ill men upon his Royal mind c. Now let all the World judge betwixt the King and this Party they grant the King has been heretofore compliant enough to their desires and then in the rudest Language that spight and scorn could dictate conclude against sense and reason that it was not fondness to his Brother nor kindness to the Monarchy but the ill influence of a few men that had thus disposed him A likely thing that he which could give up a Brother and be so unconcerned for his Crown should be so stupid rather than stiff as to venture all for a few ill men Creatures to the Duke and Pensioners to France wicked Wretches who have infected him with the fatal Notion that the Interests of his People are not only distinct but opposite to his No words I can write are sharp enough to reprove this Miscreant that thus rails against his and my Sovereign the Lords Anointed and therefore to God Almighty I leave it He tells us in the next place his Majesty doth not seem to doubt of his Power in Conjunction with his Parliament to Exclude his Brother He very well knows this Power hath been often Exerted in the time of his Predecessors Yes doubtless his Majesty hath read the English Story and observed at the same time that more Princes have been deposed by Pretended power of Parliament than Excluded and he very well knows that if he shall yield that an Argument drawn from Example is valid he will then stand upon slippery ground He also knows that the right Heir was never put by but a good plenty of Miseries Wars and Calamities followed upon it and he is able to foresee that if the same should happen again the French King may easily possess himself of these miserable Kingdoms and therefore it is fairly probable love to his People as well as his Brother hath kept him from consenting The reasons he saith that his Majesty hath aliedged are because it concerned him so near in Honour Justice and Conscience not to do it And are not these three powerful Arguments But my Author can ridicule them and turn them all against the King It is not saith he honourable for a Prince to be true and faithful to his Word and Oath To keep and maintain the Religion and Laws Established Yes who doth question it but all this and all that he hath said besides may be done without Excluding his Brother who would have just as much right supposing the King dies without lawful Issue to the Reversion as his Majesty hath to the present Possession And can his Majesty wrong him of that Right without a blemish to his Honour Justice and Conscience Who will ever after dare to relie upon his Majesty if they once see him desert his own Brother But that which follows is amazing All Obligations of Honour Justice and Conscience are comprehended in a grateful return of such benefits as have been received can his Majesty believe that he doth duly repay unto his Protestant Subjects the kindness they shewed him when they recalled him from a miserable helpless Banishment and with so much dutiful affection placed him in the Throne enlarged his Revenue above what any of his Predecessors had enjoyed and gave him vaster Sums of Money in twenty years than had been bestowed upon all the Kings since William the First Should he after all this deliver them up to be ruined by his Brother It should have been Should he after all this deliver them up to be ruined by the Dissenter and the Faction that Murthered his Father drew up an Oath of Abjuration of the whole Family of the Stuarts hanged plundered murthered sequestred and destroyed so many of his Loyal Nobility Gentry and Clergy Sir I am not so ill bred as to Catechise my Sovereign but I thing I may without offence ask the Whigs a few small questions Have you the impudence after all the Villanies you have done to Usurp the Loyalty that you never were guilty of Was it not enough to banish your Sovereign and keep him twelve years in that miserable helpless condition but you must reproach him too with it Did he not pardon you when you had sormited your Lives and all you had to his Justice by all the Laws of God and man Must he once more put himself into your power that he may try whether you will use him as you did his Father Have you not repined at his Restitution endeavoured to Banish him the second time by all the Arts imaginable Have you not murmur'd at all that has been given him Slandered that Parliament that gave it whilst it fate and since it was dissolved laboured to represent it to the Nation as the worst Parliament that ever sate Have not you Sir called them Danby's Pensioners Mercenary Pensioners c. And can you shew any vast or indeed competent Sums of Money given to the King since you know when And after all this have you the insolence to call your selves Protestants or own your selves Subjects And expect the King should in pure gratitude for what you never did lay all at your feet again As for those Protestant Subjects who besides all that you have falsely ascribed to your selves fought for him and his Father they do not fear his Majesties Brother would ruine them if he could and therefore have by thousands thanked his Majesty for his care in preserving the Succession in its due and legal course of descent In the next Paragraph my Author is very Politick and tells us Our Ancestors have been always more careful to preserve the Government inviolable than to favour any personal pretences and have therein conformed themselves to the practice of all other Nations whose examples deseve to be followed That is they have been more careful to preserve the Mornarchy it self and the Liberties of the Subject than the due and legal Descent in the Succession This is certainly true And they have paid well for neglecting the other as is apparent to any body that has read the History of England I will instance only in the Wars betwixt the Houses of Lancaster and York Richard II. being deposed and murthered Henry IV. who had no Title but was a brave Prince was set up But mark the Consequence before this Quarrel could be ended in B sworth Field there perished 80998 Private Souldiers two Kings one Prince ten Dukes two Marquesses twenty one Earls twenty seven Lords two Vicounts once Lord Prior one Judge one hundred thirty nine Knights four hundred forty one Esquires and my Author knows not how many Gentlemen in twelve Battels The total saith my Author of all the persons that have been slain is 85628. Christians and most of them of this Nation Is it fit to run the Risque of suffering all this over again As to his Examples of Princes that have been Excluded upon the account of Religion or for other smaller matters they prove nothing but that ill
