the Common Laws of England some part of the Civil and Canon Laws and a great part of the Records of the Kingdom and much honoured for his love and care of Justice But being a Judge in those Times and seduced by another of that Rank to take such a place upon him upon the pretence of keeping up and supporting the Law and was upon his Majesties Restauration advanced into an higher degree seemed notwithstanding not to have been so much or so well read as he might have been in the Feudall Laws excellent constitution and frame of the Monarchick Government of this Realm when in that House of Commons either in a cool neutrality or over perswaded by by his fears of or desire of living in safety or to preserve the Common Law when against his will and well known Integrity he was in that house of Commons in Parliament heard by another Member that Sat next unto him to say or declare his opinion that the King was trusted by the People wherein he might have better considered that two parts of our Laws most precious and necessary both to and for the King and his People which were the Summoning and calling of Parliaments or Great Councells and the Tryals of his Subjects Guilts or Innocencies per Pares with Reliefs Herriots due to our Kings and Princes and unto Ten thousand Lords of Manors or thereabouts Subordinate unto their Kings in England and Wales with Fines and Amercements Felons and Out-Laws Goods Annum diem vastum cum multis aliis c. were solely and principally derived from the Feudall Laws Which with some of the Usages and Customs of the Nation and our Statutes and Acts of Parliament from Time to Time after made and added thereunto were the Laws which many of our Kings and Princes took an Oath at their Coronations to Protect and Defend as also the leges Consuetudines quas vulgus elegerit who if our Feudal Laws had not been so very ancient as they have been would not want such as would heartily desire and make choice of them to have Lands given to hold of their King in Capite and enjoy to them and their Heirs under his more especiall protection and was in the Reign of our famous Arthur King of Brittain esteemed so great an happiness as Consensu Historicorum eruditorum of that Age and Time Leland hath informed us Utherus Pendraco fuit pater Arthuri cujus Gorlas Corinnae regulus beneficiarius erat a Notion or Title anciently used of such as held their lands in Capite or by Knight Service And therefore howsoever the learned Bracton's Pen might seem to have erred in his expression or words of Fraenare Regis it might as it ought consonantly to the Proper and Genuine Sense Intention and Meaning of all his Arguments through the Context and Tenor of his whole Books being no little one be accepted and taken to be no otherwise then a restraining him as Kings and great and good men have usually been by good advice and Councell of friends or Servants as Naaman the Syrian's Servants did in their Lords returning back in an anger from the Prophet Elisha who came near unto him and perswaded him to wash in Jordan in order to his recovery from his Leprosy when otherwise that harsh word or phrase of fraenare Reges could not without great danger damage or forfeiture be used or any forcible perswasion put upon a free Prince by Authorities coutrary to their Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy Justly and Truly descending from the Feudall Laws which commandeth all men holding of them in Capite to do otherwise And although some of our Ancient Historians have informed us that in a Parliament holden at Merton in the 20th Year of the Reign of King Henry the 〈◊〉 upon the Bishops endeavouring to have a Law made that according to the Canon Law the Children born before Marriage illicitis amplexibus should by a subsequent Marriage of the Parents be esteemed legitimate the Temporall Lords restiterunt and laying their hands upon their Swords Jurarunt quod noluerunt leges Angliae mitare it was not any plain absolute deniall of the Kings Decisive and Legislative Power but only an Altercation Debate or Dispute betwixt the Spirituall and Temporall Lords in Parliament concerning that matter And neither the Bishops or the house of Commons or any of the Commons represented or not could not so much as attempt to force or bridle their King by Commotions or force of Arms which by the Feudall Laws and the most of our Laws and Customs derived from thence would have been legally adjudged a Rebellion and Fraenare Regis in that undecent expression si quod rei fecerit aut neglexerit quod Dominum contempsisse dicitur aut si Dominus per consequentiam laedatur persona cujus existimationem sartam tectam manere Domini interest for Concilio auxilio Domino adesse debet which was the Cause and ground of right Reason that in the Reign of our King Edward the 2. the Lord Beaumont or de Bello monte was in Parliament Fined for refusing to come to Parliament and give the King his advice or Councell And it is not many Years since that the Emperor of Germany Seised and Imprisoned Prince William of Furstenburgh a feudatory for appearing in Person at a Treaty betwixt the Emperor and the King of France against his Lord the Emperor And our Mesne Lords holding their Lands Jurisdictions Courts Baron and Courts Leet notwithstanding that Act of Parliament for dissolving the Court of Wards and Liveries and the tenures in Capite supporting it did from the 24th Day of February in the Year of our Lord 1645 when in the height of their Wars against their Sovereign they had but Voted the Dissolution of thrt Court and the Tenures in Capite for at that Time there appeared not to have been any Act of Parliament although an Act made in the Time of Oliver Cromwell might be an usher or used as a pattern in the drawing of that by a learned Judge of those Rebellions Times wherein the Reliefs Herriots were found necessary to be reserved unto his now Majesty his Heirs and Sucessors Which may sadly be believed to have been a Decapitation or cutting off the head of the Body-Politick or Government as a Prologue to the Tragicall and Direfull Murder in the cutting off the Head of their most Pious better Deserving King No King or Prince in the World Christian or Heathen black or white that had all their Subjects except their Nobility and the Bishops and such as hold their Lands by the Honorary Services of grand Serjeanty or by the tenures of Copyhold or by Copy of Court-Roll unto which our Littleton giveth no better a name or Title then tenure in Villainage or any service incident thereunto which being originally derived from the tenures in Capite were not many Years ago very nigh a fourth Part of the Kingdom that had so
INVESTIGATIO Jurium Antiquorum ET RATIONALIUM REGNI SIVE Monarchiae Angliae In Magnis suis Conciliis SEU PARLIAMENTIS ET Regiminis cum iisdem in suis Principiis optimi OR A Vindication of the Government of the Kingdom of England under our Kings and Monarchs appointed by God from the Opinion and Claim of those that without any Warrant or Ground of Law or Right Reason the Laws of God and Man Nature and Nations the Records Annals and Histories of the Kingdom would have it to be originally derived from the People or the King to be Co-ordinate with his Houses of Peers and Commons in Parliament Per Fabianum Philipps J. C. Socium Medii Templi London Jerom. c. 6. v. 16. State super vias Antiquas inquirite veritatem The FIRST TOME LONDON Printed for the Author and are to be sold by Charles Broome at the Gun in St. Paul's Church-Yard 1686. VIRTUTE ET FIDE Robert Harley of Bramton Castle in the County of Hereford Esqr. To the Sacred Majesty of James the Second King of great Brittain France and Ireland Defender of the Faith c. Dread Soveraign WHen the Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy the greatest Tyes and Obligations that can be imposed upon the Generations of Mankind have so little prevailed as that the giddy and mad-headed Multitude prone to all wickedness and evil Examples have under an Hypocritical pretence of Holiness and Reformation of that which was good and needed it not introduced an abundance of unclean Spirits and brought forth that which was altogether like their Tutors and Masters of Impiety and with great impudence pertinacity secret and subtil contrivances after His late Majesties happy Restauration continued their Machinations and Rebellious Principles until his Death who notwithstanding his great Clemency and many Plots discovered by Gods mercy by the continual vigilancy of his Guards with all the care that could be taken was for a long time hardly preserved from Assassination which Villanies and Dangers consorted so well with their Ambitions and Envies Rapines Plunderings Sequestrations Decimations and pillaging of three Kingdoms especially of England besides the sad accompt to be made of the Massacre in Ireland destruction of many Thousands in England with their Families and Estates in the defence of your Majesties blessed Father the Martyr with that horrid ever to be abhorred Addition of his Murther and the long continued Miseries Calamities and Troubles put upon their Late Soveraign your Royal Brother your Majesty and the rest of the Royal â—rogeny as they or too many of them or their Seditious and Rebellious Party may not improbably an thought only to watch or enforce an opportunity of playing the same or a worse game of Rebellion over again and if they can to a more impious advantage bed plant a soveraignty inherent in the people whom they intend to govern as arbitrarily and wickedly as they had done before which a lamentable many years Experience hath taught the people to believe it to be abundantly Tyrannical and Slavish enough to those that were made so unhappy as to endure and Experiment it which to prevent is and should be certainly the duty of every good Subject and I over of his King and Countrey In order wherunto having made my Observations and Remarks from the Commencement of the grandest Rebellion that ever troubled and harassed England in the years 1640 1641. until his present year of the Lord 1685 now the 83 year and an half of my yet Deo gratias vividae senectutis many years before for the most part written and as well digested as many disturbances and worldly troubles would permit which could notwithstanding never alienate or withdraw my mind from those my first Enquiries or Observations And my careful and I hope industrious and impartial Recherches into the Original and true power of Parliaments will shew how the Incroachments of a miselected House of Commons therein have since the Raigns of Qu. Elizabeth and K. James made it their principal and only business by Petions Ingrateful Lurches and Artifices and catching Advantages of our Kings Princes necessarily enforced want of Money for the defence of themselves and their People to undermine and bring into an Anarchy or Insulting Poliarchy this your heretofore more flourishing Monarchy strongly built and founded upon the Feudal Laws derived unto your Majesty by and from your Royal Ancestors and Predecessors from the Brittish German Saxon Danish and Normans Feudal Laws and Customs the best Establishers and Supports of a truly not counterfeit Monarchick Regal Government and doubt not but that my Labours and Travel therein with what other Light and Confirmations may be justly added by such as will well Weigh and Consider it may truly Manifest and Prove the same and without the suspicion of an over-credulity well believe that the Reverend Judges and Sages of the Law whom our Kings have Commanded and Ordained to be greatly reverenced administring Justice under you to your people many of whom and the professors of the Law pleading before them were only Educated and practised as Lawyers in the time of the late misguided Parliament might have been easily mis-led by the Minores Gentium the Lawyers and Officers pleading or practising in the Courts of Justice by rejecting the Councel of the Prophet Jeremiah Stare super vias Antiquas inquirere Veritatem which his lamentations after their destruction might have taught them after sooner to have believed and not to have the original of your Majesties Government to be as Inscrutable as that of the River Nile or to forget their Common Parent or Original as in many things to make or render our Laws to have no Resemblance thereof but to be quite contrary thereunto or as some Children in the Stories or Tales of easily believing old Women changed in their Cradles all which should put every good Subject in mind neither to be ignorant of your Rights or negligent in the maintenance of them it being of no small concernment to your People to preserve yours with as much care as their own being comprehended therein and when he shall hear the Ship wherein his King is strugling with the rage and fury of the Winds and Seas and every minute like to be destroyed and swallowed up ought to make hast tenui sua Cymba and do all he can to relieve and preserve him of what Judgment and Disposition soever he be though not at all under those great obligations of the Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy and of the bonds of gratitude must exuere humanitatem that will not endeavour to rescue him and in these my feeble but true hearted endeavours found those that instead of saving the Ship were only careful to Sacrifice to their own designs and divert and steer her from the right Port of Monarchy whilst they laboured all they could to save her by bringing her only into the Curses rather than Blessings of an Anarchy or knavish self-enriching Poliarchy and
publishing in print in our own and some Forreign Nations a never to be believed or proved justification of the Murder of their most Pious Prince sub forma sigura judicii and no English men but the Learned and Loyal Dr George Bate and my self with our names subscribed and another without publickly vindicated his worth and innocency and not a Lawyer or man of the militia togata could find either a conscience or care calamum eâ—igere to defend the honour of their King and Countrey when they were bound by their Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy not to have omitted it when as Advocati they should as Linwood hath told them in the case of an ordinary Client tanquam Athletae in Campo justitio pugnare not stand still hearall our Neighbour Christians speak of such a villainous Murder with horror and detestation and the learned Zeiglerus a Forreigner besides Salmasius who had never taken our Oath of Allegeance and Supremacy have publickly declared against it And do hope that our learned Lawyers of England who were not before our now almost fifty years Parliamentary Rebellion willing to be outdone or believed to be less learned in omni scibili or matter of learning in the Laws of their own or other Nations witness our Great Selden and many others will not suffer our Laws which want nothing to illustrate their very antient original to be so lost and eclipsed as there will be nothing of our Fundamental Laws left to furnish their practice in the Temples and Courts of Justice than such fragments as the Attorneys Seminaries shall be pleased to furnish them withal when they have squeezed the profit into their own advantages of all manner of Champerties and Ambodextryes by clipping our venerable just and antient Laws into such parcels as may seem most for their wicked and reasonless advantages and should be more than praemunired and not to be reckoned much less peccant than the Clippers of Caesars Coin or Image or false Forreign Coin introduced into the Kingdom in their daring to attempt to vitiate or violate their Kings Laws and suffer Milton that understood no more of our Laws of England than that which he had purposely Metamorphosed to delude a silly part of the People or Rabsheka it defieâ— the Host of Israel and John Goodwin a factious Minister with his Flambeau or Torch in the Pulpit to intice all that could be so mad as to believe them that King Charles the Martyr was justly accused condemned and beheaded at the suit of a few infatuated Rebels and so many men of the long Robe not have Loyalty care or Conscience enough to hasten to the brook to find some stones to sling at and convince those or any of their Goliahs or hear a Judge deservedly displaced by his late Majesty King Charles the 2d declare in the Court of Kings Bench tell not us of old Records and Antiquities but of the Law or Practice in or since 1641. And a Bencher of an Inns of Court perswades himself that he had hit the mark when he had said that Antiquities were no more to be valued than old Iron picked up out of the Channel in London Streets and sold for a penny in the pound And Mr. Milton that would have all men have a liberty to be divorced from their Wives as much as himself was from true Learning and Reason having done all and more than he could to blast and disparage that most excellent Pious Prince King Charles the Martyr and make his ever to be accursed Murder to be according to the Laws of England could not forbear persecuting his Manes whilst he magnified the Populum Anglicanum when all men had abhorred it and Bedingfield and Chresheld had voluntarily laid down their Commissions and forsook their Offices and places of Judges and the greatest Rebellion did ride in its triumphant Chair shall the Gentlemen of the long Robe who might be very able to do and should be well acquainted with all manner of Learning be so little concerned in it as to leave two Doctors of Physick to do what they could themselves for there were a Lion in the way whilst Mr. Milton cryed out as Tully in another case O fortunate nate me Consulo Roma And it would be a pity that so many Learned People in England of several conditions should not rightly understand the Constitutions and Government thereof but be so much mistaken as to believe they are honest and Loyal enough if they can but get what they can from their King and sacrifice it to their humours when the fear of God and right understanding of our Laws may teach us that our Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy do signifie much more than the ordinary Oaths of the smaller sort of the common people who have as little wit as Estate and a great deal less of Religion and that our Laws from Age to Age have resided in our Kings who have always been accompted to be tanquam Lex viva Could there be so great a thirst after learning and honour and esteem for it gained could the Queen of Sheba travel so far to hear the Wisdom of Solomon and Pythagoras to hear Plato Philip of Macedon give his Gods thanks that he had found out such a Tutor as Aristotle for his Son Alexander have men of learning and richer Souls than ordinary been invited and gladly welcomed into other Cities and Countries as our King Alfred did Asser Menevensis Edward the First Accursius and our King James the First the generally learned Causabon Peter du Moulin and Gerardus Vossius and believed it to be a great part of their honour and glory to be the Incouragers of learning and vertue Tacitus saith that amongst the Romans the Sons of Nobility did dare operam Studiis liberalibus The Emperor Valence appointed for the publick Library at Constantinople seven Antiquaries to look after the Books four for the Greek and three for the Latine who were to have a publick allowance and must we that may stand upon our Fore-fathers Shoulders and may with great ease do rather greater than lesser matters not be ashamed to be Children of yesterday when they that have arrived but unto a small parcel of learning must in spight of their Teeth acknowledge that experience is commonly upon earth one of the most trustiest guides and neglected the Mistress of Fools when posterior dies should never fail to be discipulus prioris and it can portend no less than a sad fatality and ruin to a Nation to have learning put under no better a Character than that of a Fop or a grave thinking Coxcomb when a Knave though a Fool is believed to be a Man of Parts and Ingenuity and an honest man a simple fellow or an Ass fit only to be bang'd or rid upon and whilst we mourn and lament with the Prophet Jeremiah the forecasted ruin of our Jerusalem and with our long ago Gildas the Excidium Britanniae should cease to
