Selected quad for the lemma: peace_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
peace_n	king_n	parliament_n	treaty_n	2,836	5	9.4232	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A83680	A declaration of the Commons of England assembled in Parliament, expressing their reasons for the adnulling and vacating of these ensuing votes. 15 Januarii, 1648. / Ordered by the Commons assembled in Parliament, that this declaration and votes be forthwith printed and published. H: Scobel, Cler. Parl. D. Com.	England and Wales. Parliament. House of Commons.	1649 (1649)	Wing E2560; Thomason E538_23; ESTC R206053	8,378	17

A DECLARATION OF THE COMMONS OF ENGLAND Assembled in PARLIAMENT Expressing their REASONS FOR The Adnulling and Vacating of these ENSUING VOTES 15 Januarii 1648. ORdered by the Commons assembled in Parliament That this Declaration and Votes be forthwith printed and published H Scobel Cler. Parl. D. Com. London Printed for Edward Husband Printer to the Honorable House of Commons Jan. 18. 1648. A Declaration of the Commons of England assembled in Parliament expressing the Reasons of these ensuing Resolutions viz. Die Martis 12 Decembr 1648. Resolved c. THat the Vote of the 8 of June 1648. for the Revoking of the Orders of the 7 of Sept. the 9 of Sept. and the 27 of Jan. 1647. for disabling Commissary Lionel Copley Denzil Hollis Esq Sir John Clotworthy Col Edward Massey Mr. Walter Long and others from being Members of this House was of a dangerous consequence and tending to the destruction of the Justice and Peace of this Kingdom and is hereby Repealed Resolved c. That the Vote of 30 Junii 1648. whereby this House did concur with the Lords that for opening a way towards a Treaty with his Majesty for a safe Peace That the Votes of the 3 of January 1647. Forbidding all Addresses to be made to or from the King be taken off was highly dishonorable to the proceedings of Parliament and apparently destructive to the good of the Kingdom Die Mercurii 13 Decembr 1648. VVHereas the 17 of August 1648. this House did concur with the Lords That for opening a way towards a Treaty with his Majesty for a safe and well-grounded Peace these Votes following should be and were revoked and taken off viz 1. Resolved That the Lords and Commons do Declare That they will make no further Addresses or Application to the King 2. Resolved By the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament That no Application or Address be made to the King by any person whatsoever without the leave of both Houses 3. Resolved By the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament That the person or persons that shall make breach of this Order shall incur the penalty of high Treafon Resolved That the Lords and Commons do Declare That they will receive no more any Message from the King and do enjoyn That no person whatsoever do presume to receive or bring any Message from the King to both or either of the Houses of Parliament or to any other person Resolved c. That that Vote for Revocation of the said Votes was highly dishonorable to the proceedings of Parliament and apparently destructive to the good of the Kingdom Resolved c. That the Vote of 28 Julii 1648. That a Treats be had in the Isle of Wight with the King in Person by a Committee appointed by both Houses upon the Propositions presented to him at Hampton-Court was highly dishonorable to the proceedings of Parliament and apparently destructive to the good of the Kingdom Resolved c. That the several Votes of 10 November 1648. concerning the banishment of George Lord Goring the Earl of Holland the Lord Capel Sir Henry Lingen Henry Hastings Esq now call'd the Lord Loughbrough Major General Rowland Laughorn and Sir John Owen are destructive to the Peace and quiet of the Kingdom and derogatory to the Justice of the Kingdom and are hereby revoked and made Null Resolved c. That the Vote of the 10 of November 1648. That James Earl of Cambridge be fined the sum of 100000 l. and that he be kept close Prisoner until he make payment of the said fine be and is hereby revoked and he left to Justice Resolved c. That the Vote of the 2 of August 1648. That the Commissioners intended to be sent unto his Majesty to Treat with him shall have power to Treat with his Majesty in the Isle of Wight upon such Propositions as shall be offered by him was destructive to the Peace of the Kingdom and is hereby repealed and made Null and void Resolved c. That the Vote of 5 Decembr 1648. That the Answers of the King to the Propositions of both Houses are a ground for the House to proceed upon for the settlement of the Peace of the Kingdom is highly dishonorable to the Parliament and destructive to the Peace of the Kingdom and tending to the breach of the Publique Faith of the Kingdom The Declaration upon the precedent Votes THe greatest service which a Parliament can do to a King is to let Him understand the disorders of His State that by wisdom they may be amended For as every disease ends either by death or curing so do disorders which are the diseases of a State either end with the Subversion of that State or else by a Universal Reformation Upon serious consideration whereof and to exonerate the people of this Land from the sundry exorbitant Oppressions daily multiplyed upon them which threatned the ruine of many private Families and the publike desolation of the Kingdom We the Commons of England in this present Parliament assembled Having with much faithfulness and affection to the publike Good of this Realm labored for these eight yeers last past with many great fears and dangers undergone many difficulties and calamities and suppressed many distempers and disorders in opposition to a Malignant Party in this Kingdom who would have unslaved the bodies and souls of the people of this Nation by the bringing in of Popery and seeing up of Tyranny Both which we have so amply manifested to the whole world in our former Declarations as we judg it needless here again