eminent men that had never bowed the knee to Baal So that Story was set up which he was not able to prove one Syllable of at his Trial but however it was easily enough believed by them who love to make the King and Court as odious as they can as well as the Papists My Author goes on The heinous nature of the Crime and the greatness of the Persons supposed to be concerned deserved an extraordinary Examination which a Jury who were only to enquire whether Fitz-Harris was guilty of framing that Libel could never make and the Commons believed none but the Parliament was big enough to go through with it The Trial of this Person being extant I must for brevity refer my Reader to it and I see not how it had been possible for the Parliament to have sifted that business of Fitz-Harris his being put upon this by the Court to ruine the eminent men more narrowly than it was at the Trial and there was not one syllable proved by any of the Witnesses he produced which were many and persons of great worth only Mr. Oates said he heard Everard say some such thing which Everard again denied upon his Oath And Sir William Waller owned he had heard the King was discontented at his troubling him with this business but Sir William Waller Mr. Smith and Mr. Everard proved it positively upon him that he had ordered the drawing of that Libel had approved of it when it was drawn and amended some words in it with his own hands And now after all this to lay the Crime upon the Court upon the suggestion of the Malefactor was such a piece of Justice as never was attempted Nor did they the Commons only fear the perversion of Justice but the misapplication of Mercy too c. because when Fitz-Harris was inclined to Repentance and had begun a Confession to the surprize of the whole Nation without any visible cause he was taken out of the lawful custody of the Sheriffs and shut up a close prisoner in the Tower That he had not only begun but gone through with a Confession appears by a Printed Narrative taken by two which I think were both of the House of Commons one I am sure was And when notwithstanding this some eminent men began to tamper with him to turn all this upon the Court then and not before was he taken out of the custody of the Sheriffs and put into the Tower that they might not make an ill use of him to the Damage of the King and the Government The Commons had therefore no other way to be secure that the prosecution should be effectual the Judgment indifferent and the Criminal out of all hopes of Pardon unless by an ingenuous Confession be could engage both Houses in a powerful mediation to his Majesty in his behalf But by impeaching him they were sure no pardon could stop their suit tho the King might release his own Prosecution by his Pardon What need there was here of any further or more ingenuous Confession that he should make than what he had made I cannot imagine but we may guess it was meant that if Fitz-Harris should lay the blame of this Libel on the Court and say it was designed to Trappan the eminent men then they would try to get him pardoned but if he did not do this then he should have been hanged without mercy Well But what if the King would not have consented to the Pardon which was to have been purchased with his dishonour Then the Commons would not have proceeded with their impeachment and the Consequence would have been if the Lords had not rejected the Impeachment that then no inferiour Court could have tried him and so he should never have been tried So that it is plain that if the Lords had not rejected this Impeachment it would as the King saith in the Declaration have been made use of to delay a Trial that We had directed against a profess'd Papist charged with Treasons against Vs of an extraordinary nature And certainly the House of Peers did themselves Right in refusing to give countenance to such a proceeding Part of the 36 and all the 37 38 39 Pages are spent by my Author to prove that a Commoner may be tried by the Peers in Parliament upon an Impeachment of the Commons in which matter I will have no Controversie with him because he may be in the right for ought I know And I have as little to say to him whether such Commoners as are tried there ought to have any Juries or whether the Lords rejecting the Impeachment was or only looked like a denial of Justice For it is plain that as good justice might be had and in this case was had in the Kings Bench as could have been had before the Lords and if Fitz-Harris had been acquitted there then the Commons might afterwards have impeached him of any branch of Treason that was not or could not have been tried in the Kings Bench so that the pretence he makes that part of his Treasons were thought such as could only be adjudged in Parliament is impertinent for the remainder were apparently such as he ought to be hanged for in an inferiour Court and he could suffer but once and the taking notice of the rest would have been impertinent I think I may modestly say this that the impeachment of Commoners before the Lords is so extraordinary a way that it would be used as little as is possible but these Gentlemen were for nothing else and Thompson Sheridon Verdon and the Lord knows how many more were to have been thus proceeded against tho they were not persons of such extraordinary degree or quality but they might full as well have been tried in any other Court and the Consequence of this would have been that neither the Lords nor Commons would have had any leisure for any thing else but this Might it not be well retorted by the People that it had been long a matter extremely sensible to them that so many Prorogations so many Dissolutions so many other Arts had been used to delay the Trials which his Majesty had often desired and the Parliament prepared for against the five professed Popish Lords charged with Treasons of an extraordinary nature The King might if he had pleased have charged this upon the Commons too that notwithstanding the long time they had been imprisoned yet the Commons would not go on with their Trials that they might legally and regularly be discharged The Impeachment of the Earl of Danby before they had tried these five Lords occasioned the dissolution of the Long Loyal Parliament A Controversie betwixt the Lords and the Commons about the Trial of the said Earl of Danby broke the next Parliament Then comes the second short Westminster Parliament and having tried only one of them the Earl of Stafford when all the World were in expectation they would have gone on and have tried the other
