Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
lord_n	call_v	great_a	king_n	18,708	5	3.7396	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A50369	The observator, upon the successe of former Parliaments: being by way of parralell compared with this present Parliament. Published to un-deceive the people.; Discourse concerning the successe of former Parliaments.	May, Thomas, 1595-1650.	1643 (1643)	Wing M1411B; ESTC R202948	5,260	8

People as unkind to them then themselves as faulty and so the more hardly drawn to repent their Actions or meet heartily with a Parliament 2. The People looke with honour upon the Prince and when they find but few personall vices in him will hardly be brought to think though themselves feel and suffer for it that he is faulty and therefore sometimes which would hardly be believed if experience had not shewed it the People have bin so rash as that to maintain for the King an unjust Prerogative which themselves understand not they have to their own ruin and the Kings too as it hath after proved disserted that great Councell whom themselves have chosen add by whom only they could be preserved in their just rights untill too late they have seen and repented their folly Such a dissertion was too sadly seen at the breaking up of that Parliament of Edward the second where his Favourites the two Spencers were banished and the tragical effects that followed when the King found so great a party of the Clergy and Layity as enabled him to call home his banished Favourites and proved fatall to so many Parliamentary Lords as the like execution of Nobility had never before been seen in England over whose graves the People afterwards wept when it was too late and proceeded further in their revenge then became the duty and allegiance of Subjects It is therefore a great mis-fortune to England and almost a certain calamity when the distempers of government have been let grow so long as that for their cure they must need a long Parliament For there are no wayes how just how moderate soever they be which that great Councell can take if they go far enough to make the cure but will provoke either by the meanes or the length of them the Prince his impatience or the Peoples inconstancy For the first the Delinquents must needs be many and great and those employed and perchance highly favoured by him besides the reflexion which is made upon his judgement by their sufferings and that will be one reason of his impatience Another is that many prerogatives which were not indeed inherent in the Crown but so thought by the Prince and by him and his bad Councell long abused to the prejudice of the People with some seeming advantage to him though well weighed they brought none are then after a long sufferance called in question For the People are used to entrust kind Princes with many of their own priviledges and rights and never call for them again till they have been extreamly abused But at such a time to make all cleare after so long a reckoning and those long reckonings in State being commonly fatall for Parliaments have seldome been disconntinued but by such Princes whose government in the Interim have been very illegall they usually question so much as that the Prince thinkes himselfe hardly dealt withall such a Prince as we spoke of who not bad in himselfe but long misled by wicked counsell was not enough sensible of the injuries he had done The second obstacle that such Parliaments may find is the Peoples inconstancy and what age is not full of such examples which before we name let us consider whether there be any reason for it This perchance may be one that the People naturally are lovers of novelty Long discontinued and reforming Parliaments seemes to carry the face of a change of government and those things may then happen which do in the shift of Princes that some people may for a while flatter themselves with new and strange hopes that prove frustrate or else with quicker redresses of inconvenience then the great concurrence of so many weighty businesses can possibly admit how industrious soever that great Councell be distracted with so great a variety and the People after some time spent grow weary again of what they before had so long wished to see Besides the People are more and more poisoned dayly by the discourses of the kindred friends and retainers to so many Delinquents as must needs be at such a Parliament who though they be no considerable party in respect of the whole Common-wealth yet ply their particular interests with more eagernesse than most do the publike They subtilly perswade the People that what ever the Parliament does against those Delinquents is a ymed at the Kings honour and that he is wounded through their sides And this opinion is somewhat furthred when the People see how many prerogatives of the Prince as wee said before are after long enjoying called in question So that by this meanes their inconstancy seemes to be grounded upon loyalty to the King and they perchance with honest but deceived hearts grow wearie of the great Councell of the Land Another reason may be that the Prince himselfe averse from such a Parliament for the reasons aforesaid can find power enough to retard their proceedings and keepe off the cure of State so long till the People tired with expectation of it have by degrees forgot the sharpnesse of those diseases which before required it By this meanes at last accidentally a miracle hath been wrought after along Parliament which is that the People have taken part with the great Delinquents against the Parliament for no other reason than because those Delinquents had done them more wrong then the Parliament could sudenly redress And so the multitude of those great Delinquents crimes have turned to their own advantage But in such reforming Parliaments upon whom so much businesse lyes not only the inconstancy of the People hath been seen in History but the unstedfastnesse of the Representative Body it selfe and the distractions of that Assembly whilst they forsake each other under so great a burden have let that burden fall dishonourably to the ground The most unhappy instance in this case was that Parliament of Richard the second begun at Westminster and adjourned to Shrewsbury in the nineteenth year of his reigne a Parliament that difcharged their trust the worst of any that I read of where there was as much need of constancy and magnanimity as ever was to redresse those great distempers which were then grown upon the State and as much mischiefe ensued by their default both upon Prince and People which might have been well prevented and his happinesse wrought together with their own in the judgement of best writers if they had timely and constantly joyned together in maintaining the true rights of Parliament and resisting the ilegall desires of their seduced King But being fatally distracted the major part of Lords and Bishops wrought upon by the King and the House of Commons being too far prevailed with by Bushy the Speaker and his Instruments they utterly disserted the Common-wealth and looking only upon the Kings present desire assented to such things as made the Prerogative a thing boundlesse that he himselfe as the Story reports was heard glorying to say there was no true Monarch in Europe but himselfe Vpon which the same bad councell which before had brought him out of love with Parliaments brought him to as great an abuse of that power which he had now gotten over a Parliament And then followed the blank-Charters and other horrid extortions besides the suffering of some Lords whom the people most loved and shortly after by a sad consequence his own ruin Nor do we read that any of those Lords who under the colour of Loyalty and Love as they called it to his person had trodden down the power and priviledge of a Parliament under his feet had afterwards so much Loyalty to him as to defend his Crown and person against an Vsurper who without any resistance or Contradiction unjustly ascended the Royall Throne the sad occasion of that miserable and civill war which in the following Ages so long afflicted the Kingdome of England This was the worst example of any Parliament but in other times they have proved better physicke then any other earthly meanes could be yet their greatest vertue and excellency is seen when they have been used as a diet by honourable and just Princes such as this Nation hath been sometimes blest with and such who have thought it no disparagement or depression of their dignity to be ruled by the sway of that great and honourable Councell then a wise guider of a Ship would thinke it to follow his Compasse or any Mathematician to be directed by his necessary rules and instruments FINIS