Selected quad for the lemma: majesty_n
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A38384
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Englands concern in the case of His R.H.
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1680
(1680)
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Wing E2953; ESTC R4819
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21,170
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27
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be a greater Evil than that from which we intended to be freed The two first parts of this Assertion are very plain because Religion or Christianity alters not the Political Constitutions of any Society and because Popery in England hinders no man from being Heir to Real or Personal Estates the third therefore is to be made evident to wit That Prudence and Reason tell us the D. ought not to be barr'd of Succession I say then This Act is not onely unjustifiabie at present but in future and consequence as what will bring upon the whole Nation irreparable Mischiefs Where there are more hazards of an ill than a good Event the Action is in prudence to be avoided In great and momentous Instances new Experiments are not to be tryed nor indeed in any Case or Distemper where the Remedy is like to prove more fatal than the Disease Now to give or allow so boundless arbitrary and despotick a Power as that of putting by the next Heir or punishing ex post facto either in the King alone who is obliged under the Obligations of Oaths and Interest to govern by the stated Measures of Law or in him when advising with both Houses whose Power is so far from being co-ordinate or independent that it is onely communicated or derivative from the Prince as Streams from the Fountain and therefore can add or give him nothing new is to subject and enslave our selves and our Posterities For if every one be a Papist whom Faction or Malice Presumption or slight Circumstances and no positive Proofs have made so and if the right Heir on this account or for being really a Papist may be despoiled of his Right by Parliament since there can be greater Crimes or Evils than Popery which we all acknowledge consistent with Salvation what can secure all future Princes even the King at any time in being from being laid aside and dethron'd To endeavour so absolute a Subversion of our Government if it be not Treason is to design if it be pursued that which cannot but happen Anarchy and Confusion and all the Calamities of an unnatural Civil War Against this there is but one Objection That in the notion of a Parliament a King is implied and nothing can be supposed to consent to his own Ruine This I confess is true in nature in Thest but not in the fact in Hypothesi for what has been once done may be again Tumults and Factions Cunning and Address may make a Prince quit his Crown to save his Life and yet none ever lost the first but soon after did the second nay every Flower or Jewel he parts with is a step or advance to his Grave And the Considerer of the Weighty Considerations leaves in this Objection no Force by mentioning the Seconds of the Edwards and Richards deposed by Parliamentary Authority he might have added to his Catalogue the late Royal martyr'd CHARLES While this Book in many Passages treasonable is publickly sold before the Doors of Parliament who can lay aside fatal Apprehensions especially when Two Houses of Commons have successively prepared a Bill disposing of the Crown contrary to the King 's express Commands and former Presidents And because I will not run to far back and that Queen Elizabeth is renown'd for one of the best of our Princes I will instance what in some great Points hapned in her Reign concerning the Commons intermedling in the Ecclesiastical and the Crown Affairs their Right and her Prerogative In the Twenty third year of her Reign when the House of Commons first ordered to have a Time of Prayer and Humiliation appointed in the Temple on Sunday-fort'night after the Queen hindred it and sent a Message to the House by Mr. Vice-Chamberlain declaring That her Highness had great admiration of the rashness of this House in committing such an apparent Contempt of her express Command as to put in execution such an Innovation without her privity and pleasure first known And thereupon Mr. Vice-Chamberlain moved the House to make humble Submission to her Majesty acknowledging the said Offence and Contempt craving a Remission of the same with a full purpose to forbear the committing of the like hereafter And by the consent of the whole House Mr. Vice-Chamberlain carried their Submission to her Majesty Likewise in the Twenty eighth year of her Reign the Queen said She was sorry the Commons medled with Chusing and Returning Knights of the Shire for Norfolk a thing impertinent for the House to deal withal and onely belonging to the Office and Charge of the Lord Chancellor from whom the Writs issue and are returned In the Thirty ninth year of her Reign the Commons by their Speaker complaining of Monopolies the Queen made answer by the the Lord Keeper That she hoped her dutiful and loving Subjects would not take away her Prerogative which is the chiefest Flower in her Garland and the principal and head Pearl in her Crown and Diadem but that they will rather leave that to her disposition In the Thirty fifth year of her Reign Mr. Peter Wentworth and Sir Henry Bromley delivered a Petition to the Lord Keeper desiring the Lords of the Upper House to be Suppliants with them of the Lower House unto her Majesty for Entailing the Succession of the Crown whereof they had a Bill ready drawn Her Majesty was highly displeas'd herewith as contrary to her former strait Command and charged the Council to draw the Parties before them Sir Thomas Henage sent for them and commanded them to forbear the Parliament and not to go out of their several Lodgings After they were called before the Lord Treasurer the Lord Buckhurst and Sir Thomas Henage Mr. Wentworth was committed by them to the Tower Sir Henry Bromley and other Members of the House of Commons to whom he imparted the Matter were sent to the Fleet. And in the same Parliament when Mr. Morriee Attorney of the Court of Wards moved against the hard Courses of the Bishops Ordinarles and other Ecclesiastical Judges in their Courts and spake against Subscriptions and Oaths offering a Bill to be read against Imprisonment for refusal of Oaths the same afternoon Sir Edward Coke then Speaker was sent for to Court where the Queen her self gave him a Message to the House declaring It being wholly in her power to call to determine to assent or dissent to any thing done in Parliament That the calling of this was onely that the Majesty of God might be more Religiously observed by compelling by some sharp Laws such as neglect that Service and that the Safety of her Majesties Person and the Realm might be provided for It was not meant they should meddle with Matters of State or Causes Ecclesiastical and she wondred that any could be of so high commandment to attempt a thing so expresly contrary to that which she had commanded wherefore with this she was highly offended And because the Words spoken by my Lord Keeper are not now perhaps well remembred or
