Selected quad for the lemma: majesty_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
majesty_n	earl_n	lord_n	precedent_n	3,907	5	10.2488	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A54580	The happy future state of England, or, A discourse by way of a letter to the late Earl of Anglesey vindicating him from the reflections of an affidavit published by the House of Commons, ao. 1680, by occasion whereof observations are made concerning infamous witnesses : the said discourse likewise contains various political remarks and calculations referring to many parts of Christendom, with observations of the number of the people of England, and of its growth in populousness and trade, the vanity of the late fears and jealousies being shewn, the author doth on the grounds of nature predict the happy future state of the realm : at the end of the discourse there is a casuistical discussion of the obligation to the king, his heirs and successors, wherein many of the moral offices of absolution and unconditional loyalty are asserted : before the discourse is a large preface, giving an account of the whole work, with an index of the principal matters : also, The obligation resulting from the Oath of supremacy to assist and defend the preheminence or prerogative of the dispensative power belonging to the king ...	Pett, Peter, Sir, 1630-1699.	1688 (1688)	Wing P1883; ESTC R35105	603,568	476

THE HAPPY Future State of England OR A DISCOURSE by way of LETTER to the late EARL of ANGLESEY Vindicating Him from the Reflections of an AFFIDAVIT Published by the HOUSE of COMMONS Ao 1680. by occasion whereof Observations are made concerning Infamous WITNESSES The said Discourse likewise contains various Political Remarks and CALCULATIONS referring to many Parts of Christendom with Observations of the Number of the People of ENGLAND and of its Growth in Populousness and Trade The Vanity of the late Fears and Iealousies being shewn the Author doth on Grounds of Nature Predict the Happy future State of the Realm At the End of the Discourse There is a Casuistical Discussion of the Obligation of the KING His Heirs and Successors wherein many of the Moral Offices of Absolute and Vnconditional Loyalty are Asserted Before the Discourse is A large PREFACE giving an Account of the whole WORK with an Index of the Principal Matters ALSO The Obligation resulting from the Oath of SUPREMACY to Assist and Defend the Preheminence or Prerogative OF THE Dispensative Power Belonging to the KING His Heirs and Successors In the Asserting of that Power various Historical Passages occurring in the Vsurpation after the Year 1641. are mentioned and an Account is given of the Progress of the Power of Dispensing as to Acts of Parliament about Religion since the Reformation and of diverse Judgments of Parliaments declaring their Approbation of the Exercise of such Power and particularly in what concerns Punishment by Disability or Incapacity LONDON Printed MDCLXXXVIII To the Right Honorable the Earl of Sunderland Lord President of His Majesty's most Honorable Privy-Council and Principal Secretary of State and Knight of the most Noble Order of the GARTER MY LORD FOR one who is sensible how little he knows of things past or present to Dedicate a Discourse of the future State of his Country to your Lordship who are by the Age allow'd to be as Critical a Iudge of Men and Things as any it affords may seem to have in it somewhat of Presumption But when your Lordship shall have had leisure to consider the plain Grounds of Nature on which my Prediction in the following Papers hath gone I will not so much hope that what I have attempted may appear to have been no Presuming as I will expect that your Censure will cast the Presumption on the other side namely on such who were Predictors with a continuando of the Unhappy State of their Country and especially on the account of the Religion of our most Gracious Prince And were I now to have my Iudgment tryed only by that of the Mobile who measure all things by the Events I account I should be out of the Gunshot of Censure since the course of Providence after my writing of the following Work having Conducted His Majesty to fill the Throne of his Ancestors with so many Royal Virtues it has been Conspicuous to them that the Glories of his Reign have transcended the highest flights of my mentioned Expectation And indeed as I remember to have long ago heard one of the Fathers cited for a Passage to this purpose namely that on a Supposal that God recounting to him the Perfections of the Creation should ask him what he could name wanting and that he could wish he would answer Unum Laudatorem Domine so it might till of late be said that in this new Creation or Restoration of England under His Majesty's Reign the only thing we had with anxiety to wish and desire from God next to the ennabling us to Praise his divine Goodness was one whose Talent of noble thoughts and words might be adequate to the celebrating the many Talents of our Prince and their successful Improvement both for the Honour and Security and Ease of his People But neither is such one Praiser now wanting for he who shall read the many late Loyal Addresses from all Parts of the Kingdom will find the People of England to be the Unus Laudator My Lord as I in the following Discourse almost wholly Printed long ago in the last Reign during the freedom of the Press adventured on Grounds of Nature to predict such a growth of Loyalty as would make all England become one sober Party of Mankind and that the more ingenious sort of Iesuits would by natural Instinct throw off those Principles condemned in this Pope's Decree and with Iustice then acknowledged