to repeat Yet we cannot be so injurious to Truth as not to remember how for the Redress of which Abuses and for bringing the contrivers thereof to condign punishment We did often make our just complaints to the King First by many humble Petitions then by Remonstrances and Declarations Which not taking any effect but justice being still denied us the main obstructions whereof did constantly flow from the Kings immediate Design Which divers ways will most evidently appear if we do but call to remembrance how he did not only require the English Army raised by his Command in opposition of the Scots to march up against the Parliament and the City of London but practised with the same Scotish Army it self to do the same offering to corrupt them by the donation of the four Northern Counties and the Plunder of the City of London In the second place how suddenly and unexpectedly he went into Scotland notwithstanding our earnest Endeavors and Desires to the contary Thirdly how he countenanced if not contrived and authorized that horrid Rebellion in Ireland wherein were murthered in the Province of Ulster onely not to speak of the rest of that Kindgdom and that in the space of eight weeks only above One hundred and forty thousand Protestants by so many varieties of cruel deaths as all the first ten Persecutions against the Primitive Christians could never parallel And lastly his withdrawing from the Parliament and setting up

of Heaven and in despite of God himself bring the King home with Honor Safety and Freedom did notwithstanding proceed to make such Propositions to the King at the Isle of Wight for a safe and well-grounded Peace as if they had been granted kept of which there was no probability would but have returned the people again to their former slavery forasmuch as by these Propositions neither this Parliament nor any succeeding one was put into a capacity of ever being able to make any good Laws the King being still suffered to continue his Negative Vote so long opposed and so strongly Voted and Declared against by this Parliament thereby leaving still in his power a check to any just Desire of the people Which Personal Treaty thus carryed on without any one previous Proposition for the honor of the Treators or security of the things treated for both which were once thought necessary by those very men who now gave way to this as it could not chuse but abundantly satisfie and delight the disaffected party of the Kingdom so the good and honest minded people thereof who had ventured their lives and fortunes with us in the common cause did apprehend it with much horror even trembling to consider That whereas they expected a happy Peace should have been the price of their blood and the reward of their labors a peace thus concluded would have proved but the beginning of their future miseries and did not stick to complain That hereby we had left them in a far worse estate after all their Victories then when they undertook the Wars with us in our lowest condition Which we cannot condemn them for when we remember withal That this Treaty was entertained upon such Propositions as the King himself also should make which was formerly held to be so destructive to any well settled peace as neither the Houses of Parliament nor the Commissioners for the Kingdom of Scotland did think it fitting to admit when he was in his greatest height of power Neither can we believe That any Agreement we could have made with the King in the Isle of Wight in the condition he was then in would ever have been observed either by himself or any of his Party For setting aside the bare name of Honor Safety and Freedom which the Treaty did pretend unto neither the King nor any of his did ever hold him in any other condition then that of a Prisoner For clearing whereof besides that in His Message sent to both Houses October 2. He proposeth to have liberty to come to Westminster and to be restored to a condition of absolute Freedom and Safety which can import no other then that he judged himself at that present being in the time of Treaty to be deprived of both And His Letters to a prime Magistrate of the City of London declare That he held himself at that time as great a prisoner as ever And the Prince in his Declaration made at Goree sayes plainly That the King in truth is still in prison and invites the Earl of Warwick to joyn with him to rescue his Father from his unworthy imprisonment And since inforced Oaths are in many mens judgments not necessary to be kept what assurance could we have That He who so often had failed of his promises made to us when he was free and at his own disposal would make that good to us when he came to be re-established in His Royal Power which he had obliged himself to do when he was in durance and a prisoner And since hardly any example can be produced either Forraign or Domestick of any Prince once ingaged in a War with His Subjects that ever kept any Agreement which he made with them longer then meer necessity did compel him thereto The examples whereof to the contrary are so many and so manifest and the late bloody violation of the Peace betwixt the Crown of Spain and those of Naples is so fresh in our memories as we cannot expect any Propositions agreed upon at the Isle of Wight should binde the King more then the Fundamental Laws and Coronation Oath besides his often Protestations and Ingagements in the Name of a King and of a Gentleman which He hath so often violated And if we had disbanded our Army is there any thing more probable upon earth then that the King would have raised another Which if he should have done and we not endevored to do the like what were that neglect but an apparent betraying of our Cause and Trust Giving up that without a stroke which we had acquired and made good by so many victories And if we should have taken up Arms what were it but putting of the Realm again into a new Combustion Wherein whether God would bless us as before since we made no better