four they fell upon the Exclusion Bill and that being rejected by the Lords they fell upon the Revenue and seemingly Voted the King a Bankrupt Jar. 7. by declaring that no man ought to trust him further than he had ready money nor lend him any and Declared that several eminent men of the Privy Counsellors were favourers of Popery and enemies to the King and Kingdom and for which and the other things they were dissolved then comes that at Oxford with the Votes I have recited for which and for insisting upon the Bill for Excluding the Duke of York they were dissolved Could none of these Parliaments have tried the Popish Lords without these things Yes doubtless they might but they would not but kept these Lords in the Tower that whatever provocation they should give the King to Dissolve or Prorogue them still the clamour might be that it was to prevent their Trials And I am fully persuaded there are some men in England would almost choose to be hanged themselves rather than be deprived of this glorious and popular pretence of insensing the People against the King and the Court. If there be no other Evidence of the Unparliamentary and mean Solicitations used to promote this pretended Rejection of the Commons Accusation than this scurvy Hint in my Author which he acknowledgeth not fit to be remembred tho he cannot forbear Printing it I suppose it is but a small part of the Nation that will be extremely sensible of it But yet however if their Impeachment had not been rejected Fitz-Harris had long since been executed or deserved mercy by a full discovery of these malicious designs against the King and People and the secret Authors of them And that he would certainly have done to have saved his own life and then we should have had an opportunity to have made the World believe that the King did hire Fitz-Harris to raise a Rebellion against himself to defame himself and insense the minds of the People against him for thus he defamed the King at his Trial. This was all he could do to merit a Pardon by and this he did at his Trial but was able to produce no testimony to back it But this Trial occasioned strange talk in Westminster Hall and Questions were raised of a strange nature that will never have a determination in any inferiour Court but will assuredly at one time or other have a further Examination These questions were moved then by Fitz-Harris his Counsel and need never be determined By the Term in the Declaration of the Lords having done themselves right by refusing to admit the Impeachment he hath discovered the Penman of the Declaration and says he has done himself and the Nation Right and discovered himself by using his ordinary Phrase upon this occasion Now I thought verily the next word would have been his Name no but stay you there The Person is well known without naming him who always tells men they have done themselves no right when he is resolved to do them none Now cannot I tell any more whom he means by this private token than the man in the Moon and if he had graciously vouchsafed to have whispered his name in my Ear and I had known that he had usually thus expressed himself yet I should still be a little jealous some Frenchman or other might be the Author of it because my Author hath given full as good evidence Page 5. to prove it was so As for the Commons nothing says my Author was carried on to extremity by them nothing done but what was Parliamentary they could not desire a Conference till they had first stated their own Case and asserted by Votes the matter which they were to maintain at a Conference This was done effectually in the first part of the first and second Vote without adding That the refusal of the Lords to proceed in Parliament upon such Impeachment is a denial of Justice and a violation of the Constitution of Parliaments and in the second Vote and an obstruction to the further discovery of the Popish Plot and of great danger to his Majesties Person and the Protestant Religion Here the Declaration lays the stress of the business and says That when either of the Houses are so far transported as to pass such Votes concerning the proceedings of the other without Conferences first had to examine upon what grounds such proceedings are made and how far they might be justified this puts the Two Houses out of a Capacity of Transacting business together and consequently is the greatest violation of the Constitution of Parliaments Now surely the House of Commons might have asserted their Right without these Expressions which must needs insense the Lords especially when they were Printed and spread over the whole Nation But the House of Commons was so far from thinking themselves to be out of a Capacity of Transacting with the Lords any further that they were preparing to send a Message for a Conference to Accommodate this difference at the very instant when the Black Rod called them to their dissolution But this it is very probable was not known to his Majesty so that it came too late to save them If every difference in Opinion and Vote should put the Two Houses out of a Capacity of transacting business together every Parliament must be dissolved as soon as called Now Sir I could never have thought that it is so usual a thing for the Two Houses to make such Votes as these against each other I am persuaded the Lords would never have treated with the Commons if a Conference had been demanded till the Conclusions of the first and second Vote had been recanted But the Ministers promoted this difference between the Two Houses what did any of them dictate these Votes and then broke the Parliament lest it should be composed And for this my Author gives you his own honest word over again in the next Page and hopes no man will be so hard-hearted as not to believe him But my Author hath another quarrel against the Ministers because they censure these Votes of the Commons as the greatest violation of the Constitution of Parliaments They ought certainly says my Author to have excepted the power which is here assumed of giving such a Judgment and Publishing such a charge as being not only the highest violation of the Constitution but directly tending to the destruction of it Well then I for my part will never undertake to defend them in it Aut I have observed one thing in these debates that the Priviledges of the House of Commons are not much unlike the Power claimed by the Pope which is to judge all men and to be judged by no man So that whatever they are pleased to call Priviledge of Parliament I am bound to believe is so with an implicit faith For these Priviledges of Parliament are known to none but those that sit in St. Stephens Chappel and if