his Forces invading this Nation do Enact c. That our Kings in the time of the Saxons Danes and some part of the Normans had more absolute Power over their Subjects than some of their Successors ãâã himself can't deny the Charter of Liberties being made but in the Reign of Henry the Third and when the People had less of Priviledges the Kings must be supposed to have had more of Praerogative therefore we shall examine only what and where the Supremacy is at present and where the Laws of the Land not the Will of the Prince do place it In the Parliament that was held at York in Edward the Seconds time The Rebellious Barons that had violently extorted what Concessions they pleas'd from the Crown in His like those in the three foregoing Reigns when they seal'd almost each Confirmation of their Charter in Blood were all censured and condemn'd and the encroaching Ordinances they made in those Times all repeal'd Because says the Statute The Kings Royal Power was restrain'd against the Greatness of his Seigniory Royal contrary to the State of the Crown and that by Subjects Provisions over the Power Royal of the Ancestors of our Lord the King Troubles and Wars came upon the Realm I look upon this as an absolute Acknowledgment of a Royal Power which is sure the same with his Soveraign sufficiently distinguisht here from the Parliaments or the Peoples co-ordinate Supremacy for those condemn'd Ordinances were lookt upon as Usurpations upon the Kings Supremacy which they call the Power Royal of his Ancestors and not as our Author would have too of the Sovereign power of Lords and Commons At the Convention of the three Estates first of Richard the Third where the Parliament call themselves so themselves expound also what is meant by it And say it is the Lords Spiritual Temporal and Commons of this Land assembled in present Parliament so that we have here the whole three States besides the King owning themselves such without assuming to themselves a Soveraign power recognizing the Right of Richard and acknowledging him the Sovereign And tho I shall for ever condemn as well as all Ages will their allowing his Usurpation a Right which was an absolute wrong yet this is an undeniable Argument that then they did not make their King Co-ordinate with themselves made themselves declared themselves three States without him and acknowledged their King the Sovereign and Supream That Act that punisht appeals to Rome with a premunire in Henry the Eighth's time gives this Reason why none should be made to the Pope nor out of the Kingdom because the King alone was only the supream head in it It tells us expressly That England is an Empire that the King the Supream Head has the Dignity and Royal Estate of the Emperial Crown unto whom a body Politick divided into Terms and Names of Spirituality and Temporality been bounden ãâã next to God humble Obedience c. Who has furnisht him with Plenary Entire Power ãâã Authority Prerogative and Jurisdiction Here his Body Politick is devided into Spiritual and Temporal here he is called the supreme Head and here I think is a full Recognition of his sole Sovereignty And 't is strange that what a Parliament did in Opposition to Popery should be so zealously contradicted by such Sycophants that pretend so much to oppose it In the next place he tells us of an error he lay under that he thought our Commonalty had not formally assembled in Parliament before Henry the Thirds time but of that now is fully convinc'd by the Labours of some learned Lawyers whom he names and lets them know too how much they are obliged to him for the Honor But I suppose he reads but one sort of Books and that such as suit with his Humor and Sedition and of that Nature he can meet with Variety for I dare avow that within the space of six years all that ever was or can be said against the best of Government our own all that was or ever will be rak't up for justifying a Rebellion and restoring a Republick from falsifyed Roll and Record from perverted History and Matter of Fact by Pens virulent and Factious with all the Art and Industry and whatever thought could invent for its Ruine and Destruction has been Printed and Publisht such an Universal Conspiration of Men of several Faculties each assisting with what was his Excellency his Talent in Treason which seemed to be the Task-Master of the Town and Monopolizer of Trades But our Politician might return to his old Opinion again did he but consult other Authors I believe as learned Antiquarians I am sure more Loyal Subjects who can shew him that the Saxons Councils call'd the Witena Gemotes had in them no Commons That the Conqueror call'd none of them to his great Councils none in those of his two Sons that succeeded nor none in any of the Parliaments down to Henry the Third my Lord Coke tells us of the Names this Parliament had before the Conquest as Sinoth Michel or Witena Gemote which he says implyed the Great Court or Meeting of the King and all his Wise Men And also sometimes of the King with his Council of his Bishops Nobles and the Wisest of the People and unless from the wisest of the People and all his Wise Men they can make up an House of Commons I am sure from this Authority they can have no proof and from Wise Men can be gathered nothing but such as were Noble or chief of the Realm for the meaner sort and that which we now call the Commonality were then far enough from having any great share of Learning or common Understanding and then besides these Wisest of the People were only such whom the King should think Wise and admit to his Council far from being sent by their Borroughs as elected Senators King Alfred had his Parliament and a great one was held by King Athelstan at Grately ' which only tells us there were Assembled some Bishops Noble-Men and the Wise-Men whom the King called which implies no more then those he had a mind should come But the Antiquity of a Parliament or that of an House of Commons is not so much the thing these Factious Roll and Record Mongers contend for 't is its Superiority Supremacy and there endeavours to make them antient is but in order to the making their Power Exorbitant and not to be controul'd by that of their King whom in the next place this Re-publican can scarce allow the power of calling them at his Pleasure and dissolving them when he pleases But so great is the Power of Truth and the Goodness of the Cause he Opposes that he is forc't to contradict himself to desend his Paradoxes For he tells us the King is obliged with an hear say Law which his learned in the Faculty and Faction can't find out yet to call Parliaments as often as need should be that is
Optimacy is made up of so many more And where then into what form to whom shall we run for the best maintaining of this popular Darling this dangerous Violation that has been clamoured for rebelled and fought for the Peoples RIGHT but to that Soveraignty which our very Laws say can do no wrong to a Monarchy where Mechanicks can never meddle with Affairs of State to make them truckle to their own or the Nobility so powerful as to be all Soveraigns and under what Prince can we better acquiesce for this enjoyment than the present that has so often declared for its Protection And shall the Speech of some Noble Peer be better assurance promise more than the word of a King All Subjects under him have either Riches or Honor for their private Aim to make them act more partially for the publick and which the Laws presume therefore they may injure and have therefore made the greatest punishable But him exempted from all Statutes that are Penal And these sort of Arguments I can assure them their King himself has used to prove the publick Interest his own and that he alone of all the Kingdom can be presumed most impartially concerned for the good of the publick A Reason worthy of so good a King and which the worst the most Seditious Subjects cannot Answer Did not the Parliament in Richard the Third's Time give even that Vsurper an Arbitrary Power greater than any they can dread now from their most Lawful Soveraign Did not they declare him their Lawful King by Inheritance tho they knew they made him Inherit against all Law Did not they declare it to be grounded upon the Laws of God and Nature and the Customs of the Realm whereas we now can oppose this Divine Right from the panick fear of making our true Legal King too powerful and the Succession of a Right Heir must be questioned by our Parliaments now when their Predecessors declared it unalterable even in a wrong Did they not to him but an Usurper a Tyrant own themselves Three Estates without including himself and say that by them is meant the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons and shall the Press be pestered under our undoubted Soveraign and the mildest Prince to make him Co-ordinate with the People Did they not make particular Provision in Parliament for the preservation of His Person that was the very Merderer and Destroyer of His Subjects And shall our ãâã ones Associate for the Destruction of the mildest Monarch whose greatest Care is their Protection Was this Monster ever questioned or censured for the Murder of several of His Subjects as well as the more Barbarous Butchery the spilling almost of his own Blood in his Nephews and must our most gracious one stand the mark of Malice and Reproach and that only for desending that of his Brothers who Reigned more Arbitrary and managed all Affairs more Monstrously than this very Monster of Mankind And must a Parliament be now the Manager of the mildest Monarch and think him dangerous if not governed by themselves The two Succeeding Henries had their Power as much confirmed Henry the 7th had his Negative Voice the thing those Seditious discontented Grumblers so much repine at maintained asserted for his undoubted Prerogative It is at present by the Law of his Time no ãâã if the King assent not A Prince beloved and favoured only because he was their King who tho he had as many subsidies granted more than any before him His Subjects you see never thought it a Grievance then to contribute to their ãâã being Great but acknowledged his Supremacy even under their greatest pressure His ãâã upon penal Statutes Historians call and the Law the most ãâã way for raising of Money that was ever used yet still had he the Hearts of his People as well as their Purses They thought Rebellion then could not be justifyed with clamor of Oppression as since by Ship-money and Lone tho levyed by a King whom themselves had Opprest The simplicity of those times made them suffer like good Subjects and better Christians when the refined Politicks of such Authors and a ãâã age can tell them now to be Wise is to Rebel I need not tell him who managed Affairs in Henry the Eighth's Time when Parliaments seemed to be frightned into Compliance with a Prown and Bills preferr'd more for the pleasure of the Prince than the profit of the People Their Memberships then so far from medling with the measures of the State that they seemed to take them for their sole Measures so far was then an Order of the House from controuling that of the Board And I can't see that the Peoples Petition of Right has since ãâã away too the King's Prerogative yet it was affirmed for Law in this King's Time that he had full power in all Causes to do Justice to all Men. If the Parliament or their Council shall manage Affairs let them tell me what will become of this Power and Law His Son Edward succeeded him and tho a Minor a Prince whose Youth might have given the People an opportunity for an Encroachment upon his Power and the Subject commonly will take advantage of the Supremacy and that sometimes too much when the Soveraign knows but little what it is to be a King I am sure they were so Seditiously Wise in that Infancy of Henry the Third and yet he had Protectors too as well as this But notwithstanding such an Opportunity for the robbing the Rights of the Crown you shall see then they took the first occasion for the asserting them In the very First year of his Reign it was resolved that all Authoritie and Jurisdiction Spiritual and Temporal is derived from the King but this Republican has found out another Resolution of resolving it into the power of the Parliament And in this very Reign too it was provided as the common Policy and Duty of all Loving Subjects to restrain the Publishing all manner of Shameful Slanders against their King c. upon whom dependeth the whole Unity and Universal weal of the Realm what Sentence then would the Parliaments of those times have past upon Appeals to the City vox patriae's and a Plato Redivivus upon a Libel that would prove the Kings Executive power of War forfeitable and that the Prerogative which is in the Crown hinders the Execution of the Laws tho I am sure those very Laws are the best Asserters of the Prerogative there next resolve would have been to have ordered such an Author to the ãâã by the Hands of the Hangman instead of that Honorable Vote the thanks of the House In Queen Mary's Time too the Law left all to her Majesty tells her all Jurisdiction does and of Right ought to belong to her In Queen Elizabeth's Time what was Law before they were obliged even to Swear to be so Every Member of the House before qualified
to sit in it forc'd to acknowledg his Soveraign SVPREAM in all Causes over all Persons And were their Memberships to be modelled according to the Common-wealth of this Plato their Oath must be repealed or they perjur'd Their very Constitution would be Inconfistant with his Supremacy they must manage and Command at the same time they Swear to submit and obey Was there ever a more full acknowledgment of Power and Prerogative than was made to King James upon his first coming to the Crown And tho I confess they took upon them to manage Affairs in his Son and Successors time yet this was not until they had openly bid him defyance to his Face and actually declared War against His Person then they might well set up their Votes for Law when they had violated the Fundamental ones of the Land yet themselves even in that Licentious and tumultuous time could own that such Bills as His Majesty was bound even in Conscience and Justice to pass were no Laws without his Assent What then did they think of those Ordinances of Blood and Rebellion with which themselves past such Bills afterward so unconscionable so ãâã Here it was I confess these Commons of this pernicious Projector took upon them the management of the State their Councils their Committees set up for regulating the Kings Then their Pillor'd Advocate that lost his ears as this with his Treasonable Positions should his Head Publisht the very same Proposal in his pestering Prints the very Vomit of the Press to which the dangerous Dog did in the Literal Sense return to lick it up still discharing again the same choler he had brought up before in a Nauseous Crambe A Wretch that seemed to Write for the Haberdashers and Trunk-makers instead of the Company of Stationers that Elaborate Lining the Copious Library for Hat-cases and Close-stools that Will with a whisp whose fuming Brains were at last illuminated for the leading Men into Boggs and Ditches Rebellion and Sedition The Confusion of others only for the confounding of himself for a King for the Parliament for the Presbyters for every thing for nothing but that ONE thing Scribble Compare the power of his Parliaments and his Vnparliamentary Juncto the meer Lumps of distorted Law or Legal Contradiction with the 25th of Edward He first deposes his King and even there then finds his Deposition Treason Their Divine Baxter never baffled himself more with the Bible and the Gospel than this Elaborate Legislator with the Statute and the Law William Writ against Pryn too in one Page proves his King Supream in the other his Parliaments Supremacy the most Mutinous Member would needs be Loyal when it was to late and the most Malitious Miscreant at the Pen Publisht his Memento when his Money with his Membership was sequestred from his own Home as well as his self from the Parliaments House and then palliated it with a piece against his Majesties Murder I the more Liberally enlarge upon this because his party the Presbyter would appropriate to themselves from some ãâã Papers the Vindication of their King but what I am sure in sincerity was their own Revenge They the Scot and the Todpole Spawn of both that Independant made use of unanimously the Defence of their Prince for the Destruction of his Person and then the differing Daemagogues with the very same Pretences strove to put upon each other that is both alike full of the same falshood both alike fancyed their own Integrity they seemed to Labor for the two sublimated Vices Hypocrisie and self-conceit whereof the one made them twice Villains the other double Fools And this Confounder of Paper as well as the People Publisht then â the very same Principles this starch't Republican has proposed now for new Politicks of State Pryn and Plato differ only in this one Labour'd to make Law speak Treason the other Sense Lastly were not the Parliament very tender of this last this present Princes Power and Prerogative when they enacted a new Oath to be taken by all in Office for the Renouncing the Trayterous Position of resisting his ãâã with his own Authority And this Rebellious Proposal of our Republican is to make even the Parliament it self to make use of his Authority even for an Usurpation upon his Prerogative and when once they come to Manage that they may be sure they 'll be his Masters too and I hope 't is now in some Measure proy'd even in the several particulars I undertook should be so that our Monarchs had heretofore an absolute Management of Affairs without an Interfering of Parliaments which then had not so much as Being and which were since they had it never called as their very Writs express it but to consult that they never offer'd to set a Council over their King much less themselves as this popular Pedant calls it to Manage his Militia and demonstrated this as was designed from Prescription even beyond Chronicle from the Laws of every Reign and my little Light of Reason All the following Propositions are as much against Reason and Law for the third is that the Judges be nominated by Parliament which as it would divest the King of part of his Supremacy so it would make themselves in effect both Judges and party for those then their own Creatures would have the Exposition of those Laws which themselves had made The Law allows all the Four Courts at Westminster to be all Courts by Prescription and then let them tell me to whom belongs the power of Electing those that are to preside in it to the Kings of England that can prescribe to their Government even from the very Britains before Caesar ever set Foot in it neer 1700 Years agon and with whom their Courts of Judicature were ever Coeval or the Constitution of a Parliament that first within this four hundred years could be said to have a Being and so that which themselves would now controul had a Priority even in time to their Existence for near 1300 Years It is called the Court of Kings Bench Let them name the Judges it must be no longer His but the Parliaments 'T is Rehellion in them to assume it for they must at the same time too take the Soveraignty the Supremacy and 't is that such Seditious Proposals must aim at and truly do for 't is expresly declared for Law that the Justices of the Kings Bench have Supream Authority the King himself sits there in them as the Law intends if the Parliament can chuse their Kings Representatives they can their King too and make the most Hereditary Kingdom Elective before the Reign even of Edward the First the Chief Justice of this Court was created by Letters Patent 't is out ever was and will be out of the Parliaments power to create per Patents even a petty Constable 't is the King alone that by these his Letters can constitute Courts
hundred years for so long our Monarchs can be Chronicl'd can in every Reign the Clergies being concerned in Parliament be proved upon Record and may they with the Monarchy last that with its Christianity commenc'd They seemed always to sympathize in their very sufferings never to cease but by consent and Bishops were never excluded from their Votes but when their King himself had never a voice The Sixth pernicious Principle they propose is for Marriages Alliances Treatises for War and Peace to be put in the power of the two Houses And shall the meanest Subjects be Mightier than their Soveraign Not allow'd the Marrying his Issue when where and to whom he pleases That the Parliament has presumed to intermeddle with this undoubted Prerogative of the Soveraign since the Birth-Right of the poorest Subject can no more be denyed then that the two Houses have also actually Rebell'd too but they never pretended to make Matches for their Monarch but when they were as ready to make War too There was somewhat of that Mutinous Ferment got among the Members in the latter end of King * James's his Reign who tho they mightily soothed their Soveraign with some Inconsiderable subsidies for the recovery of the Palatinate so small that notwithstanding the Preparation for War the poor Prince was forc'd to pursue Peace and to tell the Men at Westminster so much too that he intended to compass the Palatinate with an Allyance with Spain which he was not like to obtain from the smallness of their Subsidy and Aid But tho the Commons did not care much for the maintaining the War they were as much startled with this seeming tendance to Peace they knew their Prince poor and therefore thought that the time to show the Subject bold and so began the Puritan-Party to represent in a Remonstrance Popery Power Prerogative and their Averseness forsooth to the Spanish-Match The pious Prince tho none of the boldest to resist an invading People yet took the Courage to tell them they took too much upon themselves very warmly forbad them farther to meddle with his Government and deep Affairs of State and particularly with the Match of his Son with the Daughter of Spain And this account they 'll surely Credit since it comes from an Author a partial and popular Advocate for this power of Parliament And did not the Commons intermeddling with an other Spanish Match of Queen Mary's send their Memberships into the Country to mind their own Business and were presently Dissolv'd for meddling so much with their Soveraign's And this I hope will be as Authentick since it comes from an Author that has had the Thanks of the House But this Disposal of the Kings of his own Children and the Marrying them to what Princes he pleases has such an absolute Relation to the making Leagues and Allyances that the Laws which have declared the latter to be solely in the Soveraign are as Declaratory that the other is so too and this power of the Prince of making War and Peace Leagues and Allyances is so settled in him by the Laws of the Land that till they are subverted it can never be taken out In Henry the Fifth's Time a Prince under whose Courage and Conduct the Nation I think was as Flourishing at Home as it was formidable Abroad A Prince that kept a good Sway over his Subjects and wanted nothing to the making him a good Monarch but a better Title though his Expensive War in France cost his People a great deal of Money as well as Blood yet they were far from being animated into an Invading this part of Prerogative but declared as appears by the Law of his Time that to their King belonged only to make Leagues with Foreign Princes and so fully does this Fundamental Law of the Land place this power in the Prince that it absolutely excludes all the Pretences of the People for it tells us expressly that if all the Subjects of England should break a League made with a Foreign Prince if without the King's Consent it shall still hold and not be broken And must the Laws of our own as well as those of all Nations be subverted for the setting up a Supremacy of the People which both declare is absolutely in the King The Seventh Proposal about the Militia is the most Impudent because it has been the most confuted of any by Reason and baffled above all parts of the Prerogative Establisht by ãâã History tells us ever since Chronicle can Compute and that is for almost Fifteen Hundred Years that the Power of the Sword was ever in him that sway'd the Scepter and Statute tells us even the very First that was ever reckoned among Acts of Parliament That if the King lead or send his Subject to do him Service in his Wars that he shall be freed from such other Services as Castle-guard and the like so that you see that extorted Instrument the result of a REBELLION reserved this piece of Prerogative of the Soveraigns Sole Right That the Members of the two Houses should have the Management of the Militia was undertaken to be proved too by that Plague of the Press Pryn himself who proceeds upon his own false Principle and Premises which he beggs and then may well draw from them a Conclusion of an absolute Lye for he takes it for granted that by the Kingdoms Suffrages they made their King and them he could not as he says have this Military power without the Peoples consent but why may it not be with less Presumption supposed That a Parliament by special Act declared Traytors pitcht upon Him for their Pen-Man against the Prerogative and then it may be more easily concluded that Pryn was the most prejudic'd partial Person that ever put Pen to Paper for in spight of his Factious Heart he must be forc'd to confess that not only this very Charter of Liberties settled this Militia but that it was confirmed to the King almost in every Reign by Act of Parliament since the Time the very FIRST was made To the very Son and Successor of Henry that Great Confirmer of the great Grant they declare that to the King belongs to defend Force of Armour c. All that held by Knights Service the King could distrain them for the taking up Arms. By the Laws of the very next Reign And in his Son and Successors that Usurpt upon his Father's Right before it could be call'd his own they declare the manner of his Mustering and Arraying the Subject and this they did too to Henry the Fourth A Prince that had truly no other Title to the Swords of his Subjects than what he had gotten by the Conquest of his own yet so necessary was this inseparable power of the Prince thought then to be solely in him by the People that they Acknowledg'd it to be absolutely even in him that could hardly pretend to the Crown so
but God and that he had God alone for his Avenger and it seems somewhat Improbable a person of his Loyalty and Judgment should not only detract from the Supremacy of his Soveraign which he seems so much to maintain but also in direct opposition to what himself had asserted and besides were they the sense as well as the words of that Author they are only true as I have before shown when they are taken collectively in a complicated Sentence and so seems a sort of Sophistry which the Logical heads call a fallacy in Composition But yet from that does Mr. S. conclude That the power is Originally in the People and so by Consequence in the Parliament only as they are their Representatives For my part I cannot Imagine this Gentleman's large Treatise to be any thing else but a Voluminous Collection of all the Rebellious Arguments that were publisht in our late War for as in this little fiftieth part of it as he professes it to be there is not one new Notion but what is to a Syllable the same with the Papers of Pryn and the Merc. Politicus out of the Author of the Treatise of Monarchy has he made a shift to borrow or else by chance very harmoniously to agree ãâã the pernicious Position That our Monarchy is not only Limited and Mixt for that wont content them alone but that this Limitation has oblig'd the Soveraign to be Subject to the Judgment and Determination of Parliament for says that more Antient Antimonarchist this Limitation being from some body else and the power confer'd by the publick Society in the Original Constitution of the Government and then he bethinks himself that Kings too may Limit themselves afterward by their own Grants and Concessions which he is pleased to call a Secondary Original Constitution i. e. if my little Sense will let me Comprehend the saying of a Politician that has none at all somewhat like a Figure in Speech the Country-man calls his Bull us'd when the Speaker can't express himself Intelligibly A Secondary Original sounds not much unlike the Nonsense of an Original Copy or a second first yet from this senseless Sophistry it must be concluded that the Soveraign being limited by this Original Constitution or as they call it After Condiscent and Secondary Original what then therefore every Mans Conscience must acquit or Condemn the Acts of his Governour and every man has a Power of Judging the Illegal deeds of his Monarch And so Mr. S. in almost the same Language As a man he is Subject to the People that made him a King That he receiv'd the Crown upon condition and That performance is to be exacted and the Parliament Judges of the Particular Cases arising thereupon I cannot but observe to this Gentleman upon this who was always such a great admirer of the Romans Common-wealth what I hinted before was the Sense of the very Romans when according to their own Notion of Original Monarchy the People of that Common-wealth first conferr'd their Power of Government upon a single Soveraign why their very Laws tell us That notwithstanding those Contracts and Limitations of which there were very likely some exprest even in that their very Celebrated and Glorious Law that first made that Government Imperial yet when once it ãâã so Conferr'd by that very Act all Magistracy i.e. all power of Judging that the Subject had before was past over too And were our own Monarch by the Compact and condiscent of his first Ancestors such a precarious Prince as they would make him have not our own Statutes I have cited long since resolv'd his Crown to be Independant and himself accountable to none but God And then abstracting from that Advantage we have of the Resolution of the Law Reason it self against which our Republicans rebell too that also will refute the absurdity of such a Position For first where for God's sake would they fix this their preposterous power of Judicial Process if in some single Persons then the Concession of their own renowned Aphorism will fly in their Face for that allows the Soveraign to be much superior to any Selected number of his Subjects and they won't be such Senseless Sots sure as to say That those whom themselves acknowledge to be altogether inferior should be invested with that Judicial Power which is the highest token and ãâã of Supremacy if they 'll place it as Mr. Sidney forsooth does in the Original power of the People delegated unto Parliament then should that be granted them when ever this Parliament is dissolv'd if their King be never so great a Delinquent for I think they may assoon make their King so as they did foolishly those that followed him in the late Wars when the word implies a Deserting and the Law only calls them so that adhere to the King's Enemies then I say if their Soveraign be never so much a Criminal to the State upon such a Dissolution they devest themselves by their own Maxims of this power of Judicature and so put it in the power of the Monarch or the Prince at any time to blast all his Judges in a moment and dissipate them all with the Breath of his Mouth and therefore Mr. Sidney was so wittily Seditious as to foresee such a Consequence and for that Reason very resolutely does deny what some of our more moderate Republicans will allow That the King has a power of Assembling and Dissolving a Parliament But this piece of pernicious Paradox a Position so false that some of them themselves are asham'd to own has been already refuted and prov'd from the very Laws of the Land to be an absolute Lye but our Author having plac'd himself and his People above the Law tho it was his hard fate to fall under it and made the Subject Superior to those Sanctions to which themselves acknowledge none to be so but the Soveraign from whom they proceed all the Satisfaction such a Person can receive from the Statutes must be from something of Reason that is the result of them and 't is such an one as relates to their own Positions For they say therefore the Soveraign is obliged to submit to the Laws of the Land because he accepted the Crown upon such an Obligation and shall it not Seditious Souls be as good a Conclusion To say the People have passed away the power of Assembling themselves when they have passed their own Act for being by their King Assembled Then in the next place if this Original power of this People be delegated to this Parliament it would have been much to the purpose for some of them to have shown us from whence this People had this Original Power Certainly if any it must be deriv'd from God Nature or somewhat that 's Soveraign But for the Almighty In all the sacred Texts there 's not a syllable of such a Legacy left them but abundance of the bequest of it
and a Case upon our late Elections much ãâã and to say as some ãâã That such a Prescription cannot be forfeited proceeds from a confounding of the word in this Case with that Prescription by which some of them have a Title to their Estate for their Common Objection about this their Elective power is That the King may as well deprive them of their Birth-right when this their Birth right might commence by an Original Right but the Power of this Electing must Necessarily and Originally first come from the Crown But yet they know too that this their very Birth-right is in many Cases forfeitable by their own Act to the Crown and for their Burgage it self should we abstract from that Elective power that attends it nothing else but an ãâã tenure of their very King And if in the Saxons time as the popular advocates would persuade us the Commons were call'd to sit in Parliament 't is certain they could not come as Burgesses too for all that Borhoe in their Toungue signified if we can believe my Lord Coke and from which the word Burgh was since deriv'd its signification was only this Those ten Companies or Families that were one anothers pledge and so should they prove it to us as clear as the Sun as well as they have left it much in the ãâã still those their Commons could never be of those that had any Right to come but only such as the Grace of the King should call and even in Edward the first 's time those very Barons some say that were only most wise were summon'd by the King and their Sons if they were not thought so prudent as their Fathers were not call'd to Parliament after their Fathers death Therefore since Prescription since Parliament it self depended all heretofore upon the pleasure of the Prince I cannot see how the Subject shall ever be able to make it his Original Right and tho some are so bold as to say such a prescription cannot be forfeited or resign'd by the Subject resum'd or restor'd to the Crown for they must maintain those propositions or else they have no reason for their Murmering since there has been none alter'd or destroy'd but what has been by Inquiry of the Kings Quo Warranto or their own Act of Resignation yet sure if the Common Law did not favour the King in this Case Common Equity would since those Priveleges were but the very Grant of his own Ancestors But if we must consider nothing but Mr. Sidney's Original Power and Right and all that lodg'd in his good People of England it may be their Birth-right too to Rebel they may and must Murder their Monarch and that by their own Maxims when they think him not fit to Govern or Live I have heard it often said that the Members in Parliament represent the people and for that Reason are call'd their Representatives but if this Original Power which is delegated to them upon such a Representation must Subject their Soveraign as Mr. S. will have it to these his Judges of the particular Cases arising upon such a Subjection then they must e'en represent their King too and every Session of Parliament that he Summons is but an unhappy Solemnity whom himself Assemblies for his own deposition if such positions should obtain 't is those that indeed would make the Monarch fearful of Parliaments and not those idle Suggestions of Mr. Hunt that the Weekly Pamphlets were endeavouring to make him forego them and it was this very opinion that promoted the last War which he would not have so much as mention'd Lastly if this Original Power of the People be delegated to their Representatives this People that did so Communicate it can at their pleasure recall it and exercise it themselves for that is essential to the Nature of a Communicated Power for upon supposition of the peoples having such a Power it would be of the same Nature that their Kings is for Power of Supremacy wherever it be lodg'd is still the same and you see that the Power which the King has is often Commission'd to the Judges in his several Courts of Justice and yet I cannot see how his Majesty by Virtue of such a Commissionating of his Servants does Exclude himself from the Administration of those Laws that he has only allow'd others to Administer or from a recalling of that power to himself which he has only delegated to another for 't is a certain Maxim in reason that whatsoever Supream does empower others with his Authority does still retain more than he does impart tho I know 't is a Resolution in our Law Books that if any one would render himself to the Judgment of the King it would be ofnone effect because say they all his power Judicial is Committed to others and yet even they themselves will allow in many Cases their lies an Appeal to the King But what ever was the Sense of my Lord ãâã in this point who has none of the fewest Faults and failings tho his Voluminous Tracts are the greatest ease and Ornament of the Law his resolution here is not so agreeable to Common Equity and Reason therefore I say in reason it must follow That Mr. Sid. people having but delegated their Power to the Parliament still retain a power of concurring with preventing or revoking of that power they have given but in charge to their Representatives and if so then they can call them to an Account for the ill exercise of that power they have intrusted them with set up some High Court of Justice again for upon this very principle the last was erected not only for the Tryal of their King but for hanging up every Representative that has abus'd them as they are always ready to think in the exercise of that Original power with which he was by his Electors intrusted these sad Consequences which necessarily flow from this lewd Maxim would make their house of Commons very thin and they would find but few Candidates so ready to spend their Fortunes in Borough Beer only for the Representing of those that might hang them when they came home upon the least misrepresentation of their proceedings and these sad suggestions of the sorrowful Case of such precarious representatives are ãâã Consequences from the very ãâã of our Republican even in those very Arguments that he uses for the subjection of his King for if his King ãâã man must be Subject to the Judgment ãâã his People that make him a King ãâã he cannot be so Impudently ãâã but he must allow his Members of Parliament that are much more made by them by Continual Election and ãâã very breath of their Mouth ãâã be as ãâã accountable to their Makers for if ãâã should recur in this Case as he has ãâã other refuge to the Peoples having excluded themselves from this ãâã Power once in themselves by conferring it on their Representatives ãâã farewel to the very Foundation
it be but of a Gift to the publick use much more then will it oblige him in his promised Faith and Allegiance But here in this Case there is not only a Stipulation between the Soveraign and every Subject but also between the several Subjects to one another for 't is a consent upon Condition among themselves that this Man transfers his Power to some single Soveraign because the rest have does or design to do it so that the Person upon whom the Supremacy is confer'd is secured upon a double Obligation both of that which is made among them all to themselves and that which to him is made by them all and therefore that Opinion of Mr. Sidney of the Power of the People being delegated to some particular Persons the Major part of which can act for the whole Kingdom is even unreasonable according to the Notion of their own Hypothesis For while he supposes it a Natural Liberty and Original Power that the People have at the same time he lays down a Position that destroys it For 't is Unnatural and against Nature if they consider it that the major part should determine it against the Minor and be taken for the consent and Approbation of the whole when it is to be turned by a single suffrage and one casting voice And this carrying it by a Majority is against the Nature of their Original Liberty for we see that even in all Seditious Assemblies and tumultuary Meetings every Man would have every thing carried his own way but the being concluded by the Major part has always been the result of some civil Institution in the Government that thought it reasonable things should be so carried for an avoiding of Confusion and Disorder so our Representatives in Parliament are chosen by the Majority of their Electors and they pass their Bills when elected by pluralities of Voices but this proceeds from President Regulation Institution Custom and Law and yet we see that many times notwithstanding these receiv'd Rules and tacit Agreements to which all have submitted they are loth in their Elections to stand to their own accord in such Cases and that those that have lost the day or the Cause by some few voices are restless tumultuary and their natural Liberty that is in herent in every individual so prevalent that what they have lost by Law they endeavour to compass by force or fraud and from that has proceeded those Riotous forcible Decisions of some of our Elections those clan destine and fraudulent ones of others from that proceeded in our late Confusions even in Parliamentary Affairs The Remonstrances of the Army Excluded Members the Impeachment and Imprisonment of the Eleven Members Prides Purge The Peoples Agreement Abolishing of Lords House and at last Olivers Dissolution for the Independant Faction prevailing in force would by no means be concluded by Law the Presbyterian suffrages were all along the most numerous in the Senate and by all their Presidents in Parliament must have carried every Vote by the Majority This the Independant that fill'd not above the third part of the House found to their grievance saw themselves still out-voted by Law and so be took themselves to their armed Suffrages and their Legislative Swords Now tho the plurality of Voices tho against their Natural Power of the People for they don't like it even in Parliaments now since things are not carried all to their liking may be allowed to determine the Debates in a great Senate conven'd by the Soveraign Power yet it cannot be imagined that the Majority here too shall carry it for an abolishing that very power that called them unless we can imagin the Supream Power had summoned them on purpose to be deposed and that this politick BODY was Assembled as once they were too sadly in the natural Sence to cut off its own HEAD the Writ that summons them in our Parliament is in order to deliberate about the difficult Affairs of the Kingdom and it would be a difficult Business indeed should it be by a casting voice extended to a debate whither they had a King And from these Reasonings and Suggestions which I submit to Men of more Sense and Reason I dare to draw this Conclusion that even from their own Principles Their Contract with their King or as Sidney says The Condition upon which he receives the Crown he can not possibly be punish'd or depos'd because 't is almost impossible that every one of his Subjects should concur in such an Act and the Major part must by no means determine it by their own Maxims of Natural Liberty even in affairs of lesser Moment 2. Because 't is no Consequence that because they have confer'd the Supremacy upon some single Person that therefore they may reassume it too tho it were forfeitable even on Condition which l 've shown the Romans themselves never pretended to tho their own Democraticks tell us their very Lex Regia was Conditional and their Laws which by all Nations are allowed the most equal resolve it that tho with them bare promises if made to private Persons were were not Obligatory yet when offer'd to the publick they oblige and that in a Monarchy is always the King and what then must it be when there 's Oath made Faith pawn'd and fealty sworn And those Laws resolve it too as reason must that when the Supream Power was confer'd on the Prince all Magistracy was past over too and in that lies all Judicial Power and who then shall Judge of those Conditions that forfeit a Crown but him that wares it and thenthey'll be but little the better for the Controversie when a King cannot be deposed unless like a Richard the Second by his own consent I have taken this Course as the best way for the Confutation of such Principles not that I can really grant them the Concessions I have made for I could assoon believe Mr. S. dy'd a Loyal Subject as be satisfy'd with the positions he has lain down but I therefore grant them their own Hypothesis that they may confute themselves that they may see their own Babel of Anarchy will not be built upon the very Basis and Foundation of those Foolish positions they maintain that the work never was or will be carried on far without terminating as that of their Fore-fathers in Confusion and by that they mean perhaps a Common-wealth and have I hope in some Measure manifested that even by their own wicked assertion of the Peoples Divine Natural and Original power they cannot really pretend toany Right of Judging Punishing or deposing their King what force can do we have both felt and fearfully to our Terror seen but in all Arguments of this Nature the Question is of the Reason and Right and not of any Fact that may be justify'd by wrong and the refuting them from their own Maxims must be more effectually convincing then the maintaining of ours for one opinion in Politicks is
the Pest and Plague of the People are priz'd with our Republicans as the Philosophers and the Schools do their propositions of Eternal truths they imbibe the Poyson and exalt improve it too they sublimate the very Mercury of Mr. Hobs and whereas he equals us only in a state of Nature our Levellers will lay us all Common under the Inclosures of a Society and the several restrictions of so many Civil Laws But to what tends this their turning all the Power of a Parent into Tyranny as if a Father could not have an Authority over his Child unless he be bound to make it his Slave as if the Chastisement of a Father could not Evidence his Supremacy over his Son unless like the Saturn of the Easterlings he Sacrifice him to the Fire and torment it in the Flame But this paternal Right of the Father must suffer by these Factious Fools from the same sort of Inferrences they bring against the Divine Right of their King which may only serve with some Loyal Hearts to confirm the great sympathy there is between them for as by the Law of Nature a Father can't be said to injure his Son so neither by those of the Land can our Soveraign wrong his Subjects For say these Seditious ones your Divinest Monarchs by that Doctrine can Hang Burn Drown all their Subjects they should put in Damn too for once since they may as well infer from it his sending them to the Devil but cannot common Sense obtain amidst these transports of Passion can they not apprehend a Father to have any paternal Authority over his Family unless he be able to Murder every Man of it The Civil Laws the municipal ones of his Land if a Member of a Society supersede such a feverity and if a Patriarchal Prince must be supposed as were several of old after the ãâã then the Affection of a Father And the Laws of Nature were sufficient to fecure the Son or ãâã the Servant from any ãâã but what some proportionable ãâ¦ã so also did this Divine Right ãâã ãâã Soveraign as entirely ãâã ãâã the great Turk yet the ãâã part of those Civil Sanctions to which the Divinest of them all would be ãâã or at least the precepts of the Divinity their God under ãâã they ãâã that will oblig'd them both ãâã Justice and Mercy the two great Attributes of him whom they represent But since they would make this Empire of a paternal Power so ãâã in Reason let us see how it has all along ãâã in the Letter of the Law and if it has there ãâã been ãâã upon as a Notion so ãâã and ãâã The most illuminated Reason of our eminent ãâã must submit to be much in the dark The Romans from the result of their Imperial Sanctions look'd upon themselves to have such an absolute Power and Authority over their Sons and Daughters that they tell us expressly it was a peculiar Prerogative and privileg'd of the Citizens of Rome and that there was no other Nation that could Exercise such a Jurisdiction they could ãâã for ever by this Power of the Parent any thing that was acquired by the Son and give it to any whom they pleas'd whereas it might have been an Argument enough of a paternal Power had they been but only usufructuaries and the Dominion remained in the Child and such a Sense of Soveraignty do the Civilians express to reside in the Father of a Family that they gave him the same Appellation with that of a King and tell us by the name of a Family the Prince of it is also understood and tho Mr. Hunt tells us a Story out of the Cabala of the Jews Laws and the Tract of Maimonides that they lookt upon their Children ãâã of Course when they came to Thirteen and that then they could claim it as their right to be free I must tell him from the Constitutions of the Imperial that must be of more force among us unless we resolve still that even Christians shall Judaize that no Sons were ever emancipated or emitted out of the power of the Parent unless they could prevail upon him for his own consent that by no meanshe could be compell'd to it and they had no freedom de Jure till their Fathers were de facto dead And tho ãâã in his Comment on that part of the Institution says They became sui Juris at 25 from their Manner and Custome yet concludes the Law of Nature oblig'd them still to their Parent which no civil one could disanull The Duty that their Digests say was due to this Paternal power which they ãâã almost as Sacred was exprest by the word piety and a learn'd Civilian of our own laments that there is no more provisions ãâã in our English Laws for the Duty of the Child and the protection of the Parent and with them so great was the crime of parricide that they could not a long time invent an adequate punishment for such an unproportionable Guilt tho they had one for Treason against the Prince And tho our own Laws do not make the Paternal power savour so much of Soveraignty yet we shall see they sufficiently evince that the Parent has a power very Analogous too it whereas Mr. Hunt will not allow it to have the least Relation which remisness of our Civil Institutions might well proceed from a presumption of our knowledge of the express command in the Decalogue of which the Romans were ignorant tho we have no formal Emancipation now in use which does imply a power of Government yet our old Lawyer tells us still that Children are in the power of their Parents till they have extrafamiliated them by giving them some portion or Inheritances and the Custody of them while minors which ãâã went to the King upon the presumption I suppose of his only ability to be a second Father that was settled in the Parent both by common-Common-Law and Statute for there lay a good action against any one for seducing a Mans Son as well as Servant out of his power which does imply that there is a power out of which he may be seduced and thus I have endeavor'd to shew the first Foundation of power to have been in the Fathers of Families And it signifies nothing whither every Father of it Reigns in it as a King now and therefore Mr. Hunt his impertinence is inconclusive and part of his Assertion a plainly when he would infer from the continuance of the Parents Authority over their Children together with the Soveraign power distinct that therefore there was never any Foundation of a Patriarchal power for he might as well tell us That because we have no Parents now but what are Subject to the Municipal Laws of the Land therefore there was never any Patriarch in the Bible never an Abraham an Isaac or a Jacob that had an absolute Dominion over their own Families or none now amongst some
the Question is what was Law since H. 7. time and he Labours to Confute it with what was said some three years before and to Bassle the Resolution of all the Judges of the Kingdom with the Suffrages of the Parliament that even of their own Laws have no right to Judge much less by any Preceding determinations of their house to Bind all the Succeeding Judges of the Realm let him first prove a even Vsurper's Parliaments opinion Law and then proceed to refute the resolutions of the Judges of a Lawful King In short nothing can be Law there but what is Enacted if Clarence his Attainder did not take away the Discent the resolution of the Judges since is certainly the more just if it did then yet still their opinion never the less Justifiable now for the opinion of that Parliament neither was or could be made Law for if they would have made it an Act it must have been done before Richard was in the Throne and then void for want of Royal Assent if after they had Crown'd their Usurper then sure too late to be enacted unless they would have made the Tyrant his own Judge And himself to have Attainted the second Pair of Nephews as well as he Butcher'd the First But as fearless as he says the Monster was from the pretensions of the D. of Clarence his Children whose Minority might well make the poor Infants not very formidable yet he did not think the Duke himself so Barr'd with his Attainder but that he might still have been a Bar against his Horrid Usurpation that truly sent the poor Prince to the Tower and got the Brother of the Monstrous Assassin to be suffocated in the Malmsey Butt The discent to Henry the 8 was both by Blood and Entail and so beyond contradiction and with their own concession Hereditary but where that objection to the Birth-right fails them there to be sure some subsequent Act of that Kings Reign shall be sifted and made to Countenance their suggested falsehoods tho the Succession of the Prince himself contradicts it who had all the Consolidated Titles in him that had been so long disputed all that his Mothers Blood and his Fathers Arms and the Law could Invest him with but because his Exorbitant proceedings his Arbitrary power and predominancy which themselves condemn'd him for over Parliaments awd them into an altering the Succession as often as he was pleas'd to Change his bed or chop off a Wife therefore must we conclude Parliaments to have a Power to do that by Right which against all right perhaps they were compell'd to do why does he not prove it a president for Polygamy and Murder because that furious Prince still sacrificed Women to his Lust and Men to his Anger But yet allowing them such a Power of medling with the Succession which certainly does not follow from their having some time Vsurp't it or been put upon that Usurpation by their very Prince for 't is against reason to make that a right only because they can plead Prescription for doing a wrong but here those several alterations were all caus'd to be made for the securing of a Lineal Legitimate and lawful Succesior to the Throne for as a Reverend Author says the King Lamented that he should leave the Kingdom toa Woman whose Birth was questionable and he willing to settle the Kingdom on his LAWFUL Issue and for this reason he got the 25th to pass against his Daughter Mary And the very Preamble of the Act tells us that it was for the Surety of Title and Succession and Lawful Inheritance Three years are scarce past till the 28 of his Reign repeals almost all that the 25 had Enacted their Protestant Queen Elizabeth made as well as the Popish Mary plain Bastard and tho our prejudic'd Author may make the same matter right and wrong as he stands affected he must think this his powerful Parliament dealt a little hard with the latter whose Mother was never divorc't but from her Life and she pact off for a spurious Off-Spring only upon the pretended suggestions of Anne Boleyn's unknown impediments confess 't sine to Canterbury But whatever they were the Canons of the Church tho born before Marriage and since after the very Laws of the Land did make her Legitimate But however this greater piece of Injustice to this good Protestant Queen which they 'l say now proceeded from the Kings putting the Parliament upon too much Power was palliated all along with the pretence of providing a Legitimate Lawful Successor and so the clear Reverse and Contradiction of the proceedings of our late Patriots to whose Privileges those sort of presidents were apply'd for those Parliamentary Powers secluded but Bastards to make room for Heirs Lawful and Legitimate with us an Issue truly Legitimate should have been EXCLUDED for the setting up of a SPURIOUS ONE But then at last comes the 35th of his Reign and that like a Gunpowder Plot in the Cellars blows up all the former foundations of the whole House both the two former Stat. for Disabling Illegitimating are null voy'd repeal'd the LADY MARY Sister Elizabeth in those seven years suffered my Lord Bacons transmutation of Bodys and were turned all into new matter and what was Spurious Illegitimate and in Capable with the single Charm of be it enacted was become truly Lawful Lineal Heir of the Crown and Capacitated to succeed in an HEREDITARY DISCENT and so far from Invading the Prerogative so full of giving were the bountiful Parliaments of those times that they Impower their too Powerful Prince to dispose of his Crown by Letters Pattents or an Arbitrary Testamentary disposition an Oblation I think his present Majesty might esteem too great to be accepted who knows his Successor to be the Crown 's Heir scarce his own much less the PARLIAMENTS Edward the Sixth upon his Fathers death succeeded an Heir Lineal Legal and Testamentary yet the first thing this Author observes upon him is the greatest falsehood viz. That he took upon him a power what surely no King ever had to dispose of his Crown by Will When in the very Preceeding president his own Father by his Will manifested he had the Power and left it him by his last But his he 'll say was a Power given him by Parliament But that is not so plain neither both from the Preamble and the purport of both the dissonant Acts of 28 and 35 for the designs of both were only for the settling the Succession and then upon supposition of the failure of issue from those upon whom it was setled they fairly leave it to his last Will or his Letters Pattents but supposing this Liberty had not been allow'd can he imagin that a King that had got them to alter the succession at his pleasure in his Life time would not upon the failure of the Limited Heirs have dispos'd of it by Will at his death but that none but this Edward of
