excellent Prince King Edward the First about it he to take away from his People all fear and apprehension that he intended to change the Ancient Government called speedily a Parliament and in it consented to a Declaration of the Kingdoms Right in that point without the clearing of which all our other Laws had been useless and the Government itself too of which the Parliament is at the least as Essential a part as the Prince so that there passed a Law in that Parliament that one should be held every year and oftner if need be which like another Magna Charta was confirmed by a new Act made in the time of Edward the Third that glorious Prince nor were there any Sycophants in those days who durst pretend Loyalty by using Arguments to prove that it was against the Royal Prerogative for the Parliament to entrench upon the Kings Right of calling and Dissolving of Parliaments as if there were a Prerogative in the Crown to chuse whether ever a Parliament should assemble or no I would desire no more if I were a Prince to make me Grand Seignior Soon after this last Act the King by reason of his Wars with France and Scotland and other great Affairs was forced sometimes to end his Parliaments abruptly and leave business undone and this not out of Court-tricks which were then unknown which produced another Act not long after by which it was provided That no Parliament should be dismist till all the Petitions were answered That is in the Language of those times till all the Bills which were then styled Petitions were finished Doct. Pray Sir give me a little account of this last Act you speak of for I have heard in Discourse from many Lawyers that they believe there is no such Eng. Gen. Truly Sir I shall confess to you that I do not find this Law in any of our Printed Statute-Books but that which first gave me the knowledg of it was what was said about three years ago in the House of Commons by a worthy and Learned Gentleman who undertook to produce the Record in the Reign of Richard the Second and since I have questioned many Learned Counsellors about it who tell me there is such a one and one of them who is counted a Prerogative-Lawyer said it was so but that Act was made in Factious times Besides I think it will be granted that for some time after and particularly in the Reigns of Henry the 4 th Henry the 5 th and Henry the 6 th it was usual for a Proclamation to be made in Westminster-Hall before the end of every Session that all those that had any matter to present to the Parliament should bring it in before such a day for otherwise the Parliament at that day should determine But if there were nothing at all of this nor any Record extant concerning it yet I must believe that it is so by the Fundamental Law of this Government which must be lame and imperfect without it for it is all one to have no Parliaments at all but when the Prince pleases and to allow a power in him to dismiss them when he will that is when they refuse to do what he will so that if there be no Statute it is certainly because our wise Ancestors thought there needed none but that by the very Essence and Constitution of the Government it is provided for and this we may call if you had rather have it so the Common-Law which is of as much value if not more than any Statute and of which all our good Acts of Parliament and Magna Charta itself is but Declaratory so that your Objection is sufficiently aswered in this That though the King is intrusted with the formal part of summoning and pronouncing the Dissolution of Parliaments which is done by his Writ yet the Laws which oblige him as well as us have determin'd how and when he shall do it which is enough to shew that the Kings share in the Soveraignty that is in the Parliament is cut out to him by the Law and not left at his disposal Now I come to the Kings part in the Intervals of Parliament Noble Ven. Sir before you do so pray tell us what other Prerogatives the King enjoys in the Government for otherwise I who am a Venetian may be apt to think that our Doge who is call'd our Prince may have as much Power as yours Eng. Gent. I am in a fine condition amongst you with my Politicks the Doctor tells me I have made the King Absolute and now you tell me I have made him a Doge of Venice But when your Prince has Power to dispose of the Publick Revenue to name all Officers Ecclesiastical and Civil that are of trust and profit in the Kingdom and to dispose absolutely of the whole Militia by Sea and Land then we will allow him to be like ours who has all these Powers Doct. Well you puzzle me extreamly for when you had asserted the King's Power to the heighth in Calling and Dissolving Parliaments you gave me such satisfaction and shewed me wherein the Law had provided that this vast Prerogative could not hurt the People that I was fully satisfied and had not a word to say Now you come about again and place in the Crown such a Power which in my Judgment is inconsistent with our Liberty Eng. Gent. Sir I suppose you mean chiefly the Power of the Militia which was I must confess doubtful before a late Statute declar'd it to be in the King For our Government hath made no other disposal of the Militia than what was natural viz. That the Peers in their several Counties or Jurisdictions had the Power of calling together their Vassals either