Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n
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A48156
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A letter to a friend, about the late proclamation on the 11th of December, 1679, for further proroguing the Parliament till the 11th of November next ensuing
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1679
(1679)
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Wing L1637; ESTC R9259
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8,884
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16
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A LETTER TO A FRIEND About the late PROCLAMATION On the 11th of December 1679. For further PROROGVING THE PARLIAMENT Till the 11th of November next ensuing Imprimis interest Reipublicae ut pax in Regno conservetur quaecunque paci adversentur providè declinentur Nihil Infra Regnum subditos magis conservat in tranquillitate concordia quam debita Legum administratio Coke Inst 2d Fol. 158. London Printed Anno Dom. 1679. A LETTER TO A FRIEND c. SIR I Know you are a Lover of News provided it be good and such as may promote the honour of his most sacred Majesty and the interest of our Nation which consists in the constant preservation of the true Protestant Religion * Magna Chartae the best Law next to the Divine of any in the World Liberty and Property which I hope will never be invaded by any Foreign Power and which certainly I may very well presume to believe will never be in the least incroached upon at home by any whomsoever during the happy life of our gratious Soveraign whom God Almighty in his infinite mercy long continue among us But such is the obstreperous noise of malevolent tongues that I find nothing will please in this nice and scrupulous Juncture of affairs and circumstances whatsoever may possibly be endeavoured to give the most of content and satisfaction All things that come on the sudden strike the senses of the unthinking populace with such a gastly surprize that strait it presents them with the Idea of Raw-head and Bloody bones without any further Reflections upon the matter until some wiser heads take it into their serious consideration to undeceive them and to show them that if ever they mean to learn to be better Politicks and more Loyal Subjects by weighing every Intelligence in the unerring Ballance of a solid and steady Judgement this is the time Every Coffee-house now seems as it were a Cabal of State and the considering positive Customer as great a Privy Counsellour as some would fain have us for certain to believe the most Christian King Monsieur Colbert and the rest of the French Cabinet are here at the Royal-board in every thing that is transacted I am sorry to say so much but yet my integrity obliges me to speak the truth or not to speak at all and how am I capable to be silent that have on each side my Ears almost wheresoever business or what else calls me the perpetual gratings of unpleasant discourses especially about this last Proclamation of His Majesty for the Poroguing of his Parliament from the 26th of January 1679 80. till the 11th of November following 1680. when as yet the people cry he hath never seen half their Faces and so consequently cannot know the temper of their spirits how far they will stand by him with their Lives and Fortunes upon all occasions or what they will unanimously do for him to advance his glory and honour by making him formidable to all his Enemies and envied by his Neighbours and by fetling him if that can possibly be more deeply in the hearts and affections of all his Loving and Obedient Subjects I must confess at the first dash what the People do generally say seems to carry great strength of Reason along with it And you know the multitude for want of better understanding take up with first Notions and run hand-smooth away with them they think it a mighty piece of impertinence and folly to be serious in searching deep into the stress of matters when alas they are so plain and obvious to every common Capacity that certainly none but those deserve Bedlam or a worse place who in the least question or disbelieve them Are we not say they in a wood of Intanglements and eminent dangers begirt round with numbers that have their several Interests to bring us unto Ruine and Misery Do not the Papists more than ever come thick upon us with their Hellish and Damnable Plots and Conspiracies Is it not their principle to depose and murther KINGS to kill Subjects and People and to make the Streets as a Red Sea with the bloud of Protestants whom they falsly call HERETICKS and damn if it be possible their Souls too into the bargain Have we not experienced this in Queen Maries days And in our fresh remembrances does not the sight of our new built houses sadly put us in mind that the glorious City was become a heap of Ashes And how many Repetitions of dreadful fires have been both in Suburbs and Countries since that amazing conflagration What tricks and devises have been used by them for the lust as well as advantage of Foreigners to Prorogue and dissolve our Parliaments and is it not too true that the Dutchy of Mantoua Legorn and several other places abroad above a month before any such thing was talkt on here had advice from Rome that our present Parliament which as it did highly concern us we did with impatience hope and almost verily believe should sit at the stated time in January next but now to our great astonishment find our big expectations are dwindled into disappointment that our present Parliament I say should very shortly for certain be Prorogued for near a twelve month and have not we had Letters of it sent over to us by our Factors there And is it not strange that one of the Lords in the Tower almost a week before any such rumour or surmise was in Town should confidently report the same Prorogation for the same length of time to be within a very few daies And that it should so happen as they had prophecyed Can we know see and hear of all these things and yet believe we are safe and well and our Circumstances as happy as ever Surely we must not be blind in pure complaisance because our Courteous enemies would have us so This and a great deal more Sir is the common discourse of all Coffee-houses if not of most private Societies but to show you what may be said by way of healing and reconcilement be pleased to let me present you with these following Considerations 1. And first of all certainly none can have such a ridiculous and groundless fancy to believe that the KING can be any ways inclinable * If there should be any such I would caution them to remember one Act and it is in 13. Ca. 2. C. 1. S. 2. Entituled An Act for the safety and preservation of His Majesties person and Government against Treasonable and Seditious Practises and Attempts to Popery when not to mention the treatment and usage he met with in his unhappy exile at such a tender Age he has so clearly opened his heart and in the most ingaging words imaginable declared to the contrary over and over again to both his Houses of Parliament and has he not given them the assurance of it upon his Royal word and what can be required more that in all things which concerned their