Monster of Men as Lawful a King as his Nephew that he Murder'd That Arch-Rebel that of late mounted the Throne Cromwel himself as much right to sit there as a Charles the best of Monarchs they Martyr'd all these were by Parliament acknowledg'd for their Lawful Soveraigns against the very Fundamental Laws of all the Land Laws that even with the Allowance of one their late most Laborious most popular and pillor'd Advocate for this Power of Parliament Pryn himself have still plac't the Discent of the Crown in the right Heirs at Common Law and who himself Confesses that Acts of Parliament have translated it from them to others who had no good Title and then certainly such a translation at best can be but bad and Evidences that there is somewhat else requir'd besides their Power to the making of a King so powerful and prevalent are the Dictates of Truth and reason that they force their Confessions sometimes from the very Mouths of those that Labour to give them the Lye drop from them unawares and steal from their unadvised Lips Lastly 'T is most prodigiously Strange that such Seditious Sycophants as fawn upon this Parliamentary Power for altering the Succession and asserting of an absolute wrong yet are such unreasonable Souls as not to Consider the several Acts of the self-same Powers that have declar'd it unalterable and maintain'd the Monarchs Vnquestionable right Edward the 4th's first Parliament they themselves know declar'd those that came to the Crown by the Common Consent of the People to be but Vsurpers Kings only de Facto which implys ' its contrary to be just and that some de jure must be Kings they know the first of James declares his Royal Office an Heritage Inherent in the very Blood of him and also that all our Books of Law besides the Fundamental Constitution of the Land do make the Regal Power Hereditary and not Elective and such an Elected Usurpers Laws can no further oblige the Subject of England then they they 'l submit no more then the Czars of Muscovy a pecuniary ãâã must be but a bare oppression and a Capital Punishment MURDER But Will. Prynn I Confess in another of his Treatises that he Printed will have all such Acts made by Consent of Vsurping Kings bind the right Heirs of the Crown that Reign by a just Title That all such Acts oblige them is utterly false for one of them is commonly for their Exclusion but that some are admitted to bind is as really True but that is rather upon a Political account of their being serviceable to the Publick and the Country's Good And is it not now an unaccountable boldness that the very same Cases of Usurpers upon the Crown that this Indefatigable piece of Faction publish't against the Father they fought and Murder'd should be retrieved against the Son whom the kind Heavens ev'n by Miracle so lately restor'd But at last allowing those palpable falsehoods they so much Labour for falsehoods so gross that they can be felt to be matter of Fact contradict the true sense of all Chronicle with a Seditious Supposition to be secur'd of Truth give all the Laws of the Land the Lye raze Rolls and Records the better to rise a Rebellion and grant the Kings of England have been all Elected all almost from that Union of the Heptarchy in the Saxon to that of our three Kingdoms in the Scot and sure no Soul living can conclude with them in a fairer Concession than in granting the very Postulate they require yet since they then in the End of K. James tho but so lately had settled the Succession and made it Hereditary can with men of Common sense the Presidents of its having been formerly Elective prevail for an utter Subversion of such a Settlement Popery was once in England by Law Establish't and must it therefore again be Establish't by Law Certainly all succeeding Reformation must null and abolish that from which they Reform and a Repealing Act will hardly be made Declaratory of the very Statute it Repeals if these be but their best Arguments the same you see will reason us back into the very Religion of Rome we have seen several Rebellions and some even of late to have lain the Land in Blood and can such sad Sufferance be made to Prescribe for our Misery warrant some such as Bloody to succeed but since all this suppos'd suggestion must vanish like to soft Air since the Succession has been settled for so many several ages to rake every musty Record only for a sad Review of some Time of Confusion is certainly but an Impious Industry to Confound the work of the very God of Order We may as well be discontented at the Frame of his World he so well digested and plead for Prescription the Primitive Chaos CHAP. II. Remarks upon Plato Redivivus THE best Animadversion that I can make on his whole first days Discourse is that it wants none that it's Impertinence has superseded reproof and the fulsome flattering Dialogue as unfit for a serious Answer as a Farce for a Refutation out of a Sermon The great acquaintance these pretending Platonicks would be thought to have with that Sect of Philosophers did not oblige them to be so morosely reserv'd as to know none other and they may remember an Ephesian Sophy I believe as Learned too in his Politicks that was never so much tickl'd as when he saw the dull Animal mumbling of the cross-grain'd unpalatable Thistle the disputing against the Laws of the Land and the Light of Reason they 'l find as uneasie as absurd and the latter as Impious and Profane and which deserves to be assimulated to a more serious sort of Obstinacy that of so many Sauls kicking against the Pricks but the Pleasant and Ridicnlous Disputants put in for another pretty Quality of that insensible Brute the length of their sordid and stupid Flattery outdoes their Original Beast and the sad Sophister would force one Smile more to see three of the same sort of Creatures for a whole day clawing one another Certainly whatever they fancy the Dialogues of Plato whatever the Favourers of his Principles can suggest surely they were never fill'd with such Fustian But that good old Philosopher did as plainly cloath his Disputes as well as himself in an honest homely Drugget of Athens Tho I confess they tell us of his rich Bed and his affectation of State which a Soul so sublime could not but Contemn while these Sectaries are such refin'd Academicks so much polisn't with Travel and the breeding of the Times That all the Fops of France the Dons of Spain his Adulano of Italy seem melted down into one Mass of Impertinence they can't pass by the thin Apartments of a Page without a Congee Bon-Grace and a formal Salutation upon one anothers Excellencies the Doctor claws the Patient with his Lenitives Frications Emollients of Praise and Adulation and the Patient who in the literal
was done accordingly the Conspiracy of the Witness was soon afterward detected his Innocency declar'd and the poor Gentleman for want of a due process at Law plainly Murder'd and all the Conviction I wish to such unjust reproachers of the Constitution of any of our Courts of Judicature that they may never have the benefit of those Laws they Condemn and only have the Fate to Fall by that Justice of the Republick they so much extol The Villains that sign'd the Warrant for our late Kings Execution did not more Sacrifice his Person than this Impious Wretch has Murder'd him again in Effigie with a redoubl'd Cruelty to blast that unblemishable reputation which if Dearer than Life must be the greater Treason He tells us the Parliament never made War upon him because by Law says the Sycophant He can do no wrong but this shall not be allow'd for a Maxim with such Malecontents when it makes for the Monarch But what if a Parliament of Rebels put out in their Declaration that He has wrong'd the Law and vote that he Levies War to destroy the Fundamental Liberty of the People to set up Arbitrary Government send down a Traytor to keep him out of his own Garrisons when their Guards could not secure his Life from the rage of the London Rable instigated too by that Villanous Assembly that made his Repairing to Hull for the Preservation of himself an Insurrection of their King for the Destruction of the People And can such a senseless piece of Sedition imagin that undistinguishing Bullet they brought into the Field could be commanded to take off none but Evil Councellors and Seducers or that ARMS which soon silence all LAWS especially when lifted against their Soveraign would favourable consider his Right and a Maxim of our own that he could do no wrong He tells us the King was displeas'd for parting with his Power to dissolve Parliaments and took unheard of ways to demand Members with Arms Most Inhumane Wretch even to the Pious Memory of so good a Prince to give him the Lye in his Grave does not himself tell us as if his Prophetick Soul had foreseen the suggestion of such a Rebel in his making it his deepest plaint The Injury of all Injuries is that some will Falsely divulge that I repining at the Establishment of the Parliament endeavour'd by force and open Hostility to undo what by Royal assent I had done While at the same time the Contradictory Wretches would asperse him for a resolv'd and a wilful occasioner of his ruin but for the demand of the Members so far from Irregularity That this Malicious Accuser is a double Traytor to his Memory by being an Abetter of those that were truly so and representing it False the King was advis'd in Scotland of those Conspirators having Invited that Nation to come into ours Arm'd And shall not bringing in a Foreign Power an Actual Levying War be allow'd Treason He had his Witnesses ready for the proving every Article his Attorny had drawn up all their Impeachments and could not their King have the benefit of those Laws he gives Life too Could not their King Impeach a Commoner when they themselves can any Lord. He order'd Him to inform the House of Peers with the Matter of the Charge and a Serjeant at Arms to accuse them to the Commons did they or could they call this an unheard of way or Irrogular Proceeding and will the protection of their House extend to an Inditement for High-Treason as well as an Execution upon Debt certainly this President won't be found among all the Miscellanies of Parliament tho that Industrious Author might have cited too his Majestys Murder out of their Journal But let them blush at their late Arbitrary Proceedings against their Fellow Subjects and Remember what they deny'd their King Here was an obstruction of Justice that was already a Rebellion against the Executive Power of the Law such an one as only their next Ordinance for seizing the Militia could make it more so the Serjeant that was sent to Arrest their Persons is countermanded and if again attempted 't is Order'd and Resolved they 'll stand upon their Desence and make Resistance how should the Mildest Father of the most Merciful Son Mollifie so many Tygers Tugging for the Praerogative with the pretence of Privileges Why he tells us himself went attended with some Gentlemen his followers much short of his Ordinary Guard to desire he might proceed against Traytors only in a free and Legal Tryal that he had furnisht himself with proof and wanted nothing for that Evidence which he could have produced But what I am sure they were resolv'd to deny their Soveraign even what they made the Rabble clamor for against himself JUSTICE the Chronicle tells us none of his Followers mov'd farther than the Stairs but only he himself with the Palsgrave enter'd the House demanded whom before he had Accus'd and the Villains themselves so Conscious of his Equitable demand and their own Guilt that they fear'd their very delivery from their Friends and that Death I doubt they had so justly deserv'd the Criminals were fled he renews his Charge and so satisfy'd returns but so were not those whom nothing could Content at last but his Life they load it with all the Obloquies and Exasperations imaginable such Protectors of Liberties could only think Treason against him worthier of Protection then their injur'd King an Execution of Law is Voted a Breach of Priviledge the demanding the Benefit of it by him that gives it it's being they made MURDER the City Guards are set up in several places the Train-Bands are Commanded down to Westminster a greater Army sure then only the Kings Retinue to protect Impeacht Traytors and with the late Hosanna's of our Old-Baily they lead in Triumph that Primitive Council of Six accus'd for High-Treason and what Security had this present King that the like Cabal should not have been as well Secur'd from his Justice had they been but detected in some of their late Sessions they were all Members too the Difference between our King and Commons in as high a ferment the Charge that then was given to the Lords the Articles that were offer'd to the Commons appear upon Record but the Counterpart of this Kings Declaration only there they had not come so far as to contrive his Murder their Accusation was for aspersing of his Majesties Government and altering the affections of his People Countenancing Tumults against him inviting a Foreign Nation the Scots as too this Actually did and Conspiring to Levy War as these did to Raise an Insurrection And might not any Jealous Soul fear such Parliaments that protected such Traytors and might not such Traytors been again protected by such Parliaments when the City too was their own again the Guards set the Watches plac'd the Streets Chain'd and that when they could accuse no King for Breach of Priviledge or Coming to their House with
little more kindly than they did the Father and not seize his Militia with an Ordinance because they cannot Fight him with his consent nor Rebel first against their King with an open War and then send him Propositions for Peace and the making him a Slave And since some of our Seditious Souls have not only a great Veneration left for these Parliamentary Projects and as great esteem for this Statesman for the reviving them in his Politicks since some that would be thought Persons sober and moderate can think the Kings Complyance in some of these Grants and Concessions somewhat necessary and a Trifle of the Crowns prerogative to be pared from the State as requisite as a Surplice or Ceremony to be parted with in the Church since the Propositions of that Rebel Parliament and the Politicks of this rank Republican make up so perfect a Parallel It will supersede some separate labour and pains to be able to animadvert upon them together and at once His Answerer will be somewhat obliged to his Authors being but a Thief and will shew that whatever some think that such pieces of Power might be par'd from the Crown like some sappy Excrescencies from the Trunks of Trees for the better Nourishment of the Stock that all and every one of them strike directly at the very Root That the Government cannot well subsist without them all and that all of them are inseperably settled in the Crown by all the Fundamental Laws of all the Land The first that feels the reforming stroke of their Fury we find to be the Kings Privy Council and what is that why their own Oracle of the Law will assure them the most Noble most Honorable and reverend Assembly consulting for the publick good and that the number of them is altogether at the King's Will And shall those be numbered now and regulated at the Will of a Parliament whom their own Acts Statutes Rolls declare acknowledge and confess to depend upon the Nomination Power and Pleasure of the Prince would they repeal those Laws of their Ancestors enacted even according to the greatest Reason only for an Introducing their own Innovations against all Reason and Law Can it be consonant to common Sense that those whom their King is to Consult and Sit with at his Pleasure and that according to the very express Words of Authentick Rolls and Records that those should depend for their being and Existence upon the suffrages of such a senate whom all our Laws declare has it self no other being but what it owes to the Breath of that Sovereign over whom they would so ãâã Superintend as to set a Council can they think that even the Spartan Ephori would have ever been Constituted had their Kings by as strong Presidents of the Laws of their Land been allow'd the Liberty of Chusing their own advisers or would Calvin himselfhave recommended them and the Roman Tribunes the Demarchi the Decemviral at Athens had he been assured that their Decrees and Edicts had all along placed it in the power of their Prince to be advised by whom he pleased and this Rebellious Project we now are examining I am sure would prove a greater Scourge and curb to our own Kings than ever the Romans or Athenians had for the management of theirs we must turn about even the very Text and invert our Prayers to the Almighty when a Parliament shall come to Counsel his Counsellors and teach his Senators Wisdom when it shall be in the Subjects power to set himself at his Soveraigns Table you may swear he 'll be first served too and that with his own Carving and therefore were they not forc't to rase Rolls and Records for the making such a Reformation in the State Reason it self is sufficiently the Faction's Foe and as much on the side of those that are the Kings Friends For let any sober Person but consider whether the greatest Confusion Disorder and Disturbance in the State would not be the Consequence of this very distracted Opinion do we not already too much experiment the disquiet of a divided Kingdom to be most dangerous when but a tumultuous part of a Parliament too much Predominates this Gentleman 's Quarantia or if you please the Kingdoms four General Councils are to be named in Parliament and then what would be the result of it but that his Majesty must be managed by a standing House of Commons or at best some Committee of Lords they need not then Labour for the Triennial Act of the late King confirmed by the too gracious Concession of this His Councils once their own Creatures would have too much Veneration for their kind Creators to diswade their King from a speedy Summons of a Senate tho assured secured of its being sufficiently Seditious they would soon supersede as supersluous one of the very Articles of such a Counsellors Oath where he swears to keep Secret the Kings Counsel for by such a Constitution they would be obliged to make a Report from the Council-Board to some Chair-man of a Committee a better Expedient I confess than an order for Sr. Stephen's bringing in the Books And indeed none of the Kings Services should be then called Secret they would be soon Printed with their Votes and hardly be favoured voured with some of their own Affairs of Importance to be referred for the more private Hearing to a Committee of Secrecy the good advise his Majesty might expect from such Councils might be much like those of late from his Petitioners And he again told to be the mightiest Monarch by condescending to be the most puny Prince My Lord Cook tells us those Councils are there best proposed for the Kingdom when so that it can't be guess'd which way the King is enclined for fear I suppose of a servile Complyance but here the knowledge of his Inclination would be the most dangerous to the King which to be sure would be opposed and only because known the good the King would receive from such Counsellors might be put in his Eyes and the Protection the Nation could receive from such a King must be but in good Wishes and are we come to deny our Soveraign at last what every Subject can Consult his own Friends But tho this bold Gentleman as arrogantly tells us that this Privy Council is no part of the Government his imagined one he must mean a Common-wealth I 'll tell him more modestly and with better Authority than a Dixit only of a Platonick Dogmatist that he might as well have told us too what indeed are such a Republicans real thoughts that the King Himself is no part of it and shew him both from Law and Reason that they have a great share in it too And that the Laws great Oracle tells us too who is so far from letting them have no part in the Government that he tellsus they have a very great part even in the very King That they are
Subjects has given from the Crown and dispens'd with that power and right enjoy'd by their Royal Ancestors 'T is strange and unaccountable that those which stretch their Wit and Invention for this power of Parliament and run through all the Mazes of Musty Records for the proving it so Ancient yet will not allow that of their King so long a standing and which after all their fruitless Labour lost proves at last nothing but the Council of their King those Noble and Wise-men he would please to Assemble their Gemotes the name of that most Ancient Assembly implying nothing more as appears even from their own Cook himself and their Commons whom this Author would have now so great as to Govern his King far from having the least concern in publick Administrations there being in all Historical Accounts of ãâã Antient times no mention of them in those very Conventions whereas Nobles Bishops and Abbots are expresly nam'd The greatest Colour they have for ' its Conjecture is only from the word Wites or wise-men which Constituted their Witena and the Prefaces or preambles to all their Laws imply that they were with the assistance of the Wise-men made by their King but can any person of sence and Impartial conceive this Term the more applicable to the Common sort of People and meer Laymen than to the Nobles the Bishops the Lords and then as we may well believe the most Learned of the Land their Literature sure was then but little and then I am sure that of the meaner Layity must be less certainly the word Wites will import no more than an Expressive Character of those Qualifications such Nobles were suppos'd to have that are still expressly said to be summon'd and to say that by Wise-men were still understood the Commons such an Emphatical denomination could not be so well resented by their Lordships since it would seem in some sence to Exclude them from being so but as a Learned and Labourious Answer of this popular point has observ'd and what will nearly make it Vnanswerable that in thir Laws when the Senate was generally signified and the whole Constitution it self then Wise-men or Wites expressed it but where any sort of the Constituent Members are Particulariz'd there you 'll ãâã nothing but Nobles nam'd so that such an Assembly and that all of the Nobility depending upon the choice and Election of the ãâã was not much more than our present Privy Council But then they were able to make Laws and these now but Orders and Proclamations and Parliaments then were so far from Usurping upon their King that they were in a Literal sence but his own Counsellors But were it granted what the Faction so furiously contend for that Commoners were understood by the word Wisemen they were still far from ãâã such a Senate as ãâã wherein they now sit only some few ãâã joyntly with the Nobility call'd there by their Soveraigns sole Summons and Choice and this is granted by one of their most ãâã Advocates when he tells us the Dr. has only found out what no Historian is unacquainted with that our Parliaments were not always such as now Constituted if so why then all this Labor for the proving them such why so much of the Commons Antiquity Asserred why must the Press be pester'd with three or four Volums for the purpose Laborious Drudges of Sedition 't is not there Antiquity you so much contend for and so little able to defend the pains to prove them Antient is only in order to make them more Exorbitant M. P. must Print their Rights and that at a time when they were even ready to Rebel and with a superfluous piece of Sedition tell them of their Power when all good People thought they Usurpt too much Hunt must Harangue upon their Integrity to their Prince and State when some have since suffered been proved Principal Actors for the Destruction of both These like the Roman Velites were fain to Skirmish in the Front and entertain the good Government their Foe with a little light Charge of the Commons power and priviledge faithfulness and sincerity 't is a Plato they permit to bring up the Body to the Battle and assail it with the Subjects supremacy and making the Commons a standing Council for the management of Affairs of State and the better Government of their King poor prejudic'd Souls that to please a party contradict themselves give all History the Lye and then constrain themselves to believe they tell a Truth you say Parliaments were not always so powerful as now and won't you be satisfyed then they had once less power All our Chronicles tell us our Kings of old never allowed such Priviledges to the People and cannot this People be contented even with an Usurpation upon their Kings And as it will from those Authors cited before plainly appear that the old Britains the Saxons and Danish Princes were far more absolute than of late our succeeding Sovereigns so was the Conqueror the Norman too for several Successions Consult Alfredus that lived in his time aud writ down to it or Gulielm Pictaviens that writ a Treatise of his Life who tho an absolute Prince by Conquest and Arms yet themselves will allow that he governed by Laws and that our English ones too yet those very Laws were then of such a Latitude that they allowed him what his Parliament of Lords would never have allowed had he been obliged to consult them he singly ordeined what of late has been so loudly clamoured for that no Prelates should have any Jurisdiction in Temporals and disarmed all the common People in general throughout the whole Kingdom the first themselves tho such Sollieitors and Petitioners for the compassing it would not now allow his Majesty alone to exclude from their Votes tho for their own Satisfaction without an Act of Parliament and for the latter they 'll hardly allow tho granted by the Law and tho it be only disarming and securing some Seditious Souls that disturb the Peace William the Second layd his own Taxes on the People a sufferance no Subject can sustein now but with his own consent and Permission he could forbid his People by Proclamation not to go out of the Kingdom not to be done now but with a ne Exeat a Writ and Process at Law confirmed as all others are by Act of Parliament Henry the First had as great a power and prerogative and exercised it too punishments before his time which were Mutilation of Members he made pecuniary provisions for his House which were paid in kind he made to be turned into Money an Alteration of Custom and Law not now to be compast but by particular Act Baker makes him first to have instituted the form of an High Court of Parliament and tells us that before only the Nobles and Prelates were called to consult about Affairs of State But he called the Commons too as
Co-ordinate as the more modern Contenders for the Peoples Supremacy very Magisterially are pleased to Phrase it In the Reign of Edward the First the Parliament declares they are bound to assist their Sovereigns at all Seasons and in that very Sessions declared the Supream power to be his proper and peculiar Prerogative and so far from taking upon them to manage Him or His Affairs or the setting a Council over Him as a superintendent In Edward the Second's time they several times confirm'd to him the power of the Sword as his Sole undoubted unquestionable Prerogative and that he could distrain for the taking up of ãâã all that held by Knights Service and had twenty Pounds per An. and I think that allowed him to be his own Adviser when it put him into an absolute Condition to Command But I confess his Seditious and Rebellious Subjects afterward served Him just as these our Proposers did their Soveraign took upon themselves to reform his Council managed His Affairs till they did all the Kingdom too deposed him with that power of the Sword they themselves had several times in his very Reign put in his Hand as ours also denyed His Majesty the Commission of Array which they well knew the Laws allowed But as this Usage was shown to both so was it done to bind them both that both might be more easily Butchered In the following Reign of this unfortunate Prince's Son too forward to mount the Throne before his Father had thoroughly left it which he could not be said to relinquish but with his Life there I 'll grant this Republican his own Rebel Tenent was as stoutly maintained but by whom why by the very same Wretches whom too several Parliaments had condemned for the same sort of damnable Opinions and solemnly sent them into Exile too the daring and presumptuous Spencers who being the first Authors of that Seditious Sophistry that damnable Distinction of parting His Majesties Person from his political Capacity that is making Allegiance no longer Law than their King could maintain his Authority with Arms for that must be the meaning of such Treasonable Metaphysicks for if they 'll owe but Obedience upon that political account of his being a King assoon as they can but find out some blessed Expedient for the proving of him none that is Misgovernment Arbitrary Power Popish Inclinations and the like pretty Pretences to make him fairly forseit it why then truly all the Majesty vanishes like a Shadow before this New Light and if he can't hold his Scepter in his Hand with the power of his Sword why they have Metamorphosed Him into a common Man and may pluck it out with theirs And truly the Peoples Politick Capacity is such they will soon make their Kings uncapable when once they are grown so strong in the Field as not to fear it Here was the Rise of that Rebellious reasoning that run all indispensable Obligation of our Obedience to the Prince into the Capricious and Arbitrary Conjecture of the People whose Title and Deposition must depend upon his own Demeanor and that to be decided according to the diversity of thought which in a discontented Vulgar deserves the better Epithet of Distraction The good King would have a Right to his Crown as long as his kind Subjects would be pleased to think so and we have more than once found their Politicks have too soon made them uncapable to Govern and then deposed and murdered their very Persons for the want of this their politick Capacity I am sorry to say and posterity will blush to hear that such Seditious and sophisticated reasoning obtained even to the making Three mighty Monarchs in a most miserable manner to miscarry and it appears still too plain in their Prints and those too Charactered in Royal Blood that they never ãâã severing our late Soveraign's Person from his Crown till at last his Head too from his Shoulders I could not but with some passionate Digression reflect upon this pernicious Principle and so the best of it is I can be but pardonably impertinent but which I would apply pertinently to this Republicans and Parliamentary Proposition for their managing all State Affairs is one of the Consequences that may be drawn and which those Sycophants the Spencers did actually craw from this their damnable Doctrine for so they did conclude from it too as well they might That in default of him their Liege Lord his Lieges should be bound to govern the Affairs of State and what Newes now does this Devilish Democratick tells us Why the very Doctrine of two damnable Parasites whom themselves have condemned for above two or three hundred years agon who to cover their own Treason as they then too call'd it committed against the People and that but in Evil Counselling of their King invented very cunningly this popular Opinion to preserve themselves and please the Rabble they had so much ãâã And could after so many Centuries after so long a series of time the Principles even of their execrated Enemies by themselves too be put into practice and what is worse still shall the sad effects that succeeded the practising it so lately encourage our Seditious Libellers for its Reimpression if this most Rebellious Nonsense must re-obtain all their declaratory Statute the determin'd Treasons of their good King Edward may pass for a pretty piece of Impertinence they may do as once they truly did they may Fight Shoot at Imprison Butcher the Natural Body the Person of their Soveraign and tell us the Laws designed them only for Traytors when they could destroy him in his politick The same Laws make it Treason to compass his Queens Death or Eldest Sons and must it be meant of their Monarchs being Married in his politick Capacity as well as murdered or of his Heirs that shall be born by pure political Conception they might e'n set up their Common-wealth then if these were to be the Successors to the Crown But yet with the same sort of silly Sophistry that they would separate the Kings natural Capacity from his political did the same Seditious Rebels as Iremember make their own personal Relation to a politick Body Inseparable Rebellious Lumps of Contradiction shall not your Soveraigns sacred Person be preserved by that Power and Authority derived even from the ãâã and whose very Text tells us touch not mine Anointed and yet could your selves plead it as a Bar to Treason because perpetrated under a political Denomination and a Relation only to that Lower House of Commons that was then only an incorporated Body of Rebels and Regicides and this was told us by that Miscreant Harrison the most profligate the vilest the most virulent of all the Faction concerned in that bloody Villany the MURDER OF A KING the silly Sot had it infused by his Councel as Senseless as Seditious That it was an Act of the Parliament of England and so
inseparable from the Right of Soveraignty did the Laws allow this unalterable part of the Prerogative that they have declared it Inherent even in such a sort of Soveraigns as seemed not very well qualified for an Execution of that Royal Power which the Judgment of their very Parliaments decreed to be entirely theirs They resolved it to be the Right of the Prince in the Reign of a Child They resolved it so when Subjected to the Government of a Woman The Commission of Array was revived again to King James in whose Time they resolved it such a Necessary Right of the Crown that they repealed for it the very repealing Statute of the Queen This their Oracle tells us and that in those parts of his Works which the Parliament that opposed this very power in their King themselves ordered to be Printed yet themselves could as impudently Assert against the Sense of the very Law they Published against the very Law that was reviv'd but in his very Father's Time that his Son and Successors tho necessitated for suppressing such Insurrections as themselves had raised could not Issue out such Commissions of Array tho the very preamble of the Act declares the very purpose of it was to prevent and preserve the Prince from such Rebellious Subjects And in truth the Rebels were Conscious of their Guilt and that it was which made them resolve not to know the Law But presently represented in a Declaration that this Commission was contrary to the Laws of the Land and the Libertie of the Subject tho the very express privilege the Statutable Right of all their Kings Royal Ancestors but would not those wicked Miscreants have made even the Crown an Usurpation in their King that just before declared that it was against the Laws and Liberties of the Kingdom that the Kings Subjects should be commanded to attend him at his Pleasure And ordered that if they should be drawn in a Posture of Defence for their Soveraign the Sheriffs of the County should raise Forces to suppress them and then how can the most prejudiced partial Person presume to tell us that this their Kings Commission was contrary to the Liberty of the Subjects when they set themselves in Contradiction to all the Laws of the Land in the very Declaration that denyed him his Array Their Eighth Proposition is for the Forts and Castles and that the Fortifying them be in the Parliaments power but even that too base Caitiffs your selves know to be by the very Letter of the Law in the Kings the very Charter of their own Liberties in this point confirms also the Soveraign's Right where it is provided that the King can dispence with the Services that are due for the keeping of his Castles when he sends those that ought to do them to serve in his Host By the very common Law and Custom of the Realm before there was alway such Services due to the King for the keeping of Castles And certainly they were lookt upon then to be in the Disposal of the Prince when the Subject was but a Tenant to serve him in his Fortifications And this Chapter of their very Charter I hope proves sufficiently not only that the King can command his Castles to be defended but send his Subjects any where for his Defence which the Declaration of the Commons did as Rebelliously deny But besides the taking of the Kings Castles Forts Ports or Shipping is resolved and ever was reputed Treason and were not the two Houses Traytors then by a Law before that of this King made them so by Statute when they ordered upon the London Petition and that of the Cinque-Ports that all his Majesty's Forts and Castles should be presently fortified that no Forces should be admitted into Hull without the Consent of Lords and Commons seized their Kings Shipping and made Warwick Vice-Admiral of the Fleet This was a sort of accumulated Treason whose every Individual Act was truly so as if they designed that the Statutes should not declare more things Treasonable than they could dare to commit My Lord Cooke tells us whom they cannot but believe that no Subject can build a Castle or so much as a House of strength imbattailed or any Fortress Defensible without the Soveraigns consent much less sure shall they seise those that are the Kings and Fortifie them for the People and tells us again the same in his Comment upon the very Charter of Liberties and will not that neither with our Licentious Libertines be allowed for Law Is not all the Military power both by Sea and Land declared the undoubted Right of His present Majesty and that by particular Act in his own Reign does not the very preamble of it seem to provide against this very Proposition of such a Parliament or a Plato when it tells us expresly that all Forts and places of Strength is and ever was by the Laws of England the Kings undoubted Right and of all his Royal Predecessors and that neither both or either Houses can or ought to pretend to the same and declares that all the late Principles and Practices that assumed the same were all Rebellious And could some of our Mutinous Members embrace such Propositions from the Press that presumed to tell them they had of late made two such Impertinent Acts in the House Acts invading the Subjects Property Acts betraying the Liberties of that very People they represent In short and that in his own Words Acts that empower the Prince to invade the Government with Force Acts to destroy and ruin the State hindering the Execution of the Laws and the preventing our Happiness and Settlement had they had but the least Reverence for their own Constitution and that Honorable Assembly wherein they sate sure there would have been some Ordered and Resolved for the sifting out such a Pen-man and sentencing such Papers to the Hangman and the Flames what can be the result of this to sober Sense or Common Reason that such Villanous Authors should appear in publick at such a Session of Parliament to Censure and Arraign the very Acts of their former Representatives but that they thought themselves secure from any Violent Prosecution from those that then were sitting and that it was not the Constitution it self of that most Honorable Assembly the Seditious Sycophants were so Zealous for but only the present Persons its Constituent Members they so much admired The last the Tenth of those pretty Proposals that deserves particular Animad version for several of them Symbolize with one another and so are by a general asserting of the Kings Supremacy sufficiently refuted is the Parliaments Right to the making Peers the prettiest Paradox that the Abundance of Sedition with the want of Sense could suggest I have heard the Laws declare the King to be the Fountain of Honor as well as Justice but the Commons I think as they are no Court of Judicature
so were never yet known to be concerned in the making Lords The King whom only our Law declares to have no Peer is sure the only Person that can make Peers has not this Power been unquestionably in the Prince ever since these Realms had one to Rule was not the Title of Baron in Edward the First 's Time confined expresly to such only as by the Kings Writ were sommoned to sit in Parliament And even when there was an Innovation in this Point In Richard the Second's Tumultuous Time this Power was then not taken from the King till they took away his Crown did not he take upon him to confer the Peerage and as the first President per his Letters Patents And Beauchamp Baron of Kederminster the First of that Creation did the Parliament ever pretend to make Peers but when the Body had rebelled against the Head and rejected their Prince But the Creation of Honors might well then be inverted when the State it self was turned Topsie It was then I confess they denyed their King too not only the conferring of Honors for the future but passed an Act for Voiding all Titles Dignities and Precedencies already given by him But this was done to extinguish the very Remains of Royalty that there might not be left behind him the meer marks the Gracious Dispensations of the very Favor of a King the inveterate Villains labouring with their Monarch to Murder his very Memory And sure none of the Nobility have great Reason to relie upon Parliaments for the maintaining of their Old Honor or creating New for the Privilege of their Peerage or the making Peers when the very First thing that they did when they had got the Power was an Ordered and Resolved that the House of Peers was useless dangerous and ought to be Abolisht And all the Kindness their Lordships could be allowed was to be capable of being elected into the Lower House and what an Honourable House of Lords was afterward Establisht even by those that had purged away the Peerage may be seen in the Persons of those that Usurper put up afterward for Peers But under the Name the Notion of that other House when they granted that power of their Nomination to that Arch Rebel which they but so lately denyed their Lawful King why we had there then Lords of no quality no worth little Land and less Learning Mr. Hewsons Lordship that Honest Cobler Sir Thomas Pride's Lordship Knight and Dray-man My Lord James Berry Black-Smith My Lord Barksted the Bodkin-Seller and the Cant of their Counterfeit Cromwell their Creator might well tell them from the Text not many Nobl's not many wise were called but a Creation according to the very Notion of the Schools An House like that of the World too out of nothing framed by Him that had Himself Sworn to be true to the Government without founded in the Perjury of him that made them Peers and of Persons that would have disgrac'd a Pillory Persons prefer'd for their little Honesty little Quality little Sense Persons whose Lands and Possessions could only qualifie them to be Noble by being purchased with the Blood of our best Nobility Lastly Persons that were only famed for their Villanies Mighty but in Mischief making it an House indeed not of Peers but Correction which the very Law tells us must be made up of Beggars and Malefactors This Gentlemen was the Peerage produced by a Parliament's Rebellion to make Peers of which it was too the most natural Result for that very Act upon a Just Judgment would have Tainted all their Blood but they provided here for the purpose Persons that defied superseded the Work of an Attaindure Persons whose Blood even Treason could not more Corrupt This Gentlemen was the product of that most preposterous Inversion when the Commons could make Lords and their Kings House of Peers with their very Titles and Honors Abolisht by an House of Commons they seemed to be ashamed of that very Bastard Honor of which they were brought to Bed and could not tell how to Christen the base Bantling they had begot till at last some simpering Gossips stept up and Named it an other House i. e. an House without a Name Distracted Dolts the Compounds of Madness and Folly did you for this destroy your Kings Nobility created by Law to dignifie the meanest Men the Vilest Villains against the Statutes of the Land did not you confess that of the Kings Lords to be a Lawful Government and the best by recalling it tho compounded of Wretches the very worst poor Prodigals whose Repentance only rendered you more Miserable and reverst the Fate of him that fed on Husks who returned to Herd with Swine Have we not had heretofore Peers by particular â Act degraded for being a disgrace to their Peerage Lords whom the Kings Law made Honorable only their Lands could not maintain their Lordships Honors and that tho Blood and Descent had entitled them to it whereas many of these their Parliament Peers had neither Law Land Blood or Money to make them so Did not the Parliament that very Parliament that Abolisht afterward our English Peers Petition the King against Scots and Irish Titles and told him to this purpose that it was Novelty without president that persons should possess Honor where they possess nothing else and have a Vote for the making Laws where they have not a Foot of Land had their own Objection been afterward applyed to some of their own Country and that pitiful Peerage of their own chusing they must have Blusht upon the Reflection of their own Thoughts when they remember'd with what they upbraided their King The possessions of their Noble Peers being Just none at all or what was worse than nothing the purchase of their Villanies It is recorded I remember in the Conqueror's Time that Hugh Lupus Earl of Chester upon special Favor of his Prince being the Son of his own Mother by a Second Husband Arlott having Marryed Harlowin a Noble-Man of Normandy that his Earldom was granted him by William the First with as ample Jurisdiction as himself held the Crown A power I think beyond any of our present Palatinates upon which he presumed to make three or four Barons but Historians observe it was such an Honorable Concession as never any Subject before or since enjoyed and how they can presume to pretend to it now I cannot Apprehend It was alway a particular piece of Providence amongst all Nations not to render that pitiful and Contemptible to the People which they resolved should be Reverenced and Esteemed and unless we can imagine our Idolaters of the Peoples Peers would like some Infidels adore their Wooden Deities only for beeing Ugly and Deform'd or like the Israelites Worship Calves of their own Rearing I am sure that empty Title with which their Honors of that other House were only full could draw no other Reverence and Respect than that
Ass in the Apologue from an Image that it carried This I remember was the result of the Petition of the Portugals to Philip the Second of Spain and he I think obtained that Kingdom too as our Republicans did once and would again ours with the Subversion of its Laws and the Force of Arms it was their request that he would not make their Nobility of which they are not a little proud pitiful and contemptible by preferring such to that Degree whose Quality could not deserve it what Peers we had when pickt by the Council of State What Lords when cullyed out by the Commons let those remember who are so ready to forget it Seditious Sots have not the Laws of all Nations as well as our own provided that this power be the peculiar prerogative of the Prince and must these Politicks would Be 's be wifer now than the wide World Do not the Digests declare those Civil Sanctions whose Authority obtain with all Civiliz'd Subjects i. e. with almost all besides our own and whose Reason can't be refuted by the best of the Rebellious Republicans that so little regard those that their so much admired Legislators their Solon or Licurgus never saw the like Laws that must be allowed the most Rational by being so generally received those tell us and the World that the conferring of Dignities depends upon the Sole care of the Soveraign that the Subjects ought not to dispute it and such a Religious Observance of this settled Soveraignty do those sacred Sanctions recommend that they Censure it for a Crime as great as Sacrilege it self to suspect his insufficiency whom the Prince should prefer some of those Laws were the Constitutions of Heathens as well as other of those that afterward learnt Christ and had not the Doctrine of his Disciples declared Kings even an Ordinance of God the pious Pagans always esteemed their Princes Sacred and such a source of Honor was in their Soveraign Emperors that even against their very Laws they could allow them to continue those Noble whom the Marriage with a Plebeian had degraded from their Nobility as Antonius Augustus did for his Neece Julia. 'T is Nonsense I confess to talk of the Laws of all Nations to those that cannot obey their own or the Decrees of Emperors for the Preservation of their Majesty to those that will break Statutes to Libel their King yet still it serves to shew that even in this very point the Laws so long before ours allowed this power to be the peculiar prerogative of the Prince and tho we are bound only to submit to the Singular Laws and Customs of our little Land yet still if in our Senses we must be Subject to such Laws as are founded upon an Universal Reason and for these Republicks that have revolted from that Regal Government from whence they must derive their Honors we find the best of their Nobility to be but Burghers And the very Nobleman of Venice this Courteous Author so much Caresses and Admires one that must make himself so and at best but equivalent if such great things according to the Latin Aphorism may be compared with small to a Gentleman of England who wears only a shorter Coat while the other a longer Gown 'T is a solecism in Sense to imagin that Plebeians can concur in conferring that on others which themselves have not the least Tincture of A Title of Honor Or that any thing besides somewhat that is Soveraign can really communicate it to a Subject And we have seen when it was Usurpt what a sort of singular good Lordships and precious Peers were put upon us The Thebans would not so much as admit a Merchant into their Government till they deserted their calling for ten Years while the meanest Mechanicks were made Members of our House and a Tinker of the Army's just taken from his Tool The Bishop of Ely was accused only in Richard the First 's Time for putting in pitiful Officers into publick places of Trust and 't is but a little since a Parliament intrusted our Lives and Fortunes in the vilest Hands And lastly this very Libel Lashes one of our Kings for the preferring Worthless Persons and makes it even a forfeiture of the power of the Sword at the same time that he contends for the People in this point who were never yet known to prefer any other An Italian State as Tumultuous as our own took upon them once to create a new Nobility but assoon as the popular Faction or if you please the Convention of the People had set themselves for the Preservation of their Liberties to make Lords why truly the Election was like to be of such senseless Scoundrels you may suppose a Barksted or an Hewson some mender of Shooes or a maker of Bodkins But so sensible were those Seditious Souls that they were like to set up their Servants that they wisely resolved to retain their old Masters And I think were not some of us so wicked we should all be so wise too since we saw our own distracted Nation was never at rest Till our Rulers were restored to us as at the FIRST and our Councellors as at the BEGINNING And last of all only let me take the Liberty in this last and dismal scene of Sedition to represent but a bloody prospect of that Harmonious concurrence there is between all sorts of Rebellious Principles tho projected by Persons of different Persuasions Persons that differ in Manners and Customes of their Countries Rebels remote from one another in Time Rebels as remotely allyed in the Lands wherein they live As if the Sea it self could not separate such Seditious Subjects In their Principles and Practices that had defiled their Land with such a mutual Conspiration in the Murdering of their Soveraigns and let in an Inundation of Blood upon the Subjects and this Bloody Correspondency between the practice of primitive Rebels as well as modern between the Proceedings of Foreign Rebellions as well as our Domestick must result from the Reasons any sort of Subjects have to resist their Soveraign which we shall see were at all times with all sorts still the same that is just none at all and that appears in that People of such several sorts were all forc'd to pitch upon the same Pretences for the Justifying their Treasons And to make use of the same Cavil and Calumny against their Princes when they saw they could never ground any real Accusation And lastly to promote the same Projects and Propositions almost in a Literal Transcript for the levelling the raising the Foundations of their several Monarchies and making themselves the Masters of the Crown or rather this Seditious Harmony of all Rebels proceeds from their having ever been animated and instructed by the self same Agent of Hell the primitive Prince of Faction the Devil and this parity of pernicious Principles Practices and Propositions will appear in the perfect parallel that there is between the
that were by special Act since declared Traytors made their King co-ordinate assumed to themselves so much of the Legislative that they left out the Fundamental form by and with the consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons that the said Earl of Strafford be adjudged and attainted of high Treason provided that no Judge or Judges shall adjudge or interpret any Act or thing to be Treason then as he or they should or ought to have done before the making of this Act as if this Act had never been made This piece of Paradox the Contradiction to Common Law Common Sense and Reason had all the Consents all the Concurrences that could if possible have made it truly Law and even his unhappy Majesties forc'd extorted Complyance But will any Creature that is barely distinguish'd from a Brute that can only offer at the mere privilege of his being Rational debase his very Nature so much as to call it Justice Would they ascribe an Omnipotency to this their power of Parliaments beyond that of the Almighty and blasphemously allow to this their Created God what the Schools would not the Divinity it self to reconcile Contradiction but still these Statute Mongers that can make any Miscellanies of Parliameut for their turn this they will defend to be Legal only because it was past into a Law Let it be so but still there must be much difference between this their Legality which now in their Sense can be nothing but the power of making Laws and common Justice which must be the Reason for which they are made and what is contrary to that and all Reason by the Laws of God and all Nations must be null and void otherways the most Barbarous Immoralities that an Heathen would blush at by such an indefinite Legislative would be truly Legal only because they are past into a Law Murder it self made Statutable as soon as ever those that have the power have Sign'd it for an Act. These Suggestions of Consequences are far from being extravagant because at present the Principles that lead to them are what but very lately have been Printed and Publish'd and the very Practices themselves not long since put in Execution This Author I am handling has made his Legislative not to be confined and that Plato we have pretty well examined allows his People can pass any thing for the good of the Common-wealth and then it may Polygamy too because it was practis'd in his Republick and is now tolerated amongst the Turks and what some Waggs tell us an indiscreet Member was once moving for here But that we can have Parliament Murders too for I cannot call it less since the Law has declared the Contrivers of them Traitors the Case of Strafford the Martyrdom of their King are too terrible Testimonies that our Legislative has been strein'd to make the greatest Injury Law and Treason it self the Statute of the Land for they past an Act for the Tryal of their Soveraign and then declared it Legal because it was past Their God Almighty of the Law Cook himself whose Words with them is all Gospel too tho he in his Pedantick Phraseology puts no period to this Power of Parliament yet in the very next Page condemns the self same sort of Proceeding and that was in the Case that hard Fate too of an other Earl as Innocent perhaps also and as unfortunate Cromwell was attainted in Henry the Eighth's time much after the same manner my Lord Strafford was in Charles the First but only if so great Injustice can be extenuated the latter was more Inhumane For tho the First was Sentenc'd and suffer'd by Parliament without being admitted to Answer A Proceeding against our own Laws those of all Nations and of Heaven it self against all that was Humane or Divine yet Wentworth's Measure was more hard whom they made to suffer with an Attainder after he had argued for his Life confounded his Accusers and convicted some of his own Judges The same sort of Severity Sir John Mortimer met with from this Parliamentary Po upon whom they past a Judgment without so much as permitting him to be arraigned but these Barbarities of Mr. Hunt's unlimited Legislative were condemn'd even by this their learn'd Lawyer tho' he would not did not or dared not question their Authority yet damned them in his own Words if it were possible to dark Oblivion if not to be buried in Silence but this more Dogmatical Judge with his Postscript has rather Encouraged such Injustice and Severity and represented to his Parliament a power they have of Proceeding more unwarrantably when he tells them tho the Succession of our Crown be Hereditary they can alter the whole Line and Monarchy it self by their unlimited power of their Legislative Authority But I shall also shew him that his Legislative power as it cannot justly extend to such great and impious Extravagancies yet but what we see it has been actually stretch'd to so neither can it to some other things that are less so In King Edward the Third's Time there were several Acts past that took away the power of Pardons from the Prince yet all these made void by the Common Law because against the Prerogative of their King And it was resolved by the Judges in King James his Reign that Himself could not grant away the power of Dispensation with the Forfeitures upon the Penal Laws because annext to his Royal Person and the Right of his Soveraignty And if what is only Derogatory from the Crown 's Right and King's Prerogative shall be actually voided by the Common Law as we see it did to the nulling three several Statutes I cannot see how this Bill of Exclusion had it past into an Act would not have been as much null and void unless it can be proved that our Hereditary Descent of the Crown is not so much the King's Prerogative that wears it as the Pardoning of a Felon or the remitting a Fine And that I believe will be difficult to be cleared by those that have spent so much Pains and Paper for its Justification and our Author himself so much Labors for so that even the Common Law it self will anticipate the Work of the Statute and perhaps his Highness need not have stayed till that of Henry the Seventh had taken away his Exclusion as well as Attainder and purged away all his Defects and framed in capacities by his coming to the Crown I have but two Cases more with which I 'll conclude Mr. Hunts great point of Legislative In Edward the Third's Time an Act was purposely declared void that was past and the King had declared to give his consent to it But it seems upon some oversight or error it was not actually done And in the First of King James when they recogniz'd his Right they petition him to put his own Acknowledgement too without which it