the Parliament Cities and Burrough-Towns the only Iudges under the King who are fit and unfit to be Members in the House of Commons in Parliament and that the Freeholders and Burgesses more than by a just and impartial Assent and Information who were the fittest were not to be the Electors p. 371. § 20. Of the small numbers of Knights of the Shires and Burgesses which were Elected and came in the Raign of King Edward the first upon his aforesaid Writs of Election and how their numbers now amounting unto very many more were after encreased by the corruption of Sheriffs and the Ambition of such as desired to be Elected p. 382. § 21. Who made themselves Electors for the chusing of Knights of the Shires to be Members of the House of Commons in Parliament after the 21st year of the Raign of King Edward the first contrary to the Tenor of his aforesaid Writs of Summo 〈…〉 made in the 22 year of his Raign for the Election of Knights of the Shire and Burgesses to come to the Parliaments and great Councils of several of our Kings and Princes afterwards p. 387. § 22. Of the Actions and other Requisites by the Law to be done by those that are or shall be Elected Knights Citizens and Burgesses to attend our King in their great Councils or Parliaments praecedent and praeparatory to their admission therein p. 388. § 23. That the Members of the House of Commons being Elected and come to the Parliament as aforesaid did not by vertue of those Writs of Election sit together with the King and the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in one and the same Room or Place and that if any such thing were as it never was or is likely to be proved it cannot conclude or infer that they were or are co-ordinate or had or have an equal power in their Suffrages and Decisions p. 393. § 24. What the Clause in the Writs for the Election of Knights Citizens and Burgesses to come unto the Parliament ad faciendum consentiendum do properly signifie and were intended by the said Writs of 〈◊〉 to be Members of the House of Cowmons in Parliament p. 398. § 25. Of the many variations and alterations of our Kings Writs of Summons to their great Councels or Parliaments excluding some and taking in others to be assistant in that high and Honourable Court with its Resummons Revisions drawing of Acts of Parliament or Statutes dy the Judges or the Kings learned Councel in the Laws and other Requisites therein necessarily used by the sole and individual authority of our Kings and Princes p. 411. § 26. What is meant by the word Representing or if all or how many of the people of England and Wales are or have been in the Elections of a part of the Commons to come to Parliament Represented p 548. § 27. That no Impeachment by all or any of the Members of the House of Commons in Parliament or of the House of Peers in Parliament hath or ever had any authority to invalidate hinder or take away the power force or effect of any the pardons of our Kings or Princes by their Letters Patents or otherwise for High Treason or Felony Breach of the Peace or any other crime or supposed Delinquency whatsoever p. 573. § 28. Of the protection and priviledge granted unto the Members of the House of Commons in Parliament by our Soveraign Kings and â—rinces during their Attendance and Employments in their great Councils of Parliament according to the Tenor and purport of their Commissions p. 607. § 29. Neither they claim or ever were invested by any Charter or Grant of any of our Kings or Princes or otherwise of any such Priviledge or Liberty nor was or is in England any Law or Usage or Custom that a Parliament sitting cannot be Prorogued or Dissolved as long as any Petition therein exhibited remaineth unanswered or not determined p. 633. § 30. That in those Affairs peculiar only to so great and venerable an Assembly which should not be trivial or proper to lower and lesser Iurisdictions assigned for the determining of lesser matters for the publick ease and benefit our Kings and Princes have a greater burden and care upon them as Gods Vicegerents besides that of Parliaments to manage and take care of the Kingdom for the benefit and good of themselves and their people p. 637. § 31. That our Great Councils or Parliaments except anciently at the three great Festivals viz. Christmas Easter and Pentecost being ex more summoned and called upon extraordinary emergent occasions could not either at those grand and chargeable Festivals or upon necessities of State or Publick Weal and preservation ex natura rei continue long but necessarily required Prorogations Adjournments Dissolutions or endings p. 641. § 32. That Parliaments or Great Councels de quibusdam arduis concerning the defence of the Kingdom and Church of Enggland neither were or can be fixed to be once in every year or oftner they being always understood and believed to be by the Laws and Ancient and reasonable Customs of England ad libitum Regis who by our Laws Right Reason and all our Records and Annals is and should be the only Watchman of our Israel and the only Iudge of the necessity times and occasion of Summoning Parliaments p. 650. § 33. That all or any of the Members of the House of Commons in Parliament are not properly or by their original constitution intended or otherwise entituled or properly truly justly lawfully seized or to be stiled or termed Estates neither are to be so understood or believed to be and being to be no otherwise than subject to a Temporary Election and by the Authority of their Kings Writs paid their Wages and Charges by those that sent and elected them can have no Iust or Legal Right thereunto p. 656 § 34. A Series or accompt of the many Seditions Rebellions and Discords that have successively happened since the beginning of the Raign of King Henry 2. to our succeeding Kings and Princes until this present Age wherein we now live by mistaken and never to be warranted principles p. 717. A Vindication of the Antient and Present Establish'd Government of the Kingdom of ENGLAND under our Kings and Monarchs appointed by GOD from the Opinion and Claim of those that without any Warrant or ground of Law or Right Reason the Laws of God and Man Nature and Nations and the Records thereof would have it to be Originally deriv'd from the People Co-ordinate with the Houses of Peers and Commons in Parliament or by their Election SECT I. That our KINGS of ENGLAND in their voluntary Summoning to their Great Councels and PARLIAMENTS some of the more Wise Noble and better part of their Subjects to give their Advice and Consent in Matters touching the Publick Good and Extraordinary Concernment did not thereby Create Or by any Assent Express or Tacite give unto Them an Authority Co-ordination Equality or Share in the Legislative
his Subjects Untill in that much mistaken Erroneous Act of Parliament said to have been made in Feb. 1645. by some of the Lords Commons of that which should not have been called a Parliament when they made War had like strange Subjects and Advisors beaten away their King neither had there been any design of abrogating the Tenures in Capite or of that kind in all the Brittish Roman Saxon Danish or Normam times to annull or dissolve so strong and solid a Foundation as our Feudall Laws nothing in the Rebellion Force and strange unkingly restrictions Articles and agreements put upon King John at Running Mede no grievance by the Tenures in Capite or by Knight-service certified upon any the Writs sent by King Henry the 3. unto all the Sheriffs of the Counties and Cities of England and Wales to Elect 4 Knights of every County and City to certify to the King and his Baronage their Grievances nothing in the forced Parliament and Oaths upon King Henry the 3. and his Son Prince Edward in the 42. Year of his Reign nothing in his direfull procession and waâ—king with his Parliament of Praelates and Nobility throuâ—h Westminster Hall unto that Abby Church with burning Tapers Curses and Anathema's against the Infringers of Magna Charta and Charta de Forresta then and yet holden in Capite with many of our Liberties Fundamentall and Feudall Laws therein contained nothing desired or ordered to be taken away of them or any of them no mention of them in the arbitration or award made by the King of France betwixt that King and his Rebell Barons or when Simon Montfort and his Partners kept him in their powerfull Army a Prisoner about a Year or a Quarter no Complaints or grievances against those Tenures in Capite in all those multitudes of other supposed grievances nothing in the Petition of Right and 30 times confirmation of Magna Charta and Charta de Foresta as if they could never have enough of them nor Reformation desired in and through all the Clownish Rebellions and Insurrections in England in the Times of Wat Tiler John Ball Jack Cade Ket and others And therefore whilst these Underminers of our long lived Monarchy and in that their own happiness have gratified their fond feavourish fancies in procuring a Dissolution of as many as they could of our Tenures in Capite for all if any they could not with the Costly expence of 48. Millions sterling in mony besides an uncomptable and unvalued damage of four hundred thousand Men Women and Children slain or Massacred whole families ruined or for ever Crpled Heaven angry and incensed Hell gaping Religion torn in more then one hundred pieces and all for want of the Care Provision and Protection that the despised Mother Church of England like the Voice that was heard in Ramah Rachel mourning for her Children that they were not our Shames Published in the Streets of Gath and Askalon in the Time of its peace and the Sins of Rebellion and Witchcraft have as the Egiptian Locusts covered overspread the face of our heretofore fruitfull Island And the Protection and Provision usually made by our Tenures in Capite for Younger Children as well as the Eldest affords them no better a care then to leave them when the Mother is after the Fathers Death by some Debaucht Rooking or Gamiug Coxcomb made a fool of and Married again as very often they will are like Lambs left as a Prey unto the Wolves or Foxes the Second Husbands who if the Mother have Children by him will be as too many are well content to help to Fricasse the first husbands Children to make Portions or Estates for the Second so as if it be Enquired where is now the Court of Wards and Liveries which hath been so pretendedly without any Just Cause at all complained of they may find every where a Court of Wards and Liveries lamentably governed by the Fathers in Law of England Wales and Ireland They might do well to make more hast then they have done to repentance consider how much more then nothing at all the Nation was beholding to those overtures as much as they could of the Monarchy Tenures in Capite have been to those Commonwealth Erecters have deserved of the People and those whom they pretended to represent in Parliament when instead of bread they have given them Stones and of Fishes Scorpions and to shew the profoundness of their wisdom did as wisely as those that attempâ—ed to drown the Eel when upon a great serious consult they may Easily discover no better effects or fruit of their overchargeable expences enforced upon the people to their own great and Villanous gain and the ruin spoil and inestimable damage of our 3 before that most happy flourishing redoubtable Kingdoms When that Act of Parliament for taking away the Tenures in Capite doth but as much as it could convert them into Free and Common Socage without any mention of pro omnibus servitiis and the Law made by King Ina who Reigned here from the year of our Savior 923. untill after some part of the Year 940. which is not specially repealed by that Act of destroying as much as it was able the Tenures in Capite and by Knight Service did ordain that Scutarorum nullus ex pelle ovina Scutafabricatur qui secus fecerit 30 solides mulctator pro singulo quoque aratrobinos alat quisque ornatos atque instructos Equites and in a Tenure in Free and Common Socage Fealty is a duty and service inseparable as Littleton saith and signifieth although as he putteth the Case is in the Ceremony of the doing thereof sometimes different from homage for when the Tenant doth fealty unto his Lord he shall hold his hand upon a Book and shall Swear that he shall be faithfull and true to his Lord and shall bear him faith for the Lands which he holdeth of him and fealty is derived a fidelitate Feltman bestowing upon an originall of the like nature a fide and Escuage draweth unto it homage and Homage draweth unto it fealty for fealty is incident to every manner of Service unless it be in the Tenure of Franck-Almoigne and the Tenures in Capite and by Knights Service some only excepted being transferred into Free and Common Socage without saying per fidelitatem tantum pro omnibus servitiis may notwithstanding the forebidding or rejection of of Homage and all other Incidents of Tenures in Capite and by Knights Service render the fealty incident unto free and Common Socage by our Laws to amount unto as much as that which the framer of that Act of Parliament hoped to extinguish by Converting those Tenures in Capite as much as he could into Tenures in pede which should have been beleived to have been very fundamental and dangerous to alter when the wisdom of the English and Scottish Commissioners authoris'd by an Act of Parliament in the Reign of King James
Nerves Sinews and Ligaments of the Crown and head of our body Politick and in the doing thereof also might have bereaved the Nation of the ancient and honourable assistance of the House of Peers in Parliament which of Ancient and long time Immemoriall have been as they should ought to be the firm strong pillars supports of our Monarchick Government had not the Earls of Oxford and Strafford Magnanimously as a Prologue to its Restauration come to the House then called the House of Commons in Parliament wherein that great Monck that Unus homo nobis qui cunctando restituit rem was then admitted a member guarded with his own so warily conducted Army out of Scotland before his Majesties happy Restauration and the way had been prepared for it and calling him unto the Door of that house demanded as Peers their Rights and priviledges to have their house of Peers doors opened which upon his Majesties Blessed Father's murther that so misnamed house of Commons in Parliament had shut up and Voted to be Useless and Dangerous which he instantly of himself Ordered to be opened without any Act Order or Vote of Parliament into which they went and sat untill they gained more of their Loyall Party to help to fill their House again which by Degrees was shortly after especially after his Majesties Landing and Coming to London Replenished and Restored as their King and Sovereign was And the Nation had notwithstanding by that Framer of that aforesaid ever to be deplored Act of Parliament been deprived of that only part of our Parliament Subordinate unto their King from the beginning of our very ancient Monarchy and as it ought ever to be till the 49th Year of K. Henry the 3. when he was a Prisoner unto Simon Montfort and his Army of Rebells and not before When some Commons were in that Rebellion Elected to be as a part of Parliament and to sit in a Seperate Lower House ad faciendum consentiendum iis which the King and Lords should think fit or necessary to Ordain had it not been rescued and prevented by the Care of the Lord Viscount Stafford and the Barons of Abergavenny and Dudley awakened by the Book a little before Printed and Published entituled Tenenda non Tollenda who caused a Proviso to be inserted in the said Act of Parliament that nothing therein contained should be extended or prejudiciall to the Rights and Priviledges and Honours of the Peers in Parliament or any that held by Grand Serjeanty c. And having by their good will left as few Spears or Swords as they could in our Israel to help to protect or defend it could notwithstanding readily find the way to that Ingratefull River Lethe and Sin of unthankfullness which God and all good men do not only Abhorr but the most fierce and Savage Beasts of the Field and Fowls of the Air do detest and could not be fully satisfied untill they could add unto the Kings evil Bargain the taking away of the Royal Pourveyance which amounted unto no Smaller a damage unto him then Ninety or One Hundred Thousand Pounds per Ann. it being in the 35th Year of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth Estimated in the Saving of the houshold expences 25000 l. per Ann. communibus Annis in the 3. Year of the Reign of King James 40000 l. per Ann. And in the Reign of King Charles the Martyr at the most not above 50000 l. per Ann. Communibus Annis But whether more or less is not to be found in the receipt or Yearly Income of the Moyety of the dayly ceasing pretended Recompence by the Excise arising unto no more then one Hundred and Fifty Thousand Pounds deducting the no little charges in the Collection thereof and in taking away of that 50 l. per Ann. for the Royall Pourveyance brought upon the King no less a Damage then One Hundred Thousand Pounds per Ann. And cannot by the most Foolish of the People Lunaticks out of their Intervalls Ideots very small Infants and Children only excepted be with any manner of Colour or Shadow of reason believed to be any thing near a Compensation singly for the Pourveyance and a great deal less for that inestimable Jewell of the Crown the Tenures in Capite and by Knight Service the later a principall part of the support of the Sovereignty and the former of the Crown For that the Power Might and Majesty that resideth therein is unvaluable and not to be Ballanced by any thing that is not as much the Pourveyance being in the Fourth Year of the Reign of King James held to be such an Inseparable adjunct of the Crown and Imperiall Dignity and some few Years after believed by the Incomparable Sr Francis Bacon Lord Chancellor of England to be a necessary support both in Law and Politiques in other Nations as well as our own hath told us is such a Sacra Sacrorum as Baldus and Individua as Cynus termeth them which Jurisconsultorum Communi quodam decreto by an uncontroverted opinion of all Lawyers nec cedi nec distrahi nec abalienari a Summo Principe cannot as Bodin saith be granted or released nor by any manner of way aliened or witholden from the Sovereign Prince nec ulla quidem temporis dinternitate praescribi posse nor by any length of time prescribed against him and therefore by Besoldus called Imperii Majestatis Jura bona Regni conjuncta incorporate seu Coronae unita quae princeps alienare non potest the Rights and Empire of Majesty and the goods and part of the Crown so Incorporate and annexed unto it as the Prince cannot alien which for the Subjects to attempt would not be much different from an endeavour to restrain a Prince by Law against the Law of God bonos more 's which by the opinion of the Learned Bacon the Lord Chief Justice Hobart and Judge Hutton would be Void and of none Effect for the presents and good will of Inferiors to their Superiors is one of the most ancient and Noble Customs which mankind hath ever practised and began so with the Beginning and Youth of the world as we find the Patriarch Jacob sending his Sons to his then unknown Son Joseph besides the Mony which he gave them to buy Corn a Present of the best Fruits of the Country a little Balm a little Honey Spices Mirrh Nutts and Almonds The Persians in their Kings Progresses did munera offerre neque vilia neque exilia neque nimis pretiosa nec magnifica bring them Presents neither Pretious nor Contemptible from which etiam Agricolae Opifices Workmen and Plowmen were not freed in the bringing Wine Oxen Fruits and Cheeses and the first Fruits of what the Earth brought forth quae non tributa sed doni loco consebantur which were not accompted to be given as tributes but oblations and free Gifts which made the poor Persian Synetas when he met with Artaxerxes and his