armed for the Wars or onely so as to cause the Law to be eâ—â—cuted by serving Writs and in case of resistance giving possession which Lords amongst their own Tenants did then perform the two several Offices of Lord-Lieutenant and Sheriff which latter was but the Earls Deputy as by his Title of Vice-Comes do's appear But this latter being of daily necessity and Justice itself that is the Lives Liberties and Estates of all the People in that County depending upon it when the greatness of the Peers decay'd of which we shall have occasion to speak hereafter the Electing of Sheriff was referred to the County-Court where it continued till it was placed where it now is by a Statute For the other part of the Militia which is the Arming the People for War it was de facto exercised by Commission from the King to a Lord-Lieutenant as an image of the Natural Lord and other Deputies and it was tacitely consented to though it were never setled by Statute as I said before till His Majesties happy Restauration But to answer you I shall say That whatever Powers are in the Crown whether by Statute or by old Prescription they are and must be understood to be intrusted in the Prince for the preservation of the
publisht by Mr. Petit of the Temple and Mr. Attwood of grays-Inne being Gentlemen whom I do mention honoris causa and really they deserve to be honor'd that they will spare some time from the Mechanical part of their Callings which is to assist Clients with Counsel and to plead their Causes and which I acknowledg likewise to be honourable to study the true Interest of their Country and to show how ancient the Rights of the People in England are and that in a time when neither Profit nor Countenance can be hop'd for from so ingenious an undertaking But I beg pardon for the deviation Of the three branches of Soveraign Power which Politicians mention which are Enacting Laws Levying of Taxes and making War and Peace the two first of them are indisputably in the Parliament and when I say Parliament I ever intend with the King The last has been usually exercis'd by the Prince if he can do it with his own Money yet ' because even in that Case it may be ruinous to the Kingdom by exposing it to an Invasion many have affirmed that such a Power cannot be by the true and ancient free Government of England supposed to be Intrusted in the hands of one man And therefore we see in divers Kings Reigns the Parliament has been Consulted and their advice taken in those matters that have either concerned War or Leagues And that if it has been omitted Addresses have been made to the king by Parliaments either to make war or peace according to what they thought profitable to the publick So that I will not determine whether that power which draws such consequences after it be by the genuine sence of our Laws in the Prince or no although I know of no Statute or written Record which makes it otherwise That which is undoubtedly the Kings Right or prerogative is to Call and Dissolve Parliaments to preside in them to approve of all Acts made by them and to put in Execution as Supream or Soveraign Magistrate in the Intervals of Parliaments and during their Sitting all Laws made by them as also the Common Law for which Cause he has the nomination of all Inferiour Officers and Ministers under him excepting such as by Law or Charter are eligible otherwise and the Power of the Sword to force Obedience to the Judgements given both in Criminal and Civil Causes Doct. Sir You have made us a very absolute Prince what have we left us if the King have all this Power what do our Liberties or Rights signifie whenever he pleases Eng. Gent. This Objection Doctor makes good what I said before that your skill did not terminate in the body natural but extend to the Politick for a more pertinent Interrogatory could never have been made by Plato or Aristotle In answer to which you may please to understand That when these Constitutions were first made our Ancestors were a plain-hearted well-meaning People without Court-reserves or tricks who having made choice of this sort of Government and having Power enough in their hands to make it take place did not foresee or imagine that any thoughts of Invading their Rights could enter into the Princes Head nor do I read that it ever did till the Norman Line came to Reign which coming in by Treaty it was obvious there was no Conquest made upon any but Harold in whose stead William the First came and would claim no more after his Victory than what Harold enjoy'd excepting that he might confiscate as he did those great men who took part with the wrong Title and French-men were put into their Estates which though it made in this Kingdom a mixture between Normans and Saxons yet produced no Change or Innovation in the Government the Norman Peers â—â—ing as tenacious of their Liberties and as active in the recovery of them to the full as the Saxon Families were Soon after the death of William and possibly in his time there began some Invasions upon the Rights of the Kingdom 〈…〉 gat Grievances and afterwards 〈…〉 plants and Discontents which grew to that height that the Peers were fain to use their Power that is Arm their Vassals to defend the Government whilest the Princes of that Age first King Iohn and then Henry the Third got Force together The Barons