all their Principles at least unfortunately transcribed them by Inspiration which I may demonstrate with as plain a Parallel as any Corollary can be drawn from a Mathematical Proposition when I come in the next Chapter to handle that Reproach to Christianity that Opprobrium of our Church In the mean while give me leave to close this with these few Animadversions upon some of this Lawyers Sentences before we come to the Lewd Maxims of the Divine He tells us with Passion and transport that this Opinion of a Divine Authority in Kings renders us all Traytors and this Doctrine of their Divinity is dangerous to the Peace of the Kingdom and pregnant with Wars Nothing but a Zeal that had overcome his Senses could precipitate him upon such Paradoxes the only thing that prevails most with me and I believe with all that are not open Enemies to the State or fled from its Justice for an entertaining of this Religious Principle of our Loyalty is that nothing can possible with Christians be a better Argument for their living peaceable under so good a Government or were it not so good than to believe that those that are their Rulers have Authority from their God and sure his Anointed is preserved the sooner from being toucht from the regard an Heathen would have to any thing that has a power Sacred and Divine what can be a stronger Conviction to a Reasonable Soul of the good the peaceable Consequences of such a pious Doctrine than that those that contend so much against it are still found to be Disturbers of our Peace Can he prove that the Consecration of a Church and the very presence of God in the Tabernacle shall be an Encouragement for Sacrilege and an Invitation for a Villain to rob it of its Candlestick Chalices Offerings and Oblations Only that he may break the Tables before the Face of his God that gave the Law But whenever our Peace is interrupted by this Doctrine It is only by such Sacrilegious Desperado's as dare attempt Majesty and that upon the same account for Plunder and Prey At the last he is mighty tender of his Fanaticks and their Throats from the Papists but sure he may be now less concerned when we can match them with an intended Massacre of their own as clearly proved as the noon-day but may well be disbelieved by such who can not only side with the Turks in their Arms but almost most in their Infidelity But I can tell them a more Ingenuous a better way of denying their Plot by confessing it by owning what indeed it was a bare-fac'd Conspiracy a Resolute Rebellion Hitherto Mr. Hunt has been animadverted on as his Lewd Expressions and the more abominable Principles in a Person pretending to so much sincerity lay scattered promiscuously so that our Remarks must have made a Miscellany as well as his Book but its whole substance of Sedition I shall reduce now to three several Heads First * That Assertion of the Legisative which he would not allow in the King Secondly That Divine Right which he would rather place in the People Thirdly That Succession of the Crown to depend upon a Parliament or the power of both The first Reason that he gives for the first is from his Rule and Inferrence in Arithmetick where a Unite added to two makes a Third And the Conclusion is because none can say therefore those two do not go to the making that number and what then Therefore the King hath not the Legislative and this is the Logick of this Body of Law when it sets up for the Mathematicks and would demonstrate the King's Co-ordinacy as plain as a Probleme and he might have told us too without turning pedant in his Latinisms of Vnites and Triads that one and two makes three which no body can deny as the burden of the Ballad has it and here upon the strength of his Performance he has found out this wonderful discovery I know not what kind of Figure he would make of the King here but I am sure such kind of Seditious Souls could with all their Hearts make him pass for a Cypher I could find in my Heart to cap the pretty fimile with another as silly A three legg'd Stool take away one and all tumbles to the Ground they being all Equal and Co-ordinate powers for the supporting of this Supremacy in Cathedra which sounds as well as their Curia or Camera their old musty Metaphysicks that distinguisht once the King from his Crown And this obliging Metaphor will serve Mr. Hunt's turn much better For here every foot of this Magisterial Stool is commonly made of the same Matter and Mold joint Supporters of the tripple Dignity whereas his Unite even amongst Mathematicians is allowed somewhat of Precedency and to be the First the Foundation of all number But to be serious if possible in an Inference so silly must he not suppose in such a simile of two Figures which by the Accession of an Unite is made a Triad and the two concurring as much to the making that number as well as that one must he not suppose I say this to result from the equality of every single Unite so that one can not confer more to the Composition of this Triad than another If they be not equally concerned or impowered then one would concur more to the making up that ãâã than the rest so that this Law Philosopher this Cook upon Hereboord will be reduced to this Dilemma either they do not equally go to the making up that number or they do If they do not he denies his own Supposition and gives himself the Lye if he grant they do then his simile is Nonsense in the Application and a very begging of the Question For we say that our Monarch who if he please shall be the Vnite for once is more than either of the other Two and if the peevish Malecontent won't be angry I 'll tell him more than Both his Assent is such an One as is attended with a power to deny and neither of them will pretend to the Negative and that is the true Reason we find all our Republicans so furiously contending for the taking away the Kings It was for this Pryn Printed and Pestered the Press For this he trump'd up his Treatise That his Majesty 's had not an absolute Negative Voice to deny Bills of Common Right For this Plato tells us That His Majesty having it evacuated the very ends of Government For this Hunt Harangues and says He is so bold to say That never any Bill in Parliament wanted the Royal Assent that was presented by the Desires of the People And I think 't is bold enough said with a Witness For is not this King left at last by the Laws of all the Land Sole Soveraign Judge what is really fit for his Peoples good to be past whereas he presumes that their bare presenting signifies the Desires of the People and
that must absolutely determine the Jurisdiction of the Prince He tells us when a matter is moved in Parliament by the King the Commons consent last and are therefore the Commons Co-ordinate with their King Or does that only signifie the Candid Custom of the Proceedings in Parliament The King is presumed upon his own Proposal of any matter the Party and they being consulted is only for their Advice as the very Words of the Writ expresly have it by which they are called and the very Etymology of their very Name the great Council expresses Controversies in such Cases will be Eternal until the Disputants agree in the same Notion of the Thing they so much dispute For otherways it is but making of Words instead of Arguments if they mean by the Legislative of the two Houses a power of Concurrence with their King in the making Laws and that their Consent is to be required they labor to prove just nothing or what they may have without so much pains and to so little purpose If they will insist upon the Natural Etymology of the very Word they will find the Derivative Legislative to be deduced as above from the Latinism Legem ferre and then in God's Name let the two Houses enjoy even of that an Arbitrary power and bring in what Bills they please so long as they will not again force upon us an Ordinance or Vote for Law and the Statute of the Land but if their Sense of this Legislative power must signifie That their Commons have as much of it as their King and That 't is that which makes their King Co-ordinate with his Commons as is sufficiently clear from their Writings that it is then I affirm 't is against Law against Reason and a Lye For the King by the very Law it self hath power to dispence with Statutes his Proclamation is a Law and an Edict and as much as any of the Decrees of the Roman Emperor's with the Advice of his Judges he will dispence with the rigor of the Laws if too severe and resolve their meaning if Ambiguous Have their two Houses whom they would have these mighty Law makers the power of repealing or so much as altering those very Laws they make without their Kings consent And tho this Laborious Lawyer observes That neither their King can pass any thing he proposes without theirs yet this his power and that when they have not so much as a Being Evinces the Prince at least supream in the Legislative The Learned in other Laws besides our own tell us a Legislative power may partly be delegated to other Persons tho Subjects and yet remain in the Prince even entirely notwithstanding such a Communication I confess the Opinion of Canonists and Civilians may not be so Authentick with some that abhor their very Names yet Grotius himself is of that Opinion and he a Person that our Republicans can cite even on their own Side but our own Laws allow it or else I think our Judges too might make themselves Co-ordinate because their King's Commission communicates to them all the power of destributive Justice that is in the King We are told the King has committed all his power Judicial some in one Court some in another and therefore the Judgements run Consideratum est per Curiam c. and 'T is resolved That if one should render himself to the King 's own Judgement it would be of none effect yet for all this it would be false to affirm That he does not do justice because he has delegated it to others to be done The King does not put in Members of Parliament as he does Judges yet Peers he makes and calls them to Sit and Commons cannot come without his Writs for Election but certain it is that our Kings once had a more absolute Legislative for they all know their Lower House commenced but so late and heretofore their Nobles and Bishops but such as the King should be pleased to call And I cannot imagine that when our Princes admitted the Commonalty to be concerned in the making Laws they then designed he should lay aside his own Legislative or put it in Common as they do their Land in Coparcenary or in their great Coke's the learned Lawyers Language make an Hotchpotch a Pudding of his Prerogative If every Politick Body that has but a share in this Legislative must also be presum'd to participate as much of it as the King I can prove to them every petty Corporation Co-ordinate with their great Convention of States and even a poor Parish as great Legislators as an House of Parliament for by the Laws of the Land even those can make their By-Laws without Custom or Prescription if they be but for the good of the Publick and if they can but prescribe to it may pass any private Acts for their own The Civilians make their Law to be the Will and pleasure of their Prince But tho our Antient Lawyers would not expound that absolutely for our own yet they seem to make it but little less only say it must not be meant with us of his unadvised Will but such an one as is determined upon the Deliberation and Advice of His Council Pryn that preposterous Assertor of this their Legislative has furnished them sufficiently with as contradictory Arguments as absurd as irrational Inferrences for its defence He tells us in his Treatise that Kingdoms were before Kings and then the People must needs make Laws that I confess setting aside the very Contradiction that there is in Terms For certainly the Word Kingdom was never heard of till there were Kings to Govern He might as well have told us of a Derivative that was a long time before the Primitive but bating this Solecism in Sense and Speech well meaning Will designed it perhaps for the Word Country that was I believe as well as he antecedent to the King but must it be inferred because the Land was once without Kings therefore now no Kings must govern the Land For the Conclusion is as absurd to say That therefore the People have the Legislative and their Prince no Negative they do not consider the result of such rash Inferences which return upon themselves more stronger in the rebound and that even upon their tenderest places which they can hardly suffer to be touched Kings and Lords did a long time meet in Parliament before Commons in that Convention were so much as thought of and therefore must none now be convened The Papists proudly tell us their Religion was long before Luther and must we not now profess our Protestant Religion Another of the same Nature and as much Nonsense is this They infer from the possibility of the King 's dying without Heir and the Government returning to the People who then would be the Sole Legislators That therefore they must have much now of the present Legislative and be at least Co-ordinate that have a
had not the Queen if such a thing could have been expected from a Sister of that Church so Zealous done much better had she refused the Bills of both Houses brought her for introducing the Pope's power and Supremacy your selves Seditious Souls reproach this Royal Assent with Reflections so scurrilous upon her Memory that the worst of Monarchs could never Merit and then only give but Loyal Ones leave to think that your Excluding Bill tho never so much the General Desires might have been as much cursed by posterity when it had entailed upon it Misery and Blood the common Consequences of a debar'd Right To come now after this Ecclesiastical point of the Church to that Civil one of the State that other thing this Lawyer Labors for the Descent of the Crown Shall the Peoples general Desires in this too terminate the Will of the Prince why then that Monster of Mankind as well as Monarchs did mighty well too to pass that Murdering Bill presented by both Houses of Parliament to make good his own Title to the Crown by the Butchering of those Babes in the Tower for no less could be expected when it was once taken up by the Tyrant than their Destruction for the Maintaining it so that this Peoples Desires dispatch'd them in the Senate before ever they were strangled by Tyrril in the Tower Had it not been a much greater Honor to the Prince to have refused such a Barbarous Bill than turned Usurper and a Butcher for it's acceptance Had it not left a less Blot in our English Chronicle as well as upon the Nation less Blood Did not both Houses exhibite a Bill even for the making Elizabeth the best of their Queens a Bastard And does Mr. Hunt say this desire of the People too did mighty well to prevail as it always ought upon the King Did not that Royal Assent so blacken his Person and brought the Nations repute so low that the very Protestant Princes left him out of their League whom they had designed for its Head and look'd upon our England as a lump of Inconsistancy whom such Vnanimous Leaguers could not Trust And was it not in his Reign That a Zealous Papist said It was the Parliaments Power to make a King or deprive him a fortiori then a Popish Principle to destroy or exclude his Successor But as bold as this Gentleman thinks himself when he dares to say Never any King denyed to pass those Bills which the People pitcht upon to present 'T is none of his own Politick asseveration tho it be but a piece of Sedition It is no more than what a Seditious Senate told their King long agon A Senate that sate brooding on the pure Elements of Treason and of which Pryn himself was a principal Member A Senate that sowed so much Sedition in one age that all the Succeeding will hardly eradicate A Senate that sate drawing out the Scheams and Platforms of a Common-wealth A Senate that assumed to themselves indeed the Legislative the Nomothetical Disposition of the Law but they proved such a Confounded sort of Architects in the State that they drew a perfect plan a confus'd Ichonography for Rebels to build upon their Babel Those told us in plain Terms what these more cautious Coxcombs insinuate with a silly Circumlocution That the King is bound by His Coronation Oath to grant them all those Bills their Parliament shall prefer And that they gather from their contradictory conclusion that bandy'd Banter they have Box'd about in both Reigns for almost these two Ages the VULGUS ELEGERIT I am sorry to find these Seditious Souls not only to want Sense but Grammar Lilly would have told them more of the Law and his Constrctuion and Concord made a better Resolution than their Coke upon the Case But as the People when they have got the Power will soon decide on their side the Supremacy so these Times did here assoon turn the Tenses and transfer the past Laws into the Future and 't is no wonder that those that did the Statutes of their Prince could dare to break the Head of a Priscian Is not the perfect Tense much more agreeable to Sense and Reason here than the Future The question is Whether it shall be meant of those Laws the People shall Chuse or have Chosen I won't object here Our Kings being absolute and compleat Monarchs without so much as taking such an Oath without so much as being Crowned which is the Time it is to be taken tho of that the Law has in several Cases satisfied the most Seditious and so resolved their silly Suggestion The resolution I shall give is the Strength of Reason and that must at least be as Strong as the Law Let it be but once allow'd That their King by this Clause is obliged to pass all Bills that shall be brought why truly then he Swears with an implicite Faith to Repeal all the Laws if the People please for the bare possibility in such a sort of Argumentation may be supposed and we as well imagine for my Lord Coke tells us we have had Mad Parliaments such a Senate may prefer Bills for the Repealing all the Old Laws as well as for the passing any single New and I am sure 't is no more than what has actually been done in one since that Learned Lawyer lived even to the Subversion of all the Statutes of the Land so that this positive Oath in their sense may Labour under an implicite contradiction for while he swears in the latter Clause to confirm all the Bills they shall bring It may be extended to cancel all Custom and Common-Law he is in the former sworn to defend Mr. Hunt's General Desire of the People may be for the Repealing the 35th of Edward as well as that of Elizabeth and leave no Law in the Land to punish Treason as well as Recusants only that they may commit it with impunity for one of those Bills has twice been brought into the House and both may be to save their Bacon And should the King with their Elegerit be obliged especially so mild an one with an anticipated Mercy to Pardon Villains ãâã the cutting of his Throat and leave no Law to punish perhaps a Rumbold or the Ruffians at the Rye certainly were his Right not in the least Divine this would contradict all Sense and Reason Suppose Richard the Second took this Oath as well as the rest of his Successors since and afterwards the general desire of his Parliament we all know was that he would depose himself Senseless Sots was that King sworn too even in his Coronation to confirm his own Deposition In short must not this senseless Suggestion put upon the Royal Authority the greatest absurdity against all Sense and Reason must it not make him swear to confirm those Laws that have not so much as BEING and that before he knows whether they will be good
or bad Is it not Resolved and that upon Record in the King's Exchequer where the Words run with some Signification That the King keep the Laws and Customes which the Lords and Commons HAVE chosen c But grant them their own Sense that is Silliness That Oath these Malignants of our Monarchy object was made first for an absolute Usurper that came to the Crown by the Suffrages of such a Seditious Senate not much Inferior in Villainy to the late long Parliament that labored so much in this business of the Legislative or rather less Villains only in deposing a King whom the latter Murdered and why a Lawful King should be bound by that Oath did the Laws oblige him to take it which was first offered to an Vsurper I cannot apprehend That aspiring Prince swore too in his Coronation that he held his Crown by the Sole Consent of the People shall our present Soveraign do the same whom the Statutes acknowledge to hold from none but God But do not in that very Oath the Words they so much labor in confute them also in my poor Reason beyond reply is not Leges the Word Laws expresly used that it is Laws that the King swears to Confirm Corroborate Maintain and Protect And were the Commons ever allowed or presumed without a Rebellion to Elect LAWS There is not the least of a Bill mentioned in that Oath and sure they 'll offer to elect no more and in Gods Name let them chuse to send up as many of those as they please And sure then these Leges here must relate to those that are really so and have had the Royal Sanction already so that they must be reduced to this Dilemna If they 'll apply their Vulgus elegerit to the Lower House 't is certain they can make no Laws if to that of the Lords 't is as certain they can't be called Vulgus Lastly Laborious Drudges of Sedition let but these Laws ye long to subvert while you 'd seem to defend decide betwixt you and your King Is it not established by Statute it self that the King hath absolute power to Dissent to any Bill though agreed upon by both Houses But yet in spight of all this Reason and Law they tell us that the King cannot deny to pass any Bills for the publick good and which perhaps never can a good King for his Refusal of his Royal Sanction determines their Goodness and they cease to be necessary when the King thinks there is no need of them for if upon this their presumptive Goodness and the Prince as it is his undoubted Prerogative to do denying his Assent the People should presume they could with their Legislative because their King is refractory as they would call it pass some Bills into Law from their Assurance of their being good that power wou'd enable them to make bad ones too and allow their two Houses to Judge when to make but one Law they are as good Judges to make one thousand or as many as they please and no end of such a distracted Usurpation and that we saw when they began with that Ordinance for the Militia which was the first thing they presumed to make Law from their Kings as their Seditious absurd Phraseology would word it Refractory refusing i. e. that courageously maintaining his just Right when they had thus once broke the Damm no wonder if the deluge of an absolute Rebellion overwhelmed for upon the same ground the Lords might have Excluded both King and Commons for not concurring with them in what Bills and Acts they thought good and the Commons as indeed they did both King and Lords for being obstinate to such BILLS as themselves had offered But yet notwithstanding the Kings Refractoriness as our Republican Phrases it is now trumpt up again for the warranting the Peoples assuming as they would have it a sort of necessitated Power and that of calling themselves to Parliament for this the Lawyer in his Postscript Labors with his Innuendo's For this Plato tells us the Barons did well to put on their Armour that it is an Omission that ruins the very Foundations of Government and Hunt will not have them so much as discontinued for it renders such Conventions illusory Seditious Sycophants Your selves know this power of their Discontinuance and Dissolution is the best security the Crown has for its support Was it not miserably rent and torn from the Head but of our own Soveraign's Father and that only because he could not Dissolve them but had in effect signed his Destiny with their Bill of Sitting during the Pleasure of the two Houses Base Hypocrites 't is not a Parliaments Sitting you contend for but the Sitting of such a Parliament that good honest Parliament the late long and ãâã one which their virulent Villains Libelled for Popish Pensionary perhaps because it would not take the Peoples pay long enough might that have been discontinued or Prorogued wen ever heard then of the Statutes of Edwards and the Triennial Acts but their Pens were employed then to prove even that ãâã that discontents them now so much 'T is not above Eight years since their Pamphlets would demonstrate a Parliament dissolved for being but for Fiveteen Months Prorogued and were we but assured of having such another the Press had never been pestered for the calling one with their impertinnent prints nor any Petitions prefer'd for their Frequency Would you perswade the World your purses are so ãâã so free too that you long for a Subsidy to fill up the Kings Dissembling Souls the Parliament they clamour for can proceed from nothing else but a presumption of one to be their Patrons to patronize all their Irregularities and Refractoryness to the State to countenance all those gross abuses they put upon the Government they told us this to our faces and Menaced men to make them fear them Is this the way to have them Convencd to make them formidable For Gods sake can you credit that honorable Assembly with making them the pretended Abettors of all your Scandalous Actions The only felicity we have in such a Senate's sitting is That the King must summon them to sit they are Rebels by a Law if they convene without they must meet and Associate and the Kings happiness consists in his being able to Dissolve and Discontinue And this furious and indefatigable Scribler might have omitted the mentioning of those Statutes they have beaten so bare been baffled in so much and may now blush to bring upon the Stage but he shall have his answer here to this too That nothing of Mr. Hunt's like his managed Mungrel Julian may be call'd Vnanswerable For the First it is the 4th of this Edward And I confess in as few words That a Parliament be holden once every year and more often if NEED BE. It is all the Letter of the Law and every Line of it But they might as well tell us
too that before the Conquest and for some time after Parliaments were held three times in one year They had then their Easter Parliaments their Whitsunday Parliaments their Christmas Parliaments but they know then that they were but so many Conventions of that Nobility and Clergy their King should please to call And which they did Arbitrary at their Will more frequently or less as they thought convenient and the Books tell us they many times were held but twice a year now if these Gentlemen will tell us so much of old Statute Laws why should not Custom which is Resolved by the very Books to be the Common decide the case too for the King as well as the other which is their own must for the People and then we find Our Kings had the sole power of Convening Parliaments by a long prescription of whom where and as often as they pleased Are not all our Judicial Records Acts of Parliament Resolved to be but so many Declarations of the Common Law and that by all our Lawyers even concerning the Royal Government which they make the very Fundamental Law of the Land and tell us That by Common Law is understood such things as were Law before any Statute by general and particular Customs and Maxims of the Realm Now if Statute must be but Declaratory of these Customs of the Kingdom how can it be concluded but that such Acts as directly contradict any of them must be absolutely void for by the same Reason that they can with a Be it enacted void any part of it they may the whole With the same Reason that they can invade any part of the Prerogative of their Prince which the Book tells us is the principal part of the Common Law they may abolish the whole make Killing no Murder and except Persons from the Punishment of Treason Does not this Common Law it self void any Statutes that are made against the Prerogative of their King Was it not in this very Edward the 3ds time that it was so Resolved even to the nulling three several Acts that put Pardons out of the Princes power The boldest of these Anti-monarchical Zealots cannot deny but that by the Common Customs of the Realm it always was Our Kings undoubted Prerogative to call and dissolve their Parliament when they pleased Chronicle confirms it Law Resolves it may practice for ever maintain it Now I cannot see why these Statutes that contradict the Customs of the Realm in determining their King to call Parliaments which the Common Law hath left at his Liberty should not be as much void as others that upon the like Reasons have been Resolved so And if the Common Law can avoid any particular Act of Parliament against the Prerogative of the Prince as we see it did more than one If Stanfords Authoty be Law then the Conclusion is unavoidable That for the same Reason it can any or all And in my poor apprehension that Act it self of the late Kings which reasonably repeals that of his Martyred Fathers that Act with which these reproachful fellows upbraided in their prints their deceased King is so far from countenanceing their clamorous Cause that it corroborates and confirms our own Case for it tells us the very Reason of repealing those Statutes To prevent intermission of Parliaments And what is that but what we say the Common Law would of it self void an Act as they say in derogation of his Majestys just Rights and Prerogative inherent in the Imperial Crown of this Realm for the Calling and Assembling of Parliaments Nay they tell us besides of Mischiefs and Inconveniences the two main matters the Law labours to avoid might be the Result of such an Act and endanger the safety even of King and Subject And what pray now was this Statute of Charles the First but what some even of these Factious Fellows themselves confess only a Reinforcement of the two Edwards If it were no more by the same Reason they are gone too as being against the King's Prerogative and in Derogation of his Right But Factious Fools that baffle themselves before they can be confuted by others the Statute they repealed did reinforce indeed those of Edward but it was with a Witness even as they resolved it with an invading the Rights of the King and endangering the Ruin of the People but still 't is true in that latter clause of their repealing Act they prevail upon their King to grant them a Triennial one how far obliging I leave their Oracles of the Law to Judge For if our Kings have had it by their prerogative indefinitely to call Parliaments by Custom or Common Law 't is as much against both for him to be obliged to convene them in three year as two one or without Intermission And I cannot see how the last enacting Clause is consonant to the Repealing Preamble which is so mighty for the Preservation of the Prerogative and we well know under what Circumstances of State Affairs then stood the People could not have more than so good so gracious a King was even in Policy ready to grant it was within a year or two of his being placed upon the Throne of his Father And a Turbulent Faction as furious again to pull him out A Seditious Sect had but just then alarm'd him that were setting up their Christ's Kingdom before his own was hardly settled Sots that thought their Saviour the great pattern of a Passive Obedience could be pleased with the Sacrifice of Fools and Rebels and an active Resistance unto Blood that has commanded us even to suffer unto it and even in the same Season and Session as damnable a Conspiracy detected as this Hellish one so lately discovered Arms seiz'd the Tower to be taken and an Insurrection contrived the parting at such a juncture with his Prerogative might be the product of his desire to please the People 't is too much to take the forfeiture in his own wrong when in this very particular the same Law provides so much for the Prince's Right But they 'll tell us the King by his passing such a Bill has parted with his Power and Prerogative But then do not the Laws tell us it cannot be past away Was it not resolved by all the Judges but in his Grandfathers time That himself could not grant away the Power of Dispensing with the Forfeitures upon Penal Statutes and why because annext to his Royal Person and the Right of his Soveraignty And shall it not be so much our Soveraign's Right which common Custom the Fundamental Law of all the Land has invested him with the convening of Parliaments at his pleasure But for my part for my Life I cannot apprehend did there lie such a great Obligation upon his Majesty from this his own very voidable if not void Act how 't is possible to bring him at the same time within the Letter of the Laws of
Person tho he can't from His Text. When whatever they would gather from that Apostle the Lawyers Popelings have nothing left to shew for theirs unless the very Charter and grant of their King yet tho this Doctrine be as far from Rome as they think the Romanist from Heaven tho their Writers with Hunts own Brutish Rage have run it down tho it be so directly destructive of the Papal power still has this preposterous piece of paradox made it Popish and treated it almost in the same Language the Piousprelate did their Idol Church and all the dangerous Dissenters do our own Wolves Thieves Enemies of Christ Brood of Antichrist Babylonish Beast Devilish Drab sink of Sodom Seat of Satan It is a pretty way of Confutation indeed in the very beginning of an Argument to beg the Question He takes it for granted from the Text of Saint Peter that Kings are but an Ordinance of man and then stoutly concludes that it is impossible that any that is of Man's appointment can ever be of God's Ordination to be presumptively bassled recommand me to such a disputant And with that supposititious Triumph does as some think a Jesuit's Book de Jure Magistratuum enter the List full of Victory even before the Battle and this perverted Text in one of his Editions is turned into the Laurel and Lemma to Crown the Forehead of that Impudent piece This is made the Goliah of those Philistines who not with their bulk alone but with the very Letter of the Bible and the Book of Life can defie the Living God for such a Construction upon Saint Peter by common sense can never be put for place this power of Ordaining Kings once in the Power of SVBJECTS and all the World can never hinder them from being too the SVPREAM ãâã Was not this very Text actually turn'd up for the Supream Authority of the Parliament of England And was that too meant by St. Peter when in the very next Line he calls the King Supream Seditious Dolts do not make the Bible contradict it self tho your Books do does not this very Text take almost an expressive care to prevent even with providence such a silly construction and give a Signal Signification where this Supremacy resides viz. in the King But to give these well read Rebels rope enough and let them stretch their Treasonable Positions as they ought their Necks I 'll plead for them and in that which can be their only Reply viz. That this Supremacy must be understood only to be in these Kings after they are so chosen by the People But no their own Text won't allow that neither for in the very next Verse it tells us also of such persons as are Commission'd sent under him as ours has it Governors and some other Versions Captains Judges and sure had theirs been the Apostles sense too He would have more expresly let us known That Kings were first Commissionated and sent by the People before that they could send out the Peoples Governors and if we can Credit some of these Gentlemens own Writings Their KINGS and this Apostles are not all of a piece and so their Principles and the Text wont hang well together for their Kings which they 'll have to be of Man's Ordination cannot send Governors under them but as * Pryn positively tells us that People that Elect their King must chuse also the Judges and Officers if the Kings have had such a choice 't is but by the Peoples permission that such Officers are the Peoples And that his Brother Bodin you must know a great politician says That the sending them is not the Right of the Sovereign but in the Subject So that those Kings whose Divine Right they deny must needs be of another kind than those mentioned in Saint Peter for he makes his Kings so Supream that they send Governors themselves and that for the punishment of such Evil doers But to come homer to Mr. Hunt that I know values himself upon his much Law and his mighty Learning his Remarks upon his ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã will tell us he understood as much Greek as that came to when he was at School Yet betrays his little understanding of the Greek Fathers his very Schrevelius would have shown that ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã might be taken for Creature as well as Creation but his Scapula that more especially it is to be taken so in the Epistles And this has been the Resolution of one of the first Reformers of our Religion And I hope sure they 'll favour him That the general signification of this word in Scriptural Expression is taken for all Mankind and I have another the principal Reformer by me the Bible in Columns with one Greek two Latin Versions and one Dutch which I take to be the Labours of the Learned Luther where one of the Latin Translations of this very Text of Peter is expresly Omni Creaturae And that other Humanae Ordinationi is mark't with a reference to the Marginal Annotation which is Omnibus filiis Hominis And yet all this while we shan't make Nonsense of the Text as well as they put upon it contradiction and the greater absurdity for such Scriptural Figuratives are frequent where Vniversal expressions are only applicable to some particular things they would express so that when he tells us Be Subject to all mankind or to all the Sons of Men is easily understood all those of them to whom we owe Subjection and as if the good Apostle whom these miscreants would so much abuse did design to prevent such an imputation and even dissipate the Difficulty and doubt together even he explicates that General Expression of that one Text by telling us particularly to whom our Submission is to be paid both in that and the other viz. Kings as Supream and their Governors as sent And Lastly can any Soul that has but Common Sense fancy from the complicated consideration of that part of the Apostle's that thus pressingly inculcates Obedience to Governors that it did design the least room for such a Latitude that not only would leave them Indifferent to obey but such an one as they have made of it since even an encouragement to Rebel sure that submissive Preacher of the Cross so much his Saviours Disciple that he suffer'd on one too and that without resistance to a persecuting power that great Assertor of his Soveraign's Supremacy that in the very next Lines next to fearing his God commands Honoring his King as if he would express somewhat of that Divinity they deny with the closeness of the Connexion sure that most Primitive Pattern of Obedience did not pen his Epistles to teach a Julian the Doctrine of Resistance or an Hunt his Associate to debase the Divine Right the Throne of his King to the very dunghill of the People And were this Doctrine not to be countenanced by the Word of GOD we have only Mr. Hunt's Word
Paradox of the Peoples right of being their own Judges and deciding the Controversie between themselves and their King but tho they are told ten thousand times that this would make the very party to be the Judge and produce the most preposterous and unequitable destribution of Justice such as a Barbarous Nation would blush at tho both our Common Law and Common Equity tho both the Canon and Civil provide even against all Prejudic'd Evidence and must then a Fortiori against a Judge that is so and tho this Equitable process is provided even in Favour of this People yet cannot these perverse implacable Republicans think the same Common Justice necessary in the Case of their very King And then I hope they will allow ãâã Soveraigns Cause to be ãâã by Witnesses as well as their own and then who shall give in Evidence the matter of Fact in which he has ãâã his trust why they must tell us again the People so that the People ãâã is Party Judge Evidence and all and no wonder then if among the People too we find a pack of Perjur'd Oates's that can impeach their Prince But it is not really the Reason of the thing they so much rely on for that I shall refute anon beyond Answer and Reply unless it be from such as are resolv'd to Rebel against Sense as well as their Soveraign but that which truly determines these dangerous Democraticks is the tradition of their positions which as I observ'd are deliver'd down to their posterity and rever'd for Revelation The Principles of a Republick like the root of Rebellion it self run in a Blood or are receiv'd like the Plague from the Company they keep by way of Contagion They are loth to dissent from their Friends and Relations or Condemn the resolution of their pious Predecessors But sometimes the Seditious Souls are Seduc'd and Prejudic'd with the Approbation of an Author whom they shall as much perhaps pervert as they little Comprehend sometimes impos'd upon with a pretended Antiquity of their opinion and policy with which too they would delude others so for the first we saw not long since a Plato Redivivus dealt with the Devil he would have raised in the Ghost of his Philosopher and endeavored to obtrude upon the World the lewdest Sedition for the Dogma Platonis so did also the Leviathan of the Usurper that took his pastime in his unfathomable Oceana i. e. a political piece of Paradox deep and un-intelligible besides the quaintness of its pretty Style that renders it a Composition of Pedantry and Romance That Illuminato was perswaded among the wonders in his deep that he had discovered what had been so long buryed in the Floods the old Model of the very Primitive Common-wealth as if his Idaea of Government had determin'd the Deity or at least had been concurrent with the Design of the Creator when he fram'd a World to be govern'd for the bold Gentlemen being very Opiniative and I think one might say a little impious too Appeals to God whither the Sentiments of this Oliver's Architeck do not suit exactly with the very Protoplasts the Almighty's Mind and whither his Model which all must acknowledge the result of a most unnatural Rebellion was uot the very Common-wealth of Nature And this his Prototype of the Primitive Republick the Pragmatical Dogmatist is pleas'd to call the Doctrine of the Antients or Antient Prudence but if such as he says were the Government before the Flood I shall only conclude it so because its Lewdness and Sedition might occasion the deluge and might have been preserv'd for them in the Ark too since there was Beast in it of every kind and their admir'd Aristotle will allow his ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã to be Communicable to an Ant an Ape or an Ass as well as a Man This opinion of the Peoples deciding between themselves and their King you shall see is not only Mr. Sidney's but the Doctrine of all the Democraticks all the rank Republicans that ever writ Brutus in his Vindiciae makes the Magistrates whom the People shall Authorize by whom he understands their Representatives their Dyets or Parliament or else such as was the Ephori of the Lacedaemonians the Seventy Elders among the Israelites the Praefecti with the Centurians among the Romans these makes not onlythe Judges but the Avengers of the Perfidiousness as they call it of their Princes upon their presumption that they have Violated the Laws About a year before the Publishing of that Pernicious piece some say a Romish Priest a Catholick others a Reform'd one A Calvinist maintain'd the same Doctrine in a Treatise concerning the Soveraigns right over the Subject and the Subjects Duty towards his Soveraign for there he tells us tho it be a Common Objection that the King has no other Judge but God himself and the Example of David as commonly objected whose Murder and Adultery no less Laws could punish than the Almighty's he Answers to it very positively that the States of the Kingdom always retain'd a power of Judging and Bridling their King which if they do not do they are Traytors to God and their Country he would resolve the Case of King David whom the People could not Judge for his more than Ordinary Crimes to result from his sins and offences but being Personal ones and as he must mean I suppose not perpetrated against the Welfare of the Common-wealth it self tho I cannot see why the breach of any Law establisht in a Community may not be Constru'd to be a Transgression also against the Publick tho the Injury sustein'd more immediately relates to some private Person 'T is for that Reason all our Indictments run in the Kings Name and the Criminal Process in all other Nations at the suit of the Power that is Supream so that properly there is no Personal Crimes especially of this Nature but what can be consider'd too as they Commonly are against the National Interest and the very well being of the Civil Society So that if they 'l Punish or sit as Judges upon the Soveraign for designs against the Publick State it self they can as soon for any injury done to an private Member of the same But that we see the Israelites didnot pretend to do even in their David's Case and so his solution of the Nature of the Crime signify's just nothing Mr. Harrington whom his advocate and his Plagiary too in his Plato Redivivus is pleas'd to recommend for his Learning least the Notion of the Balance that he borrow'd from him should be taken for a Fool 's as well himself ãâã for it there and play'd the Knave why truly that Learned Gentleman Chimeson in the same Din of the Peoples Judicial power and these drudges of Sedition like the Common Pack-horses pursue all the same Track and the leading Bell for he tells us too the People or Praerogative all one with them are also the Supream
Youths only for the thought of restoring that much better piece of Polity the Monarchy they had help'd but so lately to subvert that without the least Consideration of their past Services they soon sentenc'd them to suffer But were it granted them That in some places the Parties are permitted to be the Judges Does that argue for the Reason and the equity of the thing that they must be so in all others 't is sure a very sorry sort of an Argument that will conclude from a particular wrong to an universal Right 'T is such an one as themselves would not allow of in the like Case when it makes for the Monarchy For when 't is objected to them that God in the Sin of his Servant David did somewhat signifie he reserv'd the judging of KINGS to himself the King of Kings and Judge of all the Earth and that therefore the Elders of the Israelites or their Seventy which Brutus says were then to constitute their supream judicatory we see did not or could not call him to Account why truly to this it is answered by his Predecessor in his Principles that Plato to this Aristotle That Author de jure Magistratuum That it is a false Conclusion to say Kings ought not to be punished by the People because David or any particular King was not I shall grant this renown'd Republican more than he 'll be willing to accept of especially in one of his Instances of the Father tho party to have heretofore been judge even in Capital of his Sons Offence tho against himself but that was when the Government of almost all the World was purely Patriarchal and then he had the same Despotical power over his Wife and Servant his whole Tribe and Family and even as their Aristotle a Common-wealth man insinuates to us in his Politicks those ruling Fathers afford us the Foundation for all Monarchy but says Sidney There being no mean Judg between King and People therefore they are his Judges and their own and why may it not be as well said therefore he is both his own Judge and theirs there is no one to mediate even in his own Instances between the Father and Son Husband and Wife Master and Servant and does therefore the Son Judge the Father the Wife the Husband and the Servant the Master or are either of them therefore the Judges in their own Case Certainly with Men of Common Sense the Supream power must conclude the Judicial too and that even themselves seem to suggest tho it be bottom'd upon a false Principle when they place it in the People For they tell us themselves in their old Antiquated Aphorism when they consider them Collectively they are satisfied they have the supremacy and then they would be not only Judges in their own Case but would for ever Exclude their King from being Judge but the very Foundation of this piece of folly under any Monarchy must needs be false and so the very Babel they would build upon it must needs fall into Confusion But to give a farther Confutation to this first Maxim of this Antimonarchist tho it be really no more than what was Printed in the Rebellion in another pernicious piece besides what we have mention'd above It went under the Name of a Treatise of Monarchy and its Author Anonymous who very fairly puts it in the very power of every Man to Judge the Illegal Acts of his Monarch But yet will not admit it to argue a superiority of the Persons Judging over him that is Judged and indeed 't is such an Inference as seems to be just as full of Folly as Faction only they that would make the People supream for it are the more lying Knaves and this that would make them decide the matter without the more Factious Fool for when you ask these Sophisters in policy if a Soveraign transcends his Bounds who shall be Judge of that excess of Soveraignty why themselves tell us there is no Judge and yet will have the People and the Party to be so but what if I should for once force them upon some shadow of Argument and tell them the Fundamental Laws of the Land to be the best Judge Yet still they be at a loss for this THEIR Judicatory for the King who is the Fountain of all the Laws is the best Judge too of their being violated But besides the very Supposition of such a Violation of the Laws by our own ãâã is as false in Fact as 't is expresly against those very Laws to suppose it for by those he is declar'd to be never able to do any wrong and so his Subjects cannot be injur'd by him or the Statutes violated when by those very municipal Sanctions he is still presumed to do right but besides Regal Authority cannot in Reason be subject to the Penalty of any positive Laws tho it may perhaps be oblig'd to the Observances And this made as Learn'd a Person as any our Land bred to distinguish this Royal Obligation into the directive and coercive part to the first he thinks them somewhat subject tho never to be compell'd with the latter Consult but your Bibles and the most curious of our Common-wealth's-Men will hardly discover what these illuminated Virtuoso's of the State have of late brought to light that any of the Kings among the Israelites or the Men of Judah were tied to the Laws of their Land That very Description that Samuel gives them of their Soveraign Saul which our Democraticks delight to represent so very grievous and intolerable and which the late Mercury-maker calls the giving them a King in his Wrath yet that serves sufficiently to satisfie these mighty Murmerers that the Nature the Constitution of Monarchy was look'd upon then to be much more Arbitrary than themselves the most Seditious Subjects would well allow or our present Soveraign aim at or offer For he tells them The manner of a King must be to take their Sons for his Service set his Souldiers to devour the product of their Ground seize their Daughters for Cooks and Confectioners their Vineyards and their Seeds their Cattle and their Servants all must be his such an absoluteness and even an Opprestion that they shall as Samuel says cry out because of their King yet even this after he was by the same Prophet anointed and endowed with all that formidable Power he so fearfully represented we don't find even him reproach'd for a Tyrant or upbraided for violating the Laws or any breach of Trust whereas their Brutus in his Description of a Tyrant calls it Tyranny only for a Prince to bring in Foreigners for his Gaurd and then our Haringtons Hunts Nevels and Needhams might have made it Treason too against the Majesty of the People for our Kings that have suffered several French Souldiers in their Troops I say seriously they might have made use of such a Ridiculous Argument of this Authors for accusing
our Princes of their Arbitrary Power as well as they have borrowed from the same Senseless Soul as silly and Seditious stuff But least our Republicans as they really do should rely too much upon Samuel's frightful Description of an Arbitrary Prince which they now-a-days too much make the Bugbear of the People as if their Dogs can worry the best Government when drest in a Bear-Skin 't is the Sense of some Learned Men that the Prophet gave them only this draught of a Monarch to let them know the extent of his power and as Sir Walter says to teach the Subject to suffer with patience any thing from the Hands of his Soveraign and I think that unfortunate Gentleman when he Pen'd most of that Excellent piece as a Prisoner had no Reason to be suspected for a Dissembling Flatterer of Kings as Brutus representsany one that defends his Soveraign's Right for a Traytor Betrayer of the People as Hunt has it or as Needham Debauch'd with the Brutish Principles of MONARCHY but I am sure may be allowed to have had more than them all In the next place the Laws of Nature of all Nations and particularly our own all absolutely exclude the People from being Judges in the Case of their King For the first It is the most Preposterous and Unnatural Inversion in the World that inferior Subjects should be invested with such a Power as common Sense will not admit to be lodg'd tny where but in the Supream they may as well invert the common Course the constant Order of unalterable Nature it self expect the Sun and Lamp of Heaven should no longer move in an Orb so high but Stars of the meanest Magnitude set up for the sole Dispensers of the day and the simile for ought I see is not so Foreign neither for we find there is more than a mere ordinary Analogy between that Harmonious Symmetry of the World and such a System of Government as if that Eternal Protoplast had found it most agreeable for the frame of the Universe which he the very God of Unity had form'd as if the Institution of the one were nothing less Divine than the Creation of the other And for this I dare appeal even to the Almighty and that with better Authority than Mr. Harrington with his Antient Prudence The God of Heaven who by all unless they be Barbarous Heathens is allowed to be but one and he himself is pleased to call Kings his very Vice-gerents here on Earth and the very Polytheists of Old Rome that had their Gods for almost every day as numerous as they say the Modern Romanist in his Calendar of Saints yet they among the many Deities they ador'd still lodg'd the Supremacy in one and ascrib'd all the Government all the sole Supream Power to their Mighty Jove For this he framed one Sun to Rule by Day and a Moon by Night For this he Justified that paternal Right in one Man which even their Aristotle a Heathen Born bred under a Republick reckons for a sort of Monarchy But I confess such a sort of Argument can not be concluding with Men that will oppose Heaven it self and all the Harmony of its Creation rather than be convinced That their own Models end commonly in Consusion and are best represented in the Primitive Chaos For the Second Consult but the Imperial Laws and the Codes of Justinian Laws that were Collected from other Nations as well as made by their own Laws that their Solon and Lycurgus with all their Attick Legislators all the great Republicks of Greece which these Seditious Souls so much extol could never have reform'd and you 'll find what provisions those make for the Supream Magistrates being the sole Judge The resolutions of some of those Heathens of the Royal Authority their Humble Submission to the Supream Jurisdiction in all Causes and over all Persons as our Protestant Oaths have it one would think should make the boldest of our Christians blush that can run up resistance at the same time they are Sworn to submit and obey these their Laws which for their equity have obtain'd even thro the universe these tell us That the King is both the Maker and sole Interpreter of the Laws that what ever pleases the Prince has the Power and efficacy of a Law and that 't is a Crime equivalent to Sacrilege it self to resist a Proclamation or Edict of their Soveraign that he himself is bound by no Law and then I am sure can't be judg'd by any and that he is exempted from them here on Earth because Subject to none but the Judge of Heaven And for fear least Arguments drawn from the Laws of Nature and all Nations should be insufficient to convince men of such Seditious Sentiments we 'll for Confirmation of the Third Subjoin the Resolution of the very Lawyers of our Land and they tell us too what the God of Heaven and almost the Universal Concurrence of all the Nations upon Earth have agreed in before our Britton as I 've shown before has in effect with the very digest of the Imperial Law made our Statutes to consist in the Will and Pleasure of the Prince only qualifies it with this Insignificant Restriction That it must not be understood of an Absolute Will and Ungovernable but such as is guided and regulated by good advice and the Rules of Equity and Reason and if this be a Warrantable Resolution and I warrant you the rankest Republican will take his Authority to be good should it in any place favour their Anarchy then it must be unavoidably concluded that where the Law is the Princes Will none of his People neither as aggregate or Jndividuals can be Judges of its Violation neither can it according to common Sense without the greatest Solecism and Absurdity be said by him to be violated at all for where the Custom of the Kingdom as it must be in all absolute Monarchies has plac'd the sole Legislative Power in that which is Supream There the same Will or Moral Action of the Sovereign that breaks an old Edict is nothing else but an Enacting of a new and the Common Objection that our Republicans Flourish withal against this is That then Murder and Sacrilege might be the Laws of the Land because perhaps it has been heretofore the pleasure of our own Prince But as such Observations are full of Venom and Spight so they are as much impertinent and nothing to the purpose for whether our own old English Lawyers had restrain'd the meaning of the Word WILL to a WILL guided by right Reason and Judgment no Person of sober Sense but must Imagine that the very Principi placuit of the Romans was as much restrain'd to the Rules of Reason and Equity and therefore their Tiberius Caligula Nero and Domitian were as much Tyrants and by their own Authors so are term'd as if they had been bound by the