some be now here that were not then present her Majesties present Charge and express Command is That no Bill touching the said Matter of State or Reformation in Causes Ecclesiastical be exhibited And upon my Allegiance saith the Speaker I am charged if any such Bill be exhibited not to read it I have been credibly informed That the Queen sent a Messenger or Serjeant at Arms into the House of Commons and took out Mr. Morrice and committed him to Prison Within few days after I find Mr. Wroth moved in the House That they might be humble Suitors to her Majesty that she would be pleas'd to set at liberty those Members of the House that were restrained which was accordingly done And answer was sent them by her Privy-Council That her Majesty had committed them for Causes best known to her self and to press her Highness with this Suit would but hinder them whose good they sought That the House must not call the Queen to an account for what she doth of her Royal Authority That the Causes for which they are restrained may be high and dangerous That her Majesty liketh no such Questions neither doth it become the House to search into Matters of that nature In 39 Eliz. the Commons were told Their Privilege was Yea and No And that her Majesties pleasure was That if the Speaker perceived any idle Heads which would not stick to hazard their own Estates but meddle with reforming the Church and transforming the Commonweal by exhibiting Bills to that purpose the Speaker should not receive them till they were view'd and consider'd by those who are fitter to consider of such things and can better judge of them And at the end of this Parliament the Queen rejected Forty eight Bills which had passed both Houses All these Passages are expresly to be found in the Records and Registries of the Council-Table and are quoted by Sir Robert Filmer in his Free holders Grand Inquest p. 77 c. and by Mr. Howel sometimes Clerk of the Council in his Philanglus p. 57 c. and several others By which it appears That this grand Privilege of Parliament Liberty of Speech which at present makes so great a Noise in the World was not in this good Queens Reign half so considerable as People now would fain persuade us It was of no great antiquity in her days but a Favour first begged in King Henry the Eighth's Reign by Sir Thomas Moore then Speaker of the House of Commons who prayed the King in the behalf of the House That if in Communication and Reasoning any man should speak more largely than of duty he ought to do that all such Offences should be pardoned and this to be entred upon Record which was accordingly granted by the King And the same Favour was allowed by Queen Elizabeth in the beginning of her Reign to Thomas Gargrave then Speaker since whose time this Privilege was always humbly desired by the Speakers for themselves and the whole House of Commons and favourably granted by their Sovereign Yet this Privilege extended onely to rash unadvised ignorant or negligent Escapes and Slips in Speech which People are subject to let fall in the heat of their Debates not to wilful Reflections much less to treasonable Speeches against the King and Government as sufficiently appears not onely by the aforesaid Proceedings in Queen Elizabeth's time but also by the Transactions of her Father's Reign where we find that Richard Strood and his Complices were not thought sufficiently protected by this Privilege for their free Speech in the House unless their Pardon were expresly confirmed by the King in Parliament to which purpose there is a printed Statute enacted in King Henry the Eighth's time And in Queen Mary's days Plowden was Fin'd in the King's Bench for Words spoken by him in Parliament against the Queen's Dignity See Filmer ubi supra Mr. Fowlis Hist of the Plots Conspiracies of the Pretended Saints in it This was well known to our British Solomon King James who finding the House of Commons encroaching too far upon the Prerogative sent the ensuing Letter from Newmarket to Sir Thomas Richardson their Speaker Mr. Speaker We have heard to our grief That our distance from the Parliament caused by our indisposition of Health hath emboldned some fiery and popular Spirits of the Lower House to debate Matters above their Capacity to our Dishonour and breach of Prerogative Royal. These are therefore to command you to make known to them That none hereafter shall presume to medle with any thing concerning our Government or Matters of State with our Sons Match with the Daughter of Spain nor to touch the Honour of that King or any other our Friends or Confederates nor with any Mans Particulars which have their due Motion in our ordinary Courts of Justice And whereas they have sent a Message to Sir Edwin Sandis to know the Reasons of his late Restraint you shall resolve them It was not for any Misdemeanour of his in Parliament But to put them out of doubt of any Question hereafter of that nature We think our self very free and able to punish any Mans Misdemeanours in Parliament as well sitting there as after which we mean not to spare hereafter upon any Occasion of any Mans. And if they have touch'd any Point which We have here forbidden in any Petition of theirs which is to be sent to Vs tell them except they reform it We will not daign the Hearing or Answering Newmarket Decemb. 3. 1621. Sanderson's History of King James pag. 510. And likewise in the same Parliament when the House of Commons much insisted upon their Privileges calling them their ancient and undoubted Inheritance this wise Prince in a second Letter to the Speaker plainly and truly told them That most Privileges of Parliament grew from Precedents which shews rather a Toleration than an Inheritance therefore he could not allow of the Style calling it their ancient and undoubted Right and Inheritance but could rather have wished that they had said their Privileges were derived from the Grace and Permission of his Ancestors and him And thereupon he concludes He cannot with patience endure his Subjects to use such Antimonarchical Words concerning their Liberties except they had subjoyned That they were granted unto them by the Grace and Favour of his Predecessors Yet he promiseth to be careful of whatsoever Privileges they enjoyed by long Custom and uncontrolled and lawful Precedents Sanderson's Hist p. 519. 520. Now add to this That if the King should be drawn to consent to the Bill of Exclusion after his several Declarations to the contrary he cannot but be concluded under a Constraint which alone makes the Act void in it self it being absolutely necessary that the Commons Lords and the Kings Consent should be free from all Restraint and Terrour and we know that Acts of Parliament in 15 Edw. 3. and 10 Ric 2. were repealed meerly because the King's Consent was forced Moreover if