Themate suspiciant montes Pacem Colles Justiciam in quibus Rex verbis asservit quod triplex regni status potuit ut sibi videbat rationabiliter annotari several degrees or conditions of men videlicet per Montes Praelalati Proceres Magnates per Colles Milites Armigeri Mercatores in populo Cultores Artifices Vulgares used to be Elected to come to Parliaments in those days Quos quidem status enuncialius exponend asserint ser nonnulla autoritates Historias Exempla summaria demonstravit quod triplex deberet virtus politica eisdem tribus statibus specialiter pertinere videlicet Prelatis Magnatibus pax veritas vera concordia absque sictur vel dissimulatione Militibus mediocribus aequitas mera Justitia absque manutenentia pauperum expressione vulgaribus vero vel inferioribus voluntaria Regi ejus Legibus when he intended none of the three several States to be allowed the Legislative Power obedientia absque perjâ—rio manutenentia Ex quibus si in Regno Angliae â—aliter se haberent maxima de conqueacencia ac Regi Regno Commoda quam plurima fine dubio pervenirent ad providend igitur qualiter in Regno montes praedicti pacem suscipiant Colles que Justitiam vulgari populo administrant ipsi etiam populi vulgares eorum antiquis relictis perjuriis divinis legibus humanis plus solito fideliter obediant intendant prefat dominus noster Rex ex sui sani avisamento concilii dictum presens Parliamentum facerit convocari volens concedens quod praefati Magnates Comitates praedict without giving either of them the Title of Estates omnibus singulis libertatibus quietanciis eis per nobiles Progenitores ipsius domini Regis quondam Reges Angliae concessis per eundum dominum Regem confirmatis minime revocalis nec per legem Angliae revocabilibus set per eosdem Prelatos Magnates Comitatem bene rationabiliter usitatis gaudeant ut antur dedit insuper prefat Cancellarius praedict Communibus without any Title of Estates nomine Regio firmiter in mandatis quod in eorum domo Communi antiquitus uâ—â—tato in Crastino convenirent eorum prolocutorem eligerent sic Electum prefat Domino Regi 〈◊〉 ea celeritate qua commode poterant realiter presentarent Et ut Justitia conqueri volentibus possit celerius adhiberi idem dominus noster Rex certos Receptores â—riatores petitionum in praedicto Parliamento exhibend constituit assignavit Item 13. die Augusti Anno presento domino Rege tribus regni statibus in presenti Parliamento existentibus which being but a Phrase or Expression of the Clerk could reach no further than the Chancellors meaning in his before mentioned Speech relating several soâ—s or qualities of People then assembled in Parliament post gratias redditas ex parte domini Regis ejus mandato Communibus regni without any Title or Stile of Estate tunc ibidem presentibus deorum bonis diligentiis laboribus circa ea quae sibi ex parte regni injuncta fuerunt exhibitis ostensis praefat dominus Cancellarum de mandato ejusdem domini ulterius declaravit qualiter idem dominus Rex ipsorum Communitat relatione conceperat quod in Civitate London et Suburbiis gravis pestilentia ceperat oriri qualiterque prefat Communes without the appellation of Estates plenam et particularum informationem et nolitiam notarium extorsionum oppressionum manutent et aliorum defect in dicto regni habitorum unde idem dominum Rex certiorari affectabat per eosdem nullatenus habuerint attendens etiam idem dominus Rex qualiter tempus Autumpâ—ale in quo magnatibus circa suas recreationes et deductas without any Title of Estates insisquet Communibus with no Title or Estates circa suarum messium congregationem intendere competabat similiter 〈…〉 propinguabat Quibus de causis et presertim ut prefati Communes without any other Title de extorsionibus oppressionibus riotis manutentiis et aliis defectibus praedictis particulariter informari possent ac dictum dominum Regem inde plenius edoteri idem dominus Rex dictum presens Parliamentum usque xv nam post festie scilicet Michaelmis tunc proxim futurum apud Westminster voluit prorogari ac illud realiter prorogavit omnibus et singulis quorum interfuit firmiter injungendo quod apud Westminster dict xv die excusatione quacunque cessante personaliter convenirent ad tractandum comitandum et consentiendum super hiis quae tum ibidem pro pacis bono et Regis et regni commodo favente domino contigerit ordinari c. And it is not a little remarkable how a man of so great learning and practise in the Laws of England as the aforesaid Sir Edward Coke should either be so much bewitched with that modus tenendi Parliamentum and at the same time so much admire Littletons Book of Tenures as he believed many of his caetera's or abbrieviations therein to comprehend some more than common or ordinary point or special matter of Law worth the enquiry and not be able to understand that the Feudal Laws were the Fundamental Laws of England and supporters of the Ancient Monarchick Government thereof and were nearly allied to the Civil or Caesarean Laws with their Patroni or Clients and have descended unto us from the Longobards Brittains Saxons Goths and Vandals and other Northern Nations now and very anciently the Laws whereby for the most part all Christendom is and hath been Governed and that that excellent Book of Littleton who was a Judge in the Raign of King Edward the fourth now not above 219. years ago contained a Compendium Summary and Practice of our Feudal Laws those best most wholesome firm and obliging Laws in the World then and long before used in England should be so little acknowledged or beloved by Sir Edward Coke whose principal care and design hath for a long time been to disparage and bury them in Oblivion by his over-much magnifying that fatal and grand Imposture of modus tenendi Parliamentum made it to be the Machine or Engine to batter and destroy our Fortresses of Loyalty and should not have allowed his Admirers as much or more than he did his and our Littleton to believe either that Empusa or Modus to be as a Creed to a People in that Frenzy and almost national infatuity wherein to he and his beloved modus had perswaded them and by the help of the Master of all Craft and Subtlety turned our Laws out of their Ancient Inheritance and by stiling our Feudal Laws the Common Laws by the Hocus Pocus Insolence and Perjury of Parliament Rebellion now almost of fifty years continuance rendred us to be like the Jews in their seventy years Captivity who so forgot their Primitive Language as they were enforced to crave the incertain help of
amaze all the men of Law and Learning in the Kingdom of England how Sir Edward Coke that hath been attempted to be a man of so great knowledge and experience in the Law and entrusted with so many weighty Charges and Offices in our Laws as Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas and afterwards of the Court of Kings Bench and so great a Collector and Remembrancer of the cases and judgments in the Law with their various forms and entries should have so often read in his so greatly beloved Book of Littleton the Chapters of Homage and Homage Auncestrel and Escuage assessed in our Parliaments could think it to be the Common Law of England and that by which it had for many Centuries past been Governed and not to be by its true and original Name and Nation as well here as in all the other parts of the Christian World the Feudal Law and what else where those Feudal Laws used in England which our Learned Sir Henry Spelman and Dr. Zouch Mr. of Alban-Hall in Oxford so largely directly mentioned to have their beneficial Use and Residence amongst us allowed and repeated by the very learned the Sieur du Fresne a Baron of France and other good Authors and Historians And if those premises cannot be enough to satisfy us Sir Edward Coke if he were alive might do well to instruct us what Law that Homage and Escuage appertained unto And if there were any other Laws that this Kingdom was governed by when and by whom they were introduced and of how long continuance for it may be hoped that our Sons of Novelty will not be so impudent as to offer to obtrude upon the World the Follies and Villanies of Wat Tiler and Jack Cade our late pretended Rebuplicans or their cheating Instrument maker Oliver Cromwel Or upon what other Laws than Feudal are our Magna Charta and Charta de Foresta supported and as often as thirty times in several of our Parliaments confirmed when all our many English Rebellions troubles of State and Commotions either at home at abroad have left it as a quiddam Sacrum more than the safe guarded vestal fire amongst the Romans or can shew us in any of our Records Annals or holy Writ wrested or misinterpreted that the Dernier Resort or Appeal hath been or ought to be in the people unless they can make themselves or any others believe that there was something or more revealed to them than was in the Scripture or Holy Prophets for there was no third Estate under our Kings to assist their Councels in Parliaments subordinate unto them put upon them nor intended to be by the 25 Conservators enforced upon King John in the Rebellious Parliament and Battle at Running Mede afterwards reduced to four or when their Captain General Robert Fitz-Walter was stiled Mariscallus Exercitus dei Ecclesiae Anglicanae neither in Anno 42. H. 3. being over-powered by some of his Rebellious Barons where those 25 Conservators were turned into 24 the one half to be nominated by the King the other by the contending party at the Parliament at Oxford or when that afterwards adjudged derogatory Parliament to Kingly Authority was referred by King Henry the third and the Rebellious Barons unto the Arbitration of the King of France or sworn to abide it none of the Rebellious party were entituled Estates or in that after Rebellion and detaining King Henry the 3 and prince Edward his Son about a year and a quarter they would not adventure to form or imitate a general Councel in that captive Kings name those few that came were not called or intended to be a 3 Estate in an House of Commons nor in any of the many Rescripts or Mandates which Symon Montfort and his partner Rebels made in their Captive Kings name nor in any Parliament after his Release or in the Parliament of King Edward the first when he was pleased to suffer some of the Commons Elected by his Writs to attend in the House of Commons in Parliament neither had they the boldness in all his long Raign of 35 years or in the 17 or 18 years of King Edward the second or the fifty one years of King Edward the third or in the Raign of King Richard the 2 until the Title of Estates crept in as aforesaid and Mr. Pryn made himself after the Creator of them in his misused rectifying And having as they thought turned the Tables the wrong way in calling our Feudal Laws the Common Laws which indeed they are should be and a long time have been have so far put them out of their Right place Order and Station as they think they have changed our Feudal Laws which are should be the only Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom and Government thereof into a quite contrary and too many of our Lawyers have been so willing to forget them as they had rather now of late make us believe if they could the tricks of Attorneys to be our Common Laws than our more Ancient Legal Rational and Fundamental Feudal Laws Insomuch that one that thinks himself no small one hath of late been pleased to say very considerately as he thought that the Study and Knowledge of Antiquities was but like the picking up of Old Iron in the London Streets or Kennels As if the Prophet Jeremy had either mistaken or lost the Commission which our Alwise and Omniscient God had given him when he advised us Stare super vias antiquas inquirere veritatem and such Lawyers of a late Edition might find themselves hard put to it to answer the question how or from whence proceeded or were derived our Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy which have for so many ages past been legally taken and enjoyned and do and ought yet to continue if not from an ancient Fundamental Feudal Laws from what other Laws of God or man were they derived or any the various Customs or Usages of either Heathen or Christian fixt or established by by any other rational Custom or Usage or unfixt and left only to the divers Interests Occasions and Contingencies of every mans particular Interest and Affairs and can never be ascertained how long they shall continue in one and the same mind and good liking and where the Systeem of these Laws Usages or Customs are or may be found or what Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy have been sworn unto or upon them Whether upon the Old Custom of England of wrastling or choosing King and Queen at the Epiphany or Twelft Night at Christmas And if they would be a 3 governing Estate may think themselves not a little beholding unto such as can either think or believe that they are or ought to be so in love with them as to trust them as formerly they had done and could tell their Brethren of Scotland that their promises were but conditional and did very lovingly alter order their man of sin Oliver Cromwel to beat subdue and after their Laws and Religion
ruine all those that really and heartily wishout any other ends than that of duty and endless Loyalty came to help her and not by so many Plots and Conspacies against your Government and Monarchy and the lives of your Majesty and Royal Brother give a far greater disturbance thereunto than the unhappy severely punished Corah Dathan and Abiram did to the Government of Moses and Aaron who did but only murmure against them saying Ye do take too much upon you but did not plot or contrive Treasons Conspiracies or Rebellions against or to Assassinate or Murder them From all which disturbances and troubles that God will be pleased whilst you are on Earth enjoying a happy life amongst an unquiet as unto too many of them never to be contented people to free your Majesty your Heirs and Successors shall as it hath ever been be the prayers of Your Majesties always Constant and Obedient Subject FABIAN PHILIPPS THE PREFACE TO THE READERS THey that have read and duly considered though but with an ordinary compassion and sense of humanity the dismal Effects of Wars Rebellions and Discords in Kingdoms and Republicks and the little gain more than a Sacrifice to the Devil and the Ambition Revenge Self-Interest and the Ruine of Kingdoms Commonwealths Families and Estates might if there had been no other evidence have clearly and lamentably seen it in those once very famous Republicks of Athens and Sparta in the Peleponesian Wars ingaging most of the little Republicks of Achaia to run the adventure with them and did in the conclusion bring them all together under the Tyranny of the Ottoman Empire in those also of the Merciless Proscriptions of Sylla and Marius at Rome and the bloody Pharsalian Fields or Battels fought betwixt Julius Caesar and Pompey too nearly allied to have made such a quarrel or bustle to disturb so great a part of the World for Empire that of the Guelphes and Gibelines happening near about the time of our King John when the Pope so domineered over him as he constrained him to do homage unto him for England and Ireland and pay him a then great yearly Tribute that of our two great contending Families in England York and Lancaster under the several Badges or Liveries of the White Rose the Red to the destruction of many of the Nobility and Gentry taking their several parties that of the German Wars betwixt the Duke of Saxony and the Emperour Charles the 5th that of the Sicilian Vespers that of the King of Spain and the Netherlands or united Provinces of the Holy League in France and the cruel Massacre of so many thousand Protestants in Ireland and that our Incomparable late Rebellion of all the Rebellions the Devil had ever abused and Cheated a Nation withal the most hypocritical horrid and abominable and the just care that every pious and good man ought to have of his King and Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy and the Blessings of God to attend his posterity might cause them to make as much hast as the dumb Son of King Craesus did to save the life of the King and therein prevent the Ruine of his Countrey And therefore I may hope that a Minimus Apostolorum one of the least Professors of the Law though of an ancient standing may be permitted without the reproach of Arrogance or scribling quiddities or Impertinences or troubling the World with the Idea's of Plato Aristotle Solon Licurgus or the unquiet Commonwealth of Rome until they were after the Experiments of divers sorts of Governments constrained to be more quiet and content with that of the Empire and Monarchy or Theocracy ordained by God be permitted to lay or bring before the Reverend Judges and Sages of the Laws of England and the Professors and Students of the Laws therein what may be found in the Records Annals and approved Authors and Historians concerning the ancient Feudal and Monarchick Government thereof without any Additions Omissions wtested Interpretations Forgeries Impostures or the fond and often abused credulity of Monkish and feigned lying Manuscripts may incite others to approve and like better of it than they have done that have to the hazard of their Estates in this World and the World to come done all that they could to pull in pieces that ancient Government upon which all our Laws reasonable Customs and Constitutions with Remedies for publick grievances have been built and founded which Sir Edward Coke hath before the dissolution of our Tenures in Capite the Ligaments of the Crown of England and the nerves sinews and strengths thereof when he was better pleased with his Soveraign not unjustly called the Quintessence of all Laws expended very near 1000 l. Sterling in my labours and travails therein and other matters concerning the Government without any penny profit or recompence either from or by the Stationers or any others more than an Employment as Deputy Comptroller of the Law Tax wherein I endeavoured all I could to serve his late Majesty and the Farmers thereof and may hope it was acceptable when his Majesty not long before his departure out of this World was by his principal Secretary of State Sir Leoline Ienkins Knight graciously pleased to declare that he had a particular regard for me and was sensible of the many Services which I had done unto the Crown which in the greatest of truth humility and modesty I might have said was done by me one of the smaller sort of the Atoms in his Kingdoms as an oblation of Duty when besides my no small loss and damage in the late horrid Rebellion I did adventure with the late learned George Bate Dr. of Physick and Mr. Nicholas Odeart sometimes Secretary to Sir Edward Nicholas principal Secretary to the murthered King did when the Rebels had refused to allow him in his own defence the assistance of his own or any other Councel learned in the Law at that they falsly called his Tryal when the Intercession of the French and Dutch Embassadors the Scots their Rebel partner Commissioners and some of the London factious Ministers could not prevail to rescue his sacred life did with great danger and hazard of our lives and Estates cause a small paper of Advice to be secretly delivered unto him not to acknowledge any jurisdiction to be in their highly wicked misnamed Court of Justice never before heard of or made use of in England or in any other Nation of the World And I did also after that wicked of wickedest sentence of death pronounced against my Soveraign Write and cause to be Printed and affixed upon the Posts and publick places in or about the Cities of London and Westminster a Protestation in the name of all the Loyal people of England against that most abominable sentence and did within a short time after Print and publish a Book in Justification and defence of him and the first as I believe that in print justly stiled him a Martyr for his people with some assurance