ruin of that from which they can reap somewhat of Advantage by its Preservation why then should we fancy Human beings and the best of Mankind Monarchs themselves whom th' Almighty has made Gods too to be guilty of so much Madness and Inhumanity Where do we find the worst of Fools designedly to destroy their Patrimony though many times through Ignorance they may waste them and that tho there were no Laws to terrifie them from turning Bankrupts or punishing them for Beggers when they have embezell'd their Substance Away then Malicious Miscreants with such sordid Insinuation such silly Suggestions against your own Soveraigns which your selves no more believe them likely to be guilty of than that they would set Fire to all their Palaces and Sacrifice themselves and Successors in the Flames But to Return to our Argument they 'll tell us perhaps What signify the Sanctions of the Imperial Laws and the Constitutions of an Absolute Empire to a Common-wealth or a Council of three States that are Co-ordinate or at most but a Monarchy Limded and mixt and where whatever power the Supream Magistrate has must have been first Confer'd upon him by the People where the Parliaments have a great part of the Legislative and their Soveraign in some sense but a Precarious Prerogative what signifies the Authority of a Britton or a Bracton whose very works by this time are superannuated who wrote perhaps when we had no Parliaments at all at least none such as now Constituted I won't insist upon in answer to all this to show the Excellency of the Civil Institutions that obtain o're all Nations that are but Civiliz'd I wont prove to them because already done That we don't Consist of three States Co-ordinate in the Legislative or that our Monarchy is Absolute and not mixt as I shortly may But yet I 'll observe to them here That the Romans themselves tho by what they call'd their Royal Law they look't upon the power of the Prince to be conferr'd upon them by the people yet after it was once so transferr'd they apprehended all their right of Judging and Punishing was past too And for their vilifying these Antient Authors and Sages of Law who did they Favour these Demagoges would be with them of great Authority and as mightyly searcht into and sifted Should I grant them they were utterly obsolete and fit only for Hat-cases and Close-stools that they both writ before the Commons came in play for their further satisfaction I 'll cite the same from latter Laws not two hundred years old and that our selves will say was since their Burgesses began And therefore to please if possible these Implacable Republicans I 'll demonstrate what I 've undertaken to defend from the several Modern Declarations of our Law For in Edward the Third's it was resolv'd that the King could not be Judged And why because he has no Peer in his Land and 't is provided by the very first Sanctions of our Establisht Laws by the great Charter it self their Act of Liberty they so much Labour in that not the meanest Subject can be Try'd or Judg'd unless it be by his Peers Equals much less so mighty a ãâã that has none and a Fortiori then with lesser Reason by those that are his own Subjects so far from being his Peers or Equals that they are together his Inferiors which has made me think many times these preposterous Asserters of so much Nonsense these Seditious Defenders of those Liberties they never understood did apprehend by the word Pares in the Law not the common Acceptation of it in the Latin but only the abused Application of it of our own English only to our House of Lords And conclude the King might be Judg'd by those we commonly call PEERS because they sit in that Honorable House and at the same to be Judg'd according to Magna Charta that all Judgements be per pares But does not each Dunce and every Dolt understand that the very Letter of the Law looks after this only that every Person be tryed at the least by those that are of his own Condition and that in the Legal Acceptation of the Word every Commoner of the Lower House nay every one of their Electors is as much a Peer as the greatest Person of the House of Lords In short they must put some such silly Seditious Exposition upon the plainest Letter when they pretend to Judge their King or else from the very Law of their own Liberty they labor in allow that their King has no Judges In that Act against Appeals that was enacted in the time of Henry the 8th the very Parliament upon whom the People and even these Republicans so much depend tells us even in the very Letter of that Law That it is Manifest from Authentick History and Chronicle That the Realm of England is an Empire That its Crown is an Imperial one That therefore their King is furnish'd by the goodness of Almighty God with an intire Power and Prerogative to render and yield Justice to all manner of Folk in all Causes and Contentions This by solemn Act is declared of their King this Excludes the People from Judging of themselves much more their Soveraigns This the Resolution of a popular Parliament they would make even the Supream and this by them resolved even in Opposition to that Popery these Panick Fools so much and so vainly fear Do not the Books the best Declarations of the Law let us understand that which they against the Resolutions of all the Law it self would so foolishly maintain that it was resolved in Edward the 4th's time That the King cannot be said to do any wrong and then surely can't be Judg'd by his very People for doing it when impossible to be done and was not this the Sense of all the Judges and Serjeants of the time to whose Opinion it was submitted was it not upon the same Reason a Resolution of the Law in Edward the 4th's time that because the Soveraign could not be said to injure any Subject therefore the Law never looks upon him as a disseisor a disposesser of any Man 's Right and all the remedy it will allow you is only Plaint and Petition Does not my Lord Coke himself that in several places is none of the greatest Assertor of the Right of the Soveraign fairly tell us least it should be vainly fear'd they should reflect upon the King 's own Misgovernment all the fault should rest upon the Officers and Ministers of his Justice Does it not appear from the Statutes of Edward the third that notwithstanding the strict Provision of the Charter for the Tryal by Peers that the King was still look'd upon as a Judge with his Council and Officers to receive Plaints and decide Suggestions and tho that and the subsequent of the next year provide against false ones yet it confirms still the power of the King to hear and determine
them whether false or true Have they not heretofore answered touching Freehold even before their King and Council and a Parliament only Petition'd their Soveraign with all Submission that the Subject might not be summon'd for the future by a Chancery Writ or Privy Seal to such an Appearance but this they 'll say was the result of the Soveraigns Usurpations upon the Laws of the Land of a King Richard the 2d That did deserve to be deposed as well as the Articles of his Depositions to be read a King that forfeited the executive Power of his Militia for prefering worthless People and was himself of little worth or as the most Licentious and Lewdest Libel of a longer date has it a King that found Fuel for his Lust in all Lewd and uncivil Courses Now tho we have the Authority of the best of our Historians for the good Qualities of this Excellent tho but an unhappy Prince and who could never have fell so unfortunately had his Subjects served him more faithfully tho Mr. Hollinshed tells us never any Prince was more unthankfully used never Commons in greater wealth never Nobles more cherish'd or the Church less wrong'd and as Mr. How has it in Beauty Bounty and Liberality he surpassed all his Predecessors and Baker the best among our Moderns says there were aparent in him a great many good Inclinations that he was only abused in his Youth but if he had been Guilty afterward in his riper Age of some proceedings these Republicans had reason to reproach I am sure he was Innocent of those foolish Innuendo's those false and frivolous Accusations for which they rejected him viz. for unworthiness and insufficiency when he never appear'd in all his Reign more worthy of the Government than at the very time they deposed him for being unworthy to Govern But whatever were the vices of that Prince with which our virulent Antimonarchists would blast and blemish his Memory yet we see from the President that is cited the Sense of his Subjects did not then savor so much of Sedition as insolently to demand it for their Privilege and Birth-right which without doubt they might have pretended to call so as much as any of those the Commons have since several times so clamored for with Tumult and Insurrection and was indeed more to be condemn'd than any of those Miscarriages the Seditious and Trayterous Assembly that deposed the same Prince did ever Object for if their Free-hold can't be call'd their Birth-Right then there 's hardly any thing of Right to which they can be born And yet we see that the King and his Council had heretofore Cognizance even of that as it appears from the Commons Petitioning him against it and his Answer which was That tho he would remand them to the Tryal of their Right by the Law and not require them there to answer peremptorily yet he did reserve the power at the suit of the Party to Judge it where by Reason of Maintenance or the like the Common Law could not have its Course then we may conclude that the judicial power was absolutely in the King and this was also at a time when this Richard the 2d was but a Minor no more than thirteen years old and so this his Answer without doubt by the Advice of the wisest of his Council and the most learned of the Land And for this reason notwithstanding it is provided by that Chapter of the Great Charter none shall be Diseised of his Fre hold but by Lawful Judgment of his Peers tho the Right was tryed before that sort of Statute by common Law as my Lord Coke observ's upon it by the verdict of 12 Peers or equal men yet still I look upon the King to remain sole Judge in every Case whether Civil or Criminal for these Peers are never allow'd to try any more than bare matter of Fact and the Soveraign always presides in his Justices to decide matter of Equity and Law And those very Laws to which he gives Life too and whose Ambiguities he resolves themselves also sufficiently terrifie the Jurors from pretending to give their own Resolutions by making them liable to the severe Judgment of an Attaint if their Verdict be found false i.e. to have their Goods Chattels Lands and Tenements forfeited their Wives and Children turn'd from their home and their Houses Levell'd and their Trees pluckt up by the Roots and their Pastures turn'd up with the Plough and their Bodies Imprison'd A sort of severity sufficient one would think to frighten the Subject from assuming to himself to decide the judicial part of the Laws and for this Reason in all dubious Cases for fear of their bringing in a verdict False they only find the Fact specially and leave the determination of it to the King in the Judges that represent him And as this was resolved for Legal even from the Common Usage and Custom of the Land confirm'd as you see by several Acts of Parliament so was it maintain'd also by those very Villains that had subverted the Government it self and violated all the Fundamental Laws of all the Land for when Lilburn a Levelling and discontented Officer a Lieutenant of Oliver's Army was put upon his Tryal for Treason only for Scribling against the Usurpation for which he had fought and as he boasted to the Bench to the very butt end of his Musket against his Majesty at the Battel of Brainford and the mutinous wretch only Troubled and Disgusted because he had not a greater share in that Usurp'd Power for which he had hazarded his Life and Fortune when he came to be pinch'd too with that Commission of High Court of Justice himself had help'd up for the Murdering of his Soveraign and his best of Subjects no Plea would serve him but this popular one which the Lieutenant laboured in most mightily that his Jury were by the Law the Judges of that Law as well as Fact and those that sate on the Bench only Pronouncers of the Sentence and truly considering they were as much Traytors by Law as the Prisoner at the Bar he was so far in the Right that his Jury were as much Judges as those Commissioners that sate at the Bench yet even that Court only of Commission'd Traytors and Authoriz'd Rebels thought good to over-rule him in that point and Iermin one of the Justices just as Senseless in his Expression of it as Unjust and Seditious in the Usurpation of such a Seat in Judicature when no King to Commission him In an uncouth and clumsie Phrase calls his Opinion of the Juries being Judges of Law A Damnable Blasphemous Heresie never heard in the Nation before and says 'T is enough to destroy all the Law of the Land and that the Judges have interpreted it ever since there was Laws in England and Keeble another of the Common-wealth-Commissioners told him 'T was as gross an error
as possible any Man could be guilty off and so all the Judges even of a power absolutely Usurp'd and wherein they profest so much the Peoples Privilege over-rul'd the Prisoner in his popular Plea 'T is true Littleton as Lilburn observ'd to them in one of his Sections says That an inquest as they may give their Verdict at large and special so if they 'll take upon them the knowledge of the Law they may also give it general But the Comment of Coke their own Oracle upon the place confirms the Suggestion I have made of Resolving it into the King's Judges For he says 't is dangerous to pretend to it because if they mistake it they run in danger of this Attaint and tho the fam'd Attorney General of those times with his little Law was so senseless as to allow it to Lilburn in the beginning of his Tryal tho at another at Reading in that time of Rebellion they made the Jury to be covered in the Court upon that account yet you see those even then the Justices of the Land tho but mere Ministers of a most unjust Usurpation would not let it pass for Law And the Refutation of this false Position is so far pertinent to our present purpose as it relates to prove the Peoples being so far from being qualified to be their Kings Judges that they can not absolutely Judge of the mere Right of a meum and tuum among themselves Several other Instances both the Books Rolls abound with that Evidence our Kings the only Judges of the Law in all Causes and over all Persons for in the 13th year of the same Richard the Second the Commons Petition'd again the King that his Council might not make any Ordinance against the Common Law and the King Graciously granted them but with a salvo to the Regalities of the Crown and the right of his Ancestors The Court of Star Chamber which the worst of times Abolish'd and my Lord Coke makes almost the best of Courts had heretofore Cognizance of property and determin'd a Controversie touching Lands contain'd in the Covenants of a Joynture as appears in the Case of the Audleys Rot. Claus. 41. Edward the 3d. There the King heard too a Cause against one Sir Hugh Hastings for with-holding part of the Living of the poor of St. Leonard in York as is Evident from the Roll. 8. Edward 4. p. 3. And tho the Proceedings of this Court were so much decryed by those that clamor'd so long for its Suppression till they left no Court of Justice in the Land unless it were that of Blood and Rebellion their High one tho the King in his giving year was so gracious that he made the very Standard and rule of his Concessions to be the very request of his People and gratified them in an Abolition of this Court establish'd by the Common-law and confirm'd afterward per Act of Parliament yet Cambden our Historian as well as our Coke our Lawyer could commend it for the most Honorable as well as the most Ancient of all our Judicatories and if they 'll have the Reason Why it treated of Matters so high as the Resolution even of Common-Law and the Statute it may be told them in the weighty Words of their own Oracle Because the King in Judgement of Law as in the rest also was always in that Court and that therefore it did not meddle with Matters of ordinary Moment least the dignity of it should be debased and made contemptible and tho by the gracious consent or rather an extorted Act of Grace the late King was forc'd to forego it yet the Proceedings of some Cases there may serve to show what a power our Kings had and ought to have in all manner of distributive Justice Several other Citations I could here set down to prove the Subjection of the very common-Common-Law to the Soveraign Power as Henry the Sixth superseding a Criminal Process and staying an Arraignment for Felony Henry the Seventh's that debar'd the Beckets by decree from pursuing their suit for Lands because the merits of the Cause had been heard by the King his Predecessor and also by himself before but these will abundantly suffice to satisfy any sober Person that does not set himself against all assertors of his Soveraigns Supremacy And then if Custom and Common Usage which Plowden in his Commentaries is pleased to call the common-Common-Law lies in many Cases Subject to the Resolution of the Supream Soveraign no doubt but the Statute the result of his own Sanction must of necessity submit and acknowledge a subjection to the same Power and that I think we have sufficiently prov'd already upon several occasions both from the Letter of the Laws themselves and our little light of Reason both from Arguments and Laws that have evidenc'd their own Resolutions to be reserv'd to the King and that we had Kings long before fore the Commons Commenc'd Conven'd ' or Concur'd in their assent to such Laws 'T is prodigiously strange to me that these mighty Maintainers of the Peoples Legislative and their Judicial Power eeven over their own Soveraigns cannot be guided by those very Laws they would have to govern their Kings thus you shall see a Needham a Nevil or a Sidney amongst our selves in all their Laborious Libels that the drudges of Sedition who seem to verify the Sacred Text in drawing Sin it self with a Cart-Rope in all that they tugg toil and labour in you ãâã see that they cite you so much as a single Statute on their side or if they do only such an one as is either Impertinently apply'd or as Industriously perverted And in the same sort does the Seditious Scot Buchanan and the rest of the Books of their discontented Demagogues that Northern Mischief that threaten'd us always with a Proverbial Omen till averted of late by the Loyalty of their latter Parliaments that have aton'd even for the last age and the persidiousness and Faction of the former those all in their Libels hardly Name you so much as one single Law of their Nation to countenance the Popular Paradox the pleasing Principle of the Peoples Supremacy which the poor Souls when prescrib'd by those Mountebanks of the State must take too like a Common Pill only because 't is gilded with the pleasant Insinuations of Natural Freedom Free-State Subjection of the Soveraign Power of the People and all the dangerous Delusions that lead them directly to the designs of these devilish Republicans i.e. a damnable Rebelion whereas would they but submit their Senses to the Sanctions of the Laws of their several Lands their Libels they would find to be best baffl'd by the Statute Books as well as their Authors to be punisht by them for their Publication 'T is strange that should not obtain in this Controversy which prevails in all polemical disputes that is some certain Maxims and Aphorisms Postulates and
Theorems not to be disputed these determin our Reason even in Philosophy and the Mathematicks and why should not the Laws then in Politicks too and where they are positive sure 't is Impudence as well as Capital perhaps to oppose And yet we see these Gentlemen of so little Law to Labour so much in a dispute that is only to be decided by it what Authority is the singular assertion of a Republican or a Plato Redivivus that the House of Commons is the only part of the old Constitution of Parliament that is left us or the single sense of Mr. Sidney that the Senate of England is above its Soveraign against the form of the very first Act of State that remains upon Record the very Charter these Democraticks adore against the form of the following one of the Forest and Consult but the Style of the Statute Book and all the Antient Acts down to Richard the Second and you 'll find not so much as one but what expressly points out in its Enacting part the sole power of the Soveraign by which it was Enacted all in these repeated Expressions of Absolute Majesty We the Kings of England of our free will have given and granted it is our Royal Will and Pleasure the King Commands the Kings Wills our Lord the King has establisht the Lord the King hath ordain'd And most of them made in the manner of Edicts or Proclamations as in the Margin will appear and tho 't is thought now such a piece of Illegality to be concluded by an Order of Council and even his Majesties late command for the Continuance of the Tunnage and the Resolution of the Judges about that part of the Excise which expir'd has by some of our murmurers been repin'd at tho by all Loyal ones it was as chearfully assented to and as punctually paid yet they shall see that the People heretofore paid such a deference even to an Edict of the Prince that they nearly rely'd as much upon it as the Romans did upon their Imperial Institutions who as I before shew'd lookt upon it as a crime like to Sacrilege but to disobey And this will appear from an Act of Parliament in Henry the Eighth's time which provided that the Princes Proclamations should not be contemned by such obstinate Persons and oppos'd by the willfullness of froward Subjects that don't consider what a King by his Royal Power may do and all that disobey'd were to be punisht according to the Penalty exprest in the Proclamation and if any should depart the Realm to decline answering for his Contumacy and Contempt he was to be adjudg'd a Traytor and tho the Statute limited it to such as did not extend to the Prejudice of Inheritance Liberties or Life yet the King was left the Judge Whether they were Prejudicial or not and these Kings Edicts by this very Act were by particular Clause made as binding as if they had been all Acts of Parliaments and that it may not be said to be an Inconsiderate and Vnadvised deed of the Parliament to give the King such a Power tho 't is hard to say so of a Senate whom the writ that convokes them says they are call'd to deliberate To avoid that imputation I must tell them it was very Solemnly a Second time Confirm'd again within three years after and by that Power given to nine of the Kings Council to give Judgment against ãâã Offenders of the former and ãâã this was repeal'd in the following ãâã of King Edward a Minor and almost a Child A time wherein not withstanding there is such a woe denounc'd against a People that have such a King the Subjects seldom fail of Invading something of the Prerogative yet still we see tho the Law be not now in ãâã plain matter of Fact that there was ãâã such a Law that our Kings ãâã were once by express words of the Statute made as valid as the very Act of State it self that made them so that the Judicial Power of the Prince was ãâã less limited and that ãâã Libels lye as well as their ãâã Tongues when they tell us and would have us believe That ãâã but our late King as well as the present ãâã pretended to so much of Prerogative or had more allow'd them by the Laws And let any one but leisurably examine as I have particularly the several Acts of each King's Reign and he 'll find that from this Richard the Second to whose time the Stile of the Statutes as you see was in a manner absolutely Majestick down to King Charles the Martyr even all those are ãâã in such Words as will ãâã the Commons ãâã being ãâã and so much concerned in the Legislative as these popular ãâã have ãâã to persuade us their People are for even they all run either in ãâã ãâã The * King with the ãâã ãâã ãâã of his Lords Spiritual and ãâã at the special Instance and ãâã of the Commons or The ãâã by and with the Assent of his Lords Spiritual ãâã and Commons and as if the past Parliaments ãâã would have provided against the ãâã ãâã of a ãâã Age which they could hardly be thought to ãâã since it savors so much of almost ãâã ãâã and Sedition as if ãâã Anoestors had feared least some of their prostigate posterity seduced with the Corruptions of a Rebellious Age should impose upon the Prerogative of the Crown with any such Subtil ãâã of their King 's making but one of the three States and by Consequence conclude as they actually did that the two being greater than him ãâã could be his Judges and their own Soveraign's Superiors why to prevent these very Rebels and Republicans in such Factious Inferences did they for two hundred years agon in the first of Richard the Third Resolve what was signified by the three Estates of the Realm For say they That is to say the Lords Spiritual Temporal and Commons and even long fince that much more lately but in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth in that Act of Recognition of her Right where they endeavor to advance her Royalty as much as possible they can and to make the Crown of this Realm as much Imperial there they tell her 'T is WEE your Majesties most faithful and Obedient Subjects that represent the THREE ESTATES of your Realm of England and therefore in King James and Charles the First 's time when the Commons began to be mutinous and encroach upon the Crown then they having with the help of their numerous Lawyers which were once by particular Act excluded the House and if less had Sate in it perhaps it might have been once less Rebellious too those Gentlemen knowing too well the weight of Words and what Construction and Sense Sedition and Sophistry can deduct from a single Syllable I am confident it was they contriv'd the Matter and Mcthod so as to foist in the Factious form of
this Be it enacted by the King Lords and Commons for that is the General Stile of the Enactive part of most of the Statutes of those Times and this was most agreeable with their mighty Notion of his Majesties making but up one of the THREE that so they might the better conclude from the very Letter of their own Laws That the TWO States which the Law it self implyed now to be Co-ordinate must be mightier and have a Power over their King whom the same Laws confest to be but ONE and the Reason why the forms of their Bill and the draught of the Lawyers and the Lower-House might be past into Act without any Alteration or Amendments of this Clause was I believe from a want of Apprehension that there ever could be such designing Knaves as to put it in to that Intention or such Factious Fools as to have inferred from it the Commons Co-ordinacy For the Nobility and Loyal Gentry that ãâã commonly the more Honesty for having the less Law cannot be presumed so soon to comprehend what Construction can be drawn from the Letter of it by the laborious cavil of a Litigious Lawyer or a cunning Knave and therefore we find that those Acts are the least controverted that have the fewest Words and that among all the multiplicity of Expressions that at present is provided by themselves that have commonly the drawing of our Statutes themselves also still discover as many Objections against it to furnish them with an Argument for the Merits of any Cause and the Defence of the Right of their Clyent at the same time they are satisfied he is in the wrong And for those Enacting forms of our Statutes whatsoever Sense some may think these Suggestions of mine may want That some Seditious Persons got most of them to run in so low so popular a Stile in the latter end of King James and Charles the first 's time such as Enacted only by the Authority of the Parliament by the Kings Majesty Lords and Commons yet upon the Restauration of Charles the Second the Words With the consent of the Lords and Commons were again reviv'd and afterward they bring it into this old agen With the Advice and Assent of Lords Spiritual Temporal and Commons according to the form of Richard the 3d. and Queen Elizabeth that resolv'd them to be the THREE STATES and this runs on through all the Acts of his Reign and even in several of them the Commons humbly beseech the King that it may be so enacted I thought it necessary to bring home to our present tho most profligate time as much Acknowledgement as possible I could of my Kings Prerogative from the Laws of our Land and the very Statutes themselves because that some great Advocates for the power of the People some times pretend to plead for them too from Acts of Parliaments tho I think in this last lewd and Libellous Contest against the Crown that lasted for about five year in that Lustrum of Treason there was but one that was so laboriously Seditious so eminently popular as to endeavour to prove the Peoples Supremacy from Rolls and Records and Acts of State and for that recommend me to the good Author of the Right of the Commons Asserted tho I should rather approve of such an undertaking when endeavored to be done from the tracing the dark and obscure tracts of Antiquity and the Authority of a Selden than the single Assertion of a Sidney and the mere Maxims of some Modern Democraticks that have no other Foundation for their Establishments than the new Notions of their Rebellious Authors and that ipse dixit of such Seditious Dogmatists But I am satisfied too that this Gentleman who has laboured so much in vindicating the Commons Antiquity and their constituting an essential part of our Saxon Parliaments did design in it much more an Opposition of our Antient Monarchy and the Prerogative of the Crown than a mere clearing the dark foot-steps of our Old Chronicle and a real defence of Matter of Fact and the Truth And this is too clearly to be prov'd from the pestilent Pen-man's P-tyts own Papers that were publish'd at such a time when there was no great need of such an Asserting the Commons Right when themselves were more likely to have Usurp'd upon the Crown and as Mr. Sidney and his Associates would have it made themselves and the People Judges of their own wrong For to see such a task undertaken at a time when we are since satisfied such dangerous designs were a-foot looks only like a particular part of that general Plot and Conspiracy that has been since discovered and that all sorts of Pens were imployed as well as all Heads Hearts and Hands at work for the carrying on Mr. Sidney's OLD CAVSE as indeed all this Gentlemans Works tended to for which the Almighty was supposed so often to have declared and signaliz'd himself and illustrates only this That there was not any Person qualified for undermining of our Monarchy either from his Wit or Parts Boldness or Courage from his Virulency in Satyr or his Knowledge in History from his skill in any Science or Profession but what some or other of the most eminent was made Serviceable to this Faction and contributed his Talent to the carrying on the Design according to the gift and graces that they had in their several Abilities to promote it neither can this Gentleman think himself libell'd in this Accusation unless he would give his own works the Lye for who but him that had such a Design for the subverting our Monarchy would at a season when the Succession of our Crown was struck at in the Commons Vote a Succession that several Laws of our Land have declared to be Hereditary even by that of God who but one so Seditious would not only have encouraged such unwarrantable Proceedings which was the late Kings own Words for 't in such an Assertion of the Commons Right but in that too brought upon the Stage several Arguments from our History several Presidents of our Soveraign's being here Elected by their Subjects when they might as well too tell us That our present Soveraign was so chosen because the Question was put to the People upon his Coronation but yet this elective Kingdom of ours did this Laborious drudg of Sedition drive at too Does he not tell us William Rufus and several others were Elected that is Henry the First King Stephen King John tho I am satisfied that consent of the Clergy and People they so much rely upon was nothing more than the Convention of those Persons that appeared upon the solemn Coronation or at least the Proclaiming of the King Themselves are satisfied all our old Statutes clearly confirm'd the sole Legislative Power of the Prince and therefore they won't when they are objected to them allow them to be Statutes at all because made I suppose only by their King but so my Lord Coke
says they said of the Statute of Edward the First which notwithstanding he calls an Act of Parliament but yet however we see that the Style of all other Acts of Parliament put all the enacting part in the power of the King so that Mr. Sidney's making his People and Parliament the Supream Judges of their Kings violating the Laws is only a Position that opposes every Act in the Statute Book from the Great CHARTER to the last grant of our late King CHARLES But our Author Triumph'd as he thought over his Adversaries in forcing back their own Argument upon his Foes for says Mr. Sidney if no man must be Judge because he is party then neither the King and then no man can be try'd for an Offence against him or the Law I confess with such a sort of disputants as are resolv'd to beg the Question and take their Premisses for principles of eternal truth you cannot avoid the Conclusion tho it be the greatest Paradox and an absolute Lye for he presumes the Parity of Reason and then concludes they are both alike Reasonable he takes it for granted the People may judge the King tho party as well as the King the People who must be suppos'd as much partial and that is truly just as if he had said when we believe as they do and what then Why then we shall be of their mind i.e. that it would follow the King or his Judges could not hang a Fellow for Fellony or this Author himself for a Traytor to the State Nay more as the Gentleman has manag'd the matter it is made an Argument à Fortiori for he supposes the Absurdity to be such that if the King in his own Case must Judge the People and not the People the King in theirs that this Contradictory Consequence would be as much conclusive That the Servant entertain'd by the Master must Judge him but the Master by no means must the Servant or in the Metaphor of his own more Blasphemous Sedition The Creature is no way bound to its Creator but the Creator it self to the thing it has Created and now all is out and all the large Volume all his mighty Treatise not to be finisht in many years is founded upon that first Principle of all Republicans The Peoples Supremacy or as Mr. Sidney says the Soveraign being but a Servant to his Subjects a Creature to these God Almightys of the People the Creators of their King truly this they are resolv'd we shall grant or as resolutely suppose we cannot Contradict and so put upon us their presumptive absurdities for our own and make them the Consequence of those Concessions that were never yeilded who taught this Gentleman who granted him that the Magistrate was the Peoples Creature but a Brutus in his Vindiciae or that as a bominable a Book De jure Magistratuum and for this must it follow that Filmer is so absurd only because he does not suppose the very pernicious principles of those very Rebels and Republicans he endeavours to refute It is an easy sort of a Conquest and you may soon prove your Foes to be Fools too if you 'll oblige them to maintain their own positions from the Contradictory Maxims of their Enemies they oppose and this Collonel that once was a Souldier and in Arms for his Common-wealth as well as a Polemical pen man against the Monarchy would soon have remain'd sole Master of the Field had the Measures of his Foe been forc't to be taken from the Rules and Maxims of the Enemy which he fought and many would think the Man a little mad that could imagine two Armies that faced in their Fronts to meet so as to stand upon the same ground It can't be well effected without a penetration of body neither can Mr. Sidney conclude us in that absurdity unless he would make us mingle Principles a thing perhaps as repugnant to our Nature as that praeternatural Coition of Matter for have we not all the Laws of our Land on our side and that besides Sense and Reason to whose determin'd sanctions even those themselves must submit for I look upon our Argumentative reasoning in such matters to be somewhat like Belief which all our Learned in the Metaphysicks will allow to determine it self upon demonstration and Commences knowledg'd and a science and so must our Positions at last in the Politicks no longer pass for indifferent Notions or disputable Opinions when they come once to be ratified by some supream Establishment or unquestionable Authority for as the result of demonstration is some Theorem or Postulate that requires our assent so are the Sanctions of the Supream power some Statutes or Laws that Command our Obedience as the one is prov'd so the other Enacted and let any one Judge from the several we have cited or any single Act themselves can cite whether all and every one do not expressly assert or absolutely imply the Soveraign so far from being the Servant of the Subject or the Peoples Creature that they many times maintain him to be under none but God and in all places acknowledge him above all the People and is not the absurdity on their side and a Contradiction even in Terms when they contend for the contrary And as that Author of the Right of the Magistrate and the like writings of the most Eminent Republicans led on and seduc'd Mr. S. in some Points so has also so his predecessor or Co-eval for I think they liv'd in an Age W. Pryn imposed upon him in others and I am sorry to see Mr. S. that valu'd himself upon his parts to rely upon that which that pest of the press plac'd so much confidence in and that are the words of Bracton where he says as Mr. S. would have it God the Law and the Parliament are the Kings three Superiors But even Pryn himself the perverter of all that was not for his purpose does not deal so disingeniously as this Gentleman in the Case for he recites it more Exactly as it is in Bracton which is the Kings Court instead of the Parliament which in the time that Antient Author writ very probably consisted only of his prelates and Lords so that if granted them Pryn's Commons and Mr. S. his People of England are not comprehended in the words of that old writer and then besides it is the opinion of some that those words the Laws and the Kings Courts were not originally in the writings of that Loyal Lawyer who in several other places of his works carries up the Divine Right of his King and that absolute Power of his Prince as high as any of the most Modern whom Mr. Hunt has represented and libell'd as first introducers of this new Notion this dangerous and damnable Doctrine for that grave Judge for above 4 or 5 hundred years agon told us our King was under none but God that he had none above him
most prodigious piece of Paradox to see some of our Seditious Republicans to rail at Ministers of State and Mr. Sidney of all Men had the least reason to have reflected for his Sufferings upon those that sate on the Bench with the rest of the Rabble of his Democraticks who of late in these tumultuous times have talkt of nothing less than the punishing of those that held the Sword of Justice threatned them with the Fates of Tresilians Fulthorps Belknaps with the Gallows Fines and Imprisonments whereas these two were only punisht in the Reign of a King wherein they actually rebell'd and deposed their Prince but were they the worst of Men that officiated in Publick Administration under their King such Republicans have the least reason to find fault when always in their Usurpations the greatest Fools aswel as Knaves have been commonly preferr'd What more Illiterate Blockheads did ever blemish a Bench than some of those that sate upon it in our Rebellion and for that consult the Tryal of Lilburn they Arraigned where you 'l find a clamorous Souldier silence and baffle them with his Books and invert the Latin Aphorism in a litteral sense by making the Gown yield to the Sword And for their Villany let Bradshaw alone And for that only be the best of Presidents The very Beggars and Bankrupts of the Times that bawl'd most for Property when they had hardly any to a penny or a pin were set up to dispose of the peoples Fortunes and Estates Princes as they are above all Men so generally make those their Ministers that excel others in Desert or Vertue because their persons are to be represented by them And they may aswel imagine a King would croud his Courts with Clowns to shew his Magnificence as fill his Judicatories with Fools or Knaves to distribute his Justice 'T is enough for an Oceana an Oliver or a Common-wealth to set up such ridiculous Officers Brutes beneath the Ass in the Apologue that will not so much as be reverenced for the Image they bear but even the best of Common Men whenthey are rais'd to some supreme Government prove like Beggars on Horse-back unable to hold the Reins or riding off their necks the wisest in their own ordinary administrations prove but foolish Phaetons when they are got into the Chariot set all in combustion and confusion The not being born to Govern or educated under the Administrations of a state makes them either meanly submissive in the midst of their Grandeur or insolently proud of their Office which renders them as ridiculously Great whereas Princes from an Hereditary VERTUE that consists alway in a MEAN or their nobler Education that instructs them in the Mode preserves them too from running into the sordid absurdities of such Extremes Many of such like preferable Conveniences might be reckoned up that make a Commonwealth less Eligible but for Confirmation of it it is better to have recourse to matter of Fact When did their Rome ever flourish more than under the Government of their Kings by that it was Founded by that it was most Victorious and with that it alway fell Romulus himself first gave them their Religion and their God as well as the Government and with the assistance of his Numa brought them to observe some Ceremonies which the Trojans had taught them under whom did their City Triumph more both in fame riches tranquility and ease than under the Empire of Augustus And one would think that when the Controversie upon his coming to the Crown was then in Debate it should have been decided by the two famous Wits of their time in their Dialogue Maecenas and Agrippa It was submitted to their determinations and we see what was the result A MONARCHY And that preferency of this most excellent Institution themselves most evidenced when upon all Exigencies and Difficulties they were forc'd to have recourse to a Dictator whom all Writers agree to have differ'd only from a King in the sound of his Name and the duration of his Office the very Definition of his Name implying that all were bound to obey his Edicts he had his Magister Equitum an Officer in effect the same with the Praefectus Vrbis which under their King was his Mayor And after that rash Rebellion of theirs against Royal Government after so many Revolutions of Tribunes Triumvirs Quaestors AEdils Praefects Praetors and Consuls were never at rest or quiet 'till they were setled again in their Caesars Themselves know best what the Sedition of Sylla and Marius cost them how many lives of Consuls and Senators besides the blood of the Commons Let them consult Plutarch and see the bloody Scene of Butchery and Murder Pray tell me mighty Murmurers in which was your Rome most bless'd or suffer'd least with the bloody War between Caesar and Pompey or the settlement of it in Julius himself Did it not bleed and languish as much with the Civil Wars of Augustus Antony and Lepidus as it flourish'd when reduc'd to the only Government of Octavius And would it not have been much better had those succeeding Emperors been all Hereditary when we find that for the most the Multitude and Soldiers were the makers and setters up of the bad and the destroyers and murderers of the best 'T is too much to tell you the story of our own Chronicles as well as their Annals how happy our Land was for a long time in a Lineal Descent of Hereditary Kings how miserably curst in the Commonwealth of England what blood it cost to establish it what Misery and Confusion it brought us when unhappily establish'd And as an Argument that the Romans flourish'd most under those Emperors see with what Veneration their Imperial Sanctions speak of their power they make it Sacriledg to disobey it they made the very memory of those that committed Treason against them to be rooted out the very Thought of it they punish'd with as much severity as the Commission all his Children Servants and whole Family were punish'd though unknowing of the Crime They punish'd those with the same severity that Conspired against any Minister of State because relating to the Imperial Body and that if they did but think of destroying them and even those that were found but the movers of Sedition were Gibbeted or Condemned to their Beasts And as those Laws made all the Sanctions of all Princes Sacred and Divine so do our own declare the King capable of all Spiritual Jurisdiction in being Anointed with Sacred Oyl by which they give him all power in Ecclesiasticals too to render his Person the more Venerable and call the Lands of the King like the Patrimony of the Church Sacred Prince and Priest were of old terms Synonimous and signified the same thing The Jews and Egyptians had no Kings but what exercised the Offices for a long time of the Priesthood too with which they then alone made the
Monarchy mixt and of this even Justin can tell us in one of his Books And for making their Monarchy more Divine did Romulus and Numa the Founder of their Religion as well as of Rome Officiate in it sometimes too So much did the Fathers of old prefer Monarchy to a Popular Government that Sir Walter Rawleigh tells us of the saying of St. Chrysostom that recommended even a Tyrant before no King at all and that is ãâã with a Sentence of Tacitus who tells us If the Prince be never so wicked yet still better than none And for that of a Commonwealth it was as bravely said by Agesilaus to a Citizen of Sparta discoursing about Government That such a one as a common Cobler would disdain in his House and Family was very unfit to Govern a Kingdom In short all the Presidents that Mr. Sidney has given us of the Romans driving out their Tarquins of the French rejecting the Race of Pharamond of the Revolt of the Low-Countries from Spain of the Scots killing James the Third and Deposing Queen Mary are all absolute Rebellions were ever Recorded so in History and will be Condemned for such by all Ages He should have mention'd for once too the murder of our Martyr'd Sovereign for to be sure he had the same sense of that upon which he was to have sate But if any thing can recommend their Commonwealth it must be only this That it cannot be so soon dispatch'd it being a Monster with many Heads to which Nero's Wish would not be so cruel That it had but one neck to be cut off at a blow The clamour this Republican made against Monarchs in general was whatever he suggests appli'd to our own in particular when he tells in the very same Page of the Power of the People of England and though he exclaims and all others do against this Arbitrary Power of Kings 't is certain themselves would make the People as Arbitrary The Question is not whether there shall be an Arbitrary Power but the Dispute is who shall have it there never was nor ever can be a People govern'd without a Power of making Laws and that Power so long as consonant to reason must be Arbitrary for to make Laws by Laws is Nonsense These Republicans by confession would fix it in many and the Multitude in Aristocracy 't is fix'd in a few and therefore in a Monarchy must be setl'd in ONE CHAP. VI. Remarks upon their Plots and Conspiracies AND now that they may not think I have foully Libell'd them in a Mis-representation of the dangerous Principles of their Republicans I 'll be so fair as to prove upon them too the natural product of their own Notions and that is the Plots of the same Villains assoon as they have been pleas'd to set up for Rebels And these will appear from Chronicle and History the Records of Time and the best Tryers of Truth these will not be falsified with Reflection but be founded upon matter of Fact And of these this will fall in our way as the first About the Year 1559 there was promoted in France a Plot and Conspiracy against their King and that founded upon the same pretext so many of ours have been of late in England that is Religion but truly fomented by what has been always the spring the very fountain of Blood and Rebellion discontent and disgust toward the Government For upon the death of Henry the Second and the Succession of Francis his eldest Son to the Throne the Princes of the House of Bourbon thinking themselves neglected and despised thrust out of Office and Employment at Court and finding the Family of the Guises still prefer'd whom they always as mortally hated resolved to revenge themselves upon the Crown that is to turn Rebels Of these Vendosme and Conde were the principal Engagers and drew in the two Castillions the Admiral and his Brother who for the removal of the Duke De Montmorency their relation from that Court to which he had prefer'd them were as full also of resentment against the Crown as those that came to engage them with an invitation to invade it and after all their several seditious Assemblies after all the many Meetings they had made after all the Treasonable Consultations they had held no design was look'd upon by them more likely to prove effectual than the making themselves Head of the Hugenots And so hot were they upon this Project the pursuit of another kind of Holy War that among our modern Crusadoes has been nothing else but a Religious Rebellion that notwithstanding the coldness of the King of Navarr they drew in most of the Protesting part of France to be truly Rebels for the sake of their Seducers while they made them believe they had only engag'd themselves to fight for the Religion of those they had so wickedly seduc'd And so conducing then were the principles of a Republick to a Rebellions Plot that one ãâã that was forc'd to turn Renegado to his Country for Misdemeanors committed in it and fled to Geneva as a Sanctuary for Sedition after he had lurk'd there like a concealed Criminal abroad upon his Return sets up for an open Rebellion at Home after he had layn so long in the lake the sink of Democracy you may be sure was well instructed how to resist a Monarch He soon blows the coals that could easily keep up the Blood of the warm Princes that was already set so well a boyling Him they pitch upon as the fittest tool to work out their design and in my conscience coming from that Common-wealth the Statsemen judged not amiss when they took him for an able Artist With his help and their own it went so far that Moneys Men and Amunition was provided and a Petition drawn for a Toleration of Religion though indeed but a Treacherous vell to cover their Intended Treason which was to seize upon the Young King upon his denyal of what they knew he would not grant surprize the Queen that still opposed them and put the Guises to the Sword whom she favoured But the Court being advised of the Conspiracy had retired to the Castle of Amboise and so far did they prosecute their Plot that their Petitioners were admitted into it though their Arm'd Accomplices that were without were compelled to fight for their Lives which Renaudie with the rest of the Ring-leaders of them lost and the Rabble to save theirs was forc'd to fly This was the praeliminary Plot and an unhappy prelude to a long and bloody Civil War fomented first by the fury of a Faction that set up for Rebels only because not favoured as they thought sufficiently by the Court and then seconded even to an Assaulting of the Crown in the Siege of Paris and almost the Subversion of the Monarchy as some Learned Historians surmise from the secret Emissaries of the Republick of Geneva I need not touch on the particulars in which the
the Army when both Impeachers and Impeach'd had forfeited their Heads to the King They had Counterplotted this with an Ordinance of the House for the Disbanding the Army but the Army found they had a more fearful Ordnance for them in the Field they had under their Command the Militia of the Camp and so resolve to command that too of the City The Contrivance for this is first Fairfax his Remonstrance to which the Commons submit but for that the Apprentices that had served them before against their King come now in as tumultuous a manner and frightn'd them into a Flight to the Army that so their City might retain its Militia The Westminster-men that stay'd plot against the Men at Windsor that were fled call in the Members that their Army had impeach'd for this the Soldiers sign an Engagement send a Remonstrance and themselves as soon conspire to follow march toward the City draw up at Hownslow-heath send their General with a Party to make a new Parliament or patch up the old To prevent the Personal Treaty with the King they drew up their Agreement of the PEOPLE resolv'd on their Votes of Non-addressing which recall'd they again re-extorted rejected the Lords for refusing to Judge their King whom having dispatcht there remain'd the Rump that is the remnant of the Commons the Creatures or rather Created Council of an Army and all the late flourishing Democracy of the long Parliament and the two Houses turn'd into a perfect Oligarchy of Officers And all what those Devils had possest themselves of by Treason before torn from their hands by a Legion of worse with as much Treachery and Plot. And one would think that all Plotting that all conspiring should have been over now but you shall see that the same principles that prevail'd upon the Rebels to ruin the Monarchy and run it into a Republick that promoted the Army to destroy the then Democracy and so set up their own Oligarchy did also incite a single Usurper among those few to set up for himself and turn it into true Tyranny Their own positions first plac'd the Supremacy in the Parliament because the two States were greater than the King that made but one The Army places the supremacy in their Sword because it was greater in the Field than the two States in the House and then comes Cromwel and setl'd the supremacy on himself because the sole Commander of all the Army his success at Dunbar and the routing of the Scot did so much his business that there could remain but little opposition of a Rump and a Man that is made by a weaker power but once a General can soon make himself by his own strength the Generalissimo he had formerly been so prevalent as to procure Petitions Addresses Remonstrances for the establishment of that patch'd piece of Parliament and all our Metaphysicks will allow that what can create can as soon annihilate he found his Omnipotency in this point he knew he had set them up against all Right and therefore had the more to run them down without Wrong and that as he did design so he effected too It was indeed a Parliament of Soldiers and he serv'd them like a General only by signifying to them to Disband and they not daring to deny determin their sitting to be on the fifth of November following But he not willing to tarry so long a Servant to those he could command to obey those that would not so soon Disband he comes and Cashiers by April 1653. and with his Lambert and Harrison sends packing that everlasting Parliament And now here is the result of their principles in a second Plot upon themselves and a new model of Government for the former they had abolisht was but the Government of a few an absolute Oligarchy tho' they were pleas'd to call it the Common-wealth of England as if it had been but Democratical when not the tenth part of the People were represented by those Administrators but so they had the confidence to call them a Parliament too but their words had commonly as much sense in them as their actions had Loyalty But Oliver having Plotted them out of all had now no great need of any Politick Plot for himself It would puzzle now our Politicians to tell me where at this time was their Supream original power of the People their natural Liberty and that Delegatory right they are to communicate to Representatives There was no King no Parliament no Rump and as yet no Protector The Disciples of Mr. Sidney's Doctrine must say forsooth The Supream Power was then in the People but as the Devil would have it Cromwel had got the supream strength Strength and power I confess are mighty different and just distinguisht by the same Metaphysicks the Scots put upon the King at Newark when they would persuade him The Army was one thing and the Soldiers of it another but if this People had then the supream power why did they not assemble themselves into a Parliament since there was no Writ from above to call them to the Assembly But our History tells us Oliver call'd it and what for why say our Republicans That the People might confer upon him their supream original Power which he could not assume without their consent very good So Cromwel was willing this supream power should be settl'd upon him by Parliament therefore he calls the Parliament i.e. gives it the supream power they in common Civility could not avoid to give it him again But where but a grain of sense settle this Supremacy in him that call'd them to assemble or in those that were assembl'd at his call I confess if the cunning Canary Birds could but contrive as once they did design such a rare Parliament that like the Bird of Asia should rise from the ashes of it's Ancestors we might have one then not only long but everlasting But even this tho' then attempted to have been enacted would have been but Nonsense and absurd and sit only to have past in that Parliament which he call'd who made many Laws just as ridiculous for thosethat have a power to dissolve themselves by the same reason would have a power to summon another and then must is sue out their Writs either before their dissolution or after if after then it is without authority and by no part of the Government and if before then a new one must be summoning before the old is dissolv'd and if the Writs should be but of force from the time of dissolution the Country Electors must be said to be conven'd by the supream Authority that is dissolv'd Cromwel and his Conspirators foresaw they would be confounded with such absurdities and they found themselves plung'd into as much confusion and then pray what did they do with this Sidney's supream original power that they did not know what to make of or how to use tho' it lay upon their hands why they
