Selected quad for the lemma: peace_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
peace_n	case_n	justice_n	session_n	2,687	5	10.4872	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30795	Surinam justice in the case of several persons proscribed by certain usurpers of power in that colony : being a publication of that perfect relation of the beginning, continuance, and end of the late disturbances in the colony of Surinam, set forth under that title, by William Byam Esq. (sometime rightfull) governour of that colony : and the vindication of those gentlemen, sufferers by his injustice, form the calummies wherewith he asperseth them in that relation / couched in the answer thereunto by Robert Sanford ...	Sanford, Robert.	1662 (1662)	Wing B6377; ESTC R37524	51,112	58

Surinam Justice IN THE CASE Of several persons proscribed by certain Usurpers of Power in that COLONY BEING A Publication of that perfect Relation of the Beginning Continuance and End of the late Disturbances in the Colony of SURINAM set forth under that Title by William Byam Esq sometime Rightfull Governour of that Colony AND The Vindication of those Gentlemen sufferers by his injustice from the Calumnies wherewith he asperseth them in that Relation Couched in the Answer thereunto By ROBERT SANFORD Neither least in Innocence nor in Sufferings Nec mori vereor nec vivere virtute salva Laesa mori vivere LONDON Printed for the Authour and are to be sold at the Brasen Serpent in St. Pauls Church-yard 1662. Imprimatur George Stradling S.T.P. Rev. in Christo Pat. Guil. Episc Lond. a Sac. Domest Ex Aed sub●ud 14. Octob. 1662. To the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners appointed by his Sacred Majesty to consult the Affairs of his Foreign Plantations My LORDS REason could not direct me to a better way to let your Lordships understand the whole of my case then by presenting you with the full charge my adversaries have published against me with such answer to it as truth and my own innocence prompted me to make Here your Honours will finde all the criminations which their inventions could superadd to the proofs brought against us and my refutation of them which are both subjected to your Lordships judgement That this Narrative which I have exposed to publick view is Byam's own I can onely bring these Arguments for when I came to Barbadoes which was long after the departure of my fellow-Proscripts from Surinam Byam not doubting their arrival gave onely short accounts to his friends there of those rancounters amongst us referring them to this Narrative sent formerly But they miscarried by their leaky vessel came not to that Island till I was departed thence and then this Declaration became first publick there Among divers copies one of them was sent to my Vncle well interessed in Surinam with a letter from Byam aggravating my particular fact He sent both to me and I as faithfully as I could transcribe them have sent both into the world I can I believe finde some here who having seen and read them before they came to my hands dare so far rely on their memories as to aver these to be the very same Here now my Lords you have both the parties pleading before your Honours in the contest the disadvantage of the weapons is observable They having afflicted us with the greatest injuries have nothing to doe but to be dirt us with any imputation which may render us criminal enough for the punishments we have suffered We are forced to bring Proofs of our Innocence against their no-proofs of our guilt or else muct fall under 〈…〉 and aspersions as though it were argument enough of our cri 〈…〉 … at we have so highly suffered Certainly it is a hard task to prove negatives but surely a much harder case that suffering Innocence must be put to it while he that hath violated her is credited on his bare assertion yet this is our task and our case and how I have performed it and acquitted my self and friends of their defamations your Lordships alone can judge This I shall chiefly urge our enemies do here confesse that they have despoiled us of reputation and liberty by an infamous imprisonment of goods by heavy fines of houses lands and of countrey by banishment and all this by an usurpt power and an arbitrary tyrannical way of proceedings by the force of an army destroying the Birth-right of the subject If they must have credit given to all their criminations against us I hope they will not he permitted to traverse what they have confessed of themselves If then to subvert the sacred fundamental Sanctions of our Nation to tread under foot the laws established for the preservation of persons and proprieties to usurp Dominion that branch of Regality to congregate an armed force without warrant and therewith to invade the Rights of their fellow-subjects be crimes of a mid-night-hew I hope they may be as well understood when they charge themselves with all this as when they accuse us of what is lesse evident Since also the Honour Libertie and Estates of the subjests are in the protection of the King and his laws why should not these persons be accountable to them how rightly they have deprived us of all these But they think to justifie their proceedings against us by the names of a General Assembly and the united Authority of the Countrey when it is known that the General Assembly though duly Authorized neither there nor in Barbadoes was ever a Court of Judicature especially in criminal cases such being always tried by the Governour assisted by all the Justices at the General Sessions of the Peace where the fact is presented by a Grand Inquest and after found done or not done by a Jury of the neighbourhood And this is according to Magna Charta and to this way of proceedings the Authority of Surinam were bound by their own Act besides the General fundamental Constitution Yet should we grant that it were customary in those Colonies to try offences by the General Assembly contrary to the great Charter it would not excuse a company of men who seiz to themselves the Power and Name of a General Assembly and vote all those that deny their Authority guilty of what crimes they please sparing or punishing them according to the Rule of their wills What they call sedition in us they confesse to be onely a disputing their power and an Act of Parliament cannot authorize any to be Judges in their own cause My Lords as we cannot loose our Allegiance by changing or soil or heaven so neither can we loose the Royal Protection And that subject that hazards life and fortunes to enlarge his Majesties Dominions the revenues of his crown and traffick of the Nation deserves not to be disenfranchised I should not importune your Lordships with a repeated clamour of my case did I groan under a supportable sufferance but wholly to loose an estate purchased by a large expence of money time and travel to be reduced from a plentiful way of being to the nearest confines of Beggery from the dignity of store to the contempts of want to be deprived of that fruition which when it was in hope onely did sweeten the toil of its acquist and what is the sum of all to see a wife and children dear and deserving panting under this whole burthen is so superlative a punishment that I cannot believe all they would make me guilty of can deserve it Death though murther had been a mercy to this And this my Lords without Hyperbole or aggravation is truly my condition whatever I brought into that Colony and whatever improvement of that my industry had made which was sufficiently considerable is so wholly gone that not the least Remains