call'd in Lewis the Dauphin whilst the King would have given away the Kingdom to the Sarazens as he did to the Pope and armed their own Creatures so that a bloody War ensued for almost forty years off and on as may be read in our History The success was that the Barons or Peers obtained in the close two Charters or Laws for the ascertaining their Rights by which neither their Lives Liberties or Estates could ever be in danger any more from any Arbitrary Power in the Prince and so the good Government of England which was before this time like the Law of Nature onely written in the hearts of Men came to be exprest in Parchment and remain a Record in Writing though these Charters gave us no more than what was our own before After these Charters were made there could not chuse but happen some encroachment upon them but so long as the Peers kept their greatness there was no breaches but what were immediately made up in Parliament which when-ever they assembled did in the first place confirm the Charters and made very often Interpretations upon them for the benefit of the People witness the Statute de Tallagio non concedendo and many others But to come nearer the giving the Doctor an answer you may please to understand that not long after the framing of these forementioned Charters there did arise a Grievance not foreseen or provided for by them and it was such an one that had beaten down the Government at once if it had not been Redressed in an Orderly way This was the Intermission of Parliaments which could not be called but by the Prince and he not doing of it they ceast to be Assembled for some years if this had not been speedily remedied the Barons must have put on their Armour again for who can Imagine that such brisk Assertors of their Rights could have acquiesced in an Omission that ruin'd the Foundation of the Government which consisting of King Lords and Commons and having at that time Marched near Five hundred years upon three Leggs must then have gone on hopping upon one which could it have gone forward as was impossible whilest Property continued where it was yet would have rid but a little way Nor can it be wonder'd at that our great Men made no provision against this Grievance in their Charters because it was impossible for them to imagine that their Prince who had so good a share in this Government should go about to destroy it and to take that burden upon himself which by our Constitution was undeniably to be divided between him and his Subjects And therefore divers of the great Men of those times speaking with that
Government and for the safety and interest of the People and when either the Militia which is given him for the execution and support of the Law shall be imploy'd by him to subvert it as in the case of Ship-Money it was or the Treasure shall be mis-apply'd and made the Revenue of Courtiers and Sycophants as in the time of Edward the Second or worthless or wicked People shall be put into the greatest places as in the reign of Richard the Second In this case though the Prince here cannot be questionable for it as the Kings were in Sparta and your Doges I believe would be yet it is a great violation of the trust reposed in him by the Government and a making that Power which is given him by Law unlawful in the Execution And the frequent examples of Justice inflicted in Parliament upon the King's Ministers for abusing the Royal Power shews plainly that such authority is not left in his hands to use as he pleases Nay there have be fallen fact troubles and dangers to some of thâ—se Princes themselves who have abused their Power to the prejudice of the Subjects which although they are no way justifiable yet may serve for an Instruction to Princes and an example not to hearken to ruinous Councils for men when they are enraged do not always consider Justice of Religion passion being as natural to man as reason and vertue which was the Opinion of divine Machiavil To answer you then I say That though we do allow such Powers in the King yet since they are given him for edification and not destruction and cannot be abused without great danger to his Ministers and even to himself we may hope that they can never be abused but in a broken Government And if ours be so as we shall see anon the fault of the ill execution of our Laws is not to be imputed either to the Prince or his Ministers excepting that the latter may be as we said before justly punishable for not advising the Prince to consent to them ending the frame of which we shall talk more hereafter but in the mean time I will come to the Kings other Prerogatives as having all Royal Mines the being serv'd first before other Creditors where mony is due to him and to have a speedier and easier way than his Subjects to recover his debts and his Rents c. But to say all in one word when there arises any doubt whether any thing be the king's Prerogative or no this is the way of deciding it viz. To consider whether it be for the good and protection of the people that the King have such a Power For the definition of Prerogative is a considerable part of the Common Law by which Power is put into the Prince for the preservation of his People And if it be not for the good of his Subjects it is not Prerogative not Law for our Prince has no Authority of his own but what was first