believe the Legend for a Bible and his History for the Revelations But yet this Prince though by Conquest and Composition he got half the Kingdom and upon Edmunds Death the whole foresaw what Power the pleas of Right and Succession might have for animating an Interest in the defence of the poor injured Heirs and therefore took all the ways to ingratiate himself with his wavering People his young and unexperienced Subjects and all manner of means for preventing the Lawful Heirs for attempting for their Right sticking at neither Murder Malice and Treachery and in order to the first he made a shew of governing with more Justice then he conquered and took mildness for the best means of his Establishment and to let the Nation know he designed only to subdue them sends away his Mercenaries ships away his Navy and for a popular Specimen of an Heroick Kindness to the memory of the Saxons he succeeded as a Satisfaction to their injured Dust prefers Edricks perjured Head to the highest place on the City Gate and with that Expedient reconciled himself at once to his own promise deserved Justice and the Peoples favour and yet for securing himself from any danger from the Lawsul Heirs so politickly Cruel that all the Royal Blood felt of his Injustice sent the two Sons of his late Co-partner in the Kingdom to be murdered abroad and got his Brother to be butchered at home such an experienced truth is it that Powers usurpt Successions altered like the blackest Villanies can only be Justifyed and defended by committing more At his Death 't is true he disposed of his Crowns by Testamentary Bequest and well he might when there was so little known for Kingdoms of Feudatory Law and private Estates then far from being entailed yet in that very Legacy you can observe what Power the Consideration had with him of Right and Blood for he leaves his own Paternal Dominions Norway to his Eldest son Swayn and to his Youngest Hardicanute his conquered England considering his Mothers Blood which was Emma Wife to the late King Ethelred might as indeed it did give him some precedency to his middle Brother Harold the one having somewhat of Saxon in him the other all Dane especially if he was as some say Illegitimate tho' Baker calls him an Elder Brother by a former Wife so that upon the whole the Contest that rose about the Succession was but whether he had Right and when at last Harald was preferred 't was upon the Resolution of his being Legitimate so that here his own Inference contradicts the end for which 't was brought and instead of altering the discent shows they industriously contended to keep it in the right Channel and allowing they were mistaken in their Opinions of his Birth the Lords to make amends for their error streight on his Death fetch home Hardicanute who dying without Issue the Right of Blood prevailed again and the Saxon entred in Edward the Confessor Edmunds Son only being past by because his very being was unknown and so they can only be blamed for not seeking for the right Heir among the supposed Dead Yet when this Edward had found him out he designed both him and his Son Atheling for successive Monarchs whose very name imported Hereditary and next of kin as much as our Prince of Wales while the second Harold but usurpt upon him against the sense of the Clergy who even then lookt upon it as a Violation of the Right of the Heir and also of their Holy Rites and tho Harald suggested that Edward had appointed him to be Crown'd Historians say that it was only to make him during the Minority of this Edgar a Regent and not an absolute King and Mat. Paris speaking of Edgar Atheling in the very first Leafe of his History in these very words says that to him belonged the Right to the Kingdom of England and if Birth could then give a Right I don't see how then or now any Power can defraud a Prince justly of his Birth-right And now we 'l begin our Remarks on the Norman Line upon which the very first words of Baker are these There were six Dukes of Normandy in France in a direct Line succeeding from Father to Son and yet this Inquisitive Monarch-maker lays his mighty stress his weighty Consideration on the single Suggestion of Duke William's being a reputative Bastard be it so have we not here the Majority of six to one that succeeded ãâã Legitimately and is not these then like all the rest of their Objections against the Government rather industrious Cavil then real Argument or allowing it still is it not most impertinently applyed to his present purpose to tell us that William the Conqueror was himself Illegitimate and yet succeeded his Father in the Dutchy of Normandy And therefore must we have another Natural and Illegitimate Duke to wear the Crown of England or was the Suggestion only made because they had such a Duke in Readiness that had already run the Popular Gantlet of Ambition and been sooth'd into the Prospect of a Scepter with the false Tongues of Flatterers and Sycophants or else was the Nomination of the Normans to supersede the Fundamental Laws of our Nation And our England a Dependent a Tributary to that Crown before the Conquest these Paradoxes must be reconciled by Miracle before such a ridiculous Instance can pass for Reason or Common Sense or vindicate the false suggester from Folly and Impertinence But even here too his very Assertion fails him and this Pretender to Truth both abuses his Reader with false Application and telling a Lye For this Duke William tho' a Bastard Born was not illegitimated so as to be barred the Crown and incapacitated for Inheritance for it appears as Baker says by many Examples that Bastardy was then no Bar to Succession and by the Canon and the Law of the Church that then obtain'd the Children born before Wedlock were de facto truly legitimated if he afterward espoused his Concubine and this his Factious Assistant Hunt himself allows when the Wretch endeavoured to Bastardize the Progenitors of his Sovereign and this many Writers say was the very Case of our Duke William whose Father took his Mother Arlotte to Wife afterward The Donation to William Rufus was again clearly Testimentary which might be allowed sure to a Conqueror whose will only gave what his Sword had gotten but however as I observed above in the Legatory Disposition of Canutus the Dane where he gave his conquered Kingdom to his Youngest and Norway his Paternal Right to Swayn his Eldest to whom 't was most due so here this Third Conqueror of Old Britain observ'd the same sort of Bequest and left Normandy his Fathers Inheritance and his own to Robert to whom it appertain'd in Reason and Right both these Instances no small Demonstration shewing how the Precedency of Blood even in those days obtained and with those too whom our Factious Innovator would
as Writers say quitted her Title too which was apparently acknowledged in letting him succeed Is the Mothers Right ever the less when the Son does succeed in her Right and is there no Difference between altering a Succession and a refusing to succeed Matt. Paris makes her live thirty years after Stephen's Death time enough to have resented her wrong if she thought she had sustein'd an Interruption of her Right and she must be supposed to be willing to consent to those Conditions of peace being all concluded with her privity and she having suffered sufficiently with a troublesom War in England went over to Normandy for Peace This Henry knowing his Right to the Crown was resolved to secure the same Right of Succession to his Son and this very endeavour for a Lawful and a Lineal discent does this perverse Author turn into an Argument for Election and because he only called his Barons Bishops and Abbots to let them know he would have him to be secured his Successor by making him a Copartner in the Government and to prevent his being wronged after his Death was resolved to see him enjoy part of his Right in his Life therefore from these fine Premises he draws this Illogical Conclusion that he was elected by their Consent and when from Gervas himself whom he Cites it appears they were by the Kings express Command call'd to his Coronation and Paris says 't was at his Summons they came to Crown his Son and by his Fathers own bidding and if this solemnity shall make our Crown Elective since the Conquest we have had none Hereditary and our Kings must never suffer any Nobles or Commons at their Coronation for fear of such Perverters making it a Parliamentary choice But if any thing could be condemned in this unhappy Solicitation for his Sons security to succeed 't was only in making him a King before he came to be a Successor by defrauding himself upon a sollicitous distrust of part of that Divine Right when he was by God entrusted with the whole and making his Son to Anticipate that by his forwardness for which he should have waited the Almighty's leisure The Nature of Monarchy being inconsistent with a Duum-Virate units may be as well divided And the very Etymon of the Word contends for the sole Soveraignty it expresses And the very sad effects of this contradictory Coronation were the best Evidence of its inconsistency and verifies the Latin Aphorism of the Tragedian that the Crown cannot admit of a shareer or competitor no more than the Bed the making himself but half King was like to have lost him the whole Kingdom and almost made him none at all they soon animated the young Monarch against his Old Father and let him know that 't was absurd for any one to be called a King and to have nothing of Government that is essential to it in the Kingdom Daniel calls it the making the Common-wealth a Monster with two Heads and what then must it be with many but withal tells us 't was only the effect of jealousie that this King feared from his Mothers Example and that some of his false Subjects might also break all Oaths of Fealty to his Son as well as this perjur'd Author has that of his Allegiance to his Sovereign and I believe this alone made this King so carefully Praecipitous as to prevent the Expiration of his Reign with an Anticipation of the Grave and a Resignation of his Rule with a POLITICAL DEATH for this Crown'd Son was soon by LEWIS of France embolden'd to that insolency from having the half that in plain Terms he demanded the whole and what the too bountiful Father had no Reason to grant by fair means the ungrateful Son resolves to obtain by foul sides with the King of France and many of the divided Kingdom with Him and are all in Arms ready for Ruin and Destruction neither did they lie down their Swords till it ended as all Alterations in a Monarchy in BLOOD and the Coparcenary King shortly after his Life but a little before reconciled to his too provident Father I am sure this shows even the Participation of the Royal Power dangerous tho by those that had Right to Succession and if such an Alteration in the Government can prove so fatal much more then an altering the Succession it self and if a Crown can't like a common Conveyance with fafety be made over in trust I dare say 't will be less secure to cut off entail The next Reign that we have Reason to reply upon is that of Richard the First and with that his irrational Inferences have dealt as unreasonably for he there by his own Confession has no other Authority for his Election as his own words have it but the words of his Historian and yet this very Historian whom he there most impudently traduces and abuses acknowledges his Hereditary Right to the Crown by which he was to be promoted before ever he tells you of the solemn Election of the People which beyond contradiction confirms what the Worthy Dr. B. has as significantly suggested that the common acceptation of Election amongst ancient Authors imply'd nothing less than what our factious insinuators apply it to and that they meant nothing else but Confirmation or Acknowledgment for first would such a Learned Authority as he cites only labour under a learned Contradiction and tell you such an one was promoted for his Hereditary Right and then in the very subsequent words declare it was by solemn Election Certainly such Immortal Authors could never wage with Sense and Reason a Mortal War and he himself is so favourable to their pious Memory as to omit all the seeming Contradiction because not reconc leable to his prejudic'd Interpretation and when Historians tell you of any thing of Election which he would have popular be sure he omits what ever they say of Hereditary Succession before so has he done here so in most of the Citations elsewhere And next also he tells us that his Father had gotten the Succession confirm'd to him in his Life Of which many of our modern Historians are totally silent and afterwards that he was again Elected by the People of which in his sense none truly speak nether is it reconcileable how they shou'd twice solemnly choose him for their King when even in Poland it self once will serve but besides before his Solemn Coronation or as he wou'd have it his popular Election immediately after his Fathers Funeral without doubt upon the consideration of his Hereditary Right he exercised as he might well do and as has been since resolv'd any King of ours may an absolute Power of a King before this Solemn Ceremony of Coronation for presently he seizes upon his Fathers Treasure in France Imprisons Fetters Manacles the late Kings Treasurer to extort the uttermost penny I think such a severe sort of absoluteness as they wou'd not now allow
Fathers Title that forc't him to strenghten his Sons with a Donation And Elenor the Sister of his Cousen Arthur who had a Stronger right did not dye in five and twenty years after he came to the Crown and was kept continually to her dying day in a close Confinement so strong a tide was the proximity of Blood thought then even by those that were the perverters of its Channel that it would bear all the force of its foes before it unless Bay'd back by as much force and violence and we have found in some of our own Reigns even that too little a well guarded Prison too weak to hold a Legitimate Prince and that from thence too they have Mounted the Throne To the Succession of his Son Edward the first one would have thought all his diligent malice or the Devils could never have afforded an Objection for it seems he can't find so much as his own old dear word Elected here amongst his abus'd Authors but another False suggestion must supply the defect And where his Trope of Inversion can't pervert the Truth another part of Rhetorick must serve the Turn Invention and a Lye for so is that which he would have us believe that his Second Brother Edmund was the First And truly I believe he could Invert the Course of Nature too as well as Blood would it serve his turn and this we must take for unquestion'd Authority from the pretensions of the House of Lancaster that descended from him and say he was only rejected for his Deformity truly were there nothing to refute it but only their pretentions the prejudice and partiality of the Pretenders were sufficient to render it suspected which aspiring Line Labour'd as much in its Genealogy as ever any Welsh Gentleman in his Pedigree But the best of it is matter of Fact contradicts it Historians deny it and none but himself would assert it It Appears from Paris that this primitive Lancastrian was no less than Six years younger And he an Author that Liv'd in the same Reign and resided in the very same Court and says that the Londoners swore Allegiance to the First-born Edward but a year old and then before the Second was so much as born And for his deformity that he only gathers from the shallower Argument of his Name being Crouch-back which as Baker observes was rather from his wearing a Cross upon his Back and this I look upon as better Authority then Buck's in the accomplishment and polishing of Richard the third and the cleering of him from his crookedness and yet I believe our good Natur'd Historian will readily credit that because spoken in commendation of a Usurper a Tyrant and a Murderer and one that came to the Crown as he will have it by the consent of the People tho this of ours must by no means be believed because it no way makes for his purpose The last was but little and now the next Reign is as much for the Gentleman's purpose and that 's a Rebellion of a Parliament an actual Deposition of the present King and the Murdering of his Sovereign and of that he makes as good use too as if he designed not only to transmit it with his Papers to posterity but with his Pen for the present Age to transcribe it into Practice and what the Devil himself would have condemned in an History has this Impious Wretch made a damnable President It must be his Design from the Season of its Publication from the Proceedings of his Parliament and from the subsequent Discoveries the whole piece was nothing else in every Paragraph but a Vindication of the Parliaments Power over Kings and here in this he has made the Deposition of his King like their ordinary Proceedings warrantable by President why did he not tell them too Painted Chamber Monday the 29. ordered a warrant be drawn for Executing the King in the open Street before White-Hall Sir Arthur Haslerig Reports from the Committee that Charles and James Stewart Sons of the late King should dye without Mercy wheresoever they should be found And he had certainly brought down his History to this too had the Times been but black enough to bear it for the subsequent sacrificing of Richard the Second is as much his popular Theam his Power of Parliaments and his Election of the People He tells them their Ancestors were weary of this Kings Irregular and Arbitrary Government and the malicious Wretch found some of their present Posterity as uneasie under a mild and merciful Reign he tells them their Parliament publickly read a Paper containing Instances of the Kings Misgovernment and concluded that he was unworthy to Reign any longer and ought to be deposed and sent to him to renounce his Crown and Dignity otherwise they would proceed that is to do it for him but I think his piece was overseen that it did not tell them too of another Paper as Bernardiston told them at the Bar that was talkt of in Parliament about too The Encroachments and Vsurpation of Arbitrary Power of following such Orders as shall from Time to Time be received from this present Parliament or the Major part of the Members when it shall be Prorogu'd or Dissolved and obey such Officers as they shall set over us Certainly his making this unfortunate Edward's Deposition a Parliamentary President has unmaskt our Treasons Historiographer superseded even with men but of common Sense his designed Impositions registred himself an inveterate Traytor with his own hand and Chronicl'd his lasting Treason to Posterity which will blush at the reading of those Villanous Infinuations which his most Licentious Pen could Publish without 't was then in that Kings Reign too as appears in their Ordinances they made the Tumultuous and Rebellious Barons for the Commons were then not so considerable as to raise a Rebellion upon the Pretence of Gods Honour and the Church the Honour of the King and his Realm made ãâã to remove evil Councellors reform the Court and to force the King to let them name all the Judges of the Bench and the chief Officers of the Crown how near they then agreed with some of our late Transactions and how well those have been copy'd since I need not observe And that the Narrative the Author of this piece presents to the Parliament was offered only for the Designs I have suggested appears also from this Instance being no way pertinent to what ought to be the right purport of his History whose Subject should have been but of Succession But that he found was not to be disputed here in this Reign it being Hereditary beyond Contradiction and 't is now an unanswerable Confirmation that those who are so much for altering the discent of the Crown are as much for the deposing of him that wears it 't is now an attested Truth under their own hands and they must give themselves the Lye to confute it But whatever were the
resentments themselves fear and call revengeful should now more tamely forego his Right when for above two hundred Years agon it was with so much Blood asserted or do they think now an excluded Prince will find fewer Friends no these Political Suggestions do but give themselves the Lye his Courage they know and for that they associated his Adherents they fear'd and for that they were to be destroyed and here we have now by this Author 's own Confession after a thirty years bloody War what in our next Parliament perhaps we may have without as well as in the late Loyal one in Scotland a full Recognition of the Right of the Lawful Heir and that no foregoing Act is of any force to foreclude the Right Inheritor of the Crown and the Parliament approving of a Duke of York for their Sovereign as a Right Heir by Lineal discent from King Richard the Second And now the Succession of this next King Edward the Fourth was the greatest Confirmation of the discent of the Crown to be by Proximity of Blood that the most devout Heart the most zealous Contender for this undoubted right cou'd wish or desire Here we have the very Parliaments those omnipotent Powers of the People the God Almighties of these Idolatrous Adorers themselves acknowledging that such a Succession is agreeable to the Laws of God Nature and Nations Human and Divine and is this now as this factious Impostor would insinuate only the Doctrine of Lambeth The position of our Lawds and the Principle of our Prelate The first thing that was done in the first of this Edward the Fourth was the repealing of all the proceedings against Richard the Second and all the three following Lines of Lancaster declar'd absolute Vsurpers That Henry the Fourth had rashly against Right and Justice by Force and Arms against his Faith and Allegiance rais'd War against King Richard usurpt and intruded on the Royal Power that the Tyrant Imprison'd murder'd his Anointed Crowned Consecrated King against Gods Law and Mans Allegiance and that there moving of the last Vsurper was according to the Laws and Custom of the Realm Most of the proceedings of Parliaments in there former Reigns were all null'd and vacated and the Intrusion of the first Lancaster into the Throne declar'd an Occasion of the ruine of the Realm and the ground of all the Civil and Intestine Wars that followed But refractory Rebels may reply This was after he had obtain'd his Right again with the Sword and all the Kingdom then his own Creatures But still these prejudic'd Souls can't reflect that most if not all of those Elections Vsurpations that they cite on their side were only then the Sense of their Parliaments when they did not dare to think otherwise and when they were fright'ned into Faction with the Terror of the Sword and forc't to comply for the fear of Arms and are not their Votes and Suffrages their Resolves and Orders as warrantble for the declaring of an undoubted Right as for an asserting of an absolute Wrong But even such a suggestion is as really simple as 't is truly false and so fails them too for their own Author tells us that the Duke of York did not think it worth the contending for till his Title was declar'd in Parliament and that was done when the last of the Usurpers was in a flourishing Condition at the head of his House of Peers and in the hearts of his People And the rejecting of their Intruder so far from being done by force that they took all the Care Counsel and Deliberation imaginable as soon as the Duke put in his Claim they reply'd 't was an high matter and not to be consider'd without their Kings consent to whom all their Lords present it himself orders it to be examin'd his own Title as far as could be found out to be defended accordingly they send for all the Judges who declin'd without doubt out of distruct the discussing it then all the Serjeants are sent for and they do the same till forc't by their Superiors into these three or four extorted Objections 1. The Oath they had takento this King 2. The Entails made to the Heirs of Henry the Fourth 3. That he claim'd as Inheritor to Henry the Third The Replies of the Duke That no Oath was obligatory for the suppressing of a Right That the Entails were made only to supply the defect of a better Title And that Records would contradict his discent from Henry the Third So sufficiently satisfied that honourable Assembly that they presently recognise his Right and that for eschewing the many In conveniences that might ensue upon an Exclusion And for saving a little of their Kings Honor as they call'd it let the poor Usurper turn a Tenant for his Life and that prov'd but afterwards at the Courtesie of the Heir Does not this blind implicit Adorer of his deify'd Creatures this idolatrous Admirer of his own created Gods see in these particulars and even in his own presidents that he cites the mutability of Mens minds and the contradictory Conclusions of this his infallible Council while Right it self must still remain the same and the decrees of Heaven can't be cancell'd since the very Laws of the Persians could not and still when our own in this point of Succession were repeal'd we find it turn'd all into Confusion and a Hell and for a more sudden alteration in this vein and humor of Parliament observe but this single Instance and that in the very season of which we are discoursing In the 38 of this Henry the sixth a Parliament was held at Coventry by that the Duke of York too is attainted of Treason and all his Adherents Their Heirs disinherited to the ninth degree their Tenants spoiled of their goods maim'd slain but in the very next year of his Reign the very same Coventry Parliament declar'd by another to be a devillish Councel celebrated for the destruction of the Nobility never elected unduly returned desiring the destruction rather than the Advancement of the Commonwealth And now can the most popular advocate of the Party from the perusal of these their inconsistent irregular proceedings make them absolute Arbitrators of Right They must resolve themselves into this Absurdity for a reply that the supream Power of the Nation for its own security can justly do wrong We have seen several Subjects against all Reason ruin'd with an Act of Parliament and therefore shall we think it alway to do Right What Reason can we give that our Courts of Equity are still the same but that they can't be controll'd by the mutability of their Statute-Law and granting this their Bill of Exclusion had past into Statute that it had been Enacted a Royal Heir must be debarr d of his Birthright I am sure the general Council of the world would quickly have given their Opinions against this great one of our Nation And tho their Codes and Digests don't obtain with
our Kings took this power upon him is utterly false from these several instances First the very first King of his name in the Saxon succession left it so to his Son to succeed And Athelstan whom above this Gentleman recommended to the City of London for a Mon. and Illegitimate against the sense and silence of all Historians was declar'd King by the Command and last Will of his Father Edward the elder in the Reign of the Danes Canutus did the same bequeath'd Norway to Swain his eldest and England to his youngest Son and for the Norman Succession the very first King and who had the most right to do so from the Sword left to Rufus the right but of an Heir Testamentary tho followed by his Son Henry the first And Richard that had less reason so to do for his Daughter Maud by the Law of the Land would have been his Heir without the Legacy and so would to the latter his Nephew Arthur and tho both were by Rebellion rejected yet still sure their right remain'd But for this Edward the 6th disposing it by Will it was not only against the Customary Discent of the Realm in a right blood but of an Express Entail in several Acts of Parliaments I am so far of this Authors opinion that I believe it was no way warrantable but never the sooner for his Parliaments settlement had it not been at last upon the right Heirs for tho those Princes of ours heretofore took upon them to leave Successors by Will they still nominated those that by Blood were to succeed without such a Nomination so that the bequest was more matter of Form then Adoption only to let the Subjects know whom they look't upon to have the right of Succession rather than to superadd any thing of more right and that 's the reason or ought to be that we properly call the next in Blood the Kings Successor but the Crowns Heir 'T is a little prodigious Paradox to me that it must be such a receiv'd Maxim that a Parliament can do no wrong and that in plain Terms they tell us it can do any thing mollifying it only with an Exception that they can't make a Man a Woman yet that they bid pretty fair for too in these Presidents of Harry the 8th when they made Bastard Females of those that were Legitimate and then Legitimis'd again the same Bastards and 't is as mighty a Miracle to men unprejudic'd that our Parliament Patriots should contend for the disordering the Succession of the Crown who still labour for the Lineal Discent of their own Common Inheritance ãâã I will appeal to the breast of the most ãâã contender for this Power whether an Act made for the disabling one of their own Sons or design'd Successors would not by themselves be look't on as ãâã if not utterly defeasible and then ãâã sure prodigiously strange where so many Learned Heads tell us of a sort of ãâã from a power Divine where the ãâã Custom of the Kingdom has ãâã a constant course of Lineal Discent ãâã as has been shown a perfect ãâã interven'd And where themselves ãâã this sort of Succession has ãâã sometimes by Statute entail'd yet ãâã they should think that but Justice ãâã their Kings Successor which they ãâã resent as an Injury to their own ãâã they may vouch for it the common ãâã of Recoveries from a right Heir with too Cunning sort of vouching and ãâã too much practis'd but I am sure no way agrees with the Laws of Forraign Nations and has been a little ãâã by some learned Heads in our own ãâã some that have brought it into ãâã seem to have rais'd a Devil not soon to be put down in their Dialogue but however this Objection is ãâã analagous nothing of a Parallel ãâã for here is a Complication of both ãâã Concern'd and concluded upon ãâã both their Consents and where shall ãâã find the perfect Proprietor of ãâã and Scepters and when God has told us ãâã that by him they Reign that bear ãâã and they 'l hardly vouch the ãâã for a piece of Injustice But allowing for once a meer Human Constitution ãâã in their bandied Authority of Saint ãâã an Ordinance of Man and the ãâã Consent with his Parliaments to ãâã the Point yet still the great ãâã would call for a little longer ãâã than a Common Recovery ãâã not presently to cut off the right of Heir to three Kingdoms only ãâã commonly done at Westminster of ãâã to so many Cottages and besides ãâã that has been practis'd so long and ãâã the test of Time and this their ãâã would have been the first President And at last what has silenc'd their Advocates for ever the non-concurrence of the King and his Lords whose consent was by themselves suppos'd to be necessary because requir'd and will like those recognitions of some of our former Parliaments for an Hereditary Succession perpetuate that right in spight of the Laws of others that were made for altering it and should the Commons ever get such a Bill to pass 't is enough to say 't was once rejected by the Peers unless they can prove that the Question was put again Whether the lower House should take advice of the Lords in the Legislative power and that 't was Resolved that the House of Peers was useless dangerous and ought to be abolish't and Order'd that an Act be brought in for that purpose Queen Mary succeeds her Brother Edward with all the Right of Blood with all the Law of God and Man too on her side for whatever the Parliament pretended they could never ãâã that which was begotten in Matrimony celebrated according to the Laws of the Church and the Realm for whatsoever defect there was found subsequent to the Consummation of the Marriage in common reason and equity ought not to have extended to the making that Issue spurious which had all the requisites to the making it truly Legitimate ãâã perhaps the subsequent discoveries ãâã be sufficient to cause a Divorce and in the too Common Case of Adultery 't would be severe far from Equity to make Bastards of all that were born before the Conviction of the Fact but it may be reply`d to this That these were such Impediments as related to the Contract ab Juitio and where that 's ãâã there the Children begotten after ãâã be suppos'd Lawful Heirs when the Contract it self is against Law but tho ãâã I shall look upon that as a rigorous resolution when I think Innocents and Infants ought to be more favour'd especially when there is a Maxim in the Law even in the like Cases that the fact may be valid tho the doing of it can't be justifi'd and besides there being a Rule that obtains amongst Civilians That Marriage contracted without any preconceiv'd Impediment tho it after ãâã to be dissolv'd as unlawful yet ãâã begotten in such a state are reputed truly Legitimate and tho Appeals
last mention'd might be Modern and I believe that Rome and Athens were never heard of when Sodom and Gomorrah were burnt with Brimstone then he is forc't to give himself the Lye and the word of Truth it self God and the Bible and that he does in excepting Moses from the number of those that had the Help and Information of any Constitution Antecedent as the Founders of the foremention'd Monarchies that were Establisht so long after might well be supposed to have had for their Instruction and yet does that sacred Penman inspired by God himself almost Coaeval with the World give us a clear account of all Original Government from the time that there was a Man to Rule or a Beast to be governed and that too of an absolute Monarchical Empire So that all what the sublime Speculations of this refin'd Politician can cavil at is only that we can't give him an account what was done before Adam what truly was the Constitutions of their Government and whether the Prae-Adamites liv'd like our English-men under a true Monarch or like the Venetian Republick under an insignificant Duke For this certainly must be the Consequence of his Inconsiderate Assertion that Original Government is unknown at the same time that he excepts Moses from the Number of those that Establisht a Particular one which by the Consequence of his own Concession must be the first General and Original unless he allow another before it dis-believe the very Bible and give his God the Lye But he is not the first Author that has fancyed Prae-Adamites and writ about them too Besides his Brother Heathen the Stagyrite as great a Philosopher as his Plato tho not so Dogmatical makes it more than an Hypothesis one of his Principles that our World was Eternal and then indeed we shall be puzzled for this Original of Government in General for lack of a Creation when the Bible shall be baffled and Books of Moses at a loss But I wonder since he allows that Primitive Penman to be one inspired by God and excepts him too from the Number of those that have transmitted an account of the Original of particular Governments which must imply that he did of that which was General and so contradict his first Position That we wanted such a Tradition that yet all the while he won't take notice what is the account he gives and what 's the first this Moses mention'd without doubt he knew the very Consideration of it would confute him and that he would be confounded by the very First Chapter of ãâã And therefore he presently takes it for granted that Politicians ãâã tho none but such as himself that nothing but Necessity made the first Government But then what does he think of the Dominion that the Almighty gave in express Words to his created Man was it only to extend to the Beast of the Field and Fowls of the Air and every Living thing that then moved upon the Face of the Earth or ought it not in Reason be applyed to those Beings too that should be hereafter the product of those Beasts and that of his own Loyns but even God himself confirm'd the Donation of this power afterward to make it more sure made him Ruler In an ãâã Subjection over his Wife Eve and afterward subjected Abel in a subordinate one to his Brother Cain 'T is strange and prodigious to me that Men professing Christianity Protestants even to a fault in being fill'd with Fury instead of a sober Zeal yet should so warmly contend for the Doctrines of profest Atheists and pursue with heat the Principles of avow'd Papists Does not Mr. Hobbs teach us our Original State was that of War and this Political Atheist tells us as much that Man was first born like a Beast ãâã to prey upon one another does not Bellarmin declare by Nature all Men were equal and this Pseudo-Protestant informs us Every Man has a Right to every thing What can this Harmony mean with the profest Foes to all Religion and avow'd Enemies of our own but that these Sycophants dissemble with their very God when they declare for his Worship and would close with the Devil for its Extirpation 'T is plain they do with the Positions of the rankest Jesuites and the Fiends in Hell can't be made more black than themselves do commonly paint that Society whom I am afraid as the Indians do their Gods they only make the more ugly for Adoration In the next place all Paternal Right must be laid aside that 's a thing so ridiculous as not to be mention'd But I hope 't is only so because inconsistent with his Principles when we have so many Texts of Scripture for its Confirmation and Aristotle that learn'd Heathen tho a Native born even in a Republick places that Original of all Despotical power in the heads of Families and I can't ãâã where a man that has a Power to ãâã it over some few has not a share of Sovereignty too as well as he that has an Empire over many more The Government of those Families and the setting their Father a Ruler over them in their several Tribes was really from God as appears plain enough from the Old-Testament and that without doubt made Paul to make this of a larger extent and Interpretation in the new when he tells us expressly that all Powers are ordain'd by God and there are none but what are from him But they 'll say this may be applyed to any Democracie which is a Power too But then it may be as boldly replyed That they are not of his Ordination for we have the Authority for the sole Sovereignty of every Father of a Family from the very first Original of the World and that of their Popular Supremacie never commenced but by some Division in a Tribe or Family and even then they made some Head in that Division which was no more than what we now call Rebellion and Vsurpation The first Original of Monarchy he resolves into the Corruption of the Times which the preposterous Statesmen ought rather to have made the product of their Purity at least of their desire to be bettered and purg'd for allowing what he says some better Government tho the greatest Opposers of the Divine Right grant that of a King to be the best might degenerate upon the disorder of Times and Debauchery of Manners into Monarchy which the resolute Republican is resolv'd shall be the worst yet still his own very Argument shall contradict his reasoning and in spight of his Villanous Principles prove it the best For if manners be deprav'd under another Form of Government and that the People grow so careless as to neglect the Constitution and Frame of it as not worth the keeping and so uneasie under it as to admit any Usurpation and Intrusion of a sole single Soveraignty certainly they must have a very bad Esteem of their preceding Government to suffer it to be utterly abolish't
and somewhat at least of a good opinion of that new Soveraignty in a single Person so easily to admit ãâã for the depravity of Mens manners can never arise to such an Acme of transcendent Wickedness as only for mischief sake to undermine a Government they think the best and for an Instance their own Malitious Accusations as common as they are False fly in the very Face of this Conjecture for they make now the most Debauch't Atheists at present the greatest Sticklers for our Government Now if the Depravity of their manners would make them neglect the Monarchy they love I am sure we have such a Number of true Profligate Villains on their side that as Mortally hate it that we should soon have it undermin'd 'T is a strange Paradox that a Republick which was always the result of a Rebellion and which is restless till it return to that Government from which it revolted should be lookt upon by these prejudic'd preposterous Politicians for a piece of ãâã which can proceed from nothing else but from the Turbulent Hunjour and discontents of some restless Spirits that dislike the Constitution of that under which they were Born and would that of any to which they are Subjected yet still can Fancy that Monarchy which they will have Establish't by the common Consent of the People to proceed from a Corruption of their Manners when this their Peoples Consent and Unanimous Agreement for it should determine him at least to think it eligible for the best And if the People that in a defection from a Government who must be supposs'd the least Number shall be allow'd to reform for the better by running into a Republick as I know he thinks of the Rebellious Dutch yet why should not even there the Universal Consent of almost all the King of Spains Subjects in retaining of their Monarchy make it preferable much Over-ballance the Scales against the revolt of an handful of Rebels unless he Fancies the Nevills the Sydneys the Harringtons c. the Wisest and the most Honest part of the World And that they are always among such Renegadoes And can in Reason three or four petty Common-wealths most of them in Europe too and such as by the Machinations of some of these sort of ãâã Contents and by the Poison of their Principles were Debauch't in their Loyalty and animated to Rebel be so prevalent an Argument as to perswade Men in their Wits that the Monarchy's in which almost all our Christian World Conspires and all the Heathen agrees as far as it is known and which Government we have still found even in those unknown parts as far and as fast as they have been Discover'd that this all the while must be the worse Frame only from it's being by so few rejected and so generally receiv'd But to Convince any reasonable Soul unprejudic'd that these Democratical Devil 's wont stick to give their God the Lye and set themselves a Contradiction to all History and Truth this Daemon of Plato as an Ingenious Author and Answerer of his Diabolical Principles has Naturally nam'd him let him but consider this ãâã Falsehood of his Factious Heart tho that I believe fails him too in asserting this Impudent Paradox That Moses Theseus Romulus were the Founders of Democracies when for the First his own God if he believe any and against whom he Rebels too if he do had appointed him the Supream Ruler and also a Judge to lead them in their Decampments and give them their Laws in the Camp against whose absolute Monarchy he can object nothing but that they did not call him King and yet even that is done too by those Primitive Rebels in the Rebellion of Corah when they Expostulate with him for making himself altogether a Prince over them that is what our Modern ones call Arbitrary Absolute but even that is literally said and Moses was King in Jesurun And will our Murmurers at the Lords Anointed never be Convinc'd till they are Confounded with the same Fate till Fire come again from Heaven or they go quick down into Hell The Survivors of those discontented Mutineers upbraiding Moses for destroying of that Rebellious Brood whom God only in his Judgments had destroy'd the Almighty would have Consum'd them too in a moment neither was his Anger stay'd till Fourteen Thousand fell in a Plague our Land has Labour'd under all these Judgments but because the Almighty's resentments of our Rebellious Practices are not declar'd to us as of old out of a Cloud and he does not reveal himself now to his Vice-gerent as then to his Servant Moses and the Glory of the Lord discends not in a visable Brightness upon our Tabernacle Must we therefore be so vainly blind as to think they were not sent us for those Sins that have most deserv'd them our Conspiring against our Rulers especially when the manner of our Punishments has been so Remarkably the same with their sufferings as well as our transcrib'd Villanies the very Copy of their Crimes For that of Theseus we have the good Authority of an Authentick Historian that writ his Life who tells us when he first went to reduce them to one City and the Government of ONE the Common Ordinary people were well enough pleas'd with his Proposal And to those that were Powerful and Great he told them his Government should not be altogether Regal which in their Greek was Tyrannical if they would allow him for their King this prevail'd he says upon them too either out of Fear of his Force or the Power of his Perswasions now can such a False and Factious Imposture can such a Wretch Insinuate well his being no King that calls himself so and only because he Consulted their Opinions in Weighty Affairs make it a Democracy then we need not contend here for a Republick our King still Consulting his great Council in Arduis Regni And for Romulus his founding his Rome a Democracy so far from truth that I defie him to show the least shadow from any Colour of History for such a piece of Imposture Florus in the very First line of his Prologue calls him King Romulus and in the same tells us Rome in it's first Age and Infancy for about two hundred and fifty years was Govern'd by Kings Tacitus too in his very first Remarkable too for an unintended verse tells us that in the beginning 't was Kings had the Government of the City of Rome and afterward tells us this very Romulus Govern'd them Arbitrarily and at his will Sext. Aur. vict says he was the first King of the Romans that he lead them forth against the Sabines that he sought and that he made a League which none I think but Kings by themselves can do so that should it be allow'd what is contrary to some of the very Express Words of our formention'd Historians that Romulus was not an absolute Prince yet still here is still
matter and Evidence enough to make him a Monarch and the Government of Rome Monarchical which surely Contradicts his extravagant Assertion That it was a Democracy unless he can reconcile the Contradiction of Sole Soveraignty with the Government of a numerous Senate Another of his pretty Paradoxes is that all Empire is founded in Dominion and Property and that must be understood too of a Propriety in Lands so that where a Prince has not a foot of Land he can't have twelve Inches of Power a Position that would confine some Princes Authorities in the Dimension of a Span notwithstanding Kings are said to have such long Arms but pray let this positive Politician tell me How it comes to pass that the Property of an owners Land is so inconsistent with the Prerogative of a Prince over those very Lands that he owns or why those that have the greatest Interest in this his property must presently have the greatest Portion too of Power and Property in the Government that is only to contract his Absurdity why the Peasant that has two Acres of Land and the Prince that has but one should not presently be prefer'd to be the Prince and the Prince Condescend to be the Peasant The Question might be soon answer'd with another Quere Why this King cannot be as well Born an Heir to the Crown as his Countryman to the Cottage tho the latter commonly has Land about it when perhaps a Crown may have none For certainly according to his Position a King must have but an Insignificant Power that has not a Foot of Crown-lands and then to have it to any purpose to extend his Empire over all his Subjects the Hereditary Lands of the Crown must by his own Rule necessarily make up more Acres then all the Kingdom besides and as he observes that within this 200 years the Estates of our greatest Nobility by the Luxury of their Prodigal Ancestors being got into the hands of Mechanicks or meaner Gentry by his own Platonick Dogma these Plebeians must have the Power and Authority of our Nobles that is a Rich Commoner must presently run up into the House of Lords and a Lord perhaps less wealthy descen'd into their lower-House for they must allow their Lyes more power in our House of Peers they being a Court of Judicature which the other can't ãâã too The Disorders Confusions and Revolutions of Government ãâã would ensue from the placing this Empire and Power only in Dominion and Property which according to his own extravagant Position I think may be better render'd Demesn would be altogether as Great as those absur'd Consequences of this Foolish Maxim are truly ridiculous for we must necessarily have new Governours as often as a new Demesn could be acquir'd for meaner Persons must have greater share too in Publick Administration's assoon as they grow mightier in possessions But besides this simple suggestion as full of Folly as it is carries in it's self as much Faction too it is but another Invention of setting our Parliament again above our King and the making him according to their old Latin Aphorism Greater than a single Representative and less than all the Body Collective for he thinks it may be possible the King may have a greater portion of Land than any single Subject but I am sure it can never be that he should have more than all but this Sir Polilick ãâã has wander'd so much in the wide World that his Wits are a straggling too so full of Forreign Governments that he has forgot the ãâã of his own Is it not a receiv'd Maxim in our Law that there is no Lands in England but what is held mediately or immediately from the King that are in the hands of Subjects does not himself know we have nothing of an Allodium here as some Contend they have in Normandy and France tho they too are by some of our best Civilians contradicted and as great many Eminent Lawyers of their own tell us that the Feudatory Laws do obtain and are in force through all the Provinces of France too so that their Lands are there held also still of some superiour Lords and he knows that our greatest Estate here in Fee is not properly free but held mediately or immediately of the King or Donor to whom it may revert and 't is our King alone as our Laws still acknowlege that has his Demesn his Dominion free and holds ofnone but God and our Lord Cook tells us whom this Gentleman may Credit as having in some things been no great Friend to the Monarchy as well as himself yet that Eminent Oracle tells us that no Subject here has a direct Dominion properly but only a profitable one not much better perhaps than the Civilians usufructuaries and what becomes now of this Gentlemans the peoples Power Empire founded in Dominion and Demesne must the King have the less Power over his Tenants only because they hold the more and can't he have a right of Soveraignty over the Persons and Estates of his Subjects without Injuring them or their property or must his Subjects according to this unheard of Paradox as this their Property grows greater encroach the further upon his Power and Praerogative none but our Elect Saints must shortly set up for our Governours and I know this Factious States-man can't but favour his Friends Anabaptists and Quakers his absurrd Politicks here Extraordinarily suit with some of their mad extravagant Principles he lets them know Empire is founded in Dominion and they thank him kind Souls and tell him Dominion is founded in Grace Two or Three whole Leaves the Copious Author has alotted for the service of the Church and Glergy and there we find the Devil of a Re-publick has so possest the Politician that he openly declares against God and Religion and his Atheistical Paracelsus that confirms his Brother Brown's Aphorism to be none of his Vulgar Error that 't is thought their Profession to be so I mean the Doctor in his Dialogue interrogates his Matchiavel what he thinks of our Clergy why truly 't is answer'd He could wish that there never had been any the Christian Religion would have done much better without He presumes much it seems upon his own Divinity but if that be no sounder then his Politicks either of them is enough to send him to the Devil and on he goes in a tedious railing against the Frauds and Rogueries of our Church when t was Romish all impertinently apply'd to the present that is now so much reform'd But would not the most refractory Jew take this Snarling Cur for a Mungrel Christian that libels that only Church that maintains the Gospel in it's greatest purity and as a wise Prince well observ'd the most reform'd in the whole Christian World And 't is ãâã wonder now that such irreligious Impostors who have so little veneration for the Church should broach such pernicious Doctrines against our