use of his former mercies as it is onely in his Divine Wisdom to determine so it would be little humane providence or policy in us if it be not a bold temptation of God to put it any more to the tryal And notwithstanding that it pleased God so to harden the Kings heart that he would not abolish Episcopacy but onely suspend it and consented that the Bishops Lands should be let for a long term onely the old Rents being still reserved for their maintenance whereas we had sold the said Lands out-right and the old Rents were all that many had bought of the Bishops Estates yet so willing were these men to comply with the King as they were not onely contented that the Buyers who adventured upon the Publike Faith of the Parliament should be defrauded of their Bargains some of them wholly all of them in part but that Episcopacy it self which they had Covenanted to extirpate should yet remain in the root and a more then probable conjecture that it might recover it self again And whereas the King would not consent to the capital punishment of any one Delinquent there being onely one offered unto him namely David Jenkins the rest being beyond the Seas and out of our Power yet contrary to their Covenant and contrary to the main if not onely end of making this War which was to bring Delinquents to condign punishment they did in this also acquiesce in the Kings Answer Which in plain terms was to decline the cause of the people and to assert that of the Kings betraying thereby our own Cause and justifying His making that good by this onely action which our greatest adversaries have ever constantly upbraided us withal which was That we had no Justice on our side because we durst never bring any of them to judgment Which Actions of theirs being apparently contrary to all that which the Parliament had from the beginning of their troubles held out to the People and which were the onely Motives to induce them to undertake this War So as by this means Episcopacy remaining still in the Root wanting onely a little warmth of fair weather to make it bud forth again and in the interim no care taken at all for the constant settlement of Religion And on the other side for want of justice upon the Capital Offendors all good men discouraged and even repenting that they had ever undertaken the Cause which would have been by this Agreement so vilely and unequally stated as if the Kings party should be an hundred times beaten they must be an hundred times indempnified But on the other side if the Parliaments Party should happen to be at the loss but once all the godly people in the Land should have been destroyed for the present and the very cause of Liberty and Religion it self indangered to be lost irrecoverably for the future And whereas God having so eminently owned this Cause that the Enemy could never prevail against it either by open force of Arms or any secret machination of their own devising Hereby through the treachery of some unto whose Trust the defence thereof was committed the Cause should not onely at this time be utterly lost but all Posterity for ever discouraged to take up Arms or joyn with a Parliament again Against whom if for the King any should get the Victory all Honors Profits and worldly Felicities would consequently offer themselves to be the reward of their labors and if they should happen to be overcome there would be no Tribunal on Earth whereby to punish them or call them to account for their Actions Wherefore unless we should deny the goodness of our Cause which God hath adjudged on our side by the gracious blessings of so many signal Victories Unless we should betray our Friends who have engaged with us upon our Votes of Non-Addresses to the hazard of their Lives and Fortunes Unless we should value this one Man the King above so many Millions of people whom we represent and prefer his Honor Safety and Freedom before the Honor Safety and Freedom of the whole Nation Unless we should scorn and contemn any Peace which the great God of Heaven and Earth our assured help in our greatest distresses hath given us and that we must relie onely upon such a Peace which the King a mortal Man and our implacable Enemy shall allow us Unless we should give our selves up to the slaughter and suffer our own Members to undermine the Parliament and the Kingdoms Cause Unless we should stake All which we have to the Kings Nothing and Treat with him who hath not any thing to give us and after God hath put us in Possession of All and more then we asked then we must Treat with the King whether we shall have it or no. Lastly Unless we should value the blood of so many Innocents and the Army of so many Martyrs who have dyed in this Cause less then the blood of a few guilty persons by what Name or Title soever stiled We could do no less then repeal those Votes before specified as being highly repugnant to the glory of God greatly dishonorable to the proceedings of Parliament and apparently destructive to the good of this Kingdom Yet we are resolved by Gods assistance and that speedily so to settle the Peace of the Kingdom by the authority of Parliament in a more happy way then can be expected from the best of Kings FINIS

