Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n
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A66539
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The legacy of John Wilmer, citizen, and late merchant of London humbly offered to the lords and commons of England.
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Wilmer, John.
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1692
(1692)
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Wing W2884; ESTC R9494
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27,537
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38
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latter were promoted to the best Dignities in the Church that by the mutual assistance of each other the Kings might enslave the Bodies and drain the Purses and the Priests enslave the Souls and ride the Consciences of all Men But after our late State-Mountebanks had thus for a time tried their Tricks at length they felt the Weight of the Nation to fall like a Mill-stone upon them and found that the People of England would be the People of England still and be govern'd as reasonable Men and free-born Subjects Nevertheless in every bad Reign Evil Counsellors will be at the old Game and better is not to be expected unless in a good one we find Justice to be executed in Terrorem and it be made the Interest as well as 't is the Duty of every Man to serve the Publick The Politick States of Holland do make it so and thereby is it that they not only stand but prosper and are well served for every private Man there finds his Account of Interest and Profit in serving the Common Good whereas here in the late Reigns every Judas to his Country that most betrayed the fundamental Rights and debauched his Country had Honours and Profits for so doing and on the contrary where any stood in their way to oppose them they were certainly taken off or ruined Which shews how precarious the Lives Liberties and Properties as also the Religion of the People of England were made What Rapines barbarous Murders and Outrages were in the late Reigns such as no Chronicle can parallel Ahab and Jezabel's Murder of Naboth and taking possession of his Vineyard so blackned in holy Writ and so revenged by God seems to be far out-done by the cruel and barbarous Murder of the Brave and Noble Earl of Essex the first was done in the face of the World and owned but the latter in Hugger-mugger when he was under the Custody of the Law in Confinement and which highly aggravates the Heinousness of the Fact it was perpetrated at that moment when it was made to serve the wicked Design of destroying another of our greatest Men the Noble Lord Russel And lastly to throw the Odium of it on himself which if England take not off I am sure will cost them dear and they must feel the Vengeance of Heaven until Justice be in some kind satisfied When we took God's Way he blessed us and when we return to him he will return to us and bless us again I cannot but admire the Fineness of God's Providence how he called forth the Vertuous Puissant and Illustrious Family of Nassan to rescue his People out of the Jaws of Spanish Tyranny under Charles the Fifth and broke that Hellish Yoke made by Popish Priests and now to call the same Family in his present Majesty to break the French Yoke This is a stupendous Providence an amazing Work which will give him a glorious Name more lasting than that of Sons and Daughters God is shaking the Earth he hath begun with us in Jamaica in a terrible manner and since hath come to our own Doors and given us a Warning of his Power to shew us what he can do Let us labour to understand the meaning of the Voice of God in the Earthquake Shall we say the People of Jamaica were more wicked than we because they perished I tell you God seems to call to us in this still Voice and say Repent or ye shall all likewise perish Let us away with our dastardly Cowardliness and sordid Covetousness and Self-seeking which is the Root of all Evil and seek more the things of God and things of good Report amonst good Men in our Generation Let us reform and amend our Manners our Ways and Doings or else leave those Names of Protestants and Christians for our Immorality is a Shame to them all and the old Heathens and Turks will condemn and rise up in Judgment against us and it will be more tolerable for them in the Day of Judgment than for us The CASE of JOHN WILMER Citizen and late Merchant of London With Reflections thereupon SECTION I. THAT there was a damnable Conspiracy to introduce Popery and Arbitrary Government carried on long before the great Alarm thereof was given to the three Kingdoms about the Month of September 1678 was well known to all thinking Men and is now put out of question as it is that the late unhappy King James gave Life to it The House of Commons in the first Westminster Parliament after the Dissolution of the Long Parliament in January 1678 declared That the Duke of York being a Papist and his Hopes of coming such to the Crown gave Countenance and Encouragement to the Popish Conspiracies It appeared at that time to both Houses of Parliament by Letters from several Cardinals and others at Rome that the Duke held great Correspondences with the Pope and that his pretended Holiness could not but weep for Joy at the reading some of the Duke's Letters Whereupon a Bill was brought into the House of Commons to disable the Duke to inherit the Crown which upon a second reading in a Committee of the whole House being carried by the Majority of near two to one that Parliament was dissolved and never sat more The honest and most necessary Resolution then taken being thus defeated to the Grief and Astonishment of the greatest part of the Nation the undernamed Lords and Gentlemen viz. the Earl of Shafesbury Earl of Huntingdon Lord Grey of Werk Lord Russel Lord Cavendish Lord Brandon Thomas Wharton Esq Sir William Cowper Sir Gilbert Gerrard Sir Edward Hungerford Sir Henry Calverly Sir Scroop How Thomas Thynne Esq William Forrester Esq and John Trenchund Esq went in Person upon the 26th of June 1680 and presented Reasons to the Grand Jury which served in the Court of King's-Bench for the County of Middlesex for the indicting the Duke of York as a Popish Recusant whereupon that Jury took the Indictment into Consideration But the Judges of that Court getting Information thereof sent for the Jury and in an unheard-of manner hastily dismissed them at a time when many other Indictments were depending before them The former Lords and Gentlemen no way discouraged by the aforesaid denial of Justice upon the 30th of July following together with the Earl of Clare Sir John Cope Sir Rowland Gwynn and Mr. Wandsford did personally prosecute the same Accusation against the Duke before a second Grand Jury but they were in the same arbitrary manner dismissed by the Court to the obstruction of that Prosecution In the ensuing Michaelmas Term 1680 I John Wilmer was returned and sworn upon the Grand Jury which served in the Court of King's-Bench for the County of Middlesex at that time began the Parliament commonly called the second Westminster Parliament from the Dissolution of the late Long Parliament and upon the 11th of November the House of Commons passed a Bill entituled An Act for securing the Protestant Religion by disabling James Duke