a Sober Party in that order and have at large in p. 322. particularly shew'd my Abhorrence of charging the belief or practice of those Principles on all Persons in that Order So I have likewise in p. 238. given my Iudgment that all Seditious Principles own'd by any who call'd themselves Protestants must naturally decay and have at large in my Preface opposed my measures of futurity to those of a late Father of the Church of England concerning the two Plots that he thought the Papists and Dissenters would be ever carrying on and without his Lordships excepting the Loyal in those religionary Parties But having said this I must likewise say that these happy births of Fate having been but as it were the Births of a Day under the Powerful Influences of His Majesty's Government or as I may say a Nation 's being thus born in a Day are beyond what I did expect and I did little think that with the suddenness of the motion of Lightning when it melts the Sword and spares the Scabbard His Majesty's Declaration of Indulgence to Dissenters would at the same time melt so many hearts and all hostile Principles of the Doctrine of Resistance wrapp'd therein as it spared the Persons of the deluded Opiners I account that any indifferent Observer of the extraordinary sweetness of the way of painting their Loyalty in their Addresses and which resembleth the way of Corregio and is as excellent in its kind as that of the Sons of the Church of England after the way of the bolder touches of Titian in their former Addresses with the Style of LIVES AND FORTUNES was in its must be very hard-hearted if he likewise be not melted into a new kind of Compassion toward such his Brethren and into a noble sense of a great and good Prince having made his Subjects of all Religionary Perswasions Lachrymists for Joy and turned all their hearts to invoke Heaven in wishing for him according to that old Style a long Life a secure Kingdom a safe House valiant Armies a faithful Senate loyal Subjects the world at Peace c. The comparatively narrow Idea's of Charity and Beneficence that Subjects Minds are capable of toward one another do incline them to think chiefly of particular Toleration and such as we call Dispensation and that too with the nicety of Caution and upon Persons making the notification of their Principles and their particular disclaiming of all Disloyal ones previous to their Toleration and beyond this pitch the flights of my poor thoughts have not gone in the following Work. But His Majesty having

of the Papal Usurpations to expose himself to the fencing with two enraged Multitudes which would have produced the same effect as would a Iesuit's Preaching a Postilling Sermon here against the Yearly burning of the Pope to the Populace employed in that Solemnity My Lord I find my self her engulfed in writing a long Letter and the truth is having a great concern for your Lordship's Honour I am willing to take pains to satisfie my self exactly by thus tracing your Lordship's steps on the Stage of the World that I may satisfie others so about your being as averse as any one can be from supporting any Papal Power to invade the rights of Conscience or those of Princes The Roman Historian speaking of Nero saith Tyrannum hunc per quatuordecem annos passus est terrarum orbis And it may truly be said That England formerly has endured the Popes Tyranny and the Artifices of its Favourers for some Ages But the Patience of Man has bounds and the Propagators of such Usurpation who had so long maintain'd a separate Soveraignty here the which is like an Animal living within an Animal did find that as the lesser creature is evacuated by the greater or destroyed therein or doth else destroy the greater Animal it was so held to be in the case of such Power among us and as no doubt it always will be by your Lordship When your Travels were ended and you had with the help of the Education your Father gave you saved him by your knowledge of the Lex terroe from falling as a prey to Arbitrary Power and thereby shewed your self both a good Son and great Patriot the first Scene of publick Employment wherein your Lordship appeared with Eminency was as Governour of Vlster by Authority under the Great Seal of England a Charge of difficulty when the Forces from Scotland under the Command of Major General Munro had so long ruled absolutely there that the English Interest had suffered a great eclipse and diminution How you managed Affairs during your Government there and how by your Councils the most pernitious and potent Rebel Owen Roe O Neil was opposed and his design to swallow up that Province and the Province of Connaught disappointed and the Protestant Interest in both united and encouraged and under your Conduct and Command the Titular Popish Archbishop of Tuam taken and by the seisure of his Cabinet and Papers the Popish design upon Ireland discovered and broken in due time I doubt not you will more particularly inform the World. From that Service your Lordship was upon the ill success of those Commissioners who were first sent to the then Marquess of Ormond employed to make the Capitulation with the said Marquess then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for the Surrender of the City of Dublin and all other Garrisons under his Command into the Parliaments hands for securing them from the Irish Rebels who had invested and streightned the same Which happy work was effectually accomplished by the Articles made with the said Marquess already published to the World And so the Protestants Interest in that Kingdom made entire and so considerable that they daily gained ground of the Confederate Rebels till at length they were wholly