intrusted in him by the Government of which he is Head nor is it to be imagined that they would give him more Power than what was necessary to Govern them For example the power of pardoning Criminals condemned is of such use to the Lives and Estates of the People that without it many would be exposed to die unjustly As lately a poor Gentleman who by means of the Harangue of a Strepitous Lawyer was found guilty of Murder for a Man he never kil'd or if he had the fact had been but Man-slaughter and he had been inevitably murdered himself if his Majesty had not been graciously pleased to extend his Royal Mercy to him As he did likewise vouchsafe to do to a Gentleman convicted for speaking words he never utter'd or if he had spoken them they were but foolishly not malitiously spoken On the other side if a Controversie should arise as it did in the beginning of the last Parliament between the House of Commons and the Prerogative-Lawyers about the choice of their Speaker these latter having interested his Majesty in the Contest and made him by consequence disoblige in limine a very Loyal and a very Worthy Parliament and for what for a Question which if you will decide it the right way will be none for setting aside the Presidents and the History when the Crown first pretended to any share in the Choice of a Speaker which Argument was very well handled by some of the Learned Patriots then I would have leave to ask what man can shew and what reason can be alledged why the protection and welfare of the People should require that a Prerogative should be in the Prince to chuse the Mouth of the House of Commons when there is no particular person in his whole Dominion that would not think it against his interest if the Government had given the King Power to nominate his Bayliff his Attorney or his Referree in any Arbitration Certainly there can be no advantage either to the Soveraign or his Subjects that the person whose Office it is to put their deliberations into fitting words and express all their requests to his Majesty should not be entirely in their own Election and appointment which there is the more reason for too because the Speakers for many years past have received Instructions from the Court and have broken the Priviledges of the House by revealing their Debates Adjourning them without a Vote and committed many other Misdemeanours by which they have begotten an ill understanding between the King and his House of Commons to the infinite prejudice both of his Majesties Affairs and his People Since I have given this rule to Judge Prerogative by I shall say no more of it for as to what concerns the King's Office in the Intervals of Parliament it is wholly Ministerial and is barely to put in Execution the Common Law and the Statutes made by the Soveraign Power that is by Himself and the Parliament without varying one tittle or suspending abrogating or neglecting the Execution of any Act whatsoever and to this he is Solemnly Sworn at his Coronation And all his Power in this behalf is in him by Common Law which is Reason itself written as well in the hearts of rational Men as in the Lawyers Books Noble Ven. Sir I have heard much talk of the Kings Negative Voice in Parliaments which in my Opinion is as much as a Power to frustrate when he pleases all the endeavours and labours of his People and to prevent any good that might accrue to the Kingdom by having the right to meet in Parliament for certainly if we in Venice had placed any such Prerogative in our Duke or in any of our Magistracies we could not call ourselves a free People Eng. Gent. Sir I can answer you as I did before that if our Kings have such a Power it ought to be used according to the true and genuine intent of the Government that is for the Preservation and Interest of the people and not
for the disappointing the Counsels of a Parliament towards reforming Grievances and making provision for the future execution of the Lawes and whenever it is applyed to frustrate those ends it is a violation of Right and infringement of the King's Coronation-Oath in which there is this Clause That he shall Confirmare consuetudines which in the Latine of those times is leges quas vulgus elegerit I know some Criticks who are rather Grammarians than Lawyers have made a distinction between elegerim and elegero and will have it That the King Swears to such Laws as the people shall have chosen and not to those they shall chuse But in my Opinion if that Clause had been intended onely to oblige the King to execute the Laws made already it might have been better exprest by servare consuetudines than by confirmare consuetudines besides that he is by another clause in the same Oath sworn to execute all the Laws But I shall leave this Controversie undecided those who have a desire to see more of it may look into those quarrelling Declarations pro and con about this matter which preceded our unhappy Civil Wars This is certain that there are not to be found any Statutes that have passed without being presented to his Majesty or to some commissioned by him but whether such Addresses were intended for Respect and Honour to His Majesty as the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Lord Mayor of London are brought to him I leave to the Learned to Discourse onely thus much we may affirm That