Rebel some of which were Intercepted upon Major Holms and known to be his own Hand Spence and Castares his own Emissaries Confessing the Correspondence they had with their Rebel Friends in England and the Cochrans Melvil Baily are found to have been here in England and Agitating the Conspiracy for which upon full Evidence the said Robert Baily was Convicted had his Arms Expung'd himself Hang'd and his Body Quarterd But notwithstanding all this Evidence as clear as the Sun and all their deeds of Hellish darkness brought into as much light as the Lamp of Heaven it self affords Their infatuated Fools were still so much blinded and besotted as to represent it all for a Plot of the State only for involving some of them in a Conspiracy and the King must be presum'd to design upon himself only to trepan them into Treasonable Designs For this several Letters are dispers'd into the Country some of which being Intercepted were found to be one Sir Samuel Bernadiston's a wealthy Citizen whose Estate with a great deal of Money and as little Wit serv'd only to make him more wickedly and less wisely Seditious for nothing but the pride of a Purse or the not valuing of a Fine could have made a Man guilty of so much Folly at a Season when they were in an hot pursuit of an Hellish Conspiracy and the Blood of those that had suffer'd for it hardly cold For he lets them know that the Protestant Plot is confounded quite lost that the Evidence of it the Lord Howard was to be sent to the Tower and that all the Prisoners that lay there for the same were discharged that Sidney that Suffer'd for it was Pardon'd that Braddon that was Fin'd for it was no farther Prosecuted all rank Lyes as well as lewdly Seditious And though his kind Council was pleas'd to mitigate the Information as if the Malice was not so apparent that will not mince the matter for tho' the circumstances and the plain matter of Fact make it the most malitious piece of Faction 〈◊〉 yet moreover the very mass of his Blood was tainted with as much malice and his very Relations actual Rebels and in Arms against their Sovereign our Sir Thomas Bernadiston being a Colonel of a Foot Regiment of Rebels at the Siege of Colchester which I can make appear from an old Map of the Siege where he may see his Father or his Brother Firing upon his Majesties Subjects But these Factious Papers being prov'd upon him from his own Hand and the Testimony of his Servant that Superscrib'd them they found him Guilty without going from the Bar for which in the King's Bench he was afterward Fin'd Ten thousand Pounds to the King Bound to be of the Good Behaviour during Life and to be Committed till 't was paid But after all as if they did endeavour to silence their own Advocates in their Defence and that Impudence it self might not endeavour to smother their secret Conspiracies they break out into that open Rebellion for which they had Conspired and Invade the Kingdom as if they design'd only to prove the Plot For in April 1685. Argyle lands with Men and Amunition brought from Holland in one of the South-West Isles of Scotland call'd Yyle or Ila and their seizes all the Arms Horses Men and other Necessaries to make up an Army some of his Heretors come in for Assistance with some few of his Dependants and Relations of which of the most note were his Sons and one Achinbreck of which Name there is a Castle or Town near those Isles For a Month or two they kept Sailing about Boot Cantire and the rest of the Islands thereabouts sometime landing then setting out again But about the nineteenth of June the Lord Dunbarton having notice that the Rebels had past the River Levin above Dumbarton Town and taking their way towards Sterling overtook them in the Parish of Killerne but being late in the Evening did not Attack them but by the Morning the Rebels were march'd off toward the River Clyde which on the seventeenth they past but pursu'd by the King's Forces and Cochran carrying them by mistake into a Bogg they soon disorder'd and dispers'd The late Argyle was set upon in his flight towards the Clyde by two of Greynock's Servants receiving a Wound on his Head dismounted his Horse and ran into the Water where a Countryman fell'd him so the Soldiers carried him to their Commander from thence to Glascow and then to Edenburgh Among these Rebels were several of the blackest Conspirators of England that were fled for the same Rumbold himself the Malster at the Rye by whose House his late Majesty was to be Murder'd as also one Captain Ayloff mention'd in the King's Declaration were both there taken Rumbold fought desperately and Ayloff so despair'd that he ript up his Belly Rumbold was afterward Arraigned for Invading the Kingdom with the rest of the Rebels had Sentence as in Cases of High Treason and was accordingly Hang'd and Quarter'd and