Power or were Elected by Them THe Laws of GOD Nature and Nations our Laws of England and the Records thereof no Strangers at all unto them but much in League and Friendship with them did never deny our Kings and Princes to make use of the Councels and Advice of such of their Subjects as were fit and able to give it Nor did any of our Kings by such applications unto their Subjects for their advice and councels either in general or particular common publick or private Councels or any of their Laws Grants Charters or Customs ever allow them any co-ordinate or equal Authority with Them or over any of their Actions in the giving of their Approbation Advice or Consent Or otherwise if we may believe as we ought those Records and Accounts which the World and its aged Companion TIME have from their Infancies left and recommended unto us no such Liberties Customs or Priviledges at all ever appearing to have been granted or of right appertaining unto them by any Warrant Foundation Law Act of Parliament Reason Prescription or Custom In the time of our Ancestors the Britains Qui Legibus Romanis not of the Senate but the Emperours Caesareis seu imperialibus paruerunt quamdiu sub Imperio Romano which Mr. Selden hath asserted to have continued 360 years or thereabouts from the time of Claudius the Emperour to that of Honorius and that Severus the Emperour kept his Court for several years at York where Papinian that great and famous Lawyer sate Praetor or Lord Chief-Justice under him Which could not but introduce much of their Laws and Usages amongst us and the near succeeding Ages were so unwilling to part with them as they would never after be altogether Strangers unto them For King Aethelulph travelled with his Son Aelfred to Rome and Aelfred whilst he was there and likewise after his return and being King Librorum omnium notitiam habebat saith William of Malmsbury and was very learned as Asser Menevensis who was his Contemporary and privy to most of his Actions and Hoveden and Ingulsus have recorded it to Posterity Plurimam partem Romanae Bibliothecae Anglorum auribus dedit And Offa King of the Mercians had in the year of Christ 790. before the time of Aethelulph sounded erected and maintained in Rome a Schola Saxonica which could not be either constituted or continued without some Commerce with the Latian Language and Laws the one being likely to be an effectual means to convey the other and by a constant intercourse continue the course and knowledge of some part of these Laws and Customs in England Or in any of those Laws which Dunwallo Molmucius cujus Leges Molmucianae dicebantur ordained Or in those which Mercia Regina Britonum Uxor Gurtheli à qua Provincia Merciorum containing Gloucester shire and seven other Counties putatur denominata edit as an authentique Historian saith discretione justitia plenas quae Lex mercia dicebatur Of King Ethelbert Circa annum salutis 588 or 613. qui sub Heptarchia Saxonum as venerable Bede relates it decreta judieiorum inter subditos suos juxta exempla Romanorum Consilio sapientum constituit decreta judiciorum scribi fecit genti suae Et sub Saxonibus Danis quamvis pauciora Legum Romanorum vestigia reperiamus The learned Dr. Duck seconded by Dr. Langham in observationibus de antiquitatibus legibus Romanorum in Britannia exercitatissimus have not indiligently noted constabit tamen Reges eorum qui reliquis pietate virtute gloriae cupiditate praecelluerunt in judiciis jure dicundo inter subditos suos ad exempla Romanorum saepius se composuisse In the Laws of King Ina who about the year 712 after the Redemption of Mankind suesu instituto Cenradi Patris sui Heddae Erkenwaldi Episcoporum suorum omnium Senatorum suorum natu majorum sapientum populi sui in magna servorum Dei frequentia commanded ut justa judicia per omnem ditionem suam fundita stabilitaque sint at que ut nulli liceat in posterum Senatori sive alteri cuivis in ditione sua degenti sua antiquare judicia institutiones sive Leges genti suae condidit solempnes Of King Alured who about the year 871. prudentissimorum è suis consilio declaring that many of the Laws of his Ancestors quae sibi minus commoda videbantur ex consulto sapientum partim antiquanda partim innovanda curavit quaecunque in actis Inae gentilis sui Offae Merciorum Regis vel Ethelbert qui primus Anglorum sacrotinctus est Baptismato observatu digna deprehensus fuit ea collegit omnia reliqua plane omisit atque in istis discernendis prudentis simorum è suis consilio usus atque iis omnibus placuit editi eorum observationes Or in the League made betwixt King Alured and Guthrun the Dane or afterwards betwixt King Edward and Guthrum à sapientibus recitata sepius atque ad commodum Regni utilitatem aucta amplificata Or in or by any of the Books if they were extant and now to be seen said to have been collected and written by that great King viz. Breviarium quoddam collectum ex Legibus Trojanorum Graecorum Britannorum Saxonorum Danorum 2o. Visi Saxonum Leges 3o. Instituta quaedam 4o. Contra judices iniquos 5o. Dicta sapientum 6o. Acta Magistratum 7o. Collectiones Chronicorum Or by the Laws of King Edward about the year 900. where iis omnibus qui Reip. praesunt etiam atque etiam mandavit ut omnibus quoad ejus facere poterint aequos se praebeant judices perinde ut in judiciali libro scriptum habetur nec quicquid formident jus commune audacter liberèque dicant ac litibus singulis dies quibus dijudicentur condictos statuit Of King Athelstan about the year 924. the Heptarchy being then reduced to its pristine estate of Monarchy Consilio Ulfhelmi Archiepiscopi aliorumque Episcoporum servorum Dei. Or in his Laws not long before made in a Councel held at Exeter where he was as they mention sapientibus stipatus Of King Edmond made in a Councel at London about the year 940. tam Ecclesiasticorum quam Laicorum cui interfuerunt Oda Wolstanus Archipraesul plurimique alii Episcopi Or in or by the first written Laws of the Britains about the same time in the Reign of their King Howel Dha stiled the Good the Bards and Druids men of great veneration power and esteem amongst them not before recommending to posterity or committing to writing any of their Laws Customs or Memorials qui convocati Episcopis Laicis doctissimis Leges antiquas correxit novas condidit Or in the Laws which King Eldred made about the year 948. in festo nativitatis beatae Mariae when universi magnates Regni per Regium edictum summoniti tam Archiepiscopi totius Regni quam
and all the exiled Bishops and Monks of Canterbury should in peace return to their own but refused to make satisfaction for their Goods taken away They depart unsatisfied which made the Pope more Imperious to constrain him to do whatsoever he desired and to that end Absolved all his Subjects upon what occasion soever from all their obedience strictly forbidding them under pain of Excommunication Board Councel and Conference Who preparing to suppress an Insurrection of some of the Welsh had intelligence that if he proceeded therein he would either be killed or betrayed whereupon he returned to London required Pledges of the Nobility and had them Eustace de Vescy and Robert Fitz-Walter being accused of the Conspiracy fled the one into Scotland the other into France and the Pope pronouncing the Kings absolute Deposition from the Regal Government of the Kingdom wrote to the King of France a perfidious dangerous enemy of King John's That as he looked to have remission of his Sins he should take the charge upon him to expel him out of the Kingdom of England and possess the same to Him and his Heirs for ever and sent Letters to the Princes and great Men of other Nations That they should aid the King of France in the dejection of that contumacious King of England in revenge of the Injuries done to the Universal Church granting like remission of their Sins as if they undertook the Holy War The King of France thereupon making great preparations against him and with that Commission the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other exiled Bishops with Pandulphus the Popes Legate being sent unto him private instructions were given by the Pope to Pandulphus his juggling Legate at his returning into England out of the King of France's great Army prepared against him that if upon the Preparation and Forces gathered by the King of France for his dejection he could work the King of England to such conditions as he should propound Absolution and Restauration should be granted unto him Who thus distressed not only granted restitution and satisfaction of whatever had been taken from the Archbishop and Monks of Canterbury and the Bishops of London Bathe and Lincoln who were fled into France to the Archbishop but also laid down his Crown Scepter Sword and Ring the Ensigns of his Regality at the feet of Pandulphus as a Livery and Seizin of the Kingdom of England to the Pope and submitted himself to the judgment and mercy of the Church which being two days after or as some have written six restored unto him upon an agreement made at the receiving thereof upon his Oath Non sine dolore saith Matthew Paris tactis sacrosanctis Evangeliis in praesentia Pandulphi se judicio sanctae Ecclesiae pariturum sexdecim cum eo Comites Barones ex potentioribus Regni in animam ipsius Regis juraverunt Quod si fortè facti paeniteret ipsi eum pro possibilitate compellerent And thereupon convenerunt decimo tertio die Maii apud Doveriam viz. die Lunae proximo ante Ascensionem Domini Rex Pandulphus cum Comitibus Baronibus turba multa nimis no House of Commons certainly ubi in pacis formam unanimitèr consenserunt And in the King's Name and under his Seal it was declared by the Title of Iohannes Dei Gratiâ not of the Pope or People and four of the Barons viz. William Earl of Salisbury his Brother Reginald Earl of Boloigne William Earl of Warren and William de Ferrariis juraver ant in animam suam i. e. Regis That they should bonâ side in every thing observe that Peace and Agreement And he did likewise solemnly and absolutely swear stare mandato Domini Papae to stand to the will and command of the Pope and his Legate or Legates aforesaid in all things for not doing whereof he was excommunicated by him and that he should not molest Stephen Archbishop of Canterbury William Bishop of London Eustace Bishop of Ely Giles Bishop of Hereford Iosceline Bishop of Bath Hubert Bishop of Lincoln the Prior and Monks of Canterbury Robert Fitz-Walter whose Castle of Baynard in or near London the King had before seized with all his other Lands and Estate proclaiming him a Traytor and Eustace de Vescy with all other Clarks and Laicks which had adhaered unto them but continue in a firm peace and good accord with them and should publickly take his Oath before the said L gate or his Delegate that he should not hurt or cause them to be molested in their Persons Lands Goods or Estates but should receive them into his grace and favour and pardon all their Offences not hinder the said Archbishops and Bishops in their jurisdictions and execution of their Office but they might fully execute their Authority as they ought and should grant to the Pope Archbishops and Bishops his Letters Patents thereof upon Oaths to be taken by the Bishops Earls and Barons and their Letters Patents given that they would firmly and truly hold and keep the said Peace and Agreement and if he by himself or others should infringe it they in the behalf of the Church should oppose the Violators of the said Peace and Agrement and he should lose the benefit of the Custody of their Churches in the vacancy thereof and if he could not perswade others to keep the last part of the Oath that is to say by himself or others should contradict or go against it they should put in execution the power of the Church and Apostolick Command and did by his Letters Patents further oblige himself to quit and renounce all his Rights and Patronage which he had in any of the Churches of England and the said Letters Patents should be transmitted and delivered to the said Archbishop and Bishops before their coming into England the said Archbishop and Bishops with a Salvo honore Dei Ecclesiae giving caution by their Oaths and Letters Patents that neither they nor any on their behalf should attempt or do any thing against his Person or Crown whilst he observed and secured unto them the Peace and Agreement as aforesaid And as to what was taken from them should make unto them full Restitution with Damages for all that had been done as well to Clerks as Laicks intermedling in those Affairs not only as to their Goods and Estates but all Liberties which should be preserved unto them and to the Archbishop and Bishop of Lincoln from the time of their Consecrations and to all others from the time of the aforesaid Discords nor should there be any hindrance to the living or dead by any of his grants or promises before made neither should he retain any thing by way of Service due unto him but only the Services which should hereafter be due unto him all Clerks and Laicks imprisoned upon that occasion should be restored to Liberty And the King should presently after Absolution given to him by him that should do it cause to be
Canterbury in the behalf of the State of his Oath made and taken by others for him upon the Peace made with Lewis for confirmation of the Liberties of the Kingdom for which the War was begun with his Father without which the whole State would again fall assunder and they would have him to know it betimes to avoid those miserable inconveniencies which might happen William Brewere a Councellor urging it to have been acted by constraint and therefore not to be performed Notwithstanding which it was at that time being the 7th year of his Reign promised by the King to be ratified and a Commission was granted by Writs unto Twelve Knights in every Shire to examine What were the Laws and Liberties which the Kingdom enjoyed under his Grandfather and return the same by a certain day which saith the learned and judicious Sir Henry Spelman were never returned or could not be found In the mean time the Earls of Albemarl Chester and divers of the Nobility assemble together at Leicester with intent to remove from the King Hubert de Burgh Chief-Justiciar and other Officers that hindred their motion but the Archbishop of Canterbury by his Spiritual Power and the rest of the Nobility being careful to preserve the Peace of the Kingdom stood to the King and would not suffer them to proceed therein so as they were constrained to come in and submit themselves And the King in Parliament resumed such alienations as had been made of the Lands appertaining to the Crown by any of his Ancestors to the end he might live of his own and not be chargable to the People The next year after being the 8th year of his Reign another Parliament was holden at Westminster where the King required the Fiftieth part of all the movables both of the Clergy and Laity but Mat. Paris more probably saith the Fifteenth for the recovering of those parts in France which had been held from the Crown being one and the same which is said in Magna Charta to have been granted as a grateful acknowledgment for the grant of their Liberties which though it concerned the Estates of most of the Nobility that had Lands therein would not be yielded unto but upon confirmation of their Liberties atque his in hunc diem prosecutis Archiepiscopus concilio tota Episcoporum Comitum Priorum habita deliberatione Regi dedere responsum quod Regis petitionibus gratunter ad quiescerent si illas diu petitas libertates concedere voluisset annuit itaque Rex cupiditate ductus quod petebant Magnates Chartisque protinus conscriptis Regis sigillo munitis in the next year after for the Charters themselves bear date in the 9th year of his Reign And the several Charters or Copies thereof were sent to the Sheriffs of every County and Twelve Knights were out of every County chosen to divide the Old Forests from the New and lay open all such as had been afforested since the first Coronation of King Henry II. Although at the same time or a little before or after it some of the Nobility who had formerly crowned Lewis of France King and had been the cause of King John's death for which they were banished the Realm endeavouring to return into England and to set up again the French King's Interest and domineer over the King and his faithful Councellors by circumventing Pope Honorius Hubert de Burgh Chief-Justice of England the Earl of Chester and seven other of the King's Councellors sent an Epistle to the Pope desiring him to assist the King and them and prevent those dangerous Plots and Designs And the King having sent also his Proctors to Rome upon the like occasion they returned him an account of a new Confederacy betwixt his discontented Barons and the French King to invade England and dispossess him of the Crown thereof adding thereunto quod Gallici praedicabant omnibus quod majores Angliae obsides offerebant de reddendo siâ—i terram â—um primo venire curaret ad illam adjicientes Si aâ—iquid in curia Romana contra voluntatem Regis Franciae attemptaretur incontmenter Rex transfretaret in Angliam Nor could any such authority accrue to them in or by those Charters called Magna Charta and Charta Forestae granted by King Henry III. his Son which were in very many things but the exmeplaria or patterns of that of King John in the like method and tenour containing very many Liberties and great Priviledges which were by King Henry III. as those Charters do declare of his own free accord granted and confirmed in the 9th year of his Reign to his Subjects and People of England Liberis hominibus Free-men or Free-holders for otherwise it would have comprehended those multitudes of Villains Bondmen and Bond-women which the Nation did then and long after employ and make use of and those very many men accounted by the Laws of England to be as dead men viz. Monks Fryers Priors and Abbots to be holden to Them and their Heirs of Him and his Heirs for ever But in those Charters or his confirmation of them in the 21st and 28th year of his Reign could not procure to be inserted or recorded those clauses which they had by their terrours gained from his Father in these words viz. Nullum scutagium vel auxilium ponam in Regno nostro nisi per commune consilium Regni nostri ad corpis nostrum redimendum ad primogenitum filium nostrum militem faciendum ad primogenitam filiam nostram semel maritandam ad hoc non fiet nisi rationabile auxilium simili modo fiat de auxiliis de Civitate Londinensi quod omnes aliae Civitates Burgi Villae Barones de quinque portubus omnes portus habeant omnes libertates omnes liberas consuetudines suas Et ad habendum commune concilium Regni de auxiliis assidendis aliter quam in tribus casibus praedictis scutagiis assidendis submoneri faciemus Archiepiscopos Episcopos Abbates Comites majores Barones Regni singillatim per literas nostras Et praetereà faciemus submoneri in generali per Vicecomites Ballivos nostros omnes alios qui in capite tenent de nobis ad certum diem scilicet ad terminum quadraginta dierum ad minus ad certum locum in omnibus literis submonitionis illius causam submonitionis illius exponemus sic facta submonitione negotium procedat ad diem assignatum secundum consilium eorum qui praesentes fuerint quamvis non omnes submoniti Nos non concedimus de caetero alicui quod capiat auxilium de liberis hominibus suis nisi ad corpus suum redimendum ad faciendum primogenitum filium suum militem ad primogenitam filiam suam semel maritandam ad hoc non fiat nisi rationabile auxilium but were constrained to omit altogether and forgo those clauses and provisions which