subdued and vanquished After those Articles concluded and reception of the said City and Garrisons your Lordship was called back into England where being a Member of the House of Commons you shewed your self no less useful to this Kingdom And have since in Parliament and Council and other great Imployments in both Kingdoms shewed your self an Eminent Instrument both in his Majesties happy Restoration who entirely trusted you with the Management thereof and in other great Affairs of State and Government to general satisfaction being never by those that knew you so much as suspected for Evil Council or want of Zeal and Faithfulness to your King or Countrey but every day gaining more the Love and Esteem of Protestants and Patriots as you had incurred the implacable hatred of the Popish and Arbitrary Factions I cannot here but observe That a little before the Kings Restoration the spirit of the people universally shewing its resentments so strong and vehement against Lambert and his Committee of Safety and against all the propounders of projects of Government that nothing but his Majesties return to the Throne of his Ancestors could quiet the people and your Lordship then as President of the Council by your great Wisdom Contributing highly to the dispatch of many arduous and intricate Affairs requisite to make that great Revolution without bloudshed when things near their Center were moving so fast it may well be reckon'd among impossible things that your Lordship should now espouse the Papal interest when the Vogue the Humour the Sense and Reason and Spirit of the People are bent against it with as keen and strong and general an antipathy as can be imagined And when I consider that great real power you had in the Kingdom at that time testify'd not so much by your signing all the great Commissions then for Military and Civil Employments as by both the King and the best and wisest of the people in the Three Kingdoms putting themselves in your hands and having their eyes chiefly upon you as to the management of the Political part of that mighty concern I cannot but thinking of your Lordship whom thus the King and Kingdom delighted to honour apply to you these words in Valerius Maximus where he speaks of Agrippa Menenius whom the Senate and People chose Arbitrator of their differences and to ●ompose matters between them Quantus scilicet esse debuit arbiter publicae salutis Yet as great as this Man was he could have no Funeral unless the people had by a pole given the sixth part of a penny to defray his Funeral Charges But your Lordships case in one particular seems harder then his for they who unjustly go to take away your good Name and to make a Papist of you go about to bury you alive Had your Lordship after the King's Restoration aspired after the power of a chief Minister or suffered any such to be committed to you you must have took it with the concomitance of universal envy that hath always in England been fatal to such power England having always thought such power fatal to it 'T is the power it self of such a Minister that is look't on as a popular Nusance and t is impossible for such a great Man by raising his power only to what he thinks a moderate height to keep it secure and lasting For tho a Steeple be built with firm Stone great Art and but with a moderate height yet are there Clouds charged with Lightning and Thunder and moving in the Ayr sometimes not higher than the top of such a Steeple and the Pryamid or sharpness of such a Steeple then as I may say tapping or broaching such a Cloud that comes that way is instantly Burnt and Thundered down And the Multitude of the

an erroneous Proposition which he doth not know to be so and believes him he doth not sin but is bound to err because he is bound to believe him meretur volendo credere errorem And he who believes he shall merit by going out of his way I am sure deserves that I should not much trouble my self to go out of mine to put him in the right But this is not the temper of this Worthy Gentleman whom I have reason to esteem a lover of truth quatenus truth and for its own sake and one who doth not account falshood charming or rebelling against the Light meritorious and indeed I have observ'd it in some others as well as him that after they have deserted the Church of England their inquisitiveness in Religion has not been at its Journeys end but has still continued in its way and that so far that Holy Church and they have oft been apt secretly to be weary of one another The Rational Religion they were first educated in has had the allurements of the Natale solum that they could never wholy overpower I have known three Earls one whereof was of the Kingdom of Ireland and the other two of England and all of them were men of great Wit and Parts and such who being brought up in the Religion of the Church of England went off from it to the Church of Rome but receded not from the candour of their tempers nor from the Society of their old Friends nor from the frank readiness to discourse with them about the controverted Points of both Churches and neither of them perverted their Wives or Children to Popery and the eldest Sons of them all are eminent Sons of the Church of England and do make considerable figures in the State. One of those three Earls is yet living and in him lives the great example of an English Nobleman adorning Nobility by his intellectual and Moral Endowments and by a Majesty mixt with incomparable sweetness in his familiar Converse and by a consummate Loyalty to his Prince that Envy it self never spotted and by such an exact Observation of his Faith given to any of Mankind that he would no more violate it with an