there never were yet any Parliamentary Requests which did highly concern the Publick presented to any King and by him refused but such denials did produce very dismal effects as may be seen in our Histories ancient and late it being certain that both the Barons Wars and our last dismal Combustions proceeded from no other cause than the denial of the Princes then reigning to consent to the desires of the States of the Kingdom and such hath been the wisdom and goodness of our present gracious Prince that in twenty years and somewhat more for which time we have enjoy'd him since his happy Restauration he hath not exercis'd his Negative Voice towards more than one publick Bill and that too was to have continued in force if it had passed into an Act but for six Weeks being for raising the Militia for so long time and as for the private Bills which are matters of meer grace it is unreasonable his Majesty should be refused that Right that every Englishman enjoys which is not to be obliged to dispence his favours but where he pleases But for this point of the Negative Vote it is possible that when we come to Discourse of the Cure of our Political Distemper some of you will propose the clearing and explanation of this matter and of all others which may concern the King's Power and the Peoples Rights Noble Ven. But pray Sir have not the House of Peers a Negative Voice in all Bills how come they not to be obliged to use it for the Publick Good Eng. Gent So they are no doubt and the Commons too but there is a vast difference between a deliberative Vote which the Peers have with their Negative and that in the Crown to blast all without deliberating The Peers are Co-ordinate with the Commons in presenting and hammering of Laws and may send Bills down to them as well as receive any from them excepting in matters wherein the People are to be Taxed and in this our Government imitates the best and most perfect Commonwealths that ever were where the Senate assisted in the making of Laws and by their wisdom and dexterity polisht fil'd and made ready things for the more populous Assemblies and sometimes by their gravity and moderation reduced the People to a Calmer State and by their authority and credit stem'd the Tide and made the Waters quiet giving the People time to come to themselves And therefore if we had no such Peerage now upon the old Constitution yet we should be necessitated to make an artificial Peerage or Senate in stead of it which may assure our present Lords that though their Dependences and Power are gone yet that we cannot be without them and that they have no need to fear an annihilation by our Reformation as they suffered in the late mad times But I shall speak a word of the peoples Rights and then shew how this brave and excellent Government of England came to decay The People by the Fundamental Laws that is by the Constitution of the Government of England have entire freedome in their Lives Properties and their Persons nether of which can in the least suffer but according to the Laws already made or to be made hereafter in Parliament and duly publisht and to prevent any oppression that might happen in the execution of these good Laws which are our Birth-right all Tryals must be by twelve Men of our equals and of our Neighbourhood These in all Civil Causes judge absolutely and decide the matter of Fact upon which the matter of Law depends but if where matter of Law is in question these twelve Men shall refuse to find a special Verdict at the direction of the Court the Judge cannot Controul it but their Verdict must be Recorded But of these matters as also of Demurrers Writs of Errour and Arrests of Judgment c. I have discours'd to this Gentleman who is a Stranger before now neither do's the understanding of the Execution of our Municipal Laws at all belong to this discourse Onely it is to be noted that these Juries or twelve Men in all Trials or Causes which are Criminal have absolute Power both as to matter of Law and Fact except the Party by Demurrer confess the matter of Fact and take it out of their hands And the first question the Officer asks the Foreman when they all come in to deliver their Verdict is this Is he Guilty in manner or form as he is Indicted or not Guilty which shews plainly that they are to Examine and Judge as well whether and how far the Fact committed is Criminal as whether the person charged hath committed that Fact But though by the Corruption of these times the infallible consequences of a broken frame of Government this Office of the Juries and Right of Englishmen have been of late question'd yet it hath been strongly and effectually vindicated by a learned Author of late to whom I refer you for more of this matter I shall say no more of the Rights of the People but this one thing That neither the King nor any by Authority from him hath any the least Power or Jurisdiction over any Englishman but what the Law gives them and that although all Commissions and Writs go out in the King's name yet his Majesty hath no right to Issue out any Writ with advice of his Council or otherwise excepting what come out of his Courts nor to alter