Advantage and to take care that there should be some Bridle or Method to restrain them And there being besides Twenty-Four Cities in England where two Citizens were to be chosen out of each by the direction of that novel Writ and a great number out of as many Boroughs and Corporation-Towns then in England at the arbitrary and corrupt Power of the Sheriffs as it after proved and hapned with its Thirty-Nine Shires and two Knights to be chosen out of each the Counties and Boroughs of Wales not being at that time to be put into the Account and Four out of every of the Cinque-Ports the number would so swell and increase as might very much exceed that of the Peers and Barons which in the largest Estimate would not then arrive unto Two Hundred and Eighty and according to the then more common Accompt and they then summoned ad libitum Regis not many more than Sixty in which high and honourable Court and House of Lords Spiritual and Temporal should that very great surpassing number of Commons have their equal Suffrages as it may be believed they never were intended to be allowed the lesser number would be over-powered by the greater the more noble prudent and concerned by those that were little at all and introduce a Community or Vassalage upon themselves and their Posterity which the Roman Senators and Patritii in a Common-Wealth made out of a Monarchy for fear of Tyranny were unwilling to admit and when they were seditioned and mutinyed unto it left their Chiland Seri nepotes to endure the dire Effects of their often Changes from Kings to Consuls from Decem-virates unto Tribunes of the People Censors Tribunes-Military bloody Proscriptions and Wars betwixt the Patritii and Plebeians pacified and succeeded by a Dictator after that a Trim-virate after that an Emperor and semper Augustus Caesar with an arbitrary Power until good and wholsome Laws of their own making gave an Allay unto it For such a Miscellany of Imis cum Summis of Inferiours with Superiors could not be deemed to be either more or better enabled than the Prelates and Baronage of the Nation the Moratiores bomines Men of better Extraction Education the ancient extraordinary grand Councel of our Kings and Princes not meanly but eminently skilled in matters of State and Policy Religion War forreign Languages and Affairs of their own State and others and in the quieting the Troubles of it Nor could that their Device at that time have much Assurance of any good Success therein when the Prince was a Prisoner and Hostage for his Father who was long after in no better a condition against the Laws of Wars and Rules of Hostages and the Tenor of those Writs of Summons carried nothing in them of a perpetual Constitution or any thing more than pro hac vice and for that only time and purpose Or that such a Parcel of the lower ranks of People could be more knowing and intelligent than the King of France assisted by his grand and learned Nobility Clergy and Wisdom of his Parliament of Paris were not long before when they determined those grand and long-depending bloodily-agitated Controversies betwixt that persecuted King and some of his then ungovernable Barons concerning the disloyal and unhappy Provisions enforced from Him at Oxford some Years before And such a novum inauditum betwixt a Monarch and King no Feudatory and his rebellious Subjects referred to the Advice of themselves or their Partizans touching the Claim of their Pretences in their own particular Cases being not easily to be found in any the Annals Histories or Records of this or any other Kingdom or Nation For many of the Milites or Knights in that new Contrivance to be Elected were at that time as to their Estates of so general and lost Esteem as Twenty or Fifteen pounds per Annum was by the Statute of the First Year of the Raign of King Edward the Second which was not much above Forty Three Years after conceived to be no contemptible Rate or Proportion of Livelihood for a Knight when William de Felton an Ancestor of a Family now of good Note in the County of Suffolk being in the Third Year of the Raign of King Edward the Third presented before the Justices itinerant to be seized of the Mannot of Botingdon quod valet per Annum Twenty Pounds to be Thirty Years Old nondum Miles ideo in misericordia and many Gentlemen of good Extractions and Families did heretofore appear to have been long after retained under Earls and Barons in the Wars and Service of their Prince and not seldom as Domesticks and more especial Servants in their then large and honourable Families and have been their Receivers Stewards or Feodaries worn their more special Livings and taken Wages Dyet and Allowance for themselves and a limited Number of Men and Horses altho some of them have been Gentlemen of good Value and Descent and very many of those which have been since Elected are not denyed to have been Persons of ancient and worshipful Families The Citizens and Burgesses Merchants excepted such as did Sordidas artes exercere as the Civil Law stileth them Men that usually made their Gain or manner of Living by Deceits and Lying and were as our Common Law above Two Hundred Years after declared them saith Littleton to be Men with whose Daughters to Marry would be to a Gentleman such a Disparagement as the Parents and Kindred might Legally complain of it and the Testimony saith the Caesarean or Civil Law of a Gentleman was to go as far or to be valued as two of them And how unequal they were like to be in their Births Reputations and requisite Parliamentary Abilities who being to be very Burgesses and City or Town-Trading Inhabitants according to the Intention of those Writs could not be expected to be other than such as were only bred and instructed in the Arts Tricks Deceits and Mysteries as they have been since well called of Trade and the most of their Estates and Livelihood gained by it being much more wickedly than Honest as their Apprentices and Journey-men who know the Secret thereof can Witness nor to be able or serviceable to their Prince in any thing more than to attend Him if He should need or call him as a Merchant to some great and publick Mart or Fair to help him to buy or sell such Things as should be there Marchantable or that the Knights to be chosen in the Shires who in those times made the Military Exercises to be their greatest Care and Employment would not be more necessary and fit to attend their Soveraign to perform the Office and Intention of those Writs to defend their King themselves their Country Friends and Neighbours and to do that which every Gentleman and such as were è meliori luto of the more refined Clay better born and bred than the rude Vulgus or common sort of People would of
and that long after both by the Feudal and common Laws of this Kingdom the Lords Spiritual and Temporal were in Parliament to Assess a proportionable Escuage upon such of their Tenants who held any Capite Lands and did not go with them in Person to serve their King and Country and were not to be their own Assessors but submit unto what they should in those great Councels subordinate to their King 's determine and as they anciently were used to do when Taxes were laid upon Knights Fees when the Common People that were to pay them were not all present or any for them Or never to intend to introduce such a Party of the Common People into a Co-ordination or Fellowship with them in a Subordination to their Soveraign which might as they did afterwards entice them to encroach and believe that a License of Petitioning for Redress of any Grievances which might happen and a Liberty to give an Approbation and Obedience to what should be there ordained by the King by the Advice of his Lords Spiritual and Temporal for the publick Good should be in or unto them or their Successors an Authority or original Power to controul what their Kings by the Counsel of their Lords Spiritual and Temporal should there find necessary to Enact when they could not forget that even in the time of the Imprisonment of King Henry the Third they did in his Letters Rescripts Writs and Edicts written and sent about the Kingdom in his Name amounting to no fewer than Sixteen mention that his said Orders Acts and Commands were done by the Counsel and Advice Procerum Magnatum suorum and in some of them his Prelates Barons hautes hommes but nothing at all of the Commons And that Rebellious part of the Baronage might the easier be led into that they never meant when they had some reason to think or assure themselves that such an Election of Members or the parts of the common People would much advance the fixing and setling their Designes when they could not but acknowledge that they owed much of their Liberties and happiness under their Kings and Princes unto them and their Ancestors as in particular unto an Earl of Oxford in procuring of the King Three Hundreds in the County of Essex to be diaforrested and might be glad to entail and perpetuate their Assistances Dependencies Hospitalities Priviledges and Favours upon their Posterity and after Generations and rather return a submissive Compliance unto them well accepted than to endeavour to prejudice or in the least to make themselves equal unto them or Mastors of them but would be content to be ruled by them and not endeavour to govern or domineer over them With which doth accord that well founded Opinion and Answer of that excellent Prince and very Martyr King Charles the First our late gracious and pious Soveraign in his Answer to the haughty and undutiful Nineteen Propositions sent unto Him by the rebellious and misled Parliament the Second Day of June One Thousand Six Hundred Forty Two That the House of Commons was never intended for any share in the Government or the Choosing of them that should Govern and were not likely in those early and troublesome times to get any Root or Foundation for such an unwarrantable Pretence And might have believed that the Prelates and Baronage of England had heretofore Power and Influence sufficient to have kept them in a better Order both towards them and their Sovereign SECT II. Of the great Power Authority Command and Influence which the Prelates Barons and Nobility of England had in or about the Forty-Ninth Year of the Raign of King Henry the Third when he was a Prisoner to Symon de Monfort and those Writs of Election of some of the Commons to Parliament were first devised and sâ—nt to Summon them And the great Power and Estates which they afterwards had to create and continue an Influence upon them WHen the then Prelates by the Papal great and exorbitant Power over the Bodies and Souls of the People of England as well high as low rich or poor their Power of certifying Illegitimations Bastardy or Ne unques loyalment accouplis en Matrimony with their Fulminations Excommunications Curses Interdictions Confessions Absolutions Pardons and Dispensations Denial of Christian burial Affrights of Purgatory undenyable Commands over the inferiour Clergy and they over the People together with the great Authority which their Episcopal Function and Dignity inseparably conjoynt with their Temporal Baronies had given unto them in the Parliaments of England the greatest and highest Councels and Assembly of the Nation were in the time of King Henry the Third's Imprisonment so much allured and drawn by some of their factious and naughty Incitements to Symon de Montfort's Party by a kind of Ordinance and Agreement before mentioned of the then over-ruling-Power of the rebellious Victors as there was an undertaking to preserve from Plunder and Spoil all the Lands and Estates of the Holy-Church affirm their Authorities and all that they should have reasonable Order for amends should be performed and full Power granted unto them by the King or Generality of the Earls Barons and great Men of the Land to provide things profitable for the bettering the Estate of the Holy-Church to the Honor of God And with their temporal Baronies unto which many Mannors of a great Extent and yearly Value were annext and some other Barons holding of them and had their many Milites for service of War and Multitudes of Tenants by Tenure Lease and Copy-holding of them And the regular and monastick part of the Clergy of England many of whose Abbots and Priors were admitted to sit amongst the Peers in Parliament were so envied for their great Revenues and Estates as the Commons in a Parliament in the Raign of King Henry the Fourth wherein Lawyers were prohibited to be elected Members and therefore stiled indoctum Parliamentum did petition the King to confiscate and take into his own Revenue all their Lands which they had calculated to be sufficient to maintain One Hundred and Fifty Earls no small Estate in those times being enough to satisfy the honourable Yearly expences of one Earl and his numerous Retinue after the rate of their then living One Thousand Five Hundred Knights Six Thousand Two Hundred Esquires and erect Two Hundred Hospitals for the Relief of maimed Souldiers And in that new Frame of a great Council or Parliament wherein a part of the Commons of England were to be Assembled which can find no other Original than the Fate of that unhappy King in the battle of Lewis as the close Roll of the Forty Eight of that King will tell us there were no fewer of the then well-wishing Clergy to Symon de Mortfort Summoned unto that new modelled Parliament than One Arch-Bishop Fourteen Bishops Thirty-Five Abbots Two Priors their good Friends and Confederates and for Companies sake in such an hopeful and popular
Rebellion with Montfort against him should bring his Action for the other Two Knight's Fees and an half From which most necessary and excellent Feudal Laws have proceeded those grand Honors fixed and appurtenant to our ancient Monarchy of England in our Kings and Princes Grant to several great Families in England in Fee or Fee-Tayl as to be Constable of England Earl Marshal of England Lord Steward of England Lord Great Chamberlain of England Chamberlain of the Queens of England Die Coronationis suae Butler to our Kings at their Coronations c. And likewise the Statute de Donis or Entailes the neglect whereof in leaving all the ruined Families of the Nobility Gentry and better sort of the English Nation to feigned Recoveries introduced about the Raign of King Edward the Fourth by an unhappy and unjust Trick of Law to make the Losers believe that they shall recover the Value of their Lands so Lost amounting in the whole unto the greatest part of all the Lands in England of the Bagbearer of the Court of Common-Pleas who in the Conclusion is only Vouchee to Warrants and to make it good out of his own Land and by the small Fees and Profits of his Office was never yet known to Inherit or to have been a Purchaser of ten Acres of Land yet walks about and is never molested or called to Account for those vast Sums of Money or his Land if he ever had or was re vera intended to have had any was to be liable by his being a Common Vouchee in all the Common Recoveries which are suffered in that Court It being in those more Obedient and Loyal Times esteemed no small Honour to serve our Kings or hold Lands by such a Kind of Tenure as it may be believed to have occasioned that Adage or Common saying in England before the ever to be lamented taking away of Tenures in Capite and by Knight-Service and Pourveyance No Fishing to the Sea no Service to the King and those Royal Services affixed unto Lands and Territories have been so immutable amongst other our Neighbor Nations as in the Aurea Bulla fastned upon the Empire of Germany about the 30th Year of the Raign of our King Edward the Third the Three Spiritual Electors viz. the Arch-Bishops of Mentz Cologne and Triers or Trevers do hold their Lands and Territories by their several Tenures of being Arch-Chancellors the First of Germany the Second of Italy and the Third of France the King of Bohemia to be Archipincerna Duke of Bavaria or Count Palatine of the Rhine Archidapifer Duke of Saxony Archimariscallus Duke or Marquess of Brandenburgh Archicamerarius of that Empire and might be with or amongst them exampled from our Pattern which was long before as also from the Scots who have to this day some of the like official Dignities annexed to their Lands and Estates and as in the Raign of our King Henry the First Count Tankervile was by Inheritance and Tenure of his Lands Chamberlain of Normandy And although not so ancient as the Customs of the Patroni and Clientes in the beginning of the flourishing of the vast Roman Empire which was so greatly advantageous both unto the greater and lesser part of the People the Patroni in their Popularities and Ambitions to gain and please them in their way of Advancements to Annual Magistracies not seldom exercising their Eloquence in pleading their Causes or Suits in Law before the Lawyers had for another kind of Advantages by the Gratifications of Fees and Rewards made it to be the greatest part of their Profession which before were principally employed upon seldom Occasions in matters of Difficulty in Jurisconsults and Decisions some of the more eminent sorts of them having about the Raign of the Emperor Augustus Caesar obtained Licenses of him ad respondendum Yet after the Irruption of the Goths Vandals Longobards and Hunnes with other Northern Nations into that Empire they found it to be more beneficial to do as the Germans and many other Northern Nations have done to be Feudalists and to have Lands given unto them and their Heirs to hold by Service of War and other necessaries under those grand Obligations of Interests Oaths Gratitude Homage and Fealty which proved to be better more certain and beneficial both for the Patroni and Clientes the poorer sort of the People alwayes or very often wanting the Aid and Protection of the greater from Wrongs and Oppressions like to be put upon them And the Patroni and Greater procuring to themselves thereby a more constant Observance of Duty Honour and Additions to their former Grandeur the greater and lesser thereby mutually supporting and assisting each other which in the Consequence was as it did likely to prove much better than the charge and trouble the Patroni were used to be as in the frequent courting and Humoring of the common People with their costly Epulae's and Ludi's not only to gain their own Preferments in their Annual poursuites of Offices of Magistracy but to keep the popular Votings from Mutiny and ruining them as much as themselves And howsoever that they with us in England by a great infelicity to our languishing Monarchical Government after an horrid Rebellion and murder of our late King Anno. 12. Car. 2. by an Act of Parliament made upon his now Majesties happy Restoration for the taking away the Court of Wards and Liveries Tenures in Capite and by Knight service and Pourveyance and for settling a Revenue upon His Majesty in lieu of a great part of the lands of England and Wales which the Rebels besides their great Estates had forfeited unto him which they were willing to retain to themselves and thank him as fast as they could with a more detestable Rebellion the Praeamble mentioning most unfortunately for want of a right Information and understanding thereof That the said Court of Wards and Liveries Tenures by Knight service in Capite holden of the King or others and Socage in Capite have been by consequence more praejudicial then beneficial to the Kingdome as if the Nerves and Ligaments of the Crown of England and the ancient Support and Defence of the Honour and glory thereof for more then one thousand years could any way deserve to be so Charactered and that after the Intromission of the said Court which hath been since the 24 th day of February 1645. when the Divel and his Reformation had made a large progress in the chasing Religion out of the Kingdom and washing over in blood the Blessed Martyr King Charles the first 3 Kingdomes of England Scotland and Ireland many Persons could not by their Will or otherwise dispose of their Lands by Knight Service whereby many Questions might possibly arise unless some seasonable remedy be taken to prevent the same Our Soveraign Lord by the Assent of the Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled and by the Authority of the same did enact the taking away of the said Court