of his Standard against it The like never before practised by the worst of our Kings by which means the Regal Power which was intended for the Weal and Defence of the people being hereby turned against them rendring thereby Ireland the purchase of our Ancestors in apparent hazard of being utterly lost our Trade by Sea and Land to be decayed our Estates to be wasted and some hundreds of thousands of our Nation slaughtered and massacred We hereupon despairing of any good return of Justice from the King did appeal unto the great God of Heaven and Earth for the same who after four years Wars did give a clear and apparent sentence on our side by delivering into our hands all the Castles Towns and Persons of our Opposites even of the King himself or forcing them to fly the Land and in Forraign parts to remain as Exiles And whereas it pleased God by these his mercies to put us into such a condition of power that if we did not make England the happiest Nation in the world not onely this present Age but all Posterity would judge that either we wanted wisdom to do it or will to effect it Yet here again we were encountered with unexpected difficulties by the apparent defection of some of our own Members who not regarding the glory of God nor good of the Common-wealth but being carryed away by base avarice and wicked ambition did labor the bringing in of the King again with all his faults without the least repentance or acknowledgment of his former Transgressions either against God or his People And having to that purpose by many subtilties of theirs improved their Party amongst us to a considerable number they endeavored to do that by fraud which by open force of Arms our greatest Enemies had so often failed in To which and finding that nothing but the Army could obstruct their design it whom they had observed more then a bare mercenary Spirit as having by the extraordinary blessing of God finished the War in so short a time after their undertaking of it Manifesting thereby That their affections to the publique exceeded that of their particular employment doing so much service in a few moneths for the Parliament as if they had plotted to have made themselves uncapable of serving them any longer Whereupon they first attempted to send the greatest part of it into Ireland the Scotish Army being at the same time possessed of the four Northern Counties the Person of the King Himself being also in their power the two Keys of this Kingdom Barwick and Carlile in their hands besides the Town of Newcastle being the main and most necessary support of London and the Southern parts for firing wholly at their devotion All which signified nothing else then that we should abandon those of our own Blood and Countrey who had faithfully and religiously served us to cast our selves into the protection of a Forraign Nation who had besides a Forraign Interest But failing in this their first attempt in the second place after the going home of the Scots they labor'd to break this Army by Disbanding it which otherwise as they feared would have broken their Designs But that not succeeding their next work was to raise the City of London in actual arms against it Wherein being likewise disappointed of their expectations some of them for the same being charged by us with High Treason and other High Crimes and Misdemeanors most of them so charged having left the Land and some others for the same being imprisoned The King in the mean time shewing no maner of contrition or giving the least hopes of any good accommodation after seven Addresses made unto him in vain We thereupon judging it not fit that the obstinacy of any one man how great soever should ruine so many thousand good people of this Kingdom did Vote no further Addresses to be made unto Him as being a Person uncapable of any further Trust But did declare That we would settle the present Government in such a way as might best stand with the Peace and Happiness of this Kingdom And which we had long since by Gods assistance happily effected had not a Malignant Party amongst the Seamen the like in the Counties of Essex Surrey Sussex and the City of London many of which have since been in actual Arms against us by their pressing and urgent Petitioning of the Parliament for a Personal Treaty with the King at London and to disband the Army thereby diverted and frustrated our earnest and hearty desires Which Petitions of theirs though most of them delivered in a tumultuous maner and all of them in such a way as if they were resolved to admit of no denial yet were so countenanced by a disaffected number amongst us who in all probability did correspond with them in their Engagements as some of the Petitioners had thanks given them after they had manifestly broken the Priviledges of Parliament Besides the Matter being so repugnant to all Reason that the granting of it as the case then stood Wales being in some measure revolted the Scots hourly expected to come in Kent and Essex in arms and a very considerable part of the Navy abandoning of their Trust had been at one stroke to undo all that ever God had done for the Parliament and to render all his Mercies vain and fruitless And that we might be the more diverted from settling the Peace of this distracted Kingdom the said persons taking advantage of the sundry ingagements the Army was then employed about and that at once in divers remote parts of the Realm and of the absence of sundry well-affected Members acting in their several respective Counties for the quenching of that flame which these persons in all likelihood by their artifices had kindled did by the subtilty of many terrifying Arguments and threatning Petitions making the world believe as if there was an impossibility to settle the Peace of the Kingdom without the King not onely recal those Votes of Non Addresses to the King made upon such and so many Reasons of great weight and high concernment for the good of the people as unto the least of which they never gave any Answer but did likewise recal such Members of this House as stood charged as aforesaid with high Treason and other high Crimes without Answering or giving any satisfaction to the least part of their Charge And notwithstanding that God by the setlement of Wales the miraculous and speedy reducing of Kent the defeat of the Earl of Holland the containing of the major part of the City of London in their due obedience the confusions arising in the Revolted Navy the Rendring of Colchester and lastly the most incomparable Defeat of Duke Hamilton and his Army did manifest to Earth that Heaven was opposite and displeased with those their Councels and that once more God from above had given sentence for the Parliament against the King Yet these Members as if they would resist the will