Nos que valemos tanto camo nos y podemos mos os eligimos nuestro Rey conque nos guardeys nuestros Fueros y Privilegios y si no no. That is We who are as good as you and more Powerful do chuse you our King upon condition that you preserve our Rights and Priviledges and if not not Notwithstanding all this Philip the Second being both King of Castile and Arragon picked a quarrel with the latter by demanding his Secretary Antonio Perez who fled from the King's displeasure thither being his own Country and they refusing to deliver him it being expresly contrary to a Law of Arragon that a Subject of that Kingdom should be against his will carried to be tryed elsewhere the King took that occasion to Invade them with the Forces of his Kingdom of Castile who had ever been Rivals and Enemies to the Aragoneses and they to defend themselves under their Iusticia who did his part faithfully and couragiously but the Castilians being old Soldiers and those of Arragon but County-Troops the former prevailed and so this Kingdom in getting that of Castile by a Marriage but an Age before lost its own Liberty and Government for it is since made a Province and Governed by a Vice-Roy from Madrid although they keep up the formality of their Cortes still Doct. No man living that knew the hatred and hostility that ever was between the English and Scots could have imagined in the years 1639 and 1640 when our King was with great Armies of English upon the Frontiers of Scotland ready to Invade that Kingdom that this Nation would not have assisted to have brought them under but it proved otherwise Eng. Gent. It may be they feared That when Scotland was reduced to slavery and the Province pacified and Forces kept up there That such Forces and greater might have been imployed here to reduce us into the same condition an apprehension which at this time sticks with many of the common People and helps to fill up the measure of our Fears and Distractions But the visible reason why the English were not at that time very forward to oppress their Neighbours was the consideration That they were to be Invaded for refusing to receive from hence certain Innovations in matters of Religion and the worship of God which had not long before been introduced here and therefore the People of this Kingdom were unwilling to perpetuate a Mungrel Church here by imposing it upon them But I do exceedingly admire when I read our History to see how zealous and eager our Nobility and People here were anciently to assert the right of our Crown to the Kingdom of France whereas it is visible that if we had kept France for we Conquered it intirely and fully to this day we must have run the fate of Arragon and been in time ruined and opprest by our own Valour and good Fortune a thing that was foreseen by the Macedonians when their King Alexander had subdued all Persia and the East who weighing how probable it was that their Prince having the possession of such great and flourishing Kingdoms should change his Domicilium Imperii and inhabit in the Centre of his Dominions and from thence Govern Macedon by which means the Grecians who by their Vertue and Valour had Conquered and subdued the Barbarians should in time even as an effect of their Victories be opprest and tyrannized over by them and this precautious foresight in the Greeks as was fully believed in that Age hastened the fatal Catastrophe of that great Prince Doct. Well I hope this consideration will fore-arm our Parliaments That they will not easily suffer their eyes to be dazled any more with the false glory of Conquering France Noble Ven. You need no great cautions against Conquering France at this present and I believe your Parliaments need as little admonition against giving of Money towards new Wars or Alliances that fine wheedle having lately lost them enough already therefore pray let us suffer our Friend to go on Eng. Gent. I have no more to say of Foreign Monarchies but only to tell you That Poland is both Governed and Possessed by some very great Persons or Potentates called Palatines and under them by a very numerous Gentry for the King is not onely Elective but so limited that he has little or no Power but to Command their Armies in time of War which makes them often chuse Foreigners of great Fame for Military Exploits and as for the Commonalty or Country-men they are absolutely Slaves or Villains This Government is extreamly confused by reason of the numerousness of the Gentry who do not always meet by way of representation as in other Kingdoms but sometimes for the choice of their King and upon other great occasions collectively in the Field as the Tribes did at Rome which would make things much more turbulent if all this body of Gentry did not wholly depend for their Estates upon the favour of the Palatines their Lords which makes them much more tractable I have done with our Neighbours beyond Sea and should not without your command have made so long a digression in this place which should indeed have been treated of before we come to speak of England but that you were pleased to divert me from it before However being placed near the Portraicture of our own Country it serves better as contraria juxta se posita to illustrate it but I will not make this Deviation longer by Apologizing for it and shall therefore desire you to take notice That as in England by degrees Property came to shift from the few to the many so the Government is grown heavier and more uneasie both to Prince and People the