The Tenants in Chief being by those Differences distinguished in their Titles Possessions and Reliefs were so much less in Honor than the greater Barons who had several Writs at every Summons and all the ancient Circumstances of the Title of Baron still remaining to them It was the less difficult for those greater Barons to Exclude the rest wholly at length from having any Interest in the Parliaments of that Time under the name of Tenants in Chief only And although in somewhat a different and much inferiour manner to the Majores Barones their Number Greatness of Provinces and Estates or near Alliance in Blood unto the Crown is not much unlike the distinction made in France of the Douze Pairs not exclusively to the other Baronage which our Mathew Paris and their own Authors will Evidence were not only before but are there to this day continued as a Degree of Honor different from the Barones Minores or the Vulgus or Common People much inferior to that lesser Baronage yet the Annalls and Records of France are not yet accorded of the precise time of the first Institution of their twelve Pairs lately Augmented to a much greater number For Du Fresne is of Opinion That in the Year 1179. which was the 25th Year of the Raign of our King Henry the Second there was no certain number of the Peers of France Narrat quippe Rogerus Hovedenus Willielmum Archiepiscopum Remensem eundem Regem unxisse Remis ministrantibus ei in illo officio Willielmo Turonensi Biturocensi Senonensi Archiepiscopis fere omnibus Episcopis regni Henricum vero Regem Angliae de jure ducatus Normanniae coronam auream qua coronandus erat Philippus Philippum Comitem Flandriae gladium regni praetulisse alios vero Duces Comites Barones praeivisse Secutos diversos diversis deputatos officiis according to the long before used custom of the English at the Coronation of their Kings where divers of the greatest Officiary and Nobility as the Constable Marshall Steward and Great Chamberlain of England cum multis aliis One Nation learning of Another their Customs and Usages did conceive it to be an Honour fixt in their Families by Grand Serjeanty Et Rigordus eandem Coronationem peractam ait astante Henrico Rege Angliae ex una parte coronam super caput Regis Franciae ex debita subjectione humiliter portante cum omnibus Archiepiscopis Episcopis caeterisque regni principibus ex quibus patet saith Du Fresne caeteros Episcopos qui pro Franciae Paribus habentur ea quae hodie non assecutos ministeria in ea Solemnitate Proinde hand improbanda forte sententia qui Parium Francicorum duodecim virorum definitum fuisse tradunt a S. Ludovico Rege quos inter est Iohannes a Leidis lib. 22. ca. 7. itaque Sanctus Ludovicus Rex Franciae ordinavit in regno Franciae constituens inde collegium seu capitulum qui haberent ardua regni tractare Scilicet 6 Duces 6 Comites de Ducibus sunt tres Episcopi de Comitibus sunt etiam tres Episcopi And L'Oiseau a Learned French-man giveth us an account of the Erection of the 12 Pairs of France in these Words ils furent choisis selon la plus vray semblable opinion par Loys le Ieune du tout a la maniere des anciens Pairs de fief dont parlent les livres de fieffs et ont aussi toutes les mesmes charges qu' eux a Scavoir d' assister leRoy en Son investiture qui est son sacre coronement et de juger avec luiles differens des vassaux du Royame ont les uns les autres este ainsi appellez non pas pour estre agaux a leur seigneur mais pour estre Pairs compagnons entr ' eux seulement come l' explique un ancien Arrest donne contre le Comte de Flandres au Parlement de Toussaints 1295. rappâ—rte par du Tillet Ce fut pourtant un trait non de ieune mais de sage Roy lors que les Duc's Com'tes de France avoient usurpe le souverainete presque entiere pour empescher qu' ils ne se separassent tout a faict du Royaume d'en choisir douze des plus mauvais les faire Officiers principaux commemembres inseperables de la couronne a fin de les ingager par un interest particulier a la maintenir en son integriâ—e mesmea empescher la des union des autres moindres qu' eux moyen que les Allemans ont aussi tenu pour la conservation de l' Empire par la creation des 7 Electeurs Which in process of Time being long afterwards done by the Aurea Bulla might not improbably have been instituted in some imitation of the douze Pairs du France And in Anno 1226. being the 30th year of the Reign of our Henry the 3d the Earl of Flanders and the Earl of Boloigne complaining that their Lands had been Seized and taken away without the judgement of the 12 Peers as by the Laws of France they as was alledged ought and when those their greivances were redressed they would attend at the Coronation howsoever Blanch the Queen Regent although the Duke of Burgundy Earl of Champaigne St Paul Britain fere omnes nobiles ad Coronam who may probably be understood such as more particularly did hold by some grand Serjeanties to be performed at the Inauguration of their Kings did by the Counsell of the Popes Legat cause her Son Lewis to be Crowned without them And when St. Lewis the French King so called whose Saintship in our Barons wars had cost England very dear could in a seeming friendly Entertainment of our King Henry the 3d at Paris wish with an Outinam duodecim Pares Franciae had not done as they did in the forfeiture of Normandy mihi consentirent certe amica essemus indissolubiles but did at the same time adde Baronagium and might have understood that that judgment against King John denyed by the English to have any justice in it was not given by the 1â— Peers against him as Duke of Normandy for he was one of the principall of them himself and was neither present or heard But whither that or their Offices to be performed at the Coronation of their Kings gave the rise or ground of that especiall Peerage the time when being something uncertain for Du Fresne doubting of it declareth that quando the Pairs of France redacti fuerunt ad duodenarium numerum non omnino constaet inter Scriptores sane in confesso esse debat ab ipso seudorum origino vassallorum Coronae Franciae controversias a Paribus suis fuisse judicatas Anno. 1216. which was the 17th year of the Raign of our King John numerus Parium Franciae non fuit definitus And that distinction of the Majores Barones Minores Barones
pertineaut And that great King was so more then ordinarily carefull of the rights and Honor of his Crown and Regall authority which had been too much depressed and misused by the Rebellion of Simon Montfort and some Rebellious Barons and his fathers Imprisonment with the Wars and Hardships put upon them did so well provide against any the like troubles and Convulsions of State as in his return through France and abode for some time in Aquitain where he was Sumptuously feasted by the King of France he took an especiall care when he did Homage to him for Aquitain and some other Dominions he held of him in that Kingdom to limit it only unto them and except Normandy where he expended much time in the Setling of his affairs But howsoever Summus ille viz our Mr Selden was of opinion that so remarkable a provision and Monarchical Resolution of our King Edward the first and so many Emperors and Christian Kings and Princes to conserve the rights of their Crowns reported by Fleta was Prodigious and taken too much upon trust and an over facile credulity of our Carceratus Fleta as he termed him because resumptions of the Sacred Patrimonies aliened had been used here in England long before and not used at or about the same Time by Rodulphus primus the Emperor of Germany when he granted to Pope Gregory the 10th Bononia in Italy et latifunda circum quaque amplissima quae ante Imperii Romani pars insignis and permitted to be aliened to the Pope who was not then so easy to be resisted and that Choppinus and those many great and learned Doctors of the Law that had written and argued so much concerning those kind of alienations and our own Historians had been altogether silent therein yet that Decus Anglorum gentis might in his great recherches of our English Records Laws and Annalls have found that our King Edward might have been believed to have taken such Councel either from his former calamities in his his fathers Time or by a generall Consult with some or all of those Christian Princes or their Legates for that he was no sooner arrived in his own Kingdom and Dominions but he began to busy himself as much as his other great Cares and Variety of troubles would Suffer him to do in the allaying the Unquietness of the Disturbances which Humfrey do Bohun Constable of England Rigor Bigod Earl Marshall of England Gilbert de Clare Earl of Glocester and many other the remains of his fathers more then Cammon Distresses and in his Wars with Scotland and annexing the Rights and Superiority of it to his Crown of England in the placing displacing of the Kings and Heirs thereof a Regality Superlative not to be neglected and an effect pertinent enough to that Monarchick Universall consult when in the fourth year of his Reign an Enquiry was made of all the Manors and Lands Tenements Parks Buildings Woods Tenants Commons Pastures Pawnage Honey Herbage and all other profits of Forrests Waters Moors Marshes Heaths Turbury and Wasts and how much it was worth by the year Mills Fishings Common and severall Freeholders and Copyholders by what Service they did hold their Land by Knight Service or in Socage and what reliefs what Customary Tenants and by what works or Service they did hold what rents of Assise what Cotages and Curtilages and what rents they do pay by the Year what pleas and exquisites of the Counties and of the Forrests and what they were worth by the Year what Churches of what Yearly value and who was the Patron with the yearly value of Herriotts Fairs Markets Escheats Customes Services fore Time Works and Customs and w 〈…〉 tâ—e pleas and perquisites of Courts Fines all other Casualties were worth by the Year or may fall by any of those things an Inquisition much resembling that of the Norman villains enquest in the Book of Domesday or that which long before preceded it called the Roll of Winchester and in his elaborate recherches of all the Ancient Records Annalls Historians Manuscripts and Memorialls of the Brittish Saxon Scotish and English Nations for the clear Evidence and manifestation of his Undoubted Right to Jus Superioritatis oftke Kingdom of Scotland And in the same Year what things a Coroner should enquire of purprestures or usurpation upon any of the Kings Lands and that they should be reseised A Statute of the Exchecquer touching the recovery of the Kings Debts made in Anno 10. E. 1. A Cessavit per Biennium to be brought by the Chief Lord with a forfeiture upon him that neglecteth to do his service by the space of 2 Years In Anno 17. Fined 10 of 12 of his Judges accused and indicted of taking Bribes and very great summs of Mony Statute of quia Emptores terrarum that the Feoffs shall hold his lands of the Chief Lord and not of the Feoffer And afterwards caused the Judges at their return out of their Circuits to rectify in rolls of Parchment all Fines and amercements due unto him and ordered them to receive only their then small Wages thereout curbed the Clergy that denied to give him Aids and forbad them to come to his Parliament which was holden untill their Submission with a Clero Excluso and granted his Writs contra Impugnatores Jurium Regis made 2 Statutes of Quo Warranto in 18. E. 1. that every man should shew cause how he claimed or held his Liberties Ordinatio de libertatibus perquirendis 27. E. 1. Statute of Wards and Reliefs Anno. 28. E. 1. Another Statute of Quo Warranto Anno. 30. E. 1. Ordinatio Forrestae Anno. 33. E. 1. So that pace tanti viri with all the honor and reverence that can or ought to be given to Mr Selden that Dictator of Universal Solid Learning it may be said that our Fleta which was by him so well esteemed as to have been published and caused to be printed with his learned dissertations and Comment thereupon might well have escaped his scruples and distrust when in that great Kings travail from Hierusalem or out of Aba homewards he was royally feasted by the King of Sicily one of the aforesaid Confederate Christian Kings the Pope and divers Princes of Italy And when the Pope had afterwards demanded 8 Years arrears of him for an Yearly tribute of 1000. Marks for the Kingdom of England and Ireland enforced from King John did by his letter answer that the Parliament was dissolved before his letter came unto his hands and that sine Praelatis Proceribus no Commons therein mentioned comunicato Concilio sanctitati suae super praemissis non potuit respondere Jurejurando in Coronatio sua prestita fuit astrictus quod Jurat regni sui servabit illibata nec aliquid quod Diadema tangit regni ejusdem no such Oath or Promise being in the Coronation Oath ut nihil abusque illorum requisito Concilio
upon less overt-acts and Praesumptions have been accompted and punished as High Treason § 27. That no Impeachment by all or any of the Members of the House of Commons in Parliament or of the House of Peers in Parliament hath or ever had any Authority to invalidate hinder or take away the power force or effect of any the pardons of our Kings or Princes by their Letters Patents or otherwise for High Treason or Felony Breach of the Peace or any other crime or supposed delinquency whatsoever FOR if Monarchy hath been by God himself and the Experience of above 5000 years and the longest Ages of the World approved as it hath to have been the best and most desirable form of Government And the Kingdom of England as it hath been for more than 1000 years a well tempered Monarchy and the Sword and Power thereof was given to our Kings only by God that ruleth the Hearts of them The means thereunto which should be the Power of Punishment and Reward can no way permit that they should be without the Liberty and Prerogative of Pardoning which was no Stranger in England long before the Conquest in the Raign of King Athelstane who did thereby free the Nation from four-footed Wolves by ordaining Pardons to such Out-Laws as would help to free themselves and others from such villanous Neighbours the Laws of Canutus also making it a great part of their business to enjoyn a moderation in punishments ad divinam clementiam temperata to be observed in Magistracy and never to be wanting in the most Superior none being so proper to acquit the offence as they that by our Laws are to take benefit by the Fines and Forfeitures arising thereby and Edward the Confessors Laws would not have Rex Regni sub cujus protectione pace degunt universi to be without it when amongst his Laws which the People of England held so sacred as they did hide them under his Shrine and afterwards precibus fletibus obtained of the Conqueror that they should be observed and procured the observation of them especially to be inserted in the Coronation-Oaths of our succeeding Kings inviolably to be kept And it is under the Title of misericordia Regis Pardonatio declared That Si quispiam forisfactus which the Margin interpreteth rei Capitalis reus poposcerit Regiam misericordiam pro forisfacto suo timidus mortis vel membrorum per dendorum potest Rex ei lege suae dignitatis condonare si velit etiam mortem promeritam ipse tamen malafactor rectum faciat in quantumcunque poterit quibus forisfecit tradat fidejussores de pace legalitate tenenda si vero fidejussores defecerint exulabitur a Patria For the pardoning of Treason Murder breach of the Peace c. saith King Henry the First in his Laws so much esteemed by the Barons and Contenders for our Magna Charta as they solemnly swore they would live and die in the defence thereof do solely belong unto him super omnes homines in terra sua In the fifth year of the Raign of King Edward the Second Peirce Gaveston Earl of Cornwal being banished by the King in Parliament and all his Lands and Estate seized into the Kings hands the King granted his Pardons remitted the Seizures and caused the Pardon and Discharges to be written and Sealed in his Presence And howsoever he was shortly after upon his return into England taken by the Earl of Warwick and beheaded without Process or Judgment at Law yet he and his Complices thought themselves not to be in any safety until they had by two Acts of Parliament in the seventh year of that Kings Raign obtained a Pardon Ne quis occasionetur pro reditu morte Petri de Gaveston the power of pardoning being always so annexed to the King and his Crown and Dignity And the Acts of Parliament of 2 E. 3. ca. 2. 10 E. 3. ca. 15. 13 R. 2. ca. 1. and 16 R. 2. ca. 6. seeking by the Kings Leave and Licence in some things to qualifie it are in that of 13 R. 2. ca 1. content to allow the Power of Pardoning to belong to the Liberty of the King and a Regality used heretofore by his Progenitors Hubert de Burgh Earl of Kent Chief Justiciar of England in the Raign of King Henry the third laden with Envy and as many deep Accusations as any Minister of State could lie under in two several Charges in several Parliaments then without an House of Commons had the happiness notwithstanding all the hate and extremities Put upon him by an incensed Party to receive two several Pardons of his and their King and dye acquitted in the Estate which he had gained Henry de Bathoina a Chief Justice of England being in that Kings Raign accused in Parliament of Extortion and taking of Bribes was by the King pardoned In the fifieth year of the Reign of King Henry the third the Commons in Parliament petitioning the King that no Officer of the Kings or any man high or low that was impeached by them should enjoy his Place or be of the Kings Council The King only answered he would do as he pleased With which they were so well satisfied as the next year after in Parliament upon better consideration they petitioned him that Richard Lyons John Pechie and lice Pierce whom they had largely accused and believed guilty might be pardoned And that King was so unwilling to bereave himself of that one especial Flower in his Crown as in a Grant or Commission made in the same year to James Botiller Earl of Ormond of the Office of Chief Justiciar of Ireland giving him power under the Seal of that Kingdom to pardon all Trespasses Felonies Murders Treasons c he did especially except and reserve to himself the power of pardoning Prelates â—arls and Barons In the first year of the Raign of King Henry the fourth the King in the Case of the Duke of Albemarle and others declared in Parliament that Mercy and Grace belongeth to Him and his Royal Estate and therefore reserved it to himself and would that no man entitle himself thereunto And many have been since granted by our succeeding Kings in Parliament at the request of the Commons the People of England in Worldly and Civil Affairs as well ever since as before not knowing unto whom else to apply themselves for it So as no fraud or indirect dealings being made use of in the obtaining of a Pardon it ought not to be shaken or invalidated whether it were before a Charge or Accusation in Parliament or after or where there is no Charge or Indictment ant cedent The Pardon of the King to Richard Lyons at the request of the Commons in Parliament as the Parliament Rolls do mention although it was not inserted in the Pardon was declared to be after a charge against him by the Commons in Parliament and in the perclose