State to which after so long and preliminary Impertinence that half the piece is made a Preface the Courteous Traveller is at last arriv'd And first he begins with their old Factious assertion that the Soveraign power of England is in King Lords and Commons making his Majesty but one of their three States we all know when this pernicious principle was first set a foot what it terminated in BLOOD and that in the Destruction of the best of Governments with the best of Kings we quickly saw when once they had made their Prince Co-ordinate they soon set up their own Supremacy and then assoon made him none at all Did this prophetick Daemon foresee from his Astrological Judgments that his House of Commons were drawing another Scheam of Rebellion and that they had prepar'd a draught of a second Covenant not only for making our King Co-ordinate but Leveling the Monarchy with the Ground yet'twas convincing enough to me before that the broaching of the very same principles did as really design the same subversion of the State this Plot might as well have been seen in 80. when this Author and as great Incendiaries appear'd in publick and so popular and well might a late House of Commons animadvert on our Judges for suppressing such Seditious Libels which were so Zealously kind and impudently bold as to set up their Supremacy it had been ingratitude not to stand by those Villains that for their sakes had forfeited their Necks This very same Principle of the Subjects Soveraignty was Printed and publish't in 43. preparatory for the Covenant which the Commons had then call'd for out of Scotland and up rises this Ghost again in 81. as if even then it had heard for Spirits are very Intelligent of an Association talk't off in Parliament but I 'll tell him in short why the Soveraign Power of England is not in King Lords and Commons because King Lords and Commons are not all Soveraigns may not our Monarchy be call'd Mixt in Opposition to its being Absolute and Tyrannical without making it a meer Hotch-potch that if our King will have any thing of his right of a Soveraign power he must put it in Medley with that of his Subject as our Sisters are oblig'd in Co-parcenary But tho he take his Treasonable Maxim for Reason and Truth without shewing the least Law or Reason I shall shew him from all of them that it is both Irrational Illegal and a Lye First 'T is against Reason to Imagin there can be three such Powers Co-ordinate to make up one Soveraignty and that our King can at the same time pass for a Monarch for Soveraignty is inseparable from a King and that 's the Reason without doubt we promiscuously call him our King or Soveraign and if our Lords and Commons will assume it they may ee'n take the Crown too we saw how the participation of a Soveraign power tho it was but in a shadow and that by him that had a better pretence for the Soveraignty then all the Common Subjects can have by being the Crowns Heir was like to have unhinged the very Monarchy it self in the Reign of Henry the Second and rais'd such Commotions in the State till it was almost overturn'd And I am sure we have found and felt that this Co-ordinacy of their three States terminated at last like the participation of that Co-parcenary Prince into an insolent demanding of the whole and what they had made but half the Kings they soon made all the People's until the Government was quite run of the hooks and the Nation engaged in an unhappy War and a down-right Rebellion Does not the very Etymon of Monarchy it self express the sole Soveraignty of that Government they would make so preposterously Mixt and even Archon alone which was the next Titular Appellation the Loyal Athenians gave to the Son and Successor of their Matchless Codrus only because they thought that no Succeeding Prince could deserve the Title of Tyrannus which they made to terminate with him only because they presum'd his goodness ãâã imitation Tyrant then was not apply'd as some of our Inveterate Traytors have done it since in it's Corrupted sense tho to the most merciful King for a Tarquin or Caligula yet even this word Archon without addition of Sole that Moròs that has since succeeded to make it Monarch was then an Absolute Government of one amongst the Athenians and continued so in the same Family for a long Season till at last by popular encroachments it was made Annual and this Contender for this Co-ordinate power of the People has expos'd his Damnable designs so plainly to his Disputants that his own Conscience and Soul up-brai'd him for the Villany and makes his Venetian interrupt him for making an English Monarch but a Duke of Venice tho the Doctor the Pontaeus of the people that sucks up all the Poyson of Rebellion like that of Toads only for the Tryal of his Skill and then thinks to cheat the Devil with an Antidote He politickly opines however that he has made him too Absolute if ever there were a medley of more Malitious Villains ãâã to Libel a Government I 'll forfeit my Neck too it as well as they Heaven and Hell must be reconcil'd which without a Recantation will be so for their Confusion before these their Contradictory defamations can be made consistent But in this the Politick Rebels agree to secure an Odium upon our Monarchy in both extreams and making the most opposite Objections serve for one and the same purpose it 's absoluteness and Tyranny must make it all Bug-bear formidable frightful at the same time that their holding the Reins shall render it all Hobby-Horse Ridiculous and Contemptible Secondly I 'll shew that this their confounded principle of perfect Confusion is not only against the Fundamental Law of the Land but against the sense of every Law that ever was made in it Every preamble of an Act and that ofevery Proviso there runs with A Be it Enacted by the Kings most Excellent Majesty by and with the CONSENT of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons in the present Parliament Assembled And then let any sober person Judge where lies the Soveraignty would it be suffer'd to be thus exprest were they not satisfy'd they were not all Soveraigns or if they were ought it not according to this Rebel and Republican run We the King Lords and Commons Enact but I 'll let him know how and what the Libertine would again have that Enacting part of an Act of Parliament to be tho the Politick Knave fear'd it was too soon yet to declare plainly for an Usurpation viz. Be it Enacted and ordained by his Highness the Lord Protector Or the Parliament of England having had good Experience of the Affection of the people to this present Government by their ready Assistance in the defence thereof against Charles Stewart Son of the Lale Tyrant and
they think fit And also not to dissolve them till all their Petitions were answered that is till they are willing to be gone But then will I defie the Gentleman to shew me the difference between this their desired Parliament and a Perpetual sitting do not these industrious Endeavours for such a perpetuity of them plainly tell us 't is that 's the only thing they want and that they are taught experimentally that that alone run the three Kingdoms into absolute Rebellion and ruined the best of Kings and can as certainly compass the Destruction of the present But I 'll tell the lump of Contradiction first the words of our greatest Lawyer and then his own Cooke says none can begin continue or dissolve a Parliament but by the Kings Authority Himself says that which is undoubtedly the Kings Right is to call and dissolve Parliaments 'T is impertinent to labour to contradict that which he here so plainly confutes himself the Statesman being so big with his Treasonable Notions so full of his Faction that his Memory fails him makes him forget his own Maxims and makes his subsequent Pages wrangle with the Concessions of those that went before His next Observation is a perfect Comment upon his Text that had in it implicit Treason before he tells us in Justification of the Barons Wars which all our Historians represent as a perfect Rebellion That the Peers were fain to use their Power and can he tell me by what Law Subjects are impowred to Rebel He calls it arming of their Vassals for the defence of the Government That Bill by which they would have associated of late that I confess had it past into Act would have made Rebellion Statutable And they themselves must indeed have had the Sovereign power when they had gotten their Sovereign to suffer himself to be sworn out of his Supremacy they might well have armed their Vassals then when they had got his Majesties leave to commence Rebels and Traytors for the Protection of his Person and the Preservation of his Crown and Dignity But these humble Boons were no more ãâã that Bill must have begged and these kind Concessions no more than was expected from the Grant of a King so Gracious a Petition that might well have been answered like that of Bathsheba's by bidding them ask the Kingdom also The Barons standing in open defiance to the Laws tho they stood up too so much for them He calls the Peers keeping their Greatness and this is the Sovereign Power the Rebel would have them again set up for to be great in their Arms as well as Quality and demand with the Sword again the Prerogative of their Kings and the grant of the Regalia which in their preposterous Appellations was abused with the pretence of priviledge and right and which the force of the Field can soon make of the greatest ãâã and wrong But in the very next Page 't is expounded clearly what has may and must be done in such Conjunctions that is to your Arms. He tells us after they had obtained the framing of their Charters and I think they were as much as the most condescending Monarchs could grant or the most mutinous malecontents require Then arose another grievance ãâã and ãâã for This was the Intermission of Parliaments which could not be called but by the Prince and he not doing it they ceast for some years to be Assembled if this had not been speedily remedied The provoking Rebel for certainly he is as much so that Animates a Rebellion as he that is actually engaged in it and is by Law so declared tells us the Barons must have put on their Armour again and the brisk Assertors of their Rights not have acquiesc'd in this Omission that ruined the Foundations of the Government After all the kind Concessions of the Prince the putting him upon that which was the taking away of the very remains of Royalty puts me in mind of one of our late Expressions of a popular Representative that could declare in open Assembly as attested by some of the very Members of it that tho this their Bill of Exclusion were past which was more we see than the most mildest Monarch could grant or even our House of Peers sure the better part of our Nation could in Modesty require yet still there was more work to be done and a Reformation to be made in the Church as well as the State The Patriot was prepared to lanch out in such kind of Extravagancies and told the truth of the Plot before his time had not calmer Heads interposed and cool'd his hot one into common Sense several of the Speeches spoken in Parliament for which its Publisher deserves to be Pillor'd if not Authentic and True and brought before them on his Knees at least for his Presumption if they are It being here as Criminal to Print Truths at all times without an Imprimatur as 't is to tell it without leave even inseveral of those Speeches Publisht in that Paper I reflected on in the beginning where the Pedantick Author has exposed me in the Tail of his History that lookt like the Narrative of a Rump There are as bold Expressions of as dangerous Designs for at the end of one of their Harangues the beginning of which is only marked with R.M. and its Author may be loth to let any more Letters of his Name to be known you have these following Lines If at the same time we endeavour to secure our selves against Popery we do not also do something to prevent Arbitrary Power it will be to little purpose I think nothing can prevent that better than frequent Parliaments and therefore I humbly move that a Bill for securing frequent Parliaments be taken into Consideration can any thing be more Expressive than that the Bill so much clamour'd for was only the burden of the Song and that the Ballad it self must have been all to the Tune of 41. when Arbitrary Power never ceased its Cry till the Parliament was made Frequent its Frequency never sufficient till standing and perpetual which proyed too as dangerous as a standing Army never restless till it had really raised one too and the Kings Head from his Shoulders and can these worst of Criminals make it a Crime to make the Nation fearful of Parliaments when there are such Speech-Makers in it I shall to such Accusers Faces defend them to be formidable not out of any Apprehension of fear for my self for whenever such a Seditious Senate their Commons become dangerous again to good Subjects the safety of the Government must be but in as bad Condition But it may well terrify even a Crown'd Head and frighten him from their Frequency when some of their most popular Members have been since found in an actual Conspiracy for pâlling the Crown ãâ¦ã ãâ¦ã suffered publickly for Traytors Sir G. H. I do agree a Bill for Banishing Papists may do well But
I hope if you Banish the Men you 'll Banish some Women too consider how to prevent the Royal Family marrying Popish Women No man can doubt but the Protestant Interest has been much praejudiced by his Majesties marrying a Princess of that Religion Popish Instruments having ãâã themselves under her Protection The Country Gentleman wanted the Civilities of the Court being a declared Enemy to all Ladies but this shows plain their aims were beyond that of the Duke and that it was the Sense of some of the House the Queen was in the Plot as well as the Opinion and Asseveration of Oats his Oath against his exprest Testimony given before Sir E. H. Have we not ordered several good Bills to be brought in for the securing us against Arbitrary Power and shall we now lay aside all those and be content with the Exclusion Bill only which I think will be worth nothing unless you can get more and what some of those more are is explain ed in the next Oration to it W. G. I do admire no body does take notice of ãâã standing Army which if not ãâ¦ã such a Number as may be but convenient for Guards and limited as they may not be encreased All your Laws signify nothing the words of that Hellish Association only differ thus when they swear more modestly only to endeavour entirely to disband all such Mercenary Forces as are kept up in and about the City of LONDON These are some of the very Words as our Author relates them as they were spoken in his House of Commons I do them only that Justice that this Historian has done to their Honours or they to themselves so if these accounts are Authentick tho I remember when dangerous to Question even the Authority of an unlicensed piece of Sedition then ãâã see that many of our late malecontents of the Commons as ' well as our Plato's Rebellious Barons were not like to be contented any more with our Kings granting them all the security themselves could ask for their Religion then these Imperious Lords were after all their Liberties were fortyfied with an extorted Charter and made as firm as Fate ãâã their foresight could provide But that nothing would satisfy unless both lopt off the best Limb of their Prerogative and allowed them to have Parliaments without Intermission or at least frequent enough for an Usurpation of all the Power that is Regal for as the Doctor of Sedition observes upon the Kings being allowed to Call and Dissolve them That our Liberties and Rights signify just nothing So might ãâã this politick Pis-pot have remarked That when once it comes to the Power of the People to summon themselves or sit so long a Season till their own Order shall determine the Session that truly their Venetian Doeg would be a Prince to the Monarch of Great Britain and we should soon have less left of a King in England than such implacable Republicans have of Loyalty for I am sure we must in reason have better Ground to dread those dangers and utter Subversion of the State from their too much sitting that has been experienced than they for that panick fear of Tyranny from their ãâã so often Dissolved which they never yet felt But to see the boldness of such Villains for encouraging an Insurrection The briskness of their Barons that rebelled for a Charter and frequent Parliaments was most providentially brought upon the Stage when they knew they had forfeited most of their own by their Faction and made their House of Commons from their obstinate proceedings not likely to be soon summoned when once Dissolved so that here was a plain downright Encouragement of a resolute Rebellion as Occasion should serve and letting the People know they must put on their Armour as well as the Barons and be as brisk upon Intermission of Parliaments How far this good Exhortation encouraged an Assassination of our Sovereign and the succeeding Plot may be gathered from their attempts to put it in Execution and for which both Author and Publisher Merit full as well the Fate of those that dyed for the practising those Principles that they the more primitive Traytors had instill'd In short to insist no longer on this black Topick of plain Treason With what Faith and ãâã with what Face and Countenance can he call that perfect Conspiracy of a parcel of Faithless Peers a Defence of the Government that for almost forty Years laid the Land all in Blood and with their Witchcraft their sorceries of Rebellion that briskness as he calls it of putting on their Armour made it imitate an AEgypts Plague and Anticipate the very Judgments of the Almighty by purpling her Rivers with the Slain can the Defence of a Kingdom consist with its Destruction or those be said to stand up for their Country that invited an Invader and swore Allegiance to Lewis a Frenchman against him that was their Liege Lord I am sure this was making over their Faith to a Foreigner and many may think it as much to bee condemned as that of their King his Crown to a Saracen especially when that by some Historians is doubted but their falsehood's confirmed by all Then was our England like to have been truly France which they now but so vainly Fear In the next place he is pleased to grant the Militia to be in his Majesty's Power But 't is only until such a sort of Rebels have strength enough to take it out for he tells us the Militia being given but for an Execution of the Law if it be mis-imployed by him to subvert it 't is a Violation of the Trust and making that power unlawful in the Execution And that which shall violate this Trust has he reduced to three of the most Villanous Instances that the most Excrable Rebel could invent or the most bloody Miscreant concelve the Murder of three Kings by their Barbarous and Rebellious Subjects And in all three their strength and Militia were first taken away and then their Lives first he tels us Edward the second forfeited his Executive Power of the Militia In misapplying his revenue to Courtiers and Sycophants Richard the Second for ãâã Worthless People to the greatest places And Charles the First in the Case of Ship Money can now the most virulent Democraticks hug such a piece without Horrour at its Inhumanity or the vilest of the Faction preserve it from the Flames can those popular Parliamentarians and the most mutinous of all our murmering Members of whom my self have known some that could Countenance this very Book can they here defend iusinuated Treason when Stanley dyed for a more Innocent Innuendo but if Faction has forc't from their Souls the poor remains of Reason will Humane Nature permit such precedents to prevail that terminated in the miserable Murder of as many Monarchs 'T is remarkable and 't is what I remember these very Papers were Publish'd near about one of their late Sessions
wherein they were nibbling again at the Milittia and could so merciless a Miscreant be put in the pocket of a Member of Parliament much less then into his Heart and drop from his unadvised Lips can those that come to give their consent for the making Laws be thus Ignorant of those that are already made has not the Military power for above this 500 years been absolutely in the Crown and almost by their Parliament it self declared so in every Reign was it ever taken out but when they took away the Life of their King too was ever his Head protected from Violence when this the Guard of his Crown was gone or can any Hand long sway the Scepter when it wants the Protection of the Sword 1st Edward 3d. Chap 3. The King willeth that no man be charged to Arm himself otherwise than he was wont in the time of his Progenitors Kings of England In H. 7. declared by Stat. All Subjects of the Realm bound to assist the King in his Wars Queen Mary and all her Progenitors acknowledged to have the Power to appoint Commissioners to Muster her Subjects and array as many as they shall think fit The Subjects holding by Serjeantry heretofore all along to serve their Sovereigns in War in the Realm and a particular Act obliging them to go within or without with their King He and only He has the ordering of all the Forts and Holds Ports and Havens of the Kingdom confirmed to this very King and Cook tells us no Subject can build any Fortress Defensible Cook Litt. p. 5. And since some of our late Members of the lower House were so tickled with this Authors soothing them with the Kings Executive Power of War forfeitable I 'll tell them of an Act expressly made in some Sense against their Assuming it and for another Reason too because some mutinous Heads would argue to my Knowledge for their Members comming armed to the Parliament at Oxford and which was actually done too by Colledge and his Crew It was made in Edward the First 's time and expressly declares that in all Parliaments Treatises and other Assemblies every Man should come without Force and Armour and of this the King acquainted the Justices of the Bench and moreover that the Parliament at Westminster had declared that to us belonged straightly to desend Force of Armour and all other Force against our Peace at all times when it shall please us and the Judges were ordered to get it read in the Court and enroll'd And now can it with common Reason or Sense be suggested that the letting Favourites have some of the Treasures of the Kingdom or Courtiers as he calls it the Revenue or the preferring of such Persons as they shall think Worthless and Wicked which with such Villains as himself are commonly the most deserving that this shall be a sufficient violating as he terms it of a Kings Trust to the forfeiture of his Power of putting the Laws in Execution with which the common consent of almost all the Laws and all Ages have invested their King as an absolute ãâã singular Right of the Crown Certainly such an Opinion is as extravagant as Treasonable and could enter into the Head of nothing but a Madman the Heart of none but a Traytor Next we meet with another Assertion as false as Hell and then its clear contrary nothing but the God of Heaven is more True He tells us after having hardly allowed His Majesty a Negative Voice at least as such an Insignificant one as not to be made use of That 't is certain nothing but ãâã of Parliamentary requests produced the Baron's Wars and our last dismal Combustions when I 'll demonstrate to him as plain as a Proposition in Euclid that nothing but their too gracious and unhappy Concessions to their perfidious and ungrateful Subjects made those mighty Monarchs miscarry read but any of our Histories tho pen'd by the most prejudiced and those that ware at best but moderately Popular of our first Civil Wars The Barons Daniel that speaks most commonly as much as the Peoples Case will bear tells us his thoughts of those unhappy Dissentions that neither side got but Misery and Vexation We see that notwithstanding as often as their Charter and Liberties were confirm'd notwithstanding all the Concessions of those two yielding Monarchs still more was demanded The Charter in Henry the Third's was no sooner several times confirmed in one year but in the next presently they fell upon his Justiciary Hugo de Burg. and he must be removed or they threaten to do it with the Sword Then the poor Prince complies and sends him to the Tower Next the Bishop of Winchester is as great a grievance as the Chies Justice was before for bringing in the Pictavians and unless all those are put from him they tell him plainly they 'll depose him from his Kingdom and create a new The Bishop is sent away and those Pictavians expelled but still were there more grievances and assoon as one was removed be sure another would be found out and the true perfect Occasion of those Intestine Broils was rather the Concession ãâã King Henry in his Youth they having been used with so much Complyance in his Minority that being emboldened afterward with Age he grew too much a Soveraign to be overaw'd or overreach't by his Subjects and they having been accustom'd not to be oppos'd in their encroachments on the Crown which they had been long Habituated to he being Crown'd an Infant and they having the fresh Precedent before them with what arrogance they us'd his Father John upon any the least denyal betook themselves to the Sword for this you 'l find if Occurrences of those Times be but Impartially examin'd and for his Second Instance of our late Kings time his abominable Falsehood so far from Truth that not only Narrative and Record but the very Memory of man can give him the Lye did he not grant them these very Villains insolent demand Parliaments at last without Intermission was there not a Triennial one first Insolently demanded and as Graciously consented to was not that as ungratefully thought insufficient and nothing could satisfy till unhappily settl'd during the pleasure of the two Houses an Act of Concession which the ãâã ãâã Prince could himself call as ãâã it was unparallel'd by any of his Predecessors nothing but their Ingratitude could equal so much goodness and only for bettering of theirs the Wretches ãâã his own affairs should be the worse what punishment would the Law have found for such Monsters of Ingratitude that punisht once all Common Offenders in it with Death were not his Gracious Answers at last to the Propositions so full of Concession that some of the Cannibals that thirsted for his Blood could Vote it a Ground for the House to proceed upon for Peace Lastly had he not granted to his Inveterate Foes whose Necks were forfeited to the
Gibbet the Heads of some of his best Friends till he had none left to dispose of but his own and that at the last must be brought to the Block And can such an impudent Daemon the very spawn of the Father of Lyes thus confidently now declare that obstinacy Denyal in the late King was his Ruin but his misery and misfortune has unhappily left tho for us happy could a Nation be said so under such a loss such Politicks written in his Blood that all those of such Rebels and Republicans can never undermine In the next place the State Empirick comes upon the Stage and that only to vilify our Court of Chancery which with all Persons that can but distinguish Equity from the Rigour of the Law must-be had in Estimation the greatest Objection his utmost Malice can asperse it with is only That it may be Corrupted and so may the best of things whose Corruption is the worst There may be Roguery in Clerks he thinks in entering Rules and so their may be more Dangerous Knaves among Doctors that can prescribe a dose of Sublimate for Mercurius dulcis and such a Villany in his Art is sure more fatal then the worst that can occur in their faculty that at the worst can but bereave you and that long first of your Estate This Ruffian in a Moment robs you of your Life and I should chuse to live a little in the World tho a Beggar than be sent out like a Rat. The Ridiculousness of his Objections can't be answer'd but with such Merry ones as I make But to let him know I can defend the Constitution of the Court in Good Earnest so far is it from Obstructing his right by the Common-Law as he Ignorantly Objects that it 's a ãâã Commonly never to relieve him here when he can have his Remedy there but always in Justice and Equity renders him that right which the Rigour of the rest many times forecludes him off where the Common can't Compel a man to an agreement this will enforce it Recoveries of Legacies Performance of Wills otherwise Irrevocable and not to be Compel'd shall be obtain'd here It enforces the Husband to give the Wife Alimony and perhaps the Doctor dislikes it for that and certainly this must be a greater Solaecism than he can suggest in contradiction to the Court that a Court of meer Equity to moderate the Rigour of the Common Law should Injure their Petition of Right or Invade the Liberty of Magna Charta But that which is more Ridiculous and False is his Foolish fear of Injustice from such a single Judge sitting in the Judicatory and his Impudent assertion that never any Country in the World had such a way of Judging For the first should we not consider the prudence and Integrity of that Honourable Person that presides in it at present whose Equitable determinations were sufficient to supersede and silence such a ãâã suggestion it is morally impossible there to meet with Injustice where nothing is decreed but upon a Fair and Full Examination of Witnesses and the Judges hearing what can be alleaged by Counsel on both sides All the Panick fear that Alarms him is that the Prince for such is the Malice of a Republican that nothing can be thought Wicked enough for a King may put in a Person that may Act against Right and Reason carried away by Passion and Prejudice and at best but a Tool for the State If the possibility of such vain suggestions shall prevail for an Extirpation of an Officer of Justice Co-oeval if not before the Conquest and still Recorded for his just Administration I will allow what can't well be granted this Emperick to pass for a Politician and the same Monumental Folly will serve for as Ridiculous Objections against all other Courts of Judicature where the King has the power of placeing in it whom he pleases and they all Subject to the Passions and Infirmity that any single person and in their Breast too lying all the Decisions of any Controverted Law But that such a single Judge sitting in Judicature such a Tribunal is scarce in any Country of the World is most absolutely FALSE the Civil the Law of Nations and that of almost all the Civiliz'd part of the World has no other Method in deciding Civil causes Their Libels are but Bills of Plaint as in this the Subpaena requires the Defendant's appearance at a certain day in Court by them a Day in Court is assign'd him to Answer their Replications Exceptions here are Answer and Demurrer They pronounce Contumax and Ex-communicate Here goes out Attachment and Commission of Rebellion through the whole process the same Practise observ'd the same Rules as in all Forreign Courts of Civil Judicature where the Decretum finale or Sententia Definitiva is in the sole Breast of a single Person as our Common Decres in Chancery But what is the Law of all Nations will be soon Rebelliously Condemn'd by those that can't bear with our own and are so truly Licentious that they would live without any But for that Justice of the Venetians which he extols so much in opposition to our own his Republican Soul would be loth to venture there it 's Human Body notwithstanding it's Equal Distributive Justice which he would make Arithmetical too by makeing it so exactly proportionable to the Crime should he be found there as great a Criminal against that State as his Publisht Treasons have here render'd him to our own he would hardly come to know his Fault there till he came to feel the punishment and would find a Banditi with them to make the best Executioner 't is there Sedition and the Defamation of the Government is punisht assoon as Information is receiv'd and that with nothing less than Death and commonly drowning no Tryal per Testes and Examinants but Ferry'd away in one of their Gondola's which must prove your Infernal Boat too and the first sight of your Sin is with that of a Confessor and a Hangman and thesesure must be most Malicious Inveterate Villains that can commend such Judicatures that are rather shambles for Butchery and Murder before those of their own Nation where a Penny property can't be taken away without a Tryal per pares and the Law much less their Life But if our Republican when he commends so much the Justice of that State means only what is distributed in their Decemviral Council which is the Supream let him for a Confirmation of his Error and Folly Consult only the Case of Antonio Foscarini one of their own Senate whom upon the bare Testimony of too profligate Russians that he held correspondence with the Spanish Embassador which with any forreign one for a Senator is their Death by the Law without any Collateral or Circumstantial Proof without seeing his Accusers was seiz'd mussl'd up clapt in a dark Dungeon and in a few days sentenc'd to be strangl'd and which
Arms and the having a Guard for their house was offer'd at now when nothing but their King was again in danger and can the retrieving the Memory of those immediate Forrunners of our first Misfortunes be made a Crime And the most Flagitious Villains concern'd in it no way Criminal can such a Senate sit till it has Murder'd a King and shall not an experienc'd King secure himself from such a Seditious Senate that the design of the whole House of late was to raise a Rebellion is utterly false but that some of the late Members have actually design'd it since is Certainly true 't is attested in their Sufferings and Seal'd in their Blood The Honour of that Assembly may be no way Tainted tho both Blood and Issue of some that did sit in it is since at present so by Law a man of Common Sense can apprehend the Constitution of a Body Politick to be one thing and the Constituent Members another and this without the help of Metaphysicks or Abstraction I am Sworn besides that Natural affection I still shall have for my Soveraign to be Faithful to my Liege Lord and should I fail in my Faith I should be for-sworn I know the privilege of having a Parliament is the Interest of every Subject and should I contend against that I should be a Fool but because there is a necessity of obeying your King does the same Obligation tye you to an Vsurper A Parliament is a great Privilege to a Nation but not so when it Vsurps all sorts of Privileges that you saw took away it's head lay'd the Land of it all in BLOOD I 'll maintain with my last Breath that a Parliament is the Subjects Birth-right but God forbid we should be Born to all sort of Parliaments that would make us Traytors by a Law and we have many besides what in this Kings were declar'd by Statute Treasonable But to return to what is the Blackest piece of Treason our PLATO was the Glorious Martyr the First aggressor too or did they first seize his Militia when they could not have it by Consent was the withdrawing of the King Treason to his Parliament or were the Parliament the Traytors that made him to withdraw did the King Rebel against his own Garrison at Hull or was Hotham the Rebel that kept out his King let even prejudice here determine what the worst of Malice can suggest Does Matchiavel he cites countenance the Licentiousness of the People or rather allow too much Liberty to his Prince and make an Hero of a Tyrant an Agathocles and Grotius whom he Libels as much when he makes him to favour a Rebellion and who has expresly Condemn'd our own After this Re-publican like a Roman Velite has held our Monarchy his Foe in play all in the front of the Book he begins to rout it entirely when he comes up with the Body to the Battle and the Rear there he tells us plainly the Sweetness the profitableness of a Common-wealth that only 't is not to be set up during these Circumstances that is 't is too soon to Rebel yet and he has found out better expedients the King has too much Power the Presidents of John and Henry the Third are trumpt up again for being Compell'd to give it away the Murder of Edward and Richard the Second at least the Deposition of which that is an absolute Consequence is two or three times again Recommended for Instruction and now he tells the Parliament plainly what Branches of the Praerogative they must insist upon Power of making War and Peace Treaties and Allyances which the Kings wicked Ministers have made Destructive to the Interest of our English Nation You have here the best of Kings in effect tho apply'd to the Courtiers of which I think he must be the Chief resembl'd to the very Rebel that Vsurpt upon his Crown as if it were design'd by him as well as a Cromwel that had no right to maintain himself in the Throne but the Power of the Sword to Crave aid from FRANCE to keep Vnder his People of ENGLAND The Militia must be granted them because out of Parliament or Session it being in his hand they cannot raise the County Bands nor those of the City to Guard themselves that some irusty Members whom if the King pleases may take care of his Houshold that a Parliament meet of Course at a certain Day at the usual place without Writ or Summons and that because Peers depend so much upon the will of their Prince for Creation they should never be made but by Act of Parliament I appeal to the most moderate mild Soul Living whether any single Line of all this absolute Treason has not of late almost since the Publication of this Damnable piece been ãâã to be put in Execution was not the Haereditary Discent struck at in the Duke was not the Militia offer'd at in some of their Votes Frequency of Parliaments which would have been as good as without intermission Clamour'd for in some of their Speeches the Nomination of some of the Officers of Power by the People And lastly was it not agreed to meet without Writ and Summons when the Major part of Members were to be conven'd after Dissolution and can any still say that an alteration of the Government was never design'd by those that were then so busily concern'd and when some of the most popular and Active have been since Actually Convicted for the Compassing all this by the Blood of their King which they dispair'd of obtaining from his Le Roy vult But 't is to be hop'd that the God of Heaven who has brought to Light the Darkness even of Hell has so much illuminated Peoples understanding as well as Eyes that the next Assembly that shall constitute this Politick Body truly Honourable adsolutely Necessary in it's Constitution will be such as will transcend what has been one of their best Presidents An healing one and that of those wounds such ãâã and Doctors have scarifi'd instead of clos'd and with a merited Vote Condemn such Devils to their own Element the Fire that have so Seditiously set three Kingdoms in a Flame But tho this refin'd Statesman this polisht piece of the most accomplisht Treason may perhaps value himself upon the Product and Invention of his own Villany proud of the being reputed a witty Republican whose greatest Glory here is to be at the best but an Ingenious Rebel yet his very Reputation tho it be but in his Roguery must sink too When you consider what I shall soon satisfy any sober Person in any Soul that has but so much Sense as to distinguish an Author from a Plagiary a Man of Honesty from a Thief that even the very Notions and Principles he Prints for the establishing this Government were formerly Publisht and proposed by the very Villains that actually subverted it not one Expedient in all his Politicks but what was by sad
Experience the very Propositions of declar'd Traytors The Blessed Wit would rob the Records of an old Rebellion and that only to put in for an Inventor of a new the worst of Felons and in Forreign parts punisht as the greatest that Steals his Fellow from the Gibbet His Book has not only borrowed all from Harrington I 'll allow it him with all my Heart and that by what follows you may find A Parallel between the Propositions sent the late King by the Rebel Parliament and the Rebellious Proposals of our Plato Redivivus PARLIAMENT'S PLATO'S 1. That all the Kings Privy Council great Officers and Ministers of State may be put out excepting such as the Parliament shall approve and to assign them an Oath 1. His Majesties Power to nominate and appoint as he pleases all the Officers of the Kingdom one of the Powers in the Crown that hinder the Execution of the Laws Plat. p. 239. why may we not begin by removing all his Majesties present Council by Parliament Page 232. 2. That all Affairs of State be managed by the Parliament except such Matters as are by them transferred to their Privy Council 2. That his Majesty exercise the Four great Magnalia of Government with the consent of Four several Councils appointed for that end the Councils to be named in Parliament Page 240 241. 3. That all great Officers of the Kingdom be chosen by Parliaments and their Approbation 3. That the Election of the great Officers be by those Councils and those Councils to be chosen by the Parliament p. 258 259. 4. If any place fall void in the Interval of Parliament the Major part of this Council to chuse one to be confirmed at the next Session of Parliament 4. Preserving to themselves the Approbation of the great Officers as Chancellor Judges Generals of the Army p. ibid. 5. To reform Church Government as the Parliament shall advise to concur with the People in depriving the Bishops of their Votes 5. That the Clergy quatenus such had and will have a share in the Sovereignty and Inferiour Courts in their own Power called Ecclesiastical this is and will ever be a Solaecism in Government p. 178. 6. Marriages and Allyances to be concluded in Parliament 6. The Kings absolute Power of making War and Peace Treatises and Allyances one of the Powers in the Crown that binder our Happiness and Settlemene p. 327. 7. To settle the Militia as the Parliament have ordered it 7. The Kings disposing and ordering the Militia one of the Powers in the Crown that hinders our Happiness p. 239. 8. All Forts and Castles to be in the disposal of the Parliament 8. The King enjoying the Power of garrisoning and fortifying Places one of the Powers that binder our Happiness ibid. 9. To imploy only such People about him as the Parliament might confide in 9. That those of the Four Councils appointed by Parliament if his Majesty pleases to have the ordering his oeconomy and Houshold c. pag. 242. 10. No Peer hereafter to be made to sit in Parliament without their consent 10. That for the future no Peer shall be made but by Act of Parliament pag 252. These made the Substance of those Seditious Propositions that they prest upon the poor Prince with which they would have forc't our Charles the First to the Misfortune and Fate of a Richard the Second the most aggravated Misery that can befal a Monarch the deposing of himself These were they that filled their Parliament Papers and Proposals to their King at York the most Insolent that could be proposed surely to a Prince that was then in a Condition more likely to demand with Arms what he was denied against Law whom they might expect to see as they did soon after at the Head of good Souldiers as well as in the Hearts of Loyal Subjects such Insolencies as would have been Insufferable had they tryed and gained what was afterward so unhappily gotten that unlucky Fortune of the Day had they then what their Prosperous Villany did at last effect made their Mighty Monarch their Peoples Slave and a meer Captive of a King Carisbrook and the Isle of Wight could not have born with of much Indignity as was offered to him here when even at Nottingham and York their Non Addresses when his Person was in the Castle were less hard than such an Address when his Standard was in the Field These were those that provok't even the Mildest Prince to Protest in some rage That if he were their Prisoner he would never stoop so low These were those by which he must have made Himself what our Republican would have him now made of a King of England but a Duke of Venice and with These did they never cease to perplex his unshaken Heart his unmoved Soul continually upon all their Messages Treatises and Remonstrances and Petitions These still the Subjects of their demands when their Commissioners were sent to Oxford after their Newbury Battle these when the perfidious Scot had gotten him in their Power and Hands at Newark and New-Castle but bandied then only for the better buying of their King whom his own Country as basely sold then offered rather to make matter of delaying War then truly design'd for Peace that there might be somewhat in Agitation till the Summ was agreed upon and his Majesty diverted with the small Hopes of being at last a Titular King while they were selling him to Foreigners for an absolute Slave Lastly with these did they Plague and Pester the Poor Prince when they had made him a perfect Prisoner at Hampton Court and how well these Proposals of the late Rebels agree with the Politicks of this present Republican I 'll submit even to the most partial Person of the Party upon the perusal of this Parallel And what could be the design then at such a Season of Publishing such a piece of our Mutinous Members hugging in their Hearts and applauding with their Tongues Printed and Publisht Treason But that what was offered in their Plato was once presented in Parliament that the Politick Rebel could be pickt even out of the Journals of their House That they had Presidents there too for a Common Wealth as well as in Starkey's Shop and hoped to see her Revive again by Vote as well as by Book But these blessed Expedients tho but proposed out of the Press are the more Pernicious at the same time its Publisher makes them pertinent to what I have here applyed them the Propositions of a Parliament for he tells us he would not have them wrested from his Majesty but that he be petitioned to part with them very seasonably suggested I confess when we were so full of petitioning He would not have it effected by the Power of the Sword the Politician it seems is mightily for Peace and the Preservation of his Majesties Person but would only have them raise at first a civil War upon his Soul use the Son a
incorporated to the King himself His true Treasurers and the most profitable Instruments of the State And without doubt this great part they had always in Publick administrations made them of old so much esteem'd that in all Rolls and Acts of State they were mention'd with so much reverence and respect certainly had they been no constitution allow'd of by the Fundamental Laws of our Land they would never have been transmitted to posterity with such veneration to their Memories and that too through every Reign and all the Records of Time let them have but the benefit and priviledge of a Common Burrough and let their President an Office as old as King John's Time and that by Letters pattents but have as fair play as one of their Port-Reevs prescription would incorporate them into the Government as well as entitle those to their Franchises 'T is an absolute Contradiction to Imagin that Rolls then the very Parliaments Acts or Opinions in Transcript should have recorded them so Honourably for their Publick Administration were they not allow'd by the people so much as to be Ministers for the Publick good and such Honour was given them too by our Ancestors such Semblance of Soveraignty to their Persons that their Houses had in some sense the self-same privilege of the very Kings Palace and Verge wherein if a blow was given it was punisht with a Fine the loss of a good Summ of Money as in the other of a Hand And is it not at present Treason to destroy them and can Absurdity it self imagin that the Laws which are made always by those that Govern would make such provisions for those that were no part of the Government And lastly to prove this proposition of our Republican but a Rebels Plot and a fair progress towards a Rebellion I 'll shew this presumptious projector how vainly he presumes upon his parts and Invention that he is a double Plagiary not only borrow'd this ãâã project against the present Privy Council from these proposals of our Seditious Senate in England but his very Quarantia of Venice was set up long before he could for an Author by those Zealots that were so resolutely resolv'd to Rebel in Scotland and he shall see those Daemagogues too those Devils of Sedition look't upon it even then as a praeparatory project and the best Expedient for their Invading of the Kingdom and the Crown Their Edenburgh their Metroprolis as well as ours here was then the Seat of Sedition so truly great that it's Faction and Villany was Commensurate even with it's very Walls And those too when Casually fallen were not suffer'd to be built as if they would have let the World known by praediction their Ominous Treason was to extend further 't was here that the Sycophants at the same time they pretended so much for their Kings preservation that they protested against the pious Prince's Proclamation only for the dispersing of that dangerous Rabble that seem'd to denounce with an Omen what too fatally follow'd his Death and Destruction his Majesties sincerity to them and their Religion was repeated in it often with assurances but what was as Sincerely promis'd from a King by these Monsters of the People was as Rebelliously Ridicul'd with scorn and derision and that the Government might be satisfy'd with a sure report of their Sedition they made those Heralds that proclaim'd their Princes pleasure to witness how much it displeas'd his Rebel Subjects and in defiance to their very Faces read their own Protestation Big thus with Rebellion and Labouring with their teeming Treason at last they are fairly deliver'd of the same Rebel Brat this Republican would adop't for his own a QVARANTIA they Covenant and agree and 't was time to Vnite for a Justification of those Villanies which nought but a Combination could defend for erecting four principal Tables and 't was time too to set up their own Councils when they had so Seditiously resisted their Kings To pursue the Contempt of this Proclamation which by his Majesties Council and Command was publish't for a further Violation of the Regal Authority they set up this truly Popular the first of their four Councels to consist of their Nobility the second of the Gentry the third of their Burgesses and the fourth of their Ministry and the Decrees of these their principal and general Tables as they call'd them as if as Universally to be receiv'd as Moses his Two of Stone what they did and was approv'd of by the General one the Choice Flow'r of all the Four was to be forc't as the Peoples Law but far I am sure from the Fundamental one of the Land from this their Rebellious assuming of the Soveraignty in their pretended Councils as they call'd them too but in truth a Convention of Conspirators proceeded presently the Renewing of their Negative Confession their Band their Covenant impos'd on all sorts of People with artiside force and Blood it self And can a Test now establish't by Authority and Law be look't upon an Imposition even by those that impos'd Oaths Vnlawful and Rebel'd against both it being by them expressly declar'd in two several Acts that all Leagues of Subjects amongst themselves without their Princes Privity to be Sedition and their Authors and Abetters to be punish't as movers of such And what did this Venetian Government terminate in in Scotland but a plain Confederacy to confound all and tho the Civil and Courteous contriver of our Ruin and Subversion minces the matter with making his Majesty to Exercise his four Magnalia with the consent of these four Councils 't would puzzle his Politicks to tell me the distinction between them and those principal Tables of the Scot what should confine them from Confederating against their King instead of Consulting for him what would signifie his Majesties having a president among those of his own placeing when every one of them would be their own Masters and out of his power to displace what should hinder those from protesting with their old Rebellious Assembly in Scotland against all their Kings desires intentions and Inclinations for the publick good while they presume their own Maxims the wisest and their measures the best and to tell us that these are to give Account and to be answerable to such a Parliament who chuses them is to say a Sidney is the best Judge of the Misdemeanor of a Nevil most qualifi'd to answer his Quaere whether this project be not a better Expedient than the Justitia of Arrogan or the Spartan Ephori or to tell us one that has suffer'd for Treason to a Monarchy is the fittest to Try him that would betray it to a Common-wealth The second Proposition in the Parallel is that Affairs of State be managed by the Parliament or by such Councils as they shall appoint The true Spirit the Life the Soul of Sedition that informes and animates the whole Body of the Faction speakes here the
Dictates of this Daemon this Devil of a Republick that has possest the Nation for this five years with greater Phrensy then e're he did before the Restoration when by the very Finger of God he was first ca lt out and would now return too with more worse than himself only because he finds it swept and garnisht For I defie the most diligent Perusers of the most pernicious Libels that were Printed in the most Pestilent time when Treason was Epidemick and spread as the Plague it self more than once did and that in their Mighty Babylon their Metropolis too I challenge even those to shew me so much Penn'd even then to persuade the setting up a Republick as has so lately been Published in this very piece His Majesty upon the presenting these their Proposals I have parralleld told them they designed him for a Duke of Venice and that they only dared to do when they had bid him defyance to his Face and made him fly for refuge to his Friends when they had a fund for Rebellion in the City A General and an Army in the Field but here we have a single Republican declaring expressly for the good Government of the Venetian Arraigning of our Monarchy condemning of our Courts reforming of our Councils only to set up their Republick for the framing their Decemviral the constituting their Quarantia the making every Member of Parliament but a Noble Man of Venice and his Mighty Prince that presides in it by Law as a Principal Head but a plain puny Doeg and all this at a time the Government stood firm upon its Foundations and the best of Basis its Fundamental Law to what an height of exalted Insolence was the very Soul of Sedition then aspired to to suffer such a Serpent to see the Light that hist at the sight of a Soveraign and spit its Venom in the very Face of Majesty And whatever Recommendation this virulent Republican gives us of the Venetian Justice he would find sufficient severity sublim'd Cruelty instead of Law distributed to such daring Offenders as should offer at a Monarchy there tho but a mixt and of which they seem to have some necessitated resemblance in their constant creating of a Duke as if there were yet some remains of Royalty left which they could not extirpate and like Nature it self whom all the Art of Man can never expel the Libeller would not be long then without an Halter the Jealous State would soon send him the sight of his Sin and Sentence together and that by the Hands of his Hangman and some little Gondula to Ferry him to the deep No Magna Charta no Petition of Right no privilege of a Tryal of Peers or even a Plea allowed to the Prisoner and whom with a Praevious Sentence too they many times dispatch assoon as seiz'd And shall a Monarchy here founded upon on its Fundamental Law and that for fifteen hundred years be invaded with impunity by the Pen of every virulent Villain each Factious Fellow that can but handle the Feather of a Goose. I confess when they were arriv'd here to their Acme of Transcendent Villany when Vice had fixt her Pillars here and that in an Ocean too but of Blood when they had washt their Hands even in Insuperable Wickedness and shed that of their Prince when by a Barbarous Rebellion they had subverted thebest of Civil Governments our Monarchy and establisht their own Anarchy a Common Wealth then they might well be so bold as to write their Panegyricks upon their own Usurpation when they were to be paid for it by the Powers instead of Punishment Then they might tell us as indeed they did that the greatest of Crimes was the committing of High Treason against the Majesty of the People That the Romans gave us good Presidents for Rebellion in the turning out of their Tarquins and the Government together that Caesar Usurpt upon the power of the People Marius and Sylla on the Jurisdiction of the Senate Pisistratus turned Tyrant at Athens and Agathocles in Sicily that Cosmus was the first Founder of a Dukedom and a fatal Foe to Florence that Castruccio made himself the Lord of all Luca and oppressed the Liberty of all the Freeborn Subjects of the Land that all our Kings from him they called the Conqueror to the Scottish Tyrant were but the same sort of Usurpers upon the power of the People All this with much more Execrable Treason was Printed Publish'd and Posted through the Kingdom with Approbation of Parliament and which we shall in its proper place represent in its own blackness black as Hell it self the seat of such Seditious Souls full of Anarchy and Confusion But why we should now have so lately left us such daring desparadoes to retrieve to us the same Doctrine to tell us that Affairs of State must be managed by a Parliamentary that is in their own Phraseology a meer popular Power could proceed certainly from nothing but the deepest the most dangerous Corruption of the Times from the desperate Condition of a Government ready to be undermined by Treachery Plot and Machination brought so low that it did not dare to defend it self and its boldest Assertors so far frightened into a dishonest and imprudent sort of Diffidence as to distrust the strength of their own Cause and that was evident too from the sad servile Complyance of some fearful Souls otherwise well affected that seemed to give up their Government like a Game lost that had rather sink then swim against the Tyde But for a more direct Answer to this Proposition we shall shew that Affairs of State must be managed by our Monarch that matter of Fact has prov'd it by Prescription that it is our Kings Prerogative by the Lands Law and his unquestionable Right by the force of Reason For the first 't is evident from History that for above 600. years near a thousand before the Conquest we had Kings that had an Absolute and Soveraign sway over their Subjects as appears from the most Antient Writer of our British History it is apparent that all our Monarchs Britains Saxons and Danes exercis'd unlimited Jurisdiction without having their Affairs Govern'd by any estabisht Council much less a Parliament and that to be prov'd beyond Contradiction from the several Authors that Lived Wrote and were Eye Witnesses of the manner and Constitution of their Government and then sure must be suppos'd to understand that to which they were Subjected from those good Authorities can be easily gather'd that the power of Peace and War was always in the Prince that they were Govern'd by him Arbitrarily and at his Will that he call'd what Councils of whom when and where he pleased so far from being Limited that the most popular Parliamentarians would be loth his present Majesty should prescribe to such an Absoluteness and which nothing but the kind Concessions of some of his Predecessors to their Clamourous