complaints more in Parliament the Laws more numerous and much more tedious and prolix to meet with the tricks and malice of men which works in a loose Government for there was no need to make Acts verbose when the great Persons could presently force the Execution of them for the Law of Edward the First for frequent Parliaments had no more words than A Parliament shall be holden every year whereas our Act for a Triennial Parliament in the time of King Charles the First contained several sheets of paper to provide against a failer in the Execution of that Law which if the Power had remained in the Lords would have been needless for some of them in case of intermission of Assembling the Parliament would have made their Complaint and Address to the King and have immediately removed the obstruction which in those days had been the natural and easie way but now that many of the Lords like the Bishops which the Popes make at Rome in partibus infidelium are meerly grown Titular and purchased for nothing but to get their Wives place it cannot be wondred at if the King slight their Addresses and the Court-Parasites deride their Honourable undertakings for the safety of their Country Now the Commons succeeding as was said
admired if not adored by the people and considering too that all the power they leave him will serve but to enable him to defend us the better from Popery and Arbitrary power for which latter Monarchy was first Instituted Thus we may exercise during a Parliament or two love-tricks between the Prince and his people and imitate the hony-moon that continued for about two years after his Majesties Restauration till the ill management of affairs and the new grevances that shall arise which will be sure never to fail till our true cure be effected notwithstanding the care of the new King and his Councellors shall awaken the discontents of the people and then they will curse the time in which they made this election of a Prince and the great men for not hindring them Then men will be reckoning up the discontents of the Peers sometime after they had made a rash choice of H. the 7th in the field who had then no title when they saw how he made use of the power they gave him to lessen their greatness and to fortifie himself upon their ruins when it comes to this and that the Governing party comes to be but a little faction the people who never know the true cause of their distemper will be looking out abroad who has the Lawful title if the next Heir be not in the meantime with an Army of English and Strangers in the field here as is most likely and look upon the Prince of Orange or the next of kin as their future Saviour in case the Duke be dead in the mean time and so the cause of all their distrust taken away thus most men not only discontented persons but the people in general lookt upon his Majesty that now is as their future deliverer during our late distractions when his condition was so weak that he had scarce wherewithall to subsist and his enemies powerful at home and victorious abroad which will not be I fear our case I Prophesy then because you will have me use this word that if Nobles or people make any such unfortunate choice as this during the distractions we may be in upon his Majesties death we shall not only miss our cure or have it deferred till another Government make it but remain in the confusion we now suffer under and besides that shall be sure to feel first or last the calamity of a Civil and Foreign War and in the mean time to be in perpetual fear of it and suffer all the burden and charge which is necessary to provide for it besides all the other ill consequences of a standing Army To conclude I assure you in the Faith of a Christian that I have made this discourse solely and singly out of zeal and affection to the Interest of my Countrey and not at all with the least intention to favour or promote the Cause or Interest of the D. of York or to disparage the Duke of Monmouth from whom I never received the least unkindness nor ever had the honour to be in his Company and to whom I shall ever pay respect suitable to his high Birth and Merit Noble Ven. Well Sir your Reasoning in this point has extreamly satisfied me and the Doctor I suppose was so before as he averred therefore pray let us go on where we left Eng. Gent. I cannot take so much upon me as to be Dictator in the Method of our Cure since either of you is a thousand times better qualified for such an Office and therefore shall henceforth desire to be an Auditor Doct. Pray Sir let us not spend time in Compliments but be pleased to proceed in this business and we doubt not but as you have hitherto wonderfully delighted us so you will gratifie us in concluding it Eng. Gent. I see I must obey you but pray help me and tell me in the first place whether you do not both believe that as the causa causarum of all our Distractions is as has been proved the breach of our Government so that the immediate Causes are two First The great distrust on both sides between the King and his People and Parliament the first fearing that his Power will be so lessened by degrees that at length it will not be able to keep the Crown upon his head And the latter seeing all things in disorder and that the Laws are not executed which is the second of the two Causes fear the King