of York to inherit the Imperial Crown of England and Ireland which Bill was upon the 15th of November carried up to the Lords by the Great Lord Russel attended by almost all the Commons My then Station as a Grand-Jury-Man my Duty and my Oath obliging me thereunto and I imagining that the just Prosecution of the Duke in the Court of King's-Bench might facilitate the passing that Exclusion-Bill which was then set on soot and carrying on by the great Council of the Kingdom as the only humane Security for our Religion and Liberties I brought in a Bill of Indictment which the present Mr. Serjeant Rotherham drew up against the Duke as a Popish Recusant This Indictment was found by that Grand Jury and presented to the Court. That the defeating of that highly necessary Bill of Exclusion laid the Foundation of all the Calamities which the three Kingdoms do to this day so sensibly feel and groan under will not be now controverted and 't is as certain that hence sprung my future Sufferings It may not therefore be impertinent to remember the World in this place how it fared with that Bill in the House of Lords and I shall do it in the very Words of an Author who in his Preface asserts that the Nation is not a little obliged to Sir Roger L'Estrange a Person who says he might be compared to some Pictures that are placed too near the Sight to discover their true Value and that he is consident that the next Age who will behold him at a more advantageous and impartial Distance will have a truer and far greater Esteem of his Merits This very Author obligingly tells us that on the second reading of the Exclusion-Bill in the Lords House it was debated till 11 a Clock at Night the King being present all the while and then thrown out by a Majority of about 30 Votes in which Majority were all the Bishops then present which were 14. The foregoing Account may be found by the Reader in a very villanous Book wrote by James Wright Esq entituled A compendious View of the Tumults and Troubles of this Kingdom from the beginning of the 30th to the End of the 36th Year of his late Majesty King Charles the second of blessed Memory page 90. printed 1685. Much good may do my Lords the fourteen Bishops with the Honour here done them by this their Admirer But I cannot with-hold my self from observing that the before-mentioned Bill was read once in the House of Lords and being ordered a second reading Blessed Memory above-mentioned that never-failing Defender of the Protestant Faith did in Person sollicite the Popish Cause and by his Influence and by the helping Hand of the fourteen Fathers we were fairly kidnapp'd to Rome and are yet to seek in what Court to bring our Writ de homine replegiando in order to the obtaining a Capias in Withernam against them But 't is out of doubt that the Prosecution of our Deliverance hath already besides a Sea of precious Blood cost the Nation more Treasure than the said Bishops Lands are worth a hundred times over Some modest Reflections on the first Section THE two great Points that Mankind ought in this Life to be most careful in and concerned for are first his Duty to and Worship of his God and the second is like unto it his Duty to his Neighbour which is not only in particular to his Country and Country-men but to all Mankind in general Now the Laws of England bind every Man in his Station to maintain defend and preserve the Civil Government and the Protestant Religion and to let and hinder what in him lieth that may endanger either of the same In the Year 1678 was a discovery of a dangerous and hellish Plot of the Papists that threatned the Ruine of the Government with all our Civil and Religious Rights this wrought in most Men great Thoughtfulness which way to secure themselves and the Nation from this threatned Ruine some were for this and others were for that but in fine the Parliament saw no other way to secure the Nation but a Bill of Exclusion against the Duke of York he standing next in Succession to the Crown upon which the Papists built great Hopes and were mightily emboldned and encouraged by him and their Priests to carry on their Designs for the rooting out the Northern Heresy as they called the Protestant Religion And as the Parliament was herein busied so every honest Man looked upon himself in Duty bound to assist them in so necessary and good a Work I being then on the Grand Jury attending the Term and all Men do or should know a Grand Jury is a Jury of Enquiry I taking notice how illegally the Chief Justice the Term before prevented the Indictment against the Duke of York and perceiving what Heats and Quarrels it begat in City and Country about drinking his Health some affirming he was a Protestant and others refusing it As he was a Papist I thought it my Duty being then on the Jury and being satisfied in my Conscience of his being a Papist I did upon a Political Account bring in a Bill against him which was proved by Witness and found by the Jury The Reasons that moved me to bring in this Bill were as followeth 1. As he was next Heir to the Crown which if he came to would endanger the Overthrow of the Protestant Religion both at home and abroad in regard of his Jesuitical Bigotry and fast Friendship with the French King 2. As he was Brother to the then present King Charles the Second on whom he had a mighty Influence and who himself also had as good a Mind to the Work but acted more craftily and was not willing to go his Brother's pace but take slow and sure Steps for I then could as well and by substantial and credible Witness have proved him as much a Papist as his Brother but that was none of our Work nor lay before us for that a Law was made in the 13th Year of his Reign making it a high Misdemeanour for any to say the King was a Papist or Popishly affected 3. The finding this Bill and the farther Prosecution of it would animate and put Life into the Protestants and be a Check to the Romish Zeal in their Designs and would also put the King upon considering of not venturing all upon the Cast of a Dye especially the Parliament's being then awakened to encourage it and to back it with a Bill of Exclusion And I declare to all the World had the Duke of York been a private Person he might have lived and died a Papist without the least disturbance from me it being always my Judgment not to disturb or prosecute any Man barely for his private Opinion so he were not prompted thereby to Designs for disturbance of the Government and publick Peace But by my doing this I knew the War was begun and my Name in the black Book and I had hereby