both Houses and had no Royal Assent unto them must at the next Assembly begin again for every Session of Parliament is in Law where any Bill hath gained the Royal Assent or any Record upon a Writ of Error brought in the House of Peers hath been certified is and hath been accompted to have been a Session And although some of this latter quarrelling Age have Espoused an Opinion too much insisted upon that an Impeachment brought by the House of Commons against any one makes the supposed Offence until it be Tryed unpardonable A Reason whereof is undertaken to be given because that in all Ages it hath been an undoubted Right of the Commons to Impeach before the Lords any Subject for Treason or any Crime whatsoever And the Reason of that Reason is supposed to be because great Offences complained of in Parliament are most effectually determined in Parliament Wherein they that are of that Opinion may be intreated to take into their more serious Consideration That there neither is nor ever was any House or Members of Commons in Parliament before the Imprisonment of King H. 3. by a Rebellous part of his Subjects in the Forty ninth year of his Raign or any kind of fair or just evidence for it Factious designing and fond conjectures being not amongst good Pa 〈…〉 ots or the Sons of Wisdom ever accompted to be a sufficient or any evidence Nor was the House of Lords from its first and more ancient original intituled under their King to a Judicative Power to their Kings in common or ordinary Affairs but in arduis and not in all things of that nature but in quibusdam as the King should propose and desire their advice concerning the Kingdom and Church in matters of Treason or publick concernments and did understand themselves and that high and honourable Court to be so much forbid by Law ancient usage and custom to intermeddle with petty or small Crimes or Matters as our Kings have ever since the sixth year of the Raign of King Edward the first ordained some part of the Honourable House of Peers to be Receivers and Tryers of Petitions of the Members of the House of Commons themselves and others directed to the King to admit what they found could have no Remedy in the ordinary Courts of Justice and reject such as were properly elsewhere to be determined with an Indorsement of non est Petitio Parliamenti Which may well be believed to have taken much of its reason and ground from a Law made by King Canutus who began his Raign about the year of our Lord 1016. Nemo de injuriis alterius Regi queratur nisi quidem in Centuria Justitiam consequi impetrare non poterit For certainly if it should be otherwise the reason and foundation of that highest Court would not be as it hath been hitherto always understood to be with a Cognisance only de quibusdam arduis matters of a very high nature concerning the King and the Church But it must have silenced all other Courts and Jurisdictions and have been a continual Parliament a Goal-delivery or an intermedler in matters as low as Court Leets or Baron and County Courts and a Pye-Powder Court And the words of any Crime whatsoever do not properly signifie great Offences and that all great Offences do concern the Parliament is without a Key to unlock the Secret not at all intelligible when it was never instituted or made to be a Court for common or ordinary Criminals For the House of Commons were never wont to take more upon them than to be Petitioners and Assenters unto such things as the King by the advice of His Lords Spiritual and Temporal should ordain and obey and endeavour to perform them And an Impeachment of the House of Commons cannot be said to be in the Name or on the behalf of all the People of England for that they never did or can represent the one half of them and if they will be pleased to exaimine the Writs and Commissions granted by our Kings for their Election and the purpose of the Peoples Election of them to be their Representatives Substitutes or Procurators it will not extend to accuse Criminals for that appertained to the King himself and His Laws care of Justice and the Publick for the Common People had their Inferiour Courts and Grand Juries Assises and Goal-Deliveries to dispatch such Affairs without immediately troubling Him or His Parliament and the tenour and purpose of their Commissions and Elections to Parliament is no more than ad faciendum consentiendum iis to obey and perform such things as the King by the advice of His Lords Spiritual and Temporal should in Parliament ordain For although where the Wife or Children of a Man murdered shall bring an Appeal the King is debarred from giving a Pardon because by our Saxon Laws derived from the Laws of God they are not to be disturbed in that satisfaction which they ought to have by the loss or death of the Man murdered Yet the publick Justice will not be satisfied without the party offending be Arraigned and brought to Judgment for it if the party that hath right to Appeal should surcease or be bought off so as an Appeal may be brought after or before the King hath Indicted and an auter foitz acquit in the one case will not prejudice in the other and where the Matter of Fact comes to be afterwards fully proved and the Appeal of a Wife or Child of a Bastard called filius populi quia nullius filius where only the King is Heir cannot vacate or supersede an Indictment of the Kings Neither is an Appeal upon a Crime or in criminal Matters in the first instance to be at all pursued in Parliament by the Statute made in the First year of the Raign of King H. 4. the words whereof are Item for many great inconveniences and mischiefs that often have happened by many Appeals made within the Realm of England to the great afflictions and calamites of the Nation as it afterwards happened by the Lancastrian Plots and Desings in that mischievous Appeal in Anno 11. of King Richard the Second before this time It is ordained and stablished from henceforth That all the Appeals to be made of things done out of the Realm shall be tryed and determined before the Constable and Marshal of England for the time being And moreover it is accorded and assented That no Appeals be from henceforth made or in any wise pursued in Parliament in any time to come And therefore that allegation that the House of Peers cannot reject the Impeachment of the Commons because that Suit or Complaint of the Commons can be determined no where else will want a better foundation an Impeachment of the House of Commons in the Name of all the People being no other than an Appeal to the King in Parliament And the Suit of such as might be Appellants in another place being there
Status pro Stallo Monachorum Cannnicorum in Ecclesia Galbertus in vita Caroli Com. Flandr n. 72. Status simul sedes Fratrum dejectae sunt Idem n. 98. Inter columnas quippe solarii specula Status suos ex scriniorum aggoribus cumulis scamnorum prostituerant Stephanus Tornacensis Epist. 12. Assignetis ei statum in Choro sicut habere solet sedem in Capitulo Locum in Refectorio statutum de Installatione Canonicorum Bononiensium in Morinis Assignaturque sibi status in Choro secundum qualitatem capacitatem recepti locus in Capituli For they must have no small influence upon the minds and reason of mankind as well as that which they designed to have upon the Estates of those that would be so credulously foolish as to believe them to be a third Estate to be added unto the former two very ancient Estates in times of Parliament viz. The Lords Spiritual and Temporal and it must be a strong and strange kind of delusion as much or more enchanting than the Magicians or Southsayers of Egypt that could not expound the meaning of Pharaohs dreams or far exceed the Art of the Painter that made Zeuxis Grapes so very semblable or like unto them as the Birds were made Fools and essayed to eat them or how should or would be self created Estates think themselves to be such Estates when if any such could have been or ever had been they must rather have been the Estates or such Estates that sent them but not to be such Estates but only as their Procurators Attorneys or Deputies or what an efficacious strange Art must it be that could when miracles have been long ago ceased make a shadow pass for a Substance those that are at home no such Estates but they that were only sent are no sooner once admitted in Parliament but suddenly and ex se they become parts of that they would call the third Estate when they that sent and helped to make them Members of Parliament know of no such Grandeur or title bestowed upon them how or by whom when they were in Drink or Fudled at the time of the Election or Drinking Cheating day of various and senseless bribing bargaining partialities shamefully exercised in those our late times of Rebellion and Confusion when some that were Electors the Sheriff of the County being not himself to be Elected but commanded to cause the Election fairly to be made of Burgesses for Cities or Towns justly sending Knights of the Shires Citizens or Burgesses to Parliament not having a freehold Estate under forty shillings per Annum is at the same time thrashing in another Mans Barn or at Plow or at some dayly servile labour and neither he or his High-Crown-Hatted-Wife knew of any such honour fallen upon them or how such an hic or ubique Estateship vested in him or how he that is represented should be less in degree or honour than he that sent and helped him to be Elected and it will be difficulty enough for the third Estate Asserters to assail them from Perjury and Treason in their endeavouring to usurp upon their Soveraign and to be coordinate with him or to free them from the forfeiture of their Lands and Estates unto their Mesne Lords And it is very probable that King Henry the third in the 52 year of his Raign and his Parliament did not intend to make the Common sort of People or smaller part of the Nation to be equal with the Archbishops Bishops Abbots Priors Earls Barons and Religious Men and Women who were by that Statute exempt from coming to the Sheriffs turn or being ranked with them as Estates the Sheriffs turns being as Sr. Edward Coke saith ordinarily composed of the Bayliffs of Lords of Manors Servants and other Common sort of people that Court having no Jurisdiction to try any Action other than under forty Shillings value And there could not certainly be a greater parcel of wickedness credulity and ignorance hardly to be decerned or distinguished how they or any of their Adherents can harbour or give any entertainment to the least Embrio or parcel of opinion that all or any of the Members in the House of Commons in Parliament are a third Estate when they themselves did so little believe it as in their frequent Petitions in Parliament unto their Kings they could give themselves no greater a Title than your Pauvrez Communs your Leiges and being asked their advice in Parliament touching some especial matters denied to give it themselves but referred it unto the Councel of his Lords Spiritual and Temporal at another time refused because they had no Skill or knowledge in the affairs of Peace or War the principal parts of government and in the 13th year of the Raign of King Edward the third upon that Kings demand of an unusual Tax upon the Common people as they thought prayed leave to go into their several Counties to consult those that sent and returned again with an Assent and Answer And when King Henry the fourth appeared to be offended with them came sorrowfully before him and humbly begged his pardon could not as it appears in several of our Parliament Records when the protection of themselves their Posterities and Estates were deeply concerned give their Kings and Princes any Aids or Subsidies without the consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal that in the Raign of King Henry the fourth could not protect Sir Thomas Hexey one of their Members from an Accusation and Punishment by the King that in the Raign of King Henry the sixth could not support their own Clerk and in the Raigns of several of our Kings have been enforced to pray Aid of them by their Writs out of their Chancery to protect themselves and Moenial Servants in time of Parliaments That Queen Mary caused 39. of their Members to be indicted in the Court of Kings Bench for being absent from Parliament wherein none of them though Plowden a very learned Lawyer was one durst adventure to plead or insist upon any their pretended Soveraignty of Parliament or that they were a third Estate or part thereof That Queen Elizabeth one of the greatest and most vertuous of Princess that ever weilded a Scepter and sate in our English Throne could upon no greater an offence of Bromley and Welsh two of the Knights of the Shire for the County of Worcester then endeavouring to Petition the House of the Lords to joyn with them to supplicate her Majesty to declare her Successor did forbid them to go to the Parliament but keep their Chambers and shortly after committed them Prisoners in the Tower of London and did not long after sitting the Parliament Arraign and try in her Court of Kings-Bench for High Treason Doctor Parry a Member of Parliament and caused him to be drawn hanged and quartered and may read that in 16 R. 2. in an Act of Parliament made against Provisions at Rome under a Penalty of
upon occasion of War binos ornatos atque instructos Equites when by converting all the Tenures in Capite that of the Peers and Grand Serjeants excepted into Socage they have given the King a greater Revenue than they intended far exceeding the Revenue of the tenures in Capite the honour of the King and safety of himself and the people excepted And that in those early times none were imployed in Commissions or Places of trust by our Kings and their Laws but Knights holding by Tenure in Capite immediately or mediately that King Henry the 2d in some of his Laws declared none to be liberi Homines but those that were Military and that if the Socage men or Tenants of all the Possessors of Lands and Tenements now in England and Ireland must be in no better a capacity than as Villani Servi Bordarii Cotarii and Tenants at will under domineering Landlords and be shut out of the blessings of our Magna Carta and Carta de Foresta and left as the people were in the Raign of William the Conqueror William Rufus and Henry the first to the dire punishments cases of Treason and Felony only excepted of plucking out of Eyes and cutting off the Genitals Legs or Noses of the Offenders And it might be a meet question among the Heralds upon what foundation more than 1000 Knights Baronets do now stand seeing that Ireland is turnd into a Socage Tenure when the first original of them was to find in Capite so many men at Arms in the Kings Service And having with the Prophet Jeremy called cried out and advised many of my friends stare super vias antiquds inquirere veritatem I lament and bewail that the Monarchy of England that for more than 1600 years last past hath been so great glorious amongst her Neighbour Nations and hath in this our last Century of years been so unhappy ever since the beginning of the Raign of King John when Hubert Archbishop of Canterbury had in his Oration at the Coronation of that infortunate King declared to the Nobility and people there assembled that he was created King by the Election of the people and being reprehended and blamed for it by some of the Nobility was at that Instant or before that Assembly forced to excuse that inadvised Speech as well as he could by saying he had so done it as knowing his force nature it might induce him to govern the more orderly although he might have known that the Kingdom of England was hereditary and that King Richard the first had by his last Will and Testament devised it unto him with all other his Dominions and caused the Nobility there present to swear fealty unto him Which poyson so thrown into our Body Politick and by degrees creeping into it may well be believed to have so fixed the venom thereof as it hath from age to age been the original Cause and fomenter of the very many mischiefs and discords some Intervals of quiet intervening that have until the late long Parliament Rebellion and the Murder of King Charles the first and ever since unto this very day by those unhappy discords hapned in our Parliaments General Consiliums Colloquiums or conferences betwixt our Kings and Princes and a select number of his Subjects for mutual Aids in a general and reciprocal concernment the best and most happy constitution that ever was or could be practised in any Kingdom if it could have escaped that Series malorum Concatenation of discords that have of late been too often their Concomitants either by some aversions to Loyalty or by the Grand mistakes in the practise thereof and by the Common people making the Parliaments of later times to be as their King and he that is and should be their King little more than an extraordinary fellow Subject A Right observation and accompt whereof may from one unto the other lead us to the late blessed Martyrs fatal Murther and that Pestiferous Doctrine that did over much intice the Vulgus and ignorant part of the people that there is and ought to be an Inhaerent Right of Soveraignty in the people it being not unuseful for after ages to know and understand the same with the beginnings and progress thereof which for ought appears had its first original from Thomas Becket Archbishop of Canterbury who had in the troublesome Raign of King Henry the second and at the time of the making the Assise and Constitutions at Clarendon such a peevish ambition and unwarrantable loftiness of Spirit as after the King had in the presence of the said Archbishop and all the Bishops Earls and Barons of England received their Recognitions and promises to perform and obey them they were sent unto the Pope to have his approbation who returned them to some with an hoc damnavit toleravit as unto others And Stephen Langton Archbishop of Canterbury promoted by the Pope against the will of King John discovering as a singular rarity the Charter of the liberties granted by King Henry the first did so please some discontented Barons as they swore upon the Altar they would live and dye in the obtaining those beneficial Laws and Liberties begot a Spirit of unquietness in them which could not be allayed until the said Avitae consuetudines recognized and all ratified by King Henry the second his his Grandson by the constitions â—at â—arendon which begetting some little quiet broke out again in a worse manner upon his Son King John in the constraint and unkingly force put upon him at Running Mede where those tumultuous Barons w 〈…〉 a great Army in battel Array the better to attain their said Charter of liberties had promised to pay debts but never intended it And were so faithless and unwilling to be his Subjects as what they by force extorted from that oppressed Prince could never truly and properly merit the name or title of a Charter although he himself had been constrained so to call it and the King of France in his Exception to his award made as aforesaid many years after had so stiled it yet those undutiful doings of theirs were disliked by divers of the Bishops that had been the Popes and those Rebellious Barons Favourites who it seems did so little intend what they ought to do and undertook as some of the Bishops could not deny to certify as followeth Omnibus Episc. sidelibus Stephanus De igra Cant. Archiep. Primas Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Card. Henr. Dublin Archieq Will. London Petrus Winton Joscelin Bathon Glaston Hugo Lincoln Walter Wigorn. Will. Coventr Richardus Cicestr Magister pond Domini papae Subdiaconus familiaris Salutem Noverit Universitas vestra quod quando facta fuit pax inter donum Regem Johannem Barones Angliae de discordia inter eas orta lidem Barones nobis presentibus audientibus promiserunt dom Regi quod quamcunque securitatem haberi vellet ab iis pace illa observanda ipsi