Burgesses elected by themselves but this can't be gathered from Eadmerus the much better Authority who in the Titles and the Stile of near Nine or Ten Councils of his time not so much as mentions them King Stephen what he wanted and was forc't to spare in Taxations which were not then granted by the suffrages of the Common People tho they commonly bear the greatest burden of it tho he did not according to the Power he was then invested with raise great Sums upon his Subjects and the greatest Reason because he could not the Continual Wars having impoverisht them as well as their Prince and it has the proverbial Authority of necessitated Truth That even where it is not to be got the King himself must foregoe his Right yet this mighty Monarch's power was such that Confiscations supplyed what he could not Tax and as our Historian tells us upon light Suggestions not so much as just Suspicions he would seize upon their Goods and as I remember the Bishop of Salisbury's Case in his time confirms But tho the Menace of the threatning King the Text be turned now into the clear Reverse and our Kings Loyns no heavier then the very Finger of some of his Predecessors still we can find those that can preach him down for a Rehoboam or some Son of Nebat that makes Israel to Sin Henry the Second resum'd by his own Act all the Crown Lands that had been sold or given from it by his ãâã and this without being questioned for it much less deposed or murdered whereas when our Charles the First attempted only to resume the Lands of Religious Houses that by special act of the Parliament in Scotland had been settled on the Crown but by Usurpation were shared among the Lords when 't was only to prevent their Scandalous defrauding of the poor Priest and the very box of the poor to keep them from an ãâã and even a cruel Lording it over the poor Peasant in a miserable Vassallage beyond that of our antiquated Villains and when he endeavoured all this only by the very Law of all the Land by an Act of Renovation Legal Process and a Commission for the just surrendring Superiorities and Tyths so unjustly detain'd from the Crown but our modern Occupants of the Kirks Revenue had far less Reverence for the State chose much rather to Rebel against their Prince for being as they would Phrase it Arbitrary than part with the least power over their poor Peasants which themselves exercised even with Tyranny This was the very beginning of the first Tumults in that Factious Kingdom and 't is too much to tell you in what they ended Richard the First had a trick I am sure would not be born with now he pretends very cunningly to have lost his Signet and puts out a Proclamation that whoever would enjoy what he had under the former must come and have it confirmed by the new and so furnisht himself with a fine fund he could fairly sell and pawn his Lands for the Jerusalem Journey and as fouly upon his return resume them without pay And all this the good peaceable Subject could then brook without breaking into Rebellion and a bloody War and as they had just then none of their Great Charter that made afterward their Kings the less so neither had they such Rebellious Barons that could not be contented even with being too Great as they were then far from having granted so gracious a Petition as that of Right so neither you see so ready to Rebel and that only because they could not put upon their Prince the deepest Indignities the greatest wrong And these warrantable proceedings of our Princes whose power in all probability was unconfin'd before the Subjects Charter of Priviledges was confirm'd must needs be boundless when there were yet no Laws to Limit them yet these two Presidents were as impertinently applyed by the Common Hackney Goose quils whose Pens were put upon by the Parliament to scribble Panegyricks upon a Common-wealth to prove all our Kings a Catalogue of Tyrants tho the Presidents they brought from those times were clear Nonsense in the Application and no News to tell us or reproach to them that those Princes were Arbitrary when they had yet given no grants to restrain their Will Here I hope is sufficient Testimony and that too much to Demonstrate that our Kings of old by long Prescription were so far from being guided and governed by a Parliament as our Factious Innovator would have them now that in truth they never had any such Constitution and the People then insisted so little on their own Priviledges that they could not tell what they were and the Princes Prerogative so great that even their property could hardly be called their own But these being but Presidents before their Charters were granted or the Commons came in play tho these preceding Kings might deviate from the common Custom of the Realm in many that some may call irregular Administrations yet the Customs of the Kingdom relating to the Royal Government in all those Reigns were never questioned much less altered they never told their Kinge then as this piece of Sedition does now that their Nobles were to manage their Affairs of State as well as he would have even a Council of Commons We come to consider now whether from the granting them Charters which was done in the next Reign that of King John when the long tugged for Liberties were first allowed or from the Constitution of admitting the Commons to consult which by the greatest Advocates can't be made out handsomely before this Kings time or his Son and Successors who might well be necessitated to Consult the meaner sorts when all the great were in Arms and wisely flatter their Commons into peace when the Lords had rebelled in an open War tho' still good Authorities will not allow them to be called in either of their Reigns not so much as to be mentioned in any of their Councils and that even to the 18 of Edward the First wee 'll see I say now whether from these as they count them the most happy times That blessed Epoche wherein their Kings were first confined down to those which Posterity will blush at the Period of Villany when this Proposition was among the rest proposed whither ever the Parliament pretended unless when they actually rebelled as they did here to manage their King and his Affairs of State The greatest Lawyer and the most Equitable one that lived in this Henry the Thirds time tells us the King has a power and Jurisdiction over all that are in his Kingdom that all are under him that he has not an Equal in the Realm and sure the Project of putting the Parliament upon choosing of his Council for the managing of his Affairs or assuming themselves to manage it certainly would make the Subject have some power over him make him more then Equal or
Proceedings of our old Rebellious Barons in England And the later Rebellion of the late Leaguers in France and the clear conformity of the Proposals of our Parliament and the polticks of this Plato to both I 'll place them in their turn as they succeeded in their time and let them that would prescribe to Treason be proud of the Precedency For the First the Barons being greedy of Rule the Commons of Liberty as a learned Author and * Antiquary le ts us know some of the popular Lords began with the plausible pretext of the Peoples Liberty when to suppress these Troubles and supply the Kings Extremities a Parliament is call'd but such an one as prov'd much to the liking of the Lords and as little meant to relieve their King much less to redress the People The Clamor was of Encroachment upon their Liberty To silence that the Charter is several times confirmed But they finding what a power the Kings Necessities put in their Hands were resolved to supply him with so little that it might well keep their King from being Great they force him to the very sale of his Lands and Jewels for Bread and to turn out of his Palace because not able to sustain himself in it they seised upon Dover his Castle and the Kingdoms Key which was Treason for that account to deliver to a Foreigner and than a Fortiori for a Subject to take made Head against their Soveraign called in French to subdue him Which when they had done in which Actions none more Zealous than the Loyal Londoners for his Destruction what was the Event Why our Historians tell us and what are still the unfortunate Effects of a prosperous Rebellion Murder and Sacrilege and Sword And the Victorious Barons Lorded it like so many Tyrants too till Providence in a more signal Victory restored their Lawful King and the Subject's Liberty As the Baron's Wars began in King John's Time but broke out in a more perfect Rebellion in his Son Henry's so were the seeds of this Civil Dissention sown in the Reign of Charles the Ninth and were fully ripened in the Reign of his Son and that a 3d. Henry too The Nobles here were disgusted and soon made the Commons so too A Parliament there too was thought to remedy those Discontents and that as our Henry's encreas'd the Distemper they told the French too of their Taxes and Impositions and accus'd their King of Misgovernment for imposing them as our Lords combin'd so these Leagued for the redressing of Grievances and were first Aggressors in seising Verdun and Tull two Towns in France as those did Dover and Hull in England their Henry was forc'd to flie from Paris his Principal City His Metropolitan also of Sedition and that by Tumult too And what did it terminate in but in the Murder of their King too The calling in of the Spaniard that was like to inslave the People to a Foreign Yoke and at last weary of the Usurpt Dominion of the Duke of Mayne that had imposed on them a Council of State too the Tyrannous Assembly conven'd by Conspiraors was confusedly Dissolv'd in as much Distraction and Disorder And the recovered Nation return'd to their Lawful Lord. And did not our own late lamentable Distraction Commence in the Reign of King James and put all in Combustion in Charles the First did not they first practise upon his Necessities to which themselves had reduced him and then remonstrated against such Acts as were the very effect of his Necessity encumber'd with a War or rather betrayed into a breach they would not suffer the Father to make Peace and then denyed the Son the supplies of War A Parliament is summoned too here and that serves him just as the two preceding Ones did their Soveraign with Remonstrances of Oppressions For this the petition of Right was granted them as Gracious an Act as that of the great Charter but nothing could serve unless like that too 't was sealed in Blood and for that they began by Degrees to be so Tumultuous till this Prince was forc'd to fly his Capital City and that also as in the others prov'd the Head to the Rebellion that succeeded upon their Petition the War was first began And Hotham sent to surprize Hull as in the two former were Verdun and Dover and now was all in Arms and Blood which ended at last too in that of their King The Scots called in here as in the former the French and Spaniard the People enslaved by those that set up for their Protectors The Council of State set up here as well as in France and the ruin'd Realms never at rest till they had returned to that Soveraignty from which they revolted It is sad even to see the least thing now that looks like a prelude to such a sort of Tragedy The clamors of Sedition still the same Parliaments that are Assembled to redress them Remonstrating against Grievances they never yet felt Subjects Associating against their Prince for his Preservation the draught the Scheam and abstract of the Baron's Combination The French League the Scotch Covenant so far from an Abhorrence of either as to pitch upon a Compound of all three Designs discovered and detected for the seising of strong Holds the Tower instead of an Hull and the Scot invited once more to pass the Tweed for a better booty The Treason of such Practices is never the less because the Providence was so great as to prevent its Execution Had that not interposed the Parallel Lines I am sure would have led us on further but all their draught beyond it must have been Blood A Comparison between the Demands of our English Barons and the Desires of the French Leaguers from whence they have copyed as Counterparts The Propositions of our Parliament and the Proposals of Plato English Barons French Leaguers 1. That the King hath wronged the publick State by taking into his private 1. That the Disposals of Places of Office and Trust in the Kingdom Election the Justice Chancellor and Treasurer and require that they be chosen by the common Council of the Realm Parl. Tent. 22. H. 3. be in the Leaguers vid. Henry the 3d. of France's Answer to their Manifesto who told them 't was against the Prerogative of all his Predecessors 2. That it be ordained that 24 of the most grave and discreet Peers be chosen by the Parliament as Conservators of the Kingdom Baker pag. 8. Ann. D. 1238. Regn. H. 3.22 2. That the number of their Kings Council should be limited to 24. D'avila pag. 341. our Propositions were not to exceed 25. or under 15. 3. That those Conservators be sworn of his Majesties Council and all Strangers removed from it 3. The City of Paris set up a Council of 16. of themselves ãâã their Kings was to admit Persons whom they should chuse 4. That two Justices of the Kings-Bench two Barons of
the God that Governs this and all above and this so communicated remains still Divine whereever it is lodged the Question is reduced to this Whether it appertains to a Multitude as many or a Soveraign Sole whether with their St. Peter 't is seated in the Ordinance of Man or the Powers with St. Paul are ordained of God That this Divine Power and Right is in Kings he has superseded my Labor to prove by letting us know 't is the Opinion of most of our Orthodox Divines and their Sentiments are sufficient to determine the point especially in Matters to be proved from the Bible whose best Explanation one would think must be found amongst those whose Profession it is to expound unless you would imagine the Bishops the better Readers upon the Statute Hunt and his Casuists the most Conversant among the Critiques That this power Divine is placed in the People I 'll shew it is the Opinion both of viiolent Jesuits and the most virulent Phanaticks and their Seditious conspiring in the same sense the most powerful persuasive with me that their Sentiments are Erroneous their Position a Lye Bellarmine tells us God has made all Men by Nature equal and therefore the Power is given to the People Buchanan tells us That they have the Power and from them their Kings derive their Right Parsons proves Kings have been Lawfully chastised by their Subjects Knox says Princes for just Causes may lawfully be deposed or bridled by the Nobility Suarez shows the Power of Deposing a King to be in the Pope or the Common-wealth And Calvin seems for suppressing the rage of unruly Kings as well as the Ephori did those of Lacedaemon Mariana a Jesuit of Spain says The Common-wealth from whence the Kings have their power can call their King to an account Beza Calvin's Successor at Geneva tells us The States-men of the Kingdom must restrain the fury of their Tyrants or they are Traitors to their Country These few Instances may serve of four or five rank Romish Priests that have been transcrib'd almost to a word in the Writings of some of the false Reformers of our late Times and those that truly reformed our Religion so long agon who so far agreed with the Romanist from whom they dissented But whose Errors in such pernicious Principles in themselves might be imputed to the multiplicity of Matters then to be reformed which might make them want time for all Amendments and that Rome from which they did well for the more purity of Worship to withdraw was as an old Aphorism tells us never built in one day But to see now those that have had all the Advantages of time Instruction of the former Ages experience of this and of what Positions still were the promoters of Rebellion in both those whose fury against the Romish Faith sometimes has exceeded the Moderation of the Christian and whose Zealous Rage has made them preposterously judge the best reformed Church in the World our own Antichrist 't is matter of Astonishment to see such espousing her Doctrines wedded to her Principles whom in their canting Tropologies they still represent as a Whore Yet still love for her Lewdness The Restauration of the King was brought about he tells us without the Assistance of any of the Cavalier party and the recovered Nation obliged a wary General The Suggestion is somewhat Impudent so boldly to deny truth when the memory of man can give him the Lye prethee did the recovered Nation oblige the Wary General or the Wary General compel the Nation not yet recovered 't was well he had an Army at his Heels and that at his Devotion too or else his long Parliament would hardly have Dissolved so soon and then it would have been long before we should have had a free one The Parliament upon the returning of the secluded Members was made up of meerly Presbyterian and how likely they would have brought in the King had their Session continued to Sit may be guest from their expiring Votes and sure you may believe the Words of dying Men. ORDERED that the General give no Commission to any Officer who will not declare that the War undertaken by the Parliament against the Forces of the King was just and Lawful ORDERED that they further declare that they believe the Magistracy and Ministry to be the Ordinances of God ORDERED that they and their Sons who have assisted the King against this Parliament be made incapable to serve in the next And had not some of the Honest Cavaliers in spight of this Exclusion-Bill crept into the next Senate Had not that Honourable Person that eminent Instrument of the Restauration the present Earl of Bath whose bold and Loyal Undertakings may they last beyond our Annals and be as they merit eternal been ready to sollicite His Majesties Cause whose Goodness could not but incline so good a General 't is shrewdly to be suspected these his Presbyterians that cursed then His Majesty with their expiring breath in that blessed Vote that sanctified all their Rebellion against his Father that those that cryed Crucifie him to the last would hardly have brought him into the City with their Hosannah's But when the Net was spread for them 't is no wonder they did their Garments and when the Birds that had lived so long wild within their Wood were once Caged they might well be for cutting down their Branches in the way and their greatest glory is they cryed out then their O King Live for ever when 't was too late to Vote again the Sons of Charles Steward should dye without Mercy A Leaf or two this Gentleman spends upon the Reflections that have been made upon the Censures that have been past upon the Procedings of some of our late Parliaments and upon the Forgeries that have been contrived for the creating a belief of a Protestant Plot but I hope as much possest as he was the Devil of Sedition has left him now as he does Witches and Wizzards when he has got them in the hold and brought them to the Stake sure his Eyes are illuminated now by the discovering so many Deeds of Darkness and he was only blinded then with too much Light that of Phrensy or he that was co-eval almost with the Transactions of the last Rebellious Parliaments would have observed somewhat to make him suspect the Loyalty of some of the late Did not that begin with an Impeachment against the Duke of Bucks and these with the Banishment of a nearer Duke Was not the late King by that accused of Arbitrary Power and Popery and were not both these Accusations level'd at our present in several Votes Was there not an actual Plot of Papists discovered only from finding some Letters of a poor Priest in Clerkenwell and have we not had a notable one now as deep as Hell that none but Heaven can sound the bottom Was not the good old Queen
brought into the Conspiracy and was not Her present Majesty sworn into this Did they not declare the King seduced by Evil Councellors and impeached several of the Seducers Were not several of the Council now impeached and declared Seducers of the King Were not the Judges then impeacht and Jenkins clapt in the Tower Were not Articles drawn against Scroggs and some of the rest declared Arbitrary Were not the Spiritual Lords excluded from their Right in Temporals and did they not now again dispute the Bishop's Right Were not the Ecclesiastical Courts then to be Corrected and that now taken into Examination Was not Manwaring and Montague censured in the House Thompson and several of our Clergy now brought on their Knees Was there not a Councill of Six whom the good old King impeached for bringing in the Scots and have we not had Six of the Senators that have suffered or fled Justice for the same Conspiracy Was not the Militia aimed at now and taken away then Was not the House of Peers Voted useless and now Betrayers of the Liberty of the Subject Lastly did not the whole House take the Covenant at St. Margarets and the Major part to have subscribed an Association now and last of all Did not the Junto at Westminster pass an Act for the King's Tryal and sign a Warrant for his Execution and now a remnant of a disbanded House propose horrid Things that made even some of the Conspirators fly out upon which ensued a discovered Assassination of their Soveraign and was there no danger of a Parliament no sign of a Protestant Plot Only because the King did not leave Whitehall and go down to Hampton Court because there was no Essex in the Field as well as the Plot no King secured at Oxford as well as in the Isle of Wight that there was no High-Court erected at Westminster but only a better expedient found out at the Rye If these are Arguments to render an House of Commons unsuspected and a Plot of the Protestants unimaginable if because here are perfect Parallels of Proceedings as even as if drawn with a Compass Mathematical and which according to their proper Definition I could draw to infinity yet still there must be presumed a great Disparity between the Subversion of the Government that was actually compast and the Destruction of it now that was so lately intended If there be the least Difference between what led to the last setting up an Usurper an Arch-Rebel in the Throne and these late Machinations of Hell to retrieve the same Usurpation bating but the Providence that interposed against its Accomplishment Then will I own what this Villainous Author will have taken for granted That those that have the least Suspicion of Parliaments are the greatest Villains that a Plot of Protestants proved by Confession is still a Paradox and that my self deserve what he has merited a PILLORY The Pages that he spends in declaiming against trifling Wit supersedes all answer and Animadversion which himself has prevented in being Impertinently Witty upon the very thing he condemns The stress of his Ingenuity is even strained in the very declaiming against it And Settle has not so much answered Himself as Hunt here his own Harangue That Gentleman sate down a while for his second Thoughts but this preposterous Prigg sets himself in his own glass at the same time a Contradiction to his own Writings His Observations upon the perjuries of the Popish Priests is so severe that the absolute Argument of their Guilt is drawn from their very denyal their Superstition I abhor as much as the Treasons they dyed for but I pity their Obstinacy which till I am better satisfied I shall not condemn his inhumanity is hard which unless he had good Assurance by Christians must be blamed there is not a Criminal of our latter Conspiracy I will declare Guilty beyond his own Confession and then there is not one that dyed but whom I can well think Guilty His next Observation that is worth Ours Is that upon the Legislative Power and there he makes each of the two Houses to have as much of it as the King and that I deny with better Reason than he can assert that the two Houses are concurrent to make a Law I 'll willingly grant 't is my Interest 't is my Birth-Right But that which I look upon to be truly Legislative is the Sanction of the Law and that still lies in the breast of our Soveraign If Mr. Hunt that in many places is truly Pedantick will rub up his Priscian the Grammatical Etymology will make it but Legem ferre and then I believe his House of Commons will be most Legislative 't is their Duty their Privilege rather to bring and offer up all Bills fit for Laws and the King still I hope will have his Negative in passing them the Commons pray petition to have them past and that implies a consent Superiour to be required that can absolutely refuse the King can with out Parliament charge the Subject where 't is thought for their Benefit and allowed to dispence with a Statute that concerns his own resolv'd by all the Justices the King by himself might make Orders and Laws for the regulating Church Government in the Clergy and deprive them if they did not obey 22. Ed. 3. says the King makes the Laws by the Assent of the Lords and Commons and so in truth does every Act that is made and every clause in it Bracton says the Laws of England by the Kings Authority enjoyn a thing to be done or forbid the doing These are Arguments that our King sure has somewhat more than a bare Concurrence in the Legislative If not he must be co-ordinate and then we have three Kings which is what they would have and then as well may three hundred I love my Liberty better than our Author who has forfeited his yet I remember when too much freedom made us all Slaves The Extent of the Legislative Power is great but then I hope 't is no greater than the King shall be graciously pleased to grant it shall extend And then I hope it must be allowed that Equity and Justice must always determine the Royal Sanction too which cannot of it self make all things Equal and Just should it stamp a Le Roy vult at the same time upon Acts inconsistent and contradictory upon such as were against the Law of Nature and all Reason such would be de facto void 'T is hard to be imagined such Error and Ignorance in so wise an Assembly but what has but bare possibility in Argument must still be supposed but that it has actually been done will I prove possitively and not with some of their illogical Inferrences suggest that a thing must be so only from a bare possibility of Being Be it therefore enacted by the Kings most excellent Majesty and by the Lords and Commons in this present Parliament Assembled 't was then first those
would not be compleat and perfect from which I shall infer upon the First here was an Act past upon the King 's declaring he would give his consent had there been nothing else but his bare Assent required that declaring that he would might have been taken for granted and his not opposing it afterward sufficient not to have rendered it all null and void and the great Imprimaturs the other two Houses had given it with their Legislative have might in some Sense made it somewhat Obligatory But here 't is absolutely declared void as wanting the very Sanction that makes it a Law or any thing besides waste Paper Mr. Hunt tells us we would not say an House of Commons can make a Prince of Wales because the Prince of Wales was once confirmed by an House of Commons And I 'll tell Mr. Hunt just such another Tale The King cannot make his Coin without Metal and Allay but does therefore the Metal and Allay make the Kings Coin 't is his Royal Stamp 't is his own Impression that makes the Money Currant as well as the Laws From that of King James we may justly conclude That if here as they say there were nothing required but barely the Kings consent to the making it Law that might well in such an extraordinary Case as this be thought unnecessary to be demanded since the King that came so far for asserting his Right could not but in Reason be supposed very willingly to consent to any Recognition of it But they knew it might be an Acknowledgement of his Subjects without his Assent But never an Act of Parliament without such a Soveraign Sanction In short 't is the Privilege of all our three States Lords Spiritual Temporal and Commons 't is their Birth-right and that of every Subject to have a Concurrence in the making all Laws and why should I be thought to Love my Native Right less than Mr. Hunt yet still this Peoples concurrence need not to be Co-ordinate with their Kings or their Kings but a bare Concurrence with the People 'T is a Solecism to sober Sence to say Subjects can be Co-ordinate with him to whom they are Subjected and as absurd when they would salve it with saying As such a Senate they are not Subordinate when even for that their politick Existence they depend upon the breath of their Soveraign 'T is Remarkable to see and observe how Providence has defeated not only all their Attempts upon the Government but even their most Malicious Suggestions What pains did he take to turn over his Annals of Scotland and pick perhaps out of his Hector Boethius an Author that lived at his University when he writ far from the place where the Records were kept as a Learned and Ingenuous Author of that Nation observes which were the only things that could inform an Historian well in the Descent of the Crown or from the prejudic'd Writings of Buchanan whom none but one so partial as himself such an Enemy to our own Government as that was to the Scots would have consulted in any thing that related to the Crown and that only to make his Soveraign descended from a Bastard He might from that Author have told us too The Scotish Kings have all their Power from the People and therefore the People's above the King that the Multitude have the same power over Kings that they have over the Multitude who can depose him and if he won't submit to their Charge they can raise War against him or any private Person kill him But how has Time and Truth convinced the World that his Assertion is plain lye and I am sure without it his Inferrence had been false the King 's Learn'd Advocate there has shewn from Records That Robert the First King of the Stewarts there was married to this Elizabeth Mure that she was his first Wife that from a copy of an Act of Parliament held at Scoon the Succession was recognised to the Sons he had in his first Marriage which were the same Hunt has made first Spurious and then would not allow them Legitimized by the second Marriage because the first intervened contrary to the Canon of the Church that then obtained and the Opinion of all Civilians at present and as he might have found it in the very Codes of Justinian With what Face can he now behold his own Impostures or turn over a Leaf of his Seditious falshood without trembling The most adequate punishment I believe would be to confine him to read his own Works Blushes and Shame If he be not proof against both must torment him more in the review than he rack'd his tortured thought in the Penning it the sham of the Black-Box may as well be credited by the next Age as this has done that of the Black-Plaister when such Hunts shall Write their History of King Charles his Court after the same rate that Welden has that of King James when they shall not ãâã contend at the same time to make Bastards of those that are Legitimate but Legitimate those that are truly Bastards and the one all against Record Charter Statutes Ancient the other against the many Modern and Express Declarations of their present King This piece of this Seditious and Discontented Lawyer these now unquestionable Falshoods will be rever'd by the next age as a Revelation if not sufficiently exploded in this and I know that Welden is hugg'd at present by the Faction as an Oracle of Truth only for giving of his God the Lye and reputed as an Author sacred only for Libelling of his Soveraign that was truly so and representing that Providence as a Plague to his Royal Progeny that has signaliz'd it self in nothing more than in Miracles for its Preservation Most of the rest of his sublimated Sedition is spent in exposing the Divine Right of Kings the Right of their Succession and in truth of the Bible and its Author the Almighty he begins to confute St. Paul with that bandied Argumentation out of St. Peter that Kings are the Ordinance of Man and with that very Text on the Front does that Devilish piece de jure Magistratuum in one of its Editions begin So Mr. Hunt enters upon the Stage of his Argumentation with a perverted Text as well as one a reputed Papist that was supposed to be set a Work by the Pope for raising a Rebellion against our most Protestant Queen Elizabeth of whom I have two or three Editions by me such Encouragement does Treason and Sedition still meet with amongst our Puritans and the Popish part of the World for Re-impression and Improvement and from this damnable Libel upon Christi anity it self and the Badge of its Profession the Gospel a piece so lewdly Seditious that both the Catholicks and Phanaticks that hugg its Doctrine yet had not the Confidence to entitle them selves to the work from this and Brutus his vindicioe has Mr. Hunt and his Apostate absolutely borrowed
know not with what equity a mere Fiction in Law robs a man of so much Realty are frequently recovered with fine at Common Law against the Right Heirs he won't pretend therefore sure a Parliament shall a Kingdom and a Crown against a Royal Successor His own Reason for it is the best Refutation for I say too the Crown is Governed by other Rules than a private Estate and the Romans who were Governed by those Civil Sanctions that have since the whole World tho by those they had a Dominion over their Issues Heirs and Estates yet those will not grant even to Kings the power of Disenheriting their own Successors Nay such Favorers were they then of the Right Heirs that they would not permit their Common Citizens to be disinherited at the Arbitrary Will of the Parent but obliged them to observe such certain express Rules in their Exhaeredation And heretofore some of the Writers of our own Law could affirm that the Inheritance that descended from their Ancestors was scarce ever suffer'd to be disposed by Will but to the next Heir for my part I look upon the word Heir not to have the same Relation in case of the Royal end that it has in that of a Subject who always claims his Estate from his Ancestor Common whereas the other Heir is call'd more properly the Kings SUCCESSOR but the Crown 's HEIR And it will be hard then to make him pass for the Parliaments I won't tell Mr. Hunt here of the Blood and Miseries the common Calamities the dismal Attendants of a Royal Heir being bar'd of his Right How many Millions of Lives how much Blood it has cost us already And if any thing of ãâã would have frightned us for Excluding a Duke of York too but it seems Blood did not terrifie Mr. Hunts Members of Parliament to whom their Oracle gives all the properties of an Elephant and then they must be only provok'd at Red 't is the Justice of it and every Moral Action that must direct Communities as well as Common Persons and a Mighty Parliament as well as a single Peasant If Expediency shall come to warrant Injustice in Aggregate Bodies every Individual may as well commence Villain for Convenience Away with that Paradox of Folly and Faction that a Parliament can do no wrong since we have seen such a numerous Senate transported like one Man with rage and Folly even to the Ruin of Three Kingdoms And with what Justice an Exclusion which wou'd here have been the greatest Punishment next to Capital that a Crowns Heir could suffer could well be past and that for punishing an Offence Antecedent to the Law I leave such Legislators to Judge It looks so much like their Bills of Attainder that I am loth to tell them such an one even in this Kings time was reversed with Ignominy and Reproach and for a Repealing of the Infamy the very Records of it raz'd from the File and should the Crowns Heir too have suffer'd by a subsequent Law he cou'd never Transgress Would they have given their God the Lye and made Transgression where there was no Law Did the Seminary Priest suffer here for Officiating before that Statute was in being Should the Profession of the Catholick Faith and that but suppos'd have had the force of a Salique Law even against him that cannot well be said to sin against it Set the Mark upon the door where there is Death and the Plague and then let those that will enter dye CHAP. IV. Remarks upon Julian THat this Author was a better States-man than a Christian that he consulted more the Security of his Person than the Purity of his Religion that he had much rather burn his Bible that suffer but a Tomkin's Finger into the Flame are such undenyable Truths that you must suspend your own reason and give your own Writings the Lye but to suspect them but how far this Doctrine of self preservation is always consistent with the Gospel and whether a man may never deny himself to Confess his Christ requires I believe not an absolute determination of School Divines but may be Collected from the Practical Inferences that may be drawn from many a Text in the New Testament How far our Saviour's Suffering on the Cross should influence those that profess themselves his Disciples to Suffer How much the precepts of their great Master was Imitated by those Christians that were truly Primitive is a Disquisition proper for a Divine And has been as industriously enquired unto by several hands engaged in that Holy Function the tide is turned at last with the Time and Jovian remains as ãâã as his Julian was thought to be ãâã Answer that Learned and Loyal Author has fixt the Pillars to the Controversie and if this adventurer with the Second part of his Julians-ship will force beyond it he may discover to us a new faith a new Bible but can never confute him from either of the old most of my Remarks shall be upon his Political Observations for what he would Reform in the Doctrine of the Church is only as it relates to Matters and Affairs in the State The Loyal Addressers feel the first Effort of his fury and the ãâã of Mahomet's Hobgoblins are placed even within their Brows for expressing he thinks their contradictory Protestations but such Bugbears will hardly frighten them from following the Precepts of their Saviour that still inculcate on sufferance and Subjection but only may deter such as prefer the Crescent of that Imposture to the Cross in Baptism that can baffie their Bibles where it restrains their Liberty or admit an Alcoran of the Turks to tolerate Licentiousness it might well be a Grievance to such disaffected Creatures to see the good Effects of his Majesty's Declaration and that all his good Subjects had gotten an opportunity of shewing that Affection and hearty Loyalty which was over-awed by the Tumultuousness of a Faction from discovering it self they knew their own Party's power had been prevalent a long time in putting up Petitions and in those Numbers augmented too with Artifice as well as Sedition had placed a Confidence which they saw failed them and themselves foiled with a Weapon not much unlike their own in its make tho the Mettal and Matter of Another and better temper Here in truth lay the contrariety the Contradiction that confounded them more than in the Nature and tendency of such Addresses which if this prejudic'd Divine had examined he would have found no more Zeal in them than what was consistent with their Loyalty and Religion Their Allegiance which they had sworn and of which some of our Protestants make as little account as if a Jesuits Equivocation would absolve them from a positive Oath that obliged them to declare for the Kings Heirs and Successors and the Protestant Religion might still be maintained under any perswasion of their Prince unless the Nation was obliged to believe
of Allegiance what it's form was of old and what he would have implyed in the word HEIR therein mentioned to whom we swear and here at the same time that he would deliver the poor people as he pretends from the sad delusions of Error and Sophistry does he put upon them the greatest Falsehood and fallacy and the quaintest Sophism a Quirk in Law viz. That the King's Heir in possibility cannot be meant in our Oath of Allegiance because 't is a Maxim forsooth in our Law that no Man can have an Heir while he is living And with this silly Solaecism a sort of Sense merely Sophisticated this Elaborate Gospeller in the Law lays himself out in the pains of two or three Pages to prove the prettiest Postulate which we would have granted but for an asking that in this our Oath we did not swear Actually Allegiance to the D. of Y. And truly I am much of his opinion too in that point and that he was not then our Soveraign tho he had a possibility to Succeed But can ever a more Senseless Inference be made by a pretender to Sense or a more Jesuitical Evasion by the most dexterous Manager of an Oath First I would ask him what he thinks was the Design of its first Imposition what was the Reason of Inserting including the Kings Heirs and Successors in those Oaths of SVPREMACY and ALLEGIANCE Was it to perpetuate or acknowledge an Hereditary Succession or to warrant an Exclusion of the Right Heirs Did the Parliament design in the framing them the Lineal Discent of the Crown when they Swear to defend the Authority of the Kings Lawful Successor as well as his own or did they then reserve to themselves a power of declaring who should be his Successors by Law But if the Divine Gentleman would have reason'd pertinently and to the purpose tho it would have been but an absurd sort of Reasoning this he must have inferr'd that because we there swear only to be faithful to the Kings Heirs when they come to Succeed therefore this Oath non Obstante we are left at Liberty to prevent any Heir from his Succession and then I would have this Political Casuist tell me What would be the Difference between this Evasion and a direct Perjury for we swear to be faithful to the King's Heir that shall Succeed him and truly in the mean while we make them our own suffer only whom we please or just noneat all to Succeed for by the same Law Equity and Reason that we interrupt the Succession of one we may that of one thousand too and still be true to our Oath if we abolisht the whole Line of Succession for then those Juglers with a turn of hand and a Presto will tell us very readily why truly we swore to obey his Majesties Heirs and Successors but must needs be absolved now since there are none that do succeed And such were the Casuistical Expositions of some of our Late Divine Assemblies even in this very point when they had Murdered their Prince and denounced Death to His Heirs and were urged with their Allegiance But is not this first Perjuring themselves to Commit a Crime and then justifieing its Commission by their being Perjur'd May we not as well Murder one that would be the Successor and then plead our Innocence we did not suffer him to Succeed or truly did they not design such an Impious and Execrable countenancing of the Villany when they Associated for his Destruction and swore to destroy him would not they then too have Absolved themselves thus in Johnson's Sense and the Jesuits from any obligation to this his Majesties Heir because the Law Maxim did not yet allow him to be so and they had helpt him now from being so for ever Will a Nice point of this his Law resolve does he think as tender a Case of Conscience This his Law makes it but Manslaughter where a person is kill'd without Malice Propense but will this be no shedding of Blood to be required at his hands by the Judge of Heaven because he had his Clergy allowed here upon Earth can he Prescribe with the Laws of the Land to impunity from the Decalogue and tell the Almighty some Killing is no Murder Here his God his Saviour is invoked in a Solemn and Sacred Oath upon the Gospel and one that should be a Divine Expositor of both consults upon it the Readings of Mr. Hunt and a Resolution of the Common Law here he Swears to the plain meaning of the Words without any Mental Reservation whatsoever and yet this Mungrel in Divinity means now to take it in his mind according to a ereiv'd Maxim in the Law And this Libeller of the Primitive Christians looks like an Apostate that was as Primitive who kept pointing to the papers he put upon his Breast while he was Swearing to others that he held in his hand But yet I dare Appeal even to his own Breast who without doubt had often taken these Oaths being graduated in an University and Ordain'd a Divine tho unworthy of both whether the Words Heirs and Successors were not understood by himself of such as were to Succeed by an Hereditary Right by Birth and Blood to the Crown and whether that he did then Reserve to himself only such as did Actually succeed by Consent of Parliament and whether he did not think that by them he was not only obliged to obey those Heirs when they came to the Crown but also to do all that in him lay to promote in the due time their coming to wear it certainly to confine their Sense only to those that shall de facto succeed is but Swearing an Implyed Allegiance to any Rebel or Vsurper and the word Lawful that still accompanys Successors will not mend the Matter with such men for all is presently Legal and just with them that has but the shadow of a Parliamentary power for it's pretence And I am well assured That those that would have thought such an Exclusion just and equal with their King 's passing it would have thought it as Legal could they havesate till they had made it pass without The good old King at first disputed his Militia as hard with them and who could have believed any sort of men could have thought it the Parliament's without his Consent But assoon as the Rebel House had made their Ordinance for the Seizing it which of those Miscreants did not think it as much Law And the more than probable project at Oxford shrewdly Insinuates they would have warranted an EXCLVSION without their Kings leave Legal had they been allo'w but a further progress in their Vnwarrantable Proceedings But as much as Mr. Johnson Triumph's with this his Maxim of the Law as if he were the first Divine that had discover'd this deceitful Evasion this Jesuitical interpretation of his Protestant Oath Tho he and his Hunt and all his Lawyers in the Hall
that is made to Kings For Nature there is nothing from it more evident than a whole series of Subordination and that to single Soveraignty setting aside even the paternal among Human Creatures almost to be made out among Insects and Animals Bees and Beasts And if some King indulged this their People to appropriate to themselves all the Supream Power which we never heard of any of ours that did or to participate part of their Prerogative which we know many Indulgent ones of ours to their Parliaments have done then still this their power can't be Original because 't is derivative and I dare swear no Prince ever granted them a power of being Superiors as they must be if they would Judge him or ever accepted a Crown upon that Condition supposing it were as they would have it conferr'd For the very Act of being such a Conditional King would absolutely make him none at all and therefore those whom the Lacedaemonians compounded withal to be regulated by their Ephori were in effect not so much as the Dictators of Rome and so not to be reckon'd to Reign as Crown'd Heads or mentioned among those that we call our Monarchs In the third place if by this Original power of the People delegated to the Parliament the two Houses are constituted the Judges of their King I cannot see how Mr. Sidney could avoid or any of his Associates can this Grand Absurdity and as great a Lye that the Parliament have a Natural Liberty not only to Judge but to lop off the Sacred Head of their Liege-Lord and Soveraign For 't is certain they can have no more Authority than the People they represent and 't is as certain they must have as much Now this Original Power must be a Natural one because not deriv'd from any grant and then this Parliament of theirs must have an Original Power by Nature tho it be but to commit the most unnatural Barbarities I confess we had such an one that upon the same Principles proceeded to the perpetrating that most Execrable Treason and the very Villany that any time may be the Consequence of such Positions A Parliament which this good Author presided in or very well understood the Scandal of our own Nation and the shame and reproach of our Neighbors now I say If this his Original power of the People be delegated to this Parliament as Mr. Sidney says it is then this Parliament hath a Natural and Original Power of being their King's Judges because their People has it whom they represent I confess this is a Bar beyond the Seditious Doctrine of their Author in his Right of Magistrates For he is mighty sollicitous least he should be misapprehended as if he design'd the common People should judge their Soveraign therefore tells us very carefully none but the subordinate Magistrates themselves can Judge the Supream and their Brutus that succeeded that Assertor of Rebellion says such only as the Spartan Ephori and the seventy of the Israelites the Centurions or Equestres among the Romans and if the People had any Right to this Judicial power those Miscreants more modestly place it among the most eminent whereas our brisker Assertor of this Anarchy makes it out That therefore our more eminent Memberships have this Original Power only because Communicated them from the meanest People so that now we have a Parliament that has an Original Natural Liberty of the People tho their very Constitution it self commenc'd from the very Grant Grace and Favor of the King I could never meet with any Record yet that rehearsed these Privileges of Parliament But we have many extant and Presidents even of the House of Commons themselves that their Privileges and much of their Power proceeds from the Liberalities of their Prince more than this Natural Liberty of the People not to mention that their very being was first the result of such an Act of his Grace for from whom pray had they that freedom of Speech they upon every Session desire by their Speaker but from that King before whom they are to Speak who is it that fills their Chair those that present him or the King that accepts or disapproves whom they have presented who is it that gives them access to his Person the Commons that desire it or he from whom 't is desir'd 2. Lastly who impowers them to consent to a Bill those that supplicate his Majesty would be pleased to enact or his Majesty that says Be it enacted could this Natural Original power of the People be communicated to their Representatives the dispute about the Commons Right would be carried for ever on their side and we need not date their Original from Henry the Third or the Barons Wars or from the Saxon Heptarchy it self to be sure they then had their Representatives assoon as they had this Power and this Power it seems was assoon as they were a People And by this Original Power which they delegate for ought I see they may by the same rule as well retain it suffer no Representatives at all but assemble themselves and exercise the Soveraignty If the People delegate an Original power and a Natural Liberty to this Parliament it cannot certainly be comprehended how these Parliaments as now constituted could commence by the Grants and Concessions of the Prince and yet all will allow tho they disagree in the time that they did begin at first to be so Assembled by the Bounteous Permission of the King and that all the Privileges they claim were the result of an entire Favour of the Soveraign and not the Original freedom of the Subject if they 'll call that an Original Power to send Representatives it must be somewhat like that Author 's Secondary Original we so lately consider'd and that tho they prescribe to it for this seven hundred year as well as they cannot for above four or five 100 still it will recurr to this That this first power was the Grant of the Crown And these prescriptions as themselves allow being whenever they begun the result of the Soveraigns Bounteous Permission I cannot see why those Immunities may not be resign'd to the same Crown from which they were once receiv'd or those Franchises for prescription it self in this case is properly no more may not be Absolutely forfeited by those that at best can but be said to hold them on Condition I know the Common Law Favours a Prescription so far as in Inheritances to let it have the force of a Right when their cannot be made out any other Title but this I look upon to be of another Nature when the Original of what they prescribe too by their own Concessions was the Grant of their King and even this Common Law commonly in all its Customary Rules excepts the Prerogative of the King nay this very Prerogative of his by that very Law is allowed to be the Principal part of it I urge this because it is both apposite here
of ãâã Babel they would Build and Establish then they fall even in the fate ãâã their aspiring Fore-fathers fall by the confusion of their own Tongues and like the rearers of that proud Pile ãâã would have reacht at Heaven and ãâã Almighty as these at his Anointed and the Crown For certainly by the same Reason that they cannot Judge and Punish ãâã whom they have Commission'd to represent them because they have delegated and transferr'd to them their ãâã power by the same Argument and that a fortiori have they excluded themselves from their natural Power of being Judges of their King because they have conferr'd upon him the SVPREAM Neither can they help themselves here with their Imaginary and imply'd Conditions upon which Mr. Sidney says our Soveraign must be supposed to have first accepted his Crown For there never was any Representatives yet elected but as many Conditions and Obligations are implyed and supposed and by the same Reason must be required and exacted such as the serving their Electors faithfully the representing of their just grievances the promoting the Interest and profit of the place they serve for and if Mr. Sidneys good People must be Judges of the Violation of any of these Trusts as they must by the Maxims of their own making then the Representatives and the poor Parliament fare as bad and fall in the common fate of their King into the fearful Sentence of Mr. Sidney's own Words That Performance will be exacted and revenge taken by those they have betrayed And for to show them that my Conclusions are grounded upon matter of Fact as well as Sense and Reason and not like their lewd Arguments upon nothing but some Factious Notions and Seditious Opinions I desire them to consider whether they did not themselves find it so in several Instances In the year fourty seven Mr. Sidney's Original Power of the People in his own Sense was in the Senate and Representatives of that which we since call the long Parliament but they having as Rebelliously as well as impudently put the Sword into the Peoples Hand that had put their Original Power into the Parliaments they found all that but a Complement they soon saw what an insignificant sort of Representers they had made of themselves and that their stout Electors for all their buying of their Burgesships with so much Bees and Beer would allow them to be no longer such than they relish'd their Proceedings For to these their Representatives they send a more significant sort of a Representation that of an Army to tell them their good House must be purged of such Members as for Delinquency Corruption and abuse of the State ought not to sit in it and to let them see that for all Mr. Sidneys delegated Power they retain'd enough not only to revoke their Commissionated Authority but to chastise those whom they had Authoriz'd They prefer an Impeachment of High-Treason against no less than eleven of their most eminent Legislators one of which for such is the remarkable Visitation of Providence upon the Heads of Traytors happen'd to be a Person whom ãâã very King had impeach'd before and which nothing but their harder usage of their Hothams tho but the just Judgement upon such Perjur'd Heads could so happily Parallel For these Villains when once dipt in a Treason against their King never left it seems till they committed another of as deep a dye against the People they thought perhaps the forswearing their Allegiance might be expiated with a breach of Covenant ãâã A single persidiousness atton'd by being doubly Perjur'd as if the breach of two Negative Oaths like a brace of Negatives among the Latins had affirm'd their Fidelity but this which is so remarkable I could not but observe because it will attone for the Digression in shewing that the just God of Heaven as a more satisfactory Justice to their injur'd Soveraign and a severer Judgment on such Seditious Subjects had destin'd those Heads that were forfeited to their King to be sever'd from their Bodies by that People they had serv'd But to return to those Rebels that made such pretty returns upon one another they were not only satisfied with threatning their Representatives with a re-assuming their Original Power but they actually did it in a Remonstrance of Rebellion against their Representers as well as not long before in another against their King For so closely did they pursue their Suffragans in the Senate not only upbraiding them with ordinary ãâã but fairly laying to their charge Treason Treachery and breach of Trust neither would the bare charging them suffice but they set up a Committee for Examinations which sent fairly one of the learn'd in our Law yet Living to the Tower whose Confinement was the less to be pitty'd since the result of his serving them so much and several other Lords upon the same Charge of High-Treason were committed to the Black-Rod who had they adhered more Loyally to their King perhaps had never labored under this Tyranny of their Fellow Subjects But Mr. Sidney's Original Power of the People carried them further yet They draw up an Agreement as they call'd it of the People or rather an Union of Devils wherein it was resolved they being weary of such ãâã That the Sitting Parliament should be Dissolv'd That there should be another manner of Distribution os Burrough's for better Elections and that the People from thenceforth were to be declared the Supream Power whereunto that and all the future Representatives should be subordinate and accountable And here I hope I have proved it home with a Witness from matter of Fact as well as the force of Reason that Mr. Sidney's placing his Original Power in the People made it impossible to be delegated to the Parliament any longer than just as the People pleas'd that this Position made every Member of it dayly run the danger of his Head and that upon his Foundation 't is impracticable for any State of Government to be establish'd for to be sure the People will seldom be any longer pleased with those Delegates themselves have empowred then while they want a Power to re-assume the same that they delegated it would puzzle almost Arithmetick and a good Accountant to tell us how many Revolutions of Government this confused Principle of perfect Anarchy coufounded us with all This Original power was delegated as Mr. Sidney says to the Parliament and so it was indeed to the Long one in 49 But there you see they pull it out of their Hands and plac'd it in the Rump but that prov'd at last so unsavory they could relish it no longer and so the Original Power forsooth is resolv'd into a Council of State from that it runs into the confiding Men of Cromwells and then at last Centers in the Usurper himself so that in less than three quarters of a year this Original Power of the People was delegated to