Heretick then with a Patriarch or Apostle and by having been never suspected from using any Iesuite-Confessors to learn how to evade from solid Honour by subtle distinctions or once to allow the least Chicanery in God's Great Court of Conscience And if we cast our thoughts on France we shall there find that the great and the brave Turen after he had so unfortunately thrown himself at the Popes Feet had there his Arms as ready to embrace his Protestant Friends as ever I have heard of two Crown'd Heads of the Church of Rome who were very unkind to their Protestant Subjects after stipulations to the contrary the one was Ferdinand of Bohemia who when Cardinal Cleselius Bishop of Vienna told him that if he made War on the Bohemians the destruction of that flourishing Kingdom would certainly follow answered We would rather have the Kingdom destroyed then damned the other was Queen Mary of England who as the Acts and Monuments tells us being intent on the Restoring the Abby-Lands and discoursing with Four of her Privy-Counsellors about the same said perhaps you may object to me again that the State of my Kingdom the Dignity thereof and my Crown Imperial cannot be honourably maintain'd without the Possessions aforesaid yet notwithstanding I set more by the Salvation of my Soul then by Ten Kingdoms and the Reign of each of these was besmear'd with Blood but had they been born and bred Lambs I believe that no Transmutation of the Blood of Tygres into them would have made them such The Famous Iulian of whom 't was said Nunc Apostolicus Nunc Vilis Apostata factus had learned too much Christianity when he was a Reader to be a raging Blood-sucker and if when Emperor he had had e're a Name-sake that collected the Madrigals or Hymns against him he would perhaps have done him no harm The low birth and the Poverty and Mercenary disposition of Iudas tempted him to betray his Master with a kiss but he was so far wrought on by the good Company he had kept that he afterwards kill'd none else but himself and they are such perverted Protestants generally that are of the same rate with Iudas for Birth and Poverty and paultry Avarice that I should desire to stand out of the way from and to avoid the Vermine of such Renegadoes and they are only such Popish Princes as Ferdinand and Mary that in their Education were never imbued with better Principles then the bloody ones of Popery that I should fear as Monsters and account any Kingdom but a Den if I lived therein with them and when ever I happen to dispute about that Notion in vogue that Vertue it self in a Popish Successor will be a Nusance and make him a bloody Bigot I answer with a distinction and grant it is likely to be so in one who passed from the Breast in Infancy to suck in Sanguinary Principles but where in any Successor the Tenets of Popery when he is on the Borders of old Age are Successors to Principles of a Noble and Rational Religion that he has grown up into youth and manhood with I shall account my fears very wild and irrational if my hopes do not grow up with them as to my promising my self that he will at least answer Bocalines Character of the best Reformer of the World namely one that leaves it as he finds it and do suppose the practicableness of what is Savage in Nature being reclaim'd in one Animal toward another it was educated with will be allowed from the frequent and trivial spectacle of the Lion and the Lamb that were bred up together and who without the help of Miracle and Prophecy were taught by Nature to lye down together and shall account the same persons injurious to the World who fishing in troubled waters of the State say the worse the better and of such a Prince educated in Protestancy and then perhaps turning Papist the better the worse and especially when the Laws have espous'd us to his Line for better for worse Our acute and profound Mr. Chillingworth in Mature years went over to the Church of Rome and in his course there made a short turn and the Natale solum of the Church of England charm'd him soon back again and he by the culture of his reason made the Soil a hundred fold amends for his temporary deserting it But Princes and Potentates are under higher temptations then his low Station placed him in not to be seen to retreat especially after their having once done it before and may suppose that other Princes will look on them as more slippery and unsafe to be dealt with if the same Principles once congeal'd or hardened in them and afterward dissolv'd should be congeal'd again just as the Earth is more slippery and unsafe

of his Mind that he would never consent to any such thing must necessarily appear to the considerate a Scruple fit to be thrown off Much more then must it appear to such to have been a vile Scruple to have fancied it lawful to pronounce men Enemies to the Kingdom because they so loyally defended the Hereditary Monarchy according to their Oaths in that HOT Conjuncture wherein the Air of mens fancies was so generally infected And as in any long Intervals of extreme hot or cold weather not to participate with the generality of mens bodies in some sensible effects of it would argue somewhat of distemper in ones Constitution so in the late heat of the Populace against Popery it was inconsistent with the soundness of Loyalty not some way to partake of the effects of that heat and as I have sometimes perhaps too much with many other Loyal Persons done I remember to have read it somewhere in a Print full of Wit and Loyalty said with gayety of humour to this purpose viz. That while a whole Nation was drunk meaning I suppose intoxicated with the belief of Witnesses telling incredible things and the Populace being