curse Come we now to the Testimonies which were brought against us and the particular facts of which we are charged as they are by Byam himself exposed to the worlds view But before I come to their examination I shall premise a few things to the readers consideration There is not in my opinion a more rational evidence of the slenderness of our guilt then our charge if we consider the inquisition upon our actions which was managed in our absence by the subtilest of our enemies and principal parties concerned in the quarrel who having already designed us for destruction and acted againstus with conformable injuries had a Necessity urging them to make us as criminal as was possible Byam therefore when he had seized imprisoned our persons sends for all that can pretend to know or to have heard any thing that might render us culpable and takes their Depositions the reader may finde by the dates of most of them that they were taken before our time of trial while we were cooped up ignorant of our crime and accuser their contents will shew that much of our offence is words and let candor determine whether the most innocent persons may not be destroyed where words are capital if his enemy who is concerned in his ruine have the sole examination of such men as himself will call for and makes severe scrutiny into all his discourses picking there-hence such words as may serve his malicious purpose and cunningly omitting those which being spoken at the same time might extenuate if not amove the evil of the other inserting neither the occasion incitements time place nor condition of the speaker circumstances which illustrate a discourse and make it often appear very divers from the sense of some of its words Nor will his Declaration let us expect more integrity in Byam since when the reader hath throughly read and weighed him he will all along finde him stretching his criminations beyond any thing of proof which he could purchase against us And that strange passage of Harmunds and Lacons some years before whose names vvritten in their ovvn character were found as witnesses to a bill of debt due to Byam and yet themselves did upon their oaths declare they never saw that deed before nor were in place when it was made makes me ready to conclude him not very scrupulous of anothers perjury where it may be to his advantage And though Byam assert that evidence was given vivâ voce of our words and actions yet I shall desire the reader to understand him rightly vvhat he meanes by vivâvoce it vvas not that the vvitness came in in presence of the prisoner and there upon a mutual confrontment did take his oath and then upon that oath charge the prisoner vvith such and such facts the prisoner having liberty of putting questions to him and the court of his side to enjoin an ansvver to such questions but as I said before all or most of the vvitnesses vvere svvore before-hand in the prisoners absence Byam being the man that took the Depositions as much I must suppose to our disadvantage as he could and then vvhen the Delinquents vvere brought before them this Deposition vvas read in presence of the witness vvho by his silence asserts it and if the prisoner began to question him Marten and Noel vvould call it impudence to argue against an oath and Byam command his Marshal to take him avvay and lay him in irons Nor had every one priviledge of seeing his accuser but vvas condemned on Depositions taken God knovvs when where or of whom Yet all this notvvithstanding they found as I hope the reader also vvill our faults so much beneath the punishment they had destinied us to that they durst not bring us before an indifferent Judicature to a trial by our Peers vvhere vve might have liberty of defending our actions by law and should have had our judges of councel with us and sworne to give judgement according to law but brought us before themselves vvho vvere none of them svvorne Magistrates except those tvvo that vvere my assistants in the court of Common-pleas where we were not permitted to enter on any defence that being presently adjudged as an aggravation of our guilt but according to their own wills and prejudices sentenced to inflictions not to be precedented I think in the whole body of our law Statute or Common And herein they acted not onely Counter to the lawes of England to which they had alwaies owned a subjection but to their own constitutions also one instance of that subjection for not many moneths before these very men Enacted That a General Sessions of the Peace and Goal delivery be held twice a year viz. On the first thursday in September and the first thursday in March That this General Sessions doe by a Jury of Grand Inquest enquire into all breaches of the Peace and breaches of Statute and all criminal matters whatsoever and make presentment thereof by Indictment and proceed to the punishment of all malefactours especially where it concernes life or limb according to the known lawes of England But this was made while their authority was derived from the Delegates they decreed then like Substitutes conforming to their Commission and instructions but since that they have given themselves a greater latitude of Power a Power not differing from absoluteness which that they might retain with the less controll they must remove them who have been so long the obstacles to it and because such a general sessions as this Act prescribes cannot compleat their desires therefore are they necessitated to this other manner of proceedings But God grant us more indifferent judges of this necessity then persons so deeply interessed who having themselves created it by usurping a power over us could no other way secure themselves in the dispute made to their power from a being cast in their own action but by an illegal prosecution of us And now I will no longer detein the Reader from a view of the Depositions Deposition The Deposition of Capt. Tho. Griffith aged forty years or thereabouts taken before me this 28 th of Novemb. 1661. 1. Saith That sometime in July last or thereabouts being at the house of Mr. Michael Mashart and having some discourse of what had passed the last Assembly the Deponent told him that it was ordered that the Governour should continue and no new Election to be and this by vertue of a Proclamation from the King Sworne before me William Byam Answer 1. Themselves have confessed that the Kings Proclamation never came to be published amongst us and indeed how should it since such Proclamation never was and also that this very order for their Authorities continuation was never proclaimed but onely mentioned by some few Gentlemen of the Assembly in their occasional discourses as is confessed here and in Sect. 4. Yet see how severely they punish the breach of a law which never had promulgation But grant this order duly published