respectively which had their Original contradistinct Powers and Customs to judge and determine such Errours and Offences in Words or Actions that shall be committed by any of their Members in the handling or debating any matter depending which was contradicted by Queen Elizabeth when she charged the Members of the House of Commons in Parliament not to intermeddle in matters of Church or State or receive any Bills of that nature and severely punished some Members that attempted to do otherwise Yet they complained in their so strange a claim of those their never to be found Priviledges that they were to their great grievance broken by the Kings endeavouring to put a Salvo Jury to their Bill or Act of Parliament forbiding the pressing of Souldiers at that instant when there was so great an occasion for the Wars in Ireland and went much higher than the great Earls the Constable and Earl Marshal of England and Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester did when in a Parliament of King Edward the first they denyed him his accustomed Salvo Jure where he or his Privy Councel or Councel at Law adjudged it necessary And therefore humbly intreated his Majesty by his Royal Power and Authority whereof it may 〈◊〉 they would leave him as little as possibly they couldâ— to protect them in those and all other their Priviledges of Parliament And for the time to come would not interrupt the same and that they may not suffer in his Majesties favour when he should be so greatly obliged unto his Subjects as to restore again to his knowledge and Judgment after the end of such a Parliament never before known in England or any other Nation of the Christian World such a kind of Priviledge neither being possible to be found or heard of on Earth or amongst the Antipodes or in the discovery which Gonzagua's Geese made of the Countrey of the Moon where the Servants are reported to govern the Masters and the Children their Parents And that his Majesty would be pleased to nominate those that have been his Advisers that they may receive such condign Judgment as may appertain unto Justice And this his most faithful Councel shall advise and desire as that which will not only be a comfort to themselves but of great advantage to his Majesty by procuring such a confidence between him and his People as may be a Foundation of honour safety and happiness to his Person and Throne And probably had never adventured to fly so high a pitch if some of the Lords and Commons in Parliament had not upon the Scotch petitioning Rebellion and entring into England borrowed 150000 l. upon their several personal securities to pay their quarters whilst they were here which Parliament Manacles of their King would have amounted to more than the aforesaid Sir Edward Cokes figment of a modus tenendi Parliamentum used as he beleived in Edward the Confessors time And in the absence of Parliaments might have the Name and Title of King until they should make an occasion to Print a Remonstrance against him or arraign him And as a Prologue to their intended Remonstrance the next day they seeming not a little to congratulate his safe coming from Scotland did beseech him to give more Life and Power to the faithful Councel of his Parliament and being necessitated to make a Declaration of their grievances and the corruption of some of his Bishops especially such as are in a near trust and employment about him and were divers of them of his Privy Councel and about the Prince his Son and have thereby a dangerous operation in his Councel and Government in this time of a preparation for War betwixt his Kingdoms of Scotland and Ireland which was then but procured and fomented by confederacy Insurrection of the Papists and Bloody Affairs in Ireland for prevention whereof they have ingaged themselves and their Estates in the sum of 150000 l. Sterling or thereabouts for the necessary supply of his Majesty in his dangerous Affairs therefore they prayed 1. That he would concur with the desires of his Parliament for the depriving the Bishops of their Votes in Parliament which was the one half of that grand Fundamental of the Laws and Government of England in the House of Peers in Parliament and abridge their immoderate power usurped over the Clergy to the hazard and prejudice of the Laws Liberty and Religion of his Subjects and the taking away oppression in Church Government and Discipline punishing such Loyal Subjects as join together in Fundamental Truths against the Papists and by the oppressions of unnecessary Ceremonies 2. Remove from his Councel all the promoters thereof and to imploy such persons in his great Affairs and trust as his Parliament may conside in which was to govern him both in times of Parliament and without when he hath at his Coronation taken his Oath to govern according to his Laws not any of the Peoples 3 That he would not alienate any of the forfeited Irish Lands which begot good bargains for some of the ungodly contrivers when they after purchased their Rebel perjured Soldiers arrears for xvj d. per pound Which being fulfilled they his most great and faithful Councel upon these conditions â—â—all by the blessing of God as they would have it cheerfully undergo the expence of the War and apply themselves to such other means and Councels as shall support him and make him glorious both at home and abroad In order whereunto the contrary way they did the 15th day of December 1641. notwithstanding his earnest request unto them print and publish it wherein besides some of their own or their instigators unquiet Spirits ambitious or evil designs to misuse and Govern their Soveraign plainly appearing may be seen and the many greivances of their own making in the oppressing of each other and undertaking to determine of matters and Mysteries of State and the Arcana's and necessities of State of which they could not possibly without necessary Praecognita's be competent Judgâ—s they made a great addition to that prologue to their subsequent Rebellion and abominable consequence of the murder of that excellently pious Prince insomuch is it may be over and over again a wonder to be ranked amongst the greatest in what untrodden or dark inaccessible Caverns of the Earth these unknown and never accustomed Priviledges of the Parliaments of England could lurk or lye hidden when in all the Conservatorships of liberties devised at Running Mede forced upon King John the â—ovisions made at Oxford in the Raign of King Henry the 3d. neither any thing in the Raigns of King Edward the 2d 3. 4. and Richard 2d Henry 4 5 6. Richard the 3d the Usurper Henry the 7th King Henry 8. E. 6. Queen Mary Queen Elizabeth and and King James had never such shackles desired or claimed to be put upon any of them unto which those Parliament Remonstrants were the more incouraged by that oppressed Princes having his three Kingdoms
the Divine Providence of God had not in favour unto a sinful People prevented those very often attempts of Villany And may put us thus preserved from a ruin and confusion impending upon a Nation as unto too many of them nursed and enriched by plain or palliated Disloyalty seeing his now Royal Majesty his Indulgent Brother and Pious Father have taken their Coronation Oaths to observe the good Laws of King Edward the Confessor which are the same with our so often confirmed Magna Charta's and Charta de Foresta the Blessings of this Nation and ordained by Act of Parliament to be read in all the Cathedral Churches of England and Wales the Infringers whereof have been as aforesaid so bitterly Anathematized And that the Honour Dignity and Strength of the Nation may no longer remain Ecclipsed and that our weakness in the want of our most Honourable and Ancient Monarchick Fundamental Feudal Laws may not be told or made use of in Gath and Askalon and that our King may not be without the means to defend himself and his People and avoid the disadvantages and damages which Forreign Princes and his Allies may put upon him in all his Leagues and Treaties with them concerning his Imperial and Monarchick Crown and Dignity and in matters of Commerce wherein all his People are not a little concerned and that there is now more reason and necessity than ever was that the Temporal Nobility the principal and most concerned part of the Nation should as they did in a Parliament at Merton publickly and seriously declare that noluerunt mutare Leges Angliae Collapsa ruunt subductis tecta Columnis Moribus antiquis stant res Britannae viresque FINIS Thucidides Regale Necessarium per Fabian Philipps Plowdens Commentum Fabian Philipps Regale Necessarium c. Mich. 18. E. 3. coram Râ—gt Mich. 19. E. 3. coram Rege Ro. 161. Bracton in proâ—â—io Additament Mat Paris Dr. Brady in Histor. H. 3. in Appendix 221. 222. Dr. Stillingfleets Origines Brittannicae a Dr. Duck De authoritate Juris Civilis Romanorum Lib. 2. Spelman Conal 35. c. 8. Sect. 14. 16. Chronicon Io. Brompton 956. Selden Dissert ad Fletam c. 4. sect 4. b Sir J. Spelman de vita Aelfredi Regis 8. R. Ep. Chalâ—edon Nich. Smith appendix 190. doctissimae Annot. in lib. ejusdem Iohn Spelman 6. c Chronicon J. Brompton 788. d Dr. Duck lib. 2. c. 8. sect 14. 16. e LL Inae Reg. in legib Saxon per Ab. Whelock W. Lambard Latin reddit f Chronic. Joh. Brompton 700. g LL Alluredi Regis h Balaeus Jâ— Spelm. de vita Aelfredi Regis 166. i LL Edwardâ— Regis k LL Aethelstani Regis l LL Edmunds Regis m Dr. Duck de authorit Iuris civilis Rom. li. 2. c 8. sect 16. n Sammes Brit Antiq. iâ—â—str 100 101 102 103. n Sammes Brit Antiq. iâ—â—str 100 101 102 103. o Jo. Spelman in vita Aelfredi 124. ex Ingulfo p LL Edgari Regis Cook in Praefat 4. relat q LL Ethelredi Regis r LL Canuti R s LL Edwardi Reg. Confess t Tit. l. x Noricorum Danor in Britannâ—a u Chron. Lech seldense x LL Guilielmi Regis Conqu Matt. Paris y Tit. 95. z Seldeni notae spicilegium ad eadmerum 167. a Spelman gloffar in legib Reg. H. 1. b Mat. Paris 240 241. c Mat. Paris 21. d Spelman glossar in diatriba de Magâ—â— Charta e Balaeus de scriptoribâ—â— Anglix 93. f Dugdale's Origmes Juridiciales 17. g Chronicon Jo. Bromton 62. h Spelman's glossor i Mat. Paris 197. k Daniel 127. l Balaeus de scriptoribus Anglicis 102. m Sam. Daniel in the Life of King John n Daniel 129. o Daniel 130. p Daniel 131. q Ibidem 132. r Daniel 135. s Daniel 137. t Daniel 138. u Matt. Paris 134. 235. x Mat Paris 236 237. y Daniel 139. 140. z Râ—claus 15 Johannis part 2. m 8. dorso z Matt. Paris 226 and 239. Daniel 139. a Matt. Paris 212. h Matt. Paris 240. 241. Daniel 140. t Pat. 16 Johannis m. 1. Dorso d Anno 16 Johannis in Alba Turre London e A. 16 Johan in turre Lond. f Ro ' pat 17. Johannis in 16. in dorso 3. g Ro ' pat 17 Johan in 16 in dorso h Pryn's History of K. John 34 35. i Mat. Paris ad annos 14 15 16 17 Johan k Mat. Paris 249. l Daniel 140 141. m Daniel 143. Matt. Paris 244. 255. o Charta Reg. Johannis in Mat. Paris 254 255 256 257 258 259 260. p Balaeus de scriptoribus Angliae 102. Polydor vir gil lib. 15. q Cokes 1 part Institut 108 159. Vide L. I. Edwardi Confessor cart L. L. s Matt. Paris 161. 162. Daniel 145. u Daniel 149 147. x Ranulphus Cestrenfis Henry de Knighton Caxton's Chronicle y Pryns history of the Pope's Usurpation in England in the Reign of King John 36. z y Pryns Animadversions upon the 4th part of Cokes Instit. * Daniel 148 149. * Daniel 150 151. * M. Par. 323. * 9 H. 3. * Pryns history of the Pope's Usurpation in England 6 8. * Epist in turre Lond. inter Record ibid. * ibid. fo 61. * Inter recordd anno 8 H. 3. in turre â—ondon * Magna Charta 9 H. 3. * Spelman's glossar ' 376. * Mat. Paris * Pryn's Animadversions upon Coke's 4. part of the Institutes * M. Par. 257. * Pryn's Animadversions upon Coke's 4. part of the Institutes * Tabulae censuales Angliae Or Dooms-day-book Dugdale's Baronage 〈◊〉 â—ome â—it Warren Earl of Surrey and Ferrers Earl of Derby and his Preface to the Antiquities of Warwickshire illustrated * Magna Charta 9 H. 3. c. 31. * 9 H. 3. c. 29. * Mat. Paris 380. Spelman glossar ' 331 332. * Daniel 154. * Daniel 157. * Anno 21 H. 3. * Daniel 157. â—Ro ' Cart. 21. H. 3. m. 7. * Mat. Paris 458 459. Matthew of Westminster 249 Pryn's hist. of the Pope's Usurpation in England â—Ro'clause 23 H. 3. m 14. 18 80. a Daniel 161. b Ro ' claus 28 H. 3. c Ro ' claus 32 H. 3. m. 15. d Daniel in the life of K. H. 3. 164 165. e Daniel 165. Ro ' pat 35 H. 3. m. 6. f Mat. Paris 580 581 583. Mat. Par. 812 15. Ro ' clause 37 46 H. 3. h Mat. Paris i Mat. Paris 758 811 812. Ro ' claus 37 46 H. 3. k Pryns hist. col of the Pope's Usurpation in England 107. Daniel in the life of K. H. 3. l Ro ' pat 37 H. 3. m. 12. in dorso n Mat. Par. 977. in additament is o Spelmans Glos 〈…〉 p Mat. Parit q Mat. Westminster r Daniel 177. s Mat Paris 983. t Mat. Paris 986. Daniel 178. u M. Paris 992 w Mat. Paris 992. x Inter Recorâ— in recept ' scienti apud Camerar y Mat. Paris 261. z Hen. Knight de
of such Assistance as his Majesties and the publick Records of the Kingdom unto which for more than 45 years I have been no Stranger and my own private Library could afford me wherein I cannot be without hope but something considerable may appear in my Labours that do not in his but walking together in the inquiries after our Fundamental Laws have not contradicted but concurred with each other in the Rescue and discovery of the truth of our Ancient and excellent Government and that which I have done might have been more exact if I had not by the no small disturbances of my own affairs and the common Falshoods and Delays of most of the Printers been greatly hindred so as I was in some part thereof to endure the disadvantage of writing as the Printing Press went and therein also could not escape several discouragements and can as Livy that grand Historian of the Roman Empire hath truly said of his Enterprise that it was res magna Ardua with great sincerity say with the learned Bracton perpetuae memoriae commendium postulans a Lectore ut diligenter legat bene consideret si quid super fluum aut perperam in hac opere invenerit illud corrigat aut emendet cum omnia habere in memoria Et in nullo peccare divinum sit potuis quam humanum And with the learned Dr. Barlow Bishop of Lincoln to the like purpose as unto what he wrote against the Church of Rome that if he had miscited or quoted added or omitted any thing or matter willingly against the truth Errors of misinterpretation or definition and of the Printers only excepted I shall be willing to reform any humane frailties or frrors of that kind that shall so appear unto any considerate impartial Reader that do not read it here and there a little runing over as the Irish do their Bogs or as some others do after dinner and in afternoons Nap or Slumber or by Indexes so as I may not prejudice that grand truth concerning the Just Rights of the Imperial Crown of England and the Doctrine of the reformed Church of England against all the Engines of Rebellion Falsities Cavillations and Impostures that have been made use of against it and all their Loyal and Learned Propugnators that have done so worthily in our Israel to defend them Wherein if any shall object and think I have been too copious and fewer words and more labour might have been spared they that have been conversant with Books or the learned or be themselves learned should know that a little may be enough to some when a great deal will not be so for others especially where the Arch Enemy of Mankind hath sown and planted Weeds such as Henbane and Night Shade in our G 〈…〉 dens amongst our wholsom Herbs and Flowers the Lillies of the Vallies and the Roses of Shaâ—on which will require much time and labour and more than a few words to eradicate or pull them up or a few most clear demonstrations to a numerous party the more is the pity that for the space of almost Fifty years last past have been strangely effascinated and infatuated and yet like well of it because they have enriched themselves by turning Religion into Rebellion and Rebellion into a part of that which never was any part of Religion extravagant Religion is now made Liberty and Liberty and Religion too much turned into Rebellion And our Laws and long approved good Monarchick Government having by a seditious party of Rebels abusing the Right power and use of Parliaments diverted our Antient Just and True Laws out of their proper course and channel wherein they had blessed both our Kings and their People I am not unlike to escape the rash or envious censure of some that either have not read throughly as they ought or misread or not understood our genuine proper and true Laws therefore should be content with the duty of those that have made it their endeavour either to vindicate the Rights of their King or relieve a too much neglected unvalued truth and be as much blamed as the Bishop Elect of Winchester was in the time of the troubles and Imprisonment of King Henry the 3d. by some of his overgrown Nobility when they wrote unto the Pope as bitterly as they could against him for maintaining the justice of his Kings cause and when it may be heard of or read by some of our long missed Lawyers that have for almost 50 years been suckled or nursed up in a contrary practice may take it to be a bet ter way and more agreeable to their genuine at least to their profit and humor of the present times to do as Demetrius the Silver smith did unto St. Pauls Doctrine rather cavil and say something against it to no purpose then any thing concerning truth or cogent Arguments yet it must be adventured with a melioraspero and that the errors and mistakes of too many of our men of Law and others may no longer as it were successively afflict our Nation that the subjects may learn understand and practise the duty of Allegeance and Supremacy and not be so much out of their wâ—es as to believe that there ever was a Treason committed by a King or Emperour against their people or that the Members of the House of Commons in 〈◊〉 proceeding beyond their Limits and the King 〈◊〉 â—oples Commission ought to be accompted the reasion of the People but that so many Advocates and Lawyers as England is and hath been abundantly replenished with should rather make it their business strongly upon all occasions to defend their â—ings Rights which every man would expect of his stipended Lawyer as the Advocates of other Kingdoms never failed to do Or can any man adventure to say or think that the All-knowing Never-erring God did not intend to keep his word but made one Vicegerent after that he had made or promised it unto another or ever made the Common People his Vicegerent or any King or Prince subject to their ignorances mutabilities and Passions to be Arraigned and Murdered when they pleased at the suit of the People for Treason committed against them or if any Nation Record or History did or could ever furnish out such an example when the Murder of our Prince did so stink and was more than ordinarily abhorred and detestable as besides many learned men in Forreign parts publickly writing and declaiming against it the Czars or Czar of that great Empire of Russia or Moscovia were so sensible of it as he banished and seized many of the English Merchants and their goods and effects to the ruin of many of them for no other cause than that as he said they had been Traytors unto their King and had Murdered him though they were then men of great Loyalty and were not then Resident in England and see and read Milton over much learned in the School of his Master the Devil and our infatuated Regicides