thereupon drunk with Anger and Rage against the Persons of the Papists it was to little purpose for any one man to be sober The Notions that men had of a Plot were very various Some then were so far gone in Credulity as like the Fool that Solomon saith believeth every word they were resolved to believe every thing the Witnesses had said or would say The Loyal generally acquiesced in the Notification of it as published by the Government and thereby discharged part of the Moral Obligations of the Oaths I have discoursed of whereby they were to defend all the RIGHTS and Privileges belonging to the King his Heirs c. and one of those Rights and Privileges is what is allowed by the Law of Nations to all Sovereign Princes namely To have faith given to their publick attestation of any Fact. Yet Religion allowing men the use of the judicium discretionis about the sense and importance of the Writ divinely inspired they modestly employed their Discretion in considering what by the Dii nominales was published and if any thing therein seemed above their reason and not contrary to it their faith rested therein But the Loyal soon found that the fears and jealousies of Popery began more and more to turn into fears and jealousies relating to the Witnesses Veracity and they could not without a profound horror and astonishment reflect on the intoxication of a gaeat Body of Men believing some incarnate Devils in accusing one that had appeared to Christendom as great a Saint of her Sex as the steady practice of all Moral Vertues glorifying a heavenly mind on Earth could render her and who with such a Character must shine as a Star in the History of the Age. That many of the Popish Clergy about that time vainly endeavoured to have their Religion Paramount and had hopes to get their Lands again none will think impossible who have since seen some of our Schismatical Pastors so infatuated as to think it practicable for them again to thrive by their old Religion-Trade And that such particular Persons as were by the late Earl of Clarendon in his Book against Cressy printed in the Year 1673. remarked for the petulant and unruly Spirit that sw●yed too much among them might continue in the year 1673. no wise man doubted for the said Earl there said The wisest and soberest Catholicks of England did all they could to restrain that petulant and unruly Spirit Many sagacious Protestants who knew the irreligious Principles that the Iesuits Writings swarmed with were apt to fear that there were then endeavours to have some of them practised by some ill men who were Bigots or Paupers and whom necessity might prompt to be merc●nary in making disorders in the State. The Iudicious and Learned Bishop Morly was observed then to have some Notion or Idea of a Popish Plot peculiar to himself And as then many had their various Conceptions of the noised Plot so many loyal and serious thinking Persons supposing it to be very unreasonable and barbarous to involve the whole Body of a Religion in the guilt of some particular Persons and on any pretence to bereave them of that freedom in the profession of their Religion that both the Law of the Land and of God allowed them did employ their thoughts and fancies for the reclaiming the Age from the humour of severity then shewed to the Persons of Papists in general The Earl of Anglesy one of his Majesties Great Ministers publickly moved him in the hot Conjuncture to release all Papists and even Priests out of Prison who were not charged with any thing of a Plot. And the Disloyalty of many Nominal Protestants then appearing in their many published Prints it seemed very horrid to all ingenious men that the lives and liberties of Loyal innocent Papists should be sacrificed to feed the humours or appetites of any Beasts of Prey in the Ark of the Protestant Church I speak with Allusion to those thousands of harmless Sheep in Noahs Ark employed in feeding about 20 pair of Carnivorous Beasts there I thank God that while I was a sharer With many of the Loyal in the hatred of the Irreligionary Principles formerly maintained by the Court of Rome and many of its Churchmen and particularly of those of the Iesuits which that Court hath lately disclaimed I have likewise shared with them in the Disclaiming of hatred or enmity to any mens Persons whether Iesuits or Iesuited Protestants and I desire to live no longer than I shall with the most perfect hatred abhor the Popery of founding Dominion in Grace and endeavour to perswade all pretended Protestants but real half-Papists so to hate the same but likewise with a perfect Love to love the Persons of their Brethren-Papists And it is with Justice to be by all men to our Popish fellow-Subjects acknowledged that whatever petulance some of them were formerly guilty of or of any ambitious design of making too great a Figure in the internal Government of the Nation yet that the deportment of the generality of them hath of late appeared with such a face not only of Loyalty but Modesty and Complaisance with his Majesties measures in employing the hands and heads of Protestants of the Church of England in the Management of the great matters of State as is necessarily attractive of our Christian Love and Compassion and the rather for that we have seen at the same time many Factious Anti-Papists to have made a greater Figure in the internal Government of the Kingdom than ever any Papists did in the Reigns of King Iames and the Royal Martyr and to have thereby given disturbance both to the External Government and the Hereditary Monarchy I did observe for some Considerable time after the Plot-epoche somewhat of a becoming Humanity and Gentleness in many Anti-Papists relating