three several sort of Representatives I need not tell them how the People reassum'd it from his Son and left it just no where how the People retriev'd it again and lost it they could not tell how how they recovered it from the Committee to whom it was lost and then forc'd to leave it at last to him from whom 't was first taken their King But this I hope is sufficient to satisfie any Soul that this Supream Power when plac'd in the People will be always resolv'd into that part of it that has the Supream Strength That this Maxim of Republicans Rebels against the very Parliaments they so much admire That it always ruins the very Collective Body of People in which these Democraticks themselves would place it and resolves it self into some single Persons that by force or fraud can maintain it and this made Mr. Sidney tell us he call'd Oliver a Tyrant and acted against him too well might he look upon him as a Usurper that Usurpt upon their design'd Common-Wealth as well as the Crown I am much of his Mind but it was far from the result of any Kindness to his King He saw his Common-wealth could never be founded upon so false a bottom no not tho she had been his Darling and Dutch built his beloved Low-Countries laboring under a Magistracy that Lords it with as much Power as that from which they were delivered For this his Original Power of the People must be as much delegated to those that govern there as well as it is inherent in any sole Soveraign that is the Governor neither are any besides the best of their Burghers admitted to Administration so that even that State that comes nearest to a Common-wealth is at last but a sort of Aristocracy which their Harrington condems for worse than Monarchy it self And I believe their Commons find the Impositions of their Burgo Masters as great and as grievous as ever were the Gabels of Spain So from what has been premis'd this must be concluded that since we see they can't punish or Judge even their own Representatives only their Suffragans in an house of Commons when they have delegated to them their Original power which for once we 'l suppose them able to delegate much less shall they their Soveraign tho they did as they will have it confer upon him the power that he has for the Members of the lower House represent only the Commons of the Kingdom whereas the Soveraign is in some Sense the whole Kingdoms Representative Since we have seen this Original Power of the People wheresoever it has been delegated to have created nothing but Usurpation and wrong where can this Power be better plac'd but in the King that can alone pretend to a Right and tho we are so unhappy as to have presidents wherein they can prove to us that their Representatives were once call'd to an Account by the People that sent them that is so far from proving that they have a natural or Original right so to do that it shows the danger of such a position that they may do it and that when in the late Rebellion they presum'd upon this their Right in Equity they made it appear to be nothing else but the power of the Sword for in respect of a Right they are really so far from being able to censure their Representatives whom they send that themselves are punishable for medling in those Parliamentary concerns with which they have enrusted others What force this has in the Case of their Commons holds a Fortiori in that of their King In the last place give me leave to close this their Rebellious Argument of their Monarch being accountable to the Majesty of the people with some few more Reasons against this Damnable Doctrine that has within the Memory of man desolated and destroy'd three Kingdoms A Doctrine that confounded us in the last confus'd us in this and will be Condemn'd by all Ages A Doctrine that places the Divine right in the People and then indeed such an one as Mr. Hunt makes it Impious Sacrilegious Treasonable Destructive of Peace Pregnant with Wars and what absolutely produc'd the Civil one of England and Sacrific'd its Soveraign Head to the Fury of an Headless Multitude This Principle is the very Basis upon which all their Babel of Confusion of a Common-wealth of Anarchy is all Built and Establisht And I shall never look upon it as loss to have Labour'd in it so long if we can at last but undermine its very Foundation And that is laid even by the Libel of Mr. Sid. upon the Contract and Condition upon which they 'll suppose he receiv'd the Crown which he must be made to renounce if he does not Perform when Accepted And in answer to this we 'll suppose for once what the most Seditious Souls themselves can suggest and that this part of the Rebellious position abounds both with Sense Truth and Reason that our Kings have but a Conditional bargain of it which indeed would be but a bad one too and such I dare Swear as the Greatness of our present Soveraigns Soul would hardly submit to and if we 'll but believe his own word as firm as fate that never fail'd his Friends and surely will not then be first violated for a debasing of himself and a gratifying of his Foes that has told us or decreed that he will not suffer his Government and his Crown to be Precarious And I am apt to think that he that stemn'd the Tide the fierce influx of Blood and Rebellion as well as without a Metaphor withstood the noise of many Waters and baffl'd the Billows of the main will hardly when Seated at last in a Peaceful Throne be regardless of it's Right and Prerogative which even his meritorious sufferings have deserv'd should we bate his Virtue and Birth were not in the Ballance And 't is much unlikely that he that kept his Grandeur when a Duke of York should dwindle into that of Venice and that too when a King of Great Britain 'T is their Doeg I confess that accepts upon Condition 't is their Duke with whom they do Contract our Crown as I have shown has been resolv'd an Imperialone from the Letter of its own Laws and the very Statutes of the Land Theirs from the very Constitution it self Subject to the Senate Ours from its Foundation RESOLVD not to be Precarious as well as now too from the Resolution of its Prince But in answer to this position of our Republicans I shall depone this as a principle that notwithstanding such a Contract upon Conferring the Supremacy the same cannot be Dissolv'd even by the Consent of all those that Constituted it I wont repeat to them the Reason I have already urg'd from the Royal Law of the Romans which one of their very Republicans says was not without Condition or Limitation which if so then we see that both Augustus for
not absolutely destroyed because some Persons can maintain another no more than the Systeme of Plolomy was presently False only because Copernicus had invented his for True for the bare contradiction and Clashing of positions convinces no more than the giving the Lye but when it is prov'd upon them in one that even from their own Principles and Premisses they cannot draw the very Conclusion they design as it was since in the other that from their own Hypothesis they could not solve all the Phrases and Phaenomenons themselves would make to appear then certainly they must allow that themselves are in the wrong tho they will not Confess their Foes in the Right And now having at lenght examin'd their Original Power of People let us a little consider how long and from whence our Kings have had their Original If we must make words only instead of an Argument and cavil about an Idiom in Speech as some of their critical Contenders about this Origen of Kings have very vainly and as Foolishly quarrel'd at then we must consult our Dictionaries and the Dutch Tongue for without doubt till the Saxons settled here they had some other appellation and were only from them call'd Konyngs and since Kings but if we consider the Nature of the Government it is that which from the Greeks we call Monarchy which from its own Etymology best signifies and expresses the Sense that it bears which is the Governing part and the Supream power plac'd in the sole hands of some single Person and then the Queston will be only this how long that has obtain'd in the World by whom first instituted and in whom it first commenc'd For the first 't is undeniable that its Original was with that of the World and God himself gave it by the Name of Dominion to his Adam he had Created which in express Terms was given him first over all the Living Creatures and then over the product of his own Loins his Wife and after that as if Providence did design to prevent the dispute about the Precedency of Primogeniture it gave in express words a Superiority to Cain that the younger should be in some sense his Subject that to him should be his desire and that he should Rule over him from whence it was assoon Communicated to the Several Heads of the Families that were the product of their Loins and so succeeded in a sort of subordinate Government according to the Antiquity of the Tribe or Family That this was then such Authority as we now call Kingly is both nonsense to assert and as great a Folly for any to require that we should maintain for they may as well quarrel with us when we say there were Kings of Israel and Judah and yet cannot prove that there Courts and Revenues were as Stately and Great as now they are in England and France 't is enough if the Government of those Primitive times was but Analogous to what we call Kingly now And now that we have brought it both to a right of Primogeniture and a Paternal Right from whence will result the Divine we 'll consider what it is Mr. Sidney and his Advocates can say against it and see if there be any such absurdities in it as they more Seditiously then with any Sense and Reason suggest first for the right of Primogeniture that themselves will allow but 't is only because not able to contradict and besides as they imagin it makes for them and their Cause for by that course of descent they think our Asserters of a Divine right are oblig'd to deduce their Pedigree of their Kings form the Creation of the World in a right Line and therefore Mr. Sidney says that such a supposition makes no King to have a Title to his Crown but what can deduce his Pedigree from the Eldest Son of Noah But for that absurdity which is truly their own by supposing it ours when it can't be truly deduced from the Doctrine and defence of a Divine Right we shall answer anon when we come to treat of the Paternal That Primogeniture had the Preheminence in the very Worlds Infancy if we do but believe the word of God which tells us that himself told Cain he should Rule over his younger Brother we cannot doubt of the truth of it besides Abraham's being a Prince and having a Precedence to his Brother Lot is also there recorded and Esau selling of his Birth-right Condemn'd as a Contempt of that preheminence to which God and Nature had prefer'd him and which himself only disposed of when he presum'd he was upon the point to dye and for his disregard of this Priviledge was he punisht too in the prevention of the Blessing and which is perhaps the only Instance in Sacred writ where a Lineal Discent and the Succession was interrupted and this too only occasion'd by his own Act. And that God himself did appropiate this precedency to the first-born may be gathered out ofall the History of the Old Testament the only account that is extant and from which Authors gather all the Authentick Relation of the two first Epooches and most Memorable Periods or Interals of time viz. That from the Creation to the Flood and from the Flood to the first Olympiad i.e. to Ann. Mund. 3174. for the profane History of those times is accounted Fabulous and by Historians call'd so and from those Sacred Oracles it will appear that all their Kings of Israel and Judah succeeded according to this Right of Primogeniture or where that fail'd by Proximity of Blood And as the Almighty Countenanc'd such a Succession So does Nature it self which among Heathens was distinguisht from the Deity and may be so amongst Christians too if they consider it asthe Work and Order of the Divine will for if she shall decide it she presumes the Eldest in years to be always the wisest too and 't is not Nature but a chance preternatural when it happens to be otherwise for if we should conceive no disparity between Brothers and Sons then all Right and Superiority must be decided by Lot but Nature giving a precedency by Birth makes Naturalist to call Primogeniture the Sors naturalis In the next place the Laws confirm it and the Practise of most Nations as well our own so that when Mr. H tells us the Succession to the Crown is of a Civil Nature not establisht by any Divine right he will find and must needs know that such a Succession by Primogeniture or Proxiof Blood even by almost all Civil Institutions is allowed the precedency and that even in the Discent of Common Inheritance and Private Estates and as I have said before I look upon the Crown to have a stronger Entail and more oblig'd to discend in a direct Line if it were not from any Divine Institution of God but from a bare Human Policy to prevent the Blood and Confufion that attends always a Competition of
great and their strength so formidable that they sought Kings and were ãâã by Princes And now let them prove that this paternal Power of these Patriarchal Kings was no more than that of a Burgher in the Town of Amsterdam or that the Cities that were several of them then erected and where the sacred writ expresly says Kings and Princes Reign'd that those were nothing else but as perfect Republicks as Venice Geneva or the united Provinces in the Netherlands And cannot our Seditious Souls be convinc'd that this their Patriarchal Power was Monarchical unless we can prove every patriarch a Crown'd King should we oblige them to make out their Common-wealths of those days after the same manner their Modern ones are now Establish'd they would be put to find out in those primitive times some general revolt of a Rebellious people from their Lawful prince For that was the first Foundation of their ãâã Republick in the Low-Countries as Mr. Sidney himself will allow tho against common Sense and Reason he cannot let it be called a Rebellion And also is it not one thing to say a paternal Right was once Monarchical but must it make all Monarchs to Rule by a paternal Right conquest of the Sword grounded upon a good pretence of Right is what a great many Kings claim by a long series of Successive Monarchs makes the Title of a great many more as much unquestionable and yet I cannot see why Monarchy may not still be said to have been first founded in a paternal Right tho the claims to Soveraign power since in such several Kingdoms and Nations where it is now Establish'd are ãâã as several sorts too as there are Subjects that have submitted to be govern'd by it It is a pleasant sort of Diversion to see Mr. Hunt Harangue out half of his Treatise in an impertinent pains to prove the Father of every Family at present not to be the King of it we would have granted it him quietly and the postulate should have been his own in peace without raising upon his War of Words and the thundering charge that he gives this Opinion of puzzl'd senseless vain unlearned paradox For once every parent shall not be a Crown'd Head and every City but a Common-wealth of Kings for that is all they must contend against and then what 's the Contention but just about nothing but that parents have nothing in them that is Analogous to a Monarchical power that they have no Right to govern those very Children they have begot as this Gentleman with his mighty performances thinks he has perfectly prov'd that I think will be found at last to be the greater paradox if not a perfect Lye For first the very Decalogue declares the contrary And the command we have to Honour our Father and Mother implies an Authority that they have that requires Obedience by the Levitical the Laws of the Jews the Rebellious Son was to be ston'd to Death and if the very Bible can call it Rebellion Certainly it must suppose some power against which he could Rebel And what does Mr. Hunt who himself admits of this say to the refuting the very Objection that he raises why he says this was an unnatural severity permitted the offended parent that is an unnatural severity commanded by the very God of Nature For all those their Laws were so many Divine precepts for the regulating his own Theocracy and the very Text tells us this exemplary punishment of Dissobedience to parents was shown that Israel might fear i.e. fear those parents in whom the Almighty's Law had lodged such a power and then if we consider it in the Abstract from any positive Law of God or Divine precept if we look upon it in a pure natural State as the result of Generation for all whatever the postscript impertinently suggests with his ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã and all the distracted noise that he makes with the procreation work being such an Act of Affection and mere impetus of Love I cannot see why by that darling work that delights Mr. Hunt so much the power of governing those very Children he has begot should be superseded The Gentleman among his many Melancholy moods had it seems some pleasant Fancies For in effect he tells us no more than this that Coition being an Act of Love to the Mother the Government over the Child that she bears him must by no means be call'd a power and if this be not indeed a puzzl'd senseless Opinion I submit to persons that abound with more sense and if it have the least shadow of a consequence I will forfeit all my Right to Reason might it not be as well infer'd too that every Father that chastises his froward Child is an absolute Tyrant because that sort of severity savors of Anger and fury but the Generation work obliged him never to exercise it because that was an Act of extream Love But besides that precept in the Decalogue Honouring our Parents is an Eternal Law of Nature engraven in our Hearts as well as it was in the two Tables of Stone and whereever there is a Natural Veneration there is at the same time an imply'd subjection for those we always reverence most to whom we are most Subjected I know there are inferior Objects upon which many times we place our affection and may in some sense be said to have for them an Esteem but that cannot be properly call'd Honour but is better exprest by the Name of Love and this is that ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã that Friends have for one another tho they are Equals or Parents to their Children tho Subject to their power but if we consider the word Honouring it self which in all the Versions of the Decalouge is still render'd so as if it would remember us of the subjection we owe to those we are commanded to Honour that very word it self implys Power in the Person that is to be Honoured for if we abstract our selves from any prepossessions and Engagements of Love we still find we still Honor those most that are also most in power thus our Nobility are respected by us as Honourable because they are in great places of Power and Trust And our King more Honoured by us agen because the very Fountain of Power it self And lastly what strikes us more into a Venerable Horror of the Majesty of Heaven but that awful attribute of his being Almighty so that uncorrupted Nature it self from the Rules of Common gratitude obliges us to Honour our Parents as well as the express precept of the Divine will and then by Consequence subjects us to those whom we are requir'd to respect so much and esteem for Nature as it never according to the Maxim of the Naturalists in Philosophy is said to do any thing foolishly or in vain so neither will it require any thing that is so from others to be done and therefore there is no Natural Law that obliges us to
or opinion the rants of our implacable Republicans that are pleas'd with nothing that recommends a Monarchy no tho it be the very Bible and the Book of the Almighty Cannot those silly Souls that are transported out of Sense conceive that there is a difference in Assertion to say That Monarchy is by Divine Right and that every Monarch Rules by the same Right Divine then indeed we should run into Sidney's Absurdities of making every Rebel that could but reach at a Crown a Cromwell or a Monmouth as much a Divinity Monarch as our best and Lawful Soveraign tho it must be granted that those Successions even of Lines that have for a long time descended lineally do intimate to us somewhat of the Divine Will that it shall so succeed and even the paternal Successions in this sort of Royal Government was given us for our Instruction that God approv'd of it from the time he gave the Children of Israel and Judah their first Kings who throughout all the History of the Bible succeeded from Father to Son but that which garbles and really grieves our Republicans is that even the Divine Right of Monarchy it self can be Asserted that we have so much as the Intimation of the Will of God any Reason to conclude from his Word that he has given the Approbation to the Kingly Government any preference to Monarchy it self they quarrel at the very Bible for mentioning so much as a King or Prince and they would make the version Libel the Original when it makes a Melchisideck the King of Salem or Hamor the Hivite Prince of the Country they would have their INDEX too and expunge a whole Chapter of Genesis for talking of ten Kings besides Abraham and make all the Old Testament an entire Apocripha that does but mention a Monarch And for this Plato tells us plainly that Moses made them all Commonwealths and that afterward over those they call'd Kings the Sanhedrim and Congregation of the People did preside tho the Text tells us Moses was King in Jesurun and so the King it seems made it a Common-wealth These Rebels to the Majesty of their King are as refractory to what the Divine Majesty has approved they damn the very History of the Creation and the Original composure and Constitution of Nature because it once made a Monarch in a single Man and has puzl'd them to find out any more of Adams Common wealth but among his Beasts they Curse the Dispensations of Providence for preserving a Monarchical Government throughout the Universe and has left them nothing but two or three Rebellious States they condemn the deluge for not destroying Noah too but left so much of Regal Authority to remain in the Ark this makes them when they are perplext with the pesterings of some Loyal Positions to put us upon deducing our Kings Pedigree from Adam or as Mr. Sidney says from the Eldest Son of Noah the Foolishness and unreasonabless of their Postulates the ridiculousness of those demands I cannot better answer to my Satisfaction or theirs then by sending them to St. John's Coll. in Oxford I 'll promise them there if they 'll be but pleafed there they shall see even the most everlasting Line drawn down from the Garden of Eden to White-Hall from the first Adam to their present Soveraign K. James and if they don't like the Heraldry let them dispute it with the Painter I cannot tell how to gratify the Impertinence of their demands but with as pleasant a message But if a Man can be serious among such Buffoons I must tell them 't is one thing to say that Noah and Adam Rul'd by a Right Paternal and another that every Monarch must have the same Paternal Right from Adam and Noah 'T is one thing to say that God approv'd of Princes to Govern and another that he appointed to every Prince the same Right of Government the form of Regal Government I hope from the Royal Authority of the Patriarchs may be Justified to be of Divine Institution tho the Succession of the whole series of Succeeding Soveraigns be not resolv'd all into the same Title I can tell them of not only an absurdity but a plainlye would be the Consequence of such a position for then there must have been no Battels Fought after the Flood no Ten Kings in one Chapter of the Testament none of that long Catalogue of Egyptian Princes and in truth at present but one Vniversal Monarch in the World tho that some Learned and Laborious Heads do too industriously sometimes attempt to deduce from Scripture by the Almighty to have been once design'd and Babel for the seat of such an Empire For it would be a great piece of Paradox indeed and a greater of Impertinence to persuade such Seditious Authors there was ever any thing of an Vniversal Empire design'd that won't allow there was ever a particular one Establish'd That tell us no general revolts of a Nation can be call'd Rebellion and then I am sure they must maintain that there is no particular Supremacy from which the generality of the Subjects can be said to Reble but Mr. Sidney borrow'd this pretty Position too from that pernicious piece that was publish'd about the Rights of Magistrates for that tells us too That the Danes imprisoning their King Christien to his dying day the Swedes rejecting their Sigismund for his persisting in the Romish Religion were no Rebels I confess their Monarchys admitting so much mixture of Democracy may make the people there to have a greater power in publick Administrations but certainly cannot well extend to impower them to subvert the very publick Weal it self which must be said to consist in the supream head of it the King and tho they will seperate his Person from that publick political Consideration and say they may maintain the Monarchy tho they depose such a particular King this will not mend the matter for those that have a power to reject ONE Prince are as much empowr'd to refuse to Elect another and then the result of it must be this that our Republicans will admit no more of a particular Empire then a Vniversal In short those that had but the least Inclinations to be Loyal and did but Love and like an Establisht Monarchy that were not resolutely resolv'd to Rebel against the Light of Nature as well as the Resolution of the Laws would soon see and be satisfy'd of the Solid Reasonableness the Innocent Truth of these three several Propositions I have so lately Labour'd in First that Primogeniture obtain'd by the Institution of the Almighty and his continued Approbation in the Bible both in Paternal discent and Regal ones and that the Laws and Practise of Nations have confirm'd it in both since and that home to our Doors Secondly that Paternal Right and Power by the same Authority of the Almighty has been prefer'd by the Laws of Nature Maintain'd and by the Civil Sanctions of
what must be fill'd with their diffusive and elaborate Sedition Queen Elizabeth was no sooner setl'd in her Throne but they as seditiously endeavour'd to subvert it They libell'd her Person set their Zealots tumultuously to meet in the Night invading Churches defacing Monuments and so full at last of the Rebellious Insolencies of that Italian Republick to which they commonly repair'd to receive Instruction that her Majesty thought fit to hang up Hacket with a half dozen more of them as dangerous Subjects to her Sovereign Crown and Dignity When King James who succeeded her came to our Crown did these Malecontents that had molested him so much in Scotland disturb his Government here too as much Melvil that Northern Incendiary was as busie with his Accomplices here too to set Fire to Church and State and for that purpose publish'd several Libels against both for which being then at London he was sent to the Tower And so far had those darling Daemagogues insinuated themselves that the Hydra of a Popular Faction began to shew its fearful Faces in the very first Parliament of his Reign though in that they had so fully formerly recogniz'd his Right For in some of those several Sessions of which that consisted one of the Seditious Senators had the Confidence to affirm in the open Assembly That the giving the King Moneys might empower him to the cutting the Members Throats an Insolency that some of our Modern Mutineers upon the same Occasions have as seditiously express'd King James Dissolv'd that Parliament call'd another and that as Refractory as the former which instead of answering the Kings Request draw up their own in a Remonstrance second it with a Protestation for Priviledges representation of Religion and Popery intermedling with his Match of Spain and several Affairs of State so that he was forc'd to dissolve that Politick Body too and soon after suffer'd a Dissolution of his own Natural one dying under the Infirmities of Old Age and leaving behind him an old Monarchy rather weakned with Innovations of Republicans with the worst of Legacies to his Son and Successor A discontented People an Empty Purse with a Costly War into which he was not so much engag'd as betray'd And now we are arriv'd to what all the Stirs and Tumults of our Seditious Souls our discontented Daemocraticks in the Reign of King James did aim at and design the Destruction of the Monarchy which they could not accomplish till this of King Charles in that they never left till they laid such a Plot that at last laid all the Land in Blood and made an whole Kingdom an Akeldama For that they first quarrell'd at the Formality of his Coronation because in the Sacred Part of it the Prayer for giving him Peter's Key was first added This some silly Sots suggested to savour of Popery tho' it struck purposely at the very Popes Supremacy it self For that they begun to Tax their King for taking his Tonnage without an Act and yet refus'd to pass one that he might take it by Law unless he would accept of it in Derogation of his Royal Prerogative for Years or precariously during the Pleasure of the Two Houses when most of his Ancestors enjoy'd it for life Turner and Coke led up the dance to Sedition and reflect upon their King in their Speeches The Commons command his Secretary Office and Signet to be searcht and might as well have rifled his Cabinets too They clamour against his favouring of Seminary Priests tho' he had sent home the very Domesticks of the Queen and that even to a disgust to France and a rupture with that Crown They upbraid him for dissolving Parliaments tho' grown so insolent as to keep out the Black-Rod when he came to call them to be Dissolv'd tho' their King notwithstanding the provocations assembled another assoon and that tho' he had the fresh President of the then King of France That had laid aside his for a less presumption Thus they call'd all his Miseries and Misfortunes Misgovernments and Faults when themselves had made him both faulty and unfortunate They accuse him for favouring the Irish Rebellion tho' the first disorders in Dublin were by his diligence so vigorously supprest their Goods confiscated their Lands seiz'd their Persons imprisoned and such severities shew'd them by his Commissioners there that two Priests hang'dthemselves to prevent what they call'd a Persecution The Scot Mutinies upon the King 's restoring the Lands to the Church of which but in the minority of his Father it had been robb'd assail the Ministers in the Church in the very administration of the Sacrament because according to the Service-Book Protest against their King's Proclamations set up their four Tables at Edenburgh that is their own Councils in opposition to their King 's Hamilton had promised them as Commissioner to convene an Assembly they come and call a Parliament by themselves which tho' dissolv'd they protest shall sit still then desperate in a Sedition break out into open War Invite Commanders from abroad seize Castles at home agree to Articles of Pacification and then break all with as much Perjury Lowden their Commissioner sent to propose Peace At the same time treats with the French Ambassadour for War bring their Army into Northumberland and Durham and prey upon those Counties they had promised to protect while the Parliament at London will not give their King leave or the Citizens lend a penny for opposing those that came to pull him out of his Throne At the Treaty of Rippon they quarrel with their King for calling them Rebels that had invaded his Realm the Commissioners of the Scots conspire with the English who then fall upon Impeaching his Privy Counsellers and the unfortunate Strafford suffers first because so ready to Impeach some of them and they make that Treason in a Subject against the King which was heard known and commanded by the Soveraign Then follows Lawd a Loyal Learned Prelate and that only for defending his Church from Faction and Folly As they posted the Straffordians and repair'd in Tumults to their King for the Head of that Minister of State so Pennington with his pack of Aprentices petition'd against the Bishops and the Pillars of the Church Then Starchamber must down High Commission be abolisht Forest bounds limited yet all too little to please when the Irish Rebellion followed to which the Scots had led the Dance no Moneys to be levied in England for suppressing it till the King had disclaim'd his power of Pressing Soulders and so disarm'd himself that is he was not to fight for his defence till they had disabl'd him for Victory They quarrel with him because he would not divide among them the Lands of the Irish before they were quell'd and subdued at the same time they had quite incapacitated him to Conquer and Subdue them Then Acts must be past for Annual Triennial and at last perpetual Parliaments And whereas the Law says
destroy all Subjection in the World and make the blackest Treason our own Civil War but a prudential act of State and even of Loyalty it self the rescuing the King only out of those Mens hands that led him from his Parliament But do not they tell us even by his own concession in one of their Votes That it was the King that was seduc'd and must it not be the King too that they would reduce and by what means why therefore they say they take up Arms and did they design to command their Bullets and Ball not to meddle with the King that was only seduc'd but only to take off the evill Counsellors that were his Seducers I confess could they have promis'd his Majesty so much he might have took them for good Gunners but must still have believ'd them bad Subjects that would have put it to the venture But with this Gentleman it seems it was a sort of proclaimed War of the King 's to take that unfortunate resolution of seizing the five Members Most Factious Fool did the King rebell against his Subjects only when he came to seize actual Rebels whom himself desired only to be Try'd for Treason and that of the deepest dye for inviting in a Forreign Foe the Scots must not the Parliament without the King be the Supream power if the King can be said to Rebel against the Parliament but this Republican that expresly makes them Co-ordinate may as well call them Supream for these Gentlemen paid off the King for his unfortunate resolution and declare that his coming to their House was High Treason And well might the King shift for himself when they had made his Majesty reside in the House of Commons Prethee for thy senses sake who levy'd War first those that seiz'd upon the King's Forts Magazines Towns Ships and Revenues levy'd Soldiers or the King that had nothing of Military left him but the power and not a single Company of Horse or Foot that he had rais'd It was the twentieth of October 1641. they brought the Trainbands into the Palace Yard to protect themselves that is to terrify their King It was the eighth of January 1641. that forty thousand of the Inhabitants of London put themselves in Arms to fight fifteen hundred of the King's Horse that were to come and surprize the City the one were actually Arm'd the other never came or design'd to come They riggout the Navy on March the 2d the King's Militia is seiz'd and new Lieutenants set by their Ordinance the ãâã of March 1641. and on the twenty third of April they deny'd him entrance into his own Garrison at Hull the tenth of May the Citizens are Mustering twelve thousand Men in Finsbury Fields the King does not summon his Yorkshire Gentlemen till the twelfth of May did not grant out his Commission of Array till the twentieth of June when they had sent out their Orders and Proposals for Men and Horse Money and Arms the tenth did not set up his Standard at Nottingham till after the twelfth of August when their Parliament had rais'd their Army the seventh of July And this Vote of their King 's being seduc'd by wicked Counsel from which this Sediious Daemagogue would infer the King declared to them War before was made on the twentieth of May which was after they had seiz'd his Forts and Militia his Shipping and Navy and Muster'd their Citizens in the Field And a Month before the King sent out his Commissions of Array and above two Months before his Standard was set up That this is exactly truth Consult even the Exact Collection And whether this Seditious assertion be not a Devilish lye but your own Breast And as they begun this War of Weapons in their House so they did that of Words too and invading the Prerogative before the least breach of Priviledge One Turner a Physician under a pretence of reflecting on Buckingham abuses the best of Kings Cook amongst other Invectives says openly It was better to dye by a Forreign Foe than be destroyed at home These were but preludes to the Liberty the licentious Villains took afterward when Martin declared to the House That the King's Office was forfitable when Sir Henry Ludlow said to the same effect That his Majesty was not worthy to be King of England And Prideaux was at last come to make his Speech there for Abandoning Monarchy it was so early too that they were so forward to Usurp upon the Crown that even in this Year 1625. they offer'd to search the King's Signet Office and examin'd the Letters of his Secretary of State all this was offer'd at in the very first Parliament that he summon'd all of which the King complain'd to them of by Finch then the Lord Keeper as things unwarrantable and unusual they prosecuted too Buckingham with the more violence only because the King had told them That he acted nothing of publick Employ without his special Warrant That he had discharged his trust with fidelity That he had merited it by desert and that it was his express Command for them to desist from such an unparliamentary disquisition And for my part I cannot apprehend how according to common sense and reason both in this case and Strafford's that succeeded they could make those Traytors to their King of whom their King declar'd they had never betray'd their trust It was such a sort of Treason against their King which their King knowing and approving did not think High Treason and the person against whom it could only be committed apprehending no Commission of it at all But those Statesmen were so unhappy as to live in an age that made Treason as unlimited as ever it was before Edward the Third and which for all his twenty fifth and the first of Mary restrained Treason to conspiring against the King and the Laws of all the World makes it a Crime only of Laesae Majestatis they could bring it now to a levying War against the Majesty of the People A hard fate for many Ministers of State that are sacrific'd sometimes only for serving too well But these proceedings against the King were long I hope before the King proceeded only to take Traytors out of an House of Commons this was seditiously done in twenty five the other not lawfully attempted till forty one And judg now malitious Miscreants where when and by whom were the first provocations given to discontent and who were the first Agressors in a barbarous and a bloody Civil War Why don't they tell us too our present Soveraign invaded first the Rebels in Scotland and those that ãâã at Lime The next age may as well be brought to believe this as the present that All that their best Advocates unless absolute Rebellious can urge in their defence is the Parliament seiz'd only upon the King's Forts for fear he should fortify them against the Parliament very good that is they first made
War upon him for fear he should make War upon them that 's the English trick of it And I can tell it them in a Spanish one too so Gondamor got Raleigh's Head he told them not for the mischief he had done them but for that which he might do But had not the Laws provided so particularly for the King this would be madness and cruel injustice even among common Subjects reduce us both into Hobs's his state of nature and his fear to kill every one we meet for fear of being kill'd or set our Neighbours House a fire for fear it should catch of it self and consume our own And now be witness even the worst and the most warm Assertor of a Common-wealth in this case be for once what you so much affect Judge between you and your King The King had his Court of Starchamber constituted by Common Law and confirmed by special Act of Parliament The Commons they send up a Vote and Bill for suppressing it The High Commission was establisht by the Statute of the Queen the Commons come and would put it down with a Vote The Court of Wards and Livery the tenures of which were even before the Conquest and drew Ward and Marriage after it was establisht by particular Act the Commons clamour to have it supprest which to please them is done The King had several priviledges that belong to the Clerk of his Market confirm'd by ancient Custom and several Statutes abolisht by the Parliament in the Year 1641. The King had the Courts of his Forests his Judge in it constituted of old by Writ then by Letters Pattents This was a grievance which was never before and therefore must and was supprest with the rest The Law required no person was to be Imprisoned or put out of his Lands but by due course and custom None to be adjudged to Death but by the Law establisht they confined several of the Kings Subjects send the Bishops by order of the House to the Tower and by special Bill attaint Strafford and Behead Laud with an Ordinance Resolved by all the Judges in Queen Elizabeths time that to levy War to remove evil Counsellors is High Treason against the King they past a Vote that the King was seduc'd by evil Counsellors against whom they levied War to remove There is a special Statute that says expresly that the Subjects that aid the King shall not be molested or questioned They publisht their Declaration That it was against the Laws and Liberty of the Kingdom to assist the King that the Sherriff of the County ought to suppress them The Law makes those Delinquents that adhere to the King's Enemies they Vote those that serve him in such Wars Traitors by a Fundamental Law The Statute provides that the Parliaments should assemble peaceably they by particular order bring Horse and Foot into the Palace Yard In short The Parliament first seizes the Militia against an express Act that setl'd it solely on the King The King sent out after his Comission of Array for which he was impower'd by Act of Parliament The Parliament order the raising an Army against the K. declared Treason by special Act The King then Summons his Subjects to his assistance at York and comes and sets up his Standard at Nottingham for that was warranted by the Laws of the Land and several Statutes of the Realm I have taken this pains both to prove that bloody War that general Revolt to be a plain Rebellion and that the War it self was begun by those that were the only Rebels the Parliament because you see that both those positions have been laid down among our Republicans either of which should it gain credit is enough to run us again all into Blood And both together as false as Hell and can be the Doctrine of none but what 's the Author of all Sedition the Devil These were the Plots which they practis'd upon that poor Prince whose Sincerity was always such that he could not suspect in Nature such a sort of designing Villains nor humane Wit well imagine such ingrateful Monsters that for their King 's continual Concessions to better the Conditions of his Subjects should still Plot upon him to render his own the worse Here we saw what all these Positions Principles Practises all their Preaching Praying Printing did tend to and terminate in the People enslav'd the Monarch murder'd the Government undermin'd But as these Maxims of our Democratick's were destructive to our Monarchy and produc'd as you have seen those Plots and conspiracies that subverted it so shall we see by subsequent Events and be inform'd from as much Matter of Fact what I have heretofore insinuated only from the force of Reason that the same Principles after they had set up their Commonwealth made them Plot too upon one another When the Parliament had imprison'd their King whom they bought for a Slave confin'd him with a merciless Cruelty at Holdenby-house then a Castle and Garrison and by that Act made him no more a Monarch but a Prisoner of War themselves no more his Subjects but his Masters and Sovereigns the Parliament having had so far the End of their Plot upon the King now the Army take their Turn to Plot upon the Parliament who when they had made their Monarch accountable to their Memberships might as well sure expect by their Servants to be call'd to account The Parliament when they had wrested the Sword out of the King's Hand knew themselves the Supream Power and were as certain they could as soon send him packing with his Supream Right The Soldiers now are sensible that the Members of the Army have that Sword in their Hand which the Parliament took out of the King 's and see no reason why they may not make themselves the Supream Parliament for this their Original Right of the People over the Magistrate will always I warrant you be appropriated to that part of it that has an Actual Power and that they found for Cromwel conspires with his Adjutators who like provok'd Beasts begin to be warm'd into a perception of their own Strength which even when a Horse comes to know to be sure he 'll throw his Rider For this he fools his Fellow-Senators with a Suggestion of his readiness to suppress any Soldiers Insurrection at the same time that he set them on to rise The Parliament had plotted by Subscription and Petitioning to advance their Power upon the King their humble Servants the Soldiers now subscribe petition that the Parliament would be pleas'd to submit to their Power send to the Good Houses at Westminster the Representation of their Army that they forsooth were the Delinquents now and that they be speedily purg'd of such Members as for Delinquency were not to sit there They make eleven of them Traytors impeach them of High-Treason to
surrender it to a single person from whom they thought they had it and so the Usurper had his design The next Plot was how they could play the Knaves to get that Power again which they thought they had parted with like Fools Cromwel was cunning enough to hold what he had gotten and never parted with it but with his Breath tho' the Levellers the Anabaptists and Fifth-Monarchy Men conspir'd for Insurrections and Lambert himself left little undone to supplant him But when his Son succeeded whose silliness only made him not sit so long a Usurper they soon found opportunity to set him aside As they had pleas'd Oliver with making him a Mock King so he to pleasure them had mock't them with an House of Lords And Richard's first Parliament being made up of most Commonwealthsmen fall foul upon that new Constitution which was indeed as filthy they take themselves without the Protector and that other House to be the Supream Power Lambert and Fleetwood that first upon the Principles of these Rebels and Republicans had promoted the Affairs of the Father fall now to Plotting upon the same grounds of LIBERTY which with Daemocraticks is to do what they list to depose his Son and 't is no wonder that those should fail in their Faith to a Rebel that had revolted from their Prince For this therefore they have freequent Meetings at Wallingford House and the Parliament seeming as uneasie under him as they and they as uneasie under the Parliament they send Desborough to get its dissolution to be signed by the Protector at the same time they make their Messenger to dissolve it by themselves Richard signs it and presently after is forc'd to his own Resignation and that to just no Body and all is brought to what all such Principles and Practises always tend to perfect Anarchy and Confusion The Protector here quarrels with the Parliament and the Army the Parliament with the Army and Protector the Army with the Protector and Parliament till at last they leave us neither Parliament Protector or Army When they had brought the Government to be just no where Richard having been Plotted upon to resign to just no Body some of the rebel Rump with Lenthal their Speaker Lambert their Officer take it up as Scavengers do a piece of Silver they find in the kennel or dropt in the street these by the Army are declared a Parliament because they resolv'd themselves to be so first and the People at present could not tell where to find out another the secluded Members offer'd to run in too but were Fools for their pains and repuls'd with as much violence for they might well have foreseen and imagin'd that those that threw them out before had their Swords in their hands still and to be sure were much rather for their room than their company and that they found when they set their Souldiers with their Swords drawn to keep them out and their most Legislative Arms soon suspended them from the medling in the making of Laws Thus re-instated and establisht into that Oligarchical Tyranny that first turn'd off all Monarchy and took off the King's Head and this re-establishment of the most desperate Rebels confirmed with the approbation of the Army one would have thought their very Master the Devil could never have undermin'd or made them again to miscarry But yet so it happen'd for these Principles of our Republicans having made all obedience meerly precarious and utterly defac'd the Doctrine of the Gospel to be subject for Conscience sake as well as repeal'd the Oaths of Allegiance that required them to be so by Law Why now they were left at liberty and truly did as licentiously practise the ãâã any frame themselves had establisht and that too before they had consider'd what to set up I won't insist for it here upon the Insurrection of the Cheshire men and the business of Booth which by my little light of reason and the not unlikely Remarks to be made from the least History I have read was really a design to supplant this restored Rump Headed by one of the most eminent of the secluded Members that probably in meer revenge resolved upon a Free Parliament that is because they had not the Freedom to sit with them that secluded them But that Plot which gave them the lift again now was that of Lambert himself that had lifted them into the Saddle where himself design'd they were not to sit long For Oliver having taught him the way to a Protectorate as well as 't is thought promised him in it a Succession was resolv'd to leave nothing unessay'd to settle himself in that power to which he once thought he should otherwise succeed and being Commission'd by these Masters he had made and sent to suppress this Presbyterian Insurrection which he did with success he found it too the most seasonable time to carry on his design and so carresses his Soldiers into a Seditious Tumultuous Petition for a General to be set over the Army out of the Soldiers themselves for these Swords-Men could not relish that the Gown the Speaker a Lenthal that then lookt like the Generalissimo should Lord it over Arms that is in English be above their Lambert The Men of Westminster made a shift to keep up so much Courage as to make this Remonstrance dangerous to the Commonwealth and Vote the Commissions of the Wallingford Men to be void But Lambert that had shuffl'd so well and pact his Cards with Oliver knew how to play them now as well for himself and therefore as Cromwel had turn'd them out of the House before he comes and keeps them from getting in insomuch that when Lenthal came to the Palace Yard he could see nothing but Lambert and his Soldiers set to keep them out and so the Rumpers retreat again are put out of possession of all Lambert left an absolute Generalissimo sets up his Committee of safety in which to be sure himself must sit as President In the next place they fell a Ploting to get themselves in that had been so often at in and out and for this they put up Petitions for a free Parliament from all Parts ãâã runs down to Portsmouth which Revolts and those that were sent to reduce it turn Renegadoes Lawson and his Fellows in the Navy declare against the Committee Fairfax favours the Rump and raises Forces and they fell secretly to the Listing of Soldiers in Cornwal and the Western Counties and 't was time then for this Council of Safety to look to save themselves but nothing frighted them more into the re-admission of the Rump but the unresistible march of the mighty Monk that Fabius of our Isle that like the Roman Cunctator restor'd us our King by his prudential delays for these Rumpers ãâã return'd again into the House were far enough from declaring for a free Parliament which they still cla mour'd for so much when they were shut out Nay
and grant all Regal Rights He can erect a Court of Common pleas in what part of the Kingdom he pleases and shall he that has a power over the very being of the Court not be able to place his Ministers of Justice in it The Chancery is a Court of such Antiquity that long before the Conquest we have several accounts of it tho some that were Foreign to our Laws as well as Land would make it commence with the Conqueror Our very British Kings are said to have had such a Court and Ethelred the Saxon granted the Chancellorship even in Succession I need not it would be Nonsense to design to prove Parliaments had nothing to do with such Affairs so long before they themselves exsisted and in this Monument of Antiquity fam'd for the Distribution of the most Equal Justice since they cannot pretend without shame to the power of Electing such an Antient Officer of the Crown why what they can't presume to mend must be quite Marr'd and utterly Abolisht Pryn himself could never pretend that this Great Officer was the Peoples tho that popular piece of Absurdity might have prov'd it too as well he did the rest from the paradox of all our Princes being Elected which tho allow'd them from their perverted Histories yet still those whom they say were Chosen had the Liberty of Chusing their own Ministers sure they can't have the least shadow for such a silly Conjecture therefore this Sophister having just so much sense as to conceive from the begging one false Principle the most Damnable Falsehoods can be deducted concludes but yet very Cautiously with a beleive so that since Kings were first Elected by the People Officers of the Crown were so too that is first he Lyes like a Knave and then infers like a Fool. But the Printing and Publishing now the Reasons for the rejecting this Judicatory is only to try how near the natural Sons can tread in the Prints and the very footsteps of the former Rebellion of their Fathers for in the Reign of Henry the Third when this Mighty Parliamentary Power was first hatcht far from being brought to the Maturity to which Time and their popular Encroachments have since ripen'd it then the ãâã Embryo of State just modell'd and conceiv'd The Rebellious Barons being then the Parents as also a Rebellion since the Nurse of such Seditious proposals demanded the very same piece of Praerogative to have the Chief Justice the Chancellor and Treasurers to be chosen by themselves and then exercis'd the power when they had got it like so many Tyrants too that Ostracism upon the Kings Officers of State succeeded no better then that at Athens only to make room for so much worse the Leaguers in France Petition their King to remove his Counsellors and Officers that they might put in others of their own and shall the Presidents of Papists and that of Rebel ones obtain even with our Puritans to Rebel will they boldly own themselves Protestants and not Blush in the practices of those very Catholicks they condemn Did not our late Rebels and Regicides show themselves more Modest and Regular in their Attempts for Reformation than this more insolent Republican they never entered upon Abolishing this Court till they had extirpated the Monarchy it was the Council of State that then voted it down the Rump it self the very Nusance of the Nation had but just thought it convenient among the midst of all their Innovation to root out a Constitution so Old they had but just Voted for the taking it away when Pride's Purge came aud scour'd both these Legislators and the Law and tho then the Chancery was criminated with the same Aspersions we find lain upon it in this Libel for Chargeableness Dilatories yet even by those most virulent Villains it was allowed if well managed to compare with any Court in the whole World whereas the â Doctor of Sedition here thinks that at the best there is not to be found a worse Tribunal in the Universe neither was it easily compast even in those Times of Confusion there being no less than three or four Bills brought in for the purpose before they could with the Corrupt Committees of that Council agree on one for the Commissioners for this Regulation understanding as little Law as they had broken much had hardly the Sense to propose their own Sentiments in such a way as might make the Members Sensible there was any Reason for the prosecuting the very Work they had Undertaken they seemed to resolve only to Ruin a Court constituted with the Monarchy it self before they could agree for the reestablishing another in its Room there seemed a sort of Sympathy between that and the Government both founded both fell together and both before the Subverters had or were like to find out a better Livy tells us like it of another such a sort of rash Rebellious Reformers in Itaely a distempered State that fell out with their Aristocracy and designed a Deposition of their Old Governors and that only to chose new But before they could agree upon choice they found it I 'll assure you as difficult to get better as it was easie to destroy whom they thought worse and so with a wise Acquiescence were satisfyed and sate down with an unintended Submission It had been well for ours had they been so wise as to have thought so and done so too But so furious were they here in this very point of Reformation that tho they could not agree upon what they would Reform before the Term approacht the Members that had Voted for the Abolishing as they call'd it this Corrupt Court would not care to pass through the Hall while it was sitting but moved to have its Jurisdiction suspended till they were agreed for the manner of its utter Extirpation and on they went with their Legislative Swords their Armed suffrages till they past that Second Vote for the new modelling of all the Law and so not only supprest the Chancery but that Malignant party Justice and Equity was Banisht by those very Villains that had broke all the Statutes of the Land In short they never did destroy these Judicatures but when they did ãâã their King they never chose their Judges but when they had ãâã the Supremaey they never can do either without subverting the Monarchy for 't is their own Soveraign that sits and presides in them and the ãâã Officiate but for him because not sufficient for it himself and therefore has committed all his power of Judicature to these several Courts of Justice The King is said to Judge by his Judges ãâã the Parliament elect them they are none of his they chuse their Soveraigns Representatives while they would think it hard his Majestie should make the Peoples or nominate but to a ãâã Burrough Thus much for their Management of the State the next part of the Proposition is their