the Proclamation and the KING by that says that having many weighty Reasons not yet convenient for us to know or else to be sure he would acquaint us with them he is resolved the Parliament shall on the 26th of January be prorogued till the 11th of November next Now I pray let me make some few short remarks hereupon as they are plainly obvious to every understanding Person and I will then submit my self to your Judgements for the reasonabless of what I say I. Can you find any thing that proves the Parliament is by this Proclamation de facto prorogued till November next If no as I am sure you cannot why are you then so clamorous and positive as to affirm it is II. The Proclamation is but declarative of what the KING intends to do on the 26th of January because of the many weighty Reasons that move him to do so but do you think if before the time of their meeting next month the KING should have more weighty Reasons both for number and quality to induce him to the contrary and to oblige him to change his Resolution that he would not because the Royalword was gone forth our Laws are not like to those of the Medes and Persians which alter not and surely much less may we imagine that Proclamations are irrevocable III. To be sure the KING will be very well advised indeed before he actually prorogues his Parliament for so long a time as a twelve moneth because he knows then that how urging soever the occasion may be to require him to have his Parliament sit sooner yet they cannot in the Interval of prorogation sit legally to do any thing but in a preparatory way in ordine ad c. to have things so much the more ready against the opening of the Parliament and therefore they must be extroardinary weighty Reasons that shall oblige him to run the hazard of so great an Inconvenience which is no other way remediable but by a present dissolution of this and calling of a new Parliament and that too will take up a good deal of time in issuing forth the Writs and waiting for the proper Court days to elect Members IIII. Though the KING at the time of his issuing out this Proclamation saw nothing that could out-weight those Reasons betwixt than and the 26th of January and therefore not to put his Parliament-men to unnecessary charges by their long and wearisome Journies up to Town with their Numerous Servants to wait on them says in great affection as well as condescention That we will not at the said six and twentieth day of January expect the attendance of any but only such as being inor about the City of London and Westminster may attend the making the said Prorogation The said Proclamation Yet if every Member of Parliament the Lords Spiritual and temporal and every of the Knights Citizens and Burgesses of the House of Commons who represent in Parliament all the Communalty of England should be at the expence and trouble of coming up to Town Co. 2. Inst 157. to appear in their respective houses and should than and there * Eritis insuperahiles si fueritis inseparabiles unanimously resolve immediately to send unto his Majesty according to the 13. Car. 2 c. 5. before ever they should be called up to the Lord's house tenn of the Noble Lords from that house in their own Names and in the names of all the other their Fellow-Peers and the House of Commons likewise to send tenn of the chief of their Members to his Majesty in their own Names and in the names of all the Commons of England and they severally to cast themselves at his Majesties feet and with the utmost humility and sence of duty and loyalty plainly and briefly to lay open before him the great danger his Royal person is in from the present Plots influences villanous designs and bloudy conspiracies of the Papists as also that of the Protestant Religion and the ancient well established Government of this his Kingdome and all his Majesties Protestant Subjects and likewise humbly to beg as ever he regards the preservation of those since they were now so happily met together to consult de arduis urgentibus negotiis Regni that his Majesty would be gratiously pleased to let the Parliament continue to fit that so he might thereby come to the knowledge of the steadiness of their loyalty and affection for his service till they had effected these great things which would make him the most fear'd of Princes in this life and his Name hereafter glorious in Chronicle and which would most undoubtedly be to the Infinite Joy and satisfaction of all his loving and dutiful Subjects if I say they should all thus meet and do can any one imagine that he would resolutely withstand such an earnest prayer and so universally put up to him by his whole Realm let none offer to believe it for nothing can truely be the Subjects interest and felicity that is Independant on the King 's and where all join in hands and hearts for the real good peace and prosperity of his sacred person and his Kingdom sure he cannot but gladly hear he will not but affectionately grant Jacob strove and wrestled in prayer and did prevail accordingly 32 Gen. And although God had resolved Hezekiah's death and to that end sent his Prophet Isaiah to tell him of it as for certain from him with a thus saith she Lord set thine House in order for thou shalt dye and not live and here 's a reduplication of the same thing to denote as it were the Impossibility of the reversal yet when Hezekiah pray'd unto the Lord and beseeched him to remember how he had walk'd and what he had done and wept sore before him in prayer by way of an ardent importunity that his life might be prolonged God was wrought upon by his unfeigned request and he sent his Prophet again to him saying the Lord the God of David thy Father hath heard thy prayer he hath seen thy tears and he will add unto thy days fifteen years Nay he granted him more than his Petion for he likewise promised to deliver both him and his City out of the hands of the King of Assyria and that he would be the defence of that City and to put it out of all manner of question that he should not be so good as his word he assured it by a sign of bringing the shadow of the degrees which was gone down in the Sunn-dyall of Ahaz tenn degrees back-ward All which you may read in 38 1s from the first to the 9th verse But this is not by any way of Application because Almighty God did hearken to Hezekiah's prayer and was intreated of him to add a further continuance to his life notwithstanding his seeming fixed resolution then to put a period to his day here on earth that therefore the people might come tumultuously and seditiously to offer up their