intends to change the Government and be Arbitrary Noble Ven. I am a Stranger but though I never reflected so much upon the Original Cause as I have done since I heard you discourse of it yet I ever thought that those two were the Causes of the Unquietness of this Kingdom I mean the Jealousie between the King and his People and the Inexecution of the great Laws of Calling Parliaments Annually and letting them sit to dispatch their Affairs I understand this in the time of His Majesties Grand-Father and Father more than in His own Reign Eng. Gent. Then whoever can absolutely lay these two Causes asleep for ever will arrive to a perfect Cure which I conceive no way of doing but that the King have a great deal more Power or a great deal less And you know that what goes out of the King must go into the People and so vice versa Insomuch that the People must have a great deal more Power or a great deal less Now it is no question but either of these two would rather increase their Power than diminish it so that if this cannot be made up by the Wisdom of this Age we may see in the next that both the King will endeavour to be altogether without a Parliament and the Parliament to be without a King Doct. I begin to smell that you would be nibbling at the pretence which some had before his Majesties Restauration of a Commonwealth or Democracy Eng. Gent. No I abhor the thoughts of wishing much less endeavouring any such thing during these Circumstances we are now in That is under Oaths of Obedience to a Lawful King And truly if any Themistocles should make to me such a Proposal I should give the same Judgment concerning it that Aristides did in such a Case The Story is short After the War between the Greeks and the Persians was ended and Xerxes driven out of Greece the whole Fleet of the Grecian Confederates except that of Athens which was gone home lay in a great Arsenal such as were then in use upon the Coast of Attica during their abode there Themistocles harrangues one day the People of Athens as was then the Custome and tells them that he had a design in his head which would be of Infinite profit and advantage to the Commonwealth But that it could not be executed without the Order and Authority of them and that it did likewise require secresie and if it were declared there in the Market place where Strangers as well as Citizens might be present it could
not be concealed and therefore proposed it to their consideration what should be done in it it was at length concluded that Themistocles should propose it to Aristides and if he did next morning acquaint the People that he gave his approbation to it it should be proceeded in Themistocles informs him that the whole Fleet of their Confederates in the War against the Medes had betaken themselves to the great Arsenal upon their Coast where they might be easily fired and then the Athenians would remain absolute Masters of the Sea and so give Law to all Greece when Aristides came the next day to deliver his Judgment to the People he told them that the business proposed by Themistocles was indeed very advantageous and profitable to the Athenians But withal the most Wicked and Villanous Attempt that ever was undertaken upon which it was wholly laid aside And the same Judgment do I give Doctor of your Democracy at this time But to return to the place where I was I do belive that this difference may easily be terminated very fairly and that our House need not be pulled down and a new one built but may be very easily repair'd so that it may last many hundred years Noble Ven. I begin to perceive that you aim at this That the King must give the People more Power as Henry the Third and King Iohn did or the Parliament must give the King more as you said they did in France in the time of Lewis the Eleventh or else that it will come in time to a War again Eng. Gent. You may please to know that in all times hitherto the Parliament never demanded any thing of the King wherein the Interest and Government of the Kingdom was concerned excepting Acts of Pardon but they founded their demands upon their Right not only because it might seem unreasonable for them to be earnest with him to give them that which was his own but also because they cannot chuse but know that all Powers which are Fundamentally and Lawfully in the Crown were placed there upon the first Institution of our Government to capacitate the Prince to Govern and Protect his People So that for the Parliament to seek to take from him such Authority were to be felo de se as we call a self-Homicide but as in some Distempers of the Body the Head suffers as well as the Inferiour parts so that it is not possible for it to order direct and provide for the whole Body as its Office requires since the Wisdom and Power which is placed there is given by God to that end In which Case though the Distemper of the Body may begin from the Disease of some other part or from the mass of Blood or putrefaction of other Humours yet since that noble part is so affected by it that Reason and Discourse fails therefore to restore this again Remedies must be apply'd to and possibly Humours or Vapours drawn from the Head it self that so it may be able to Govern and Reign over the Body as it did before or else the whole Man like a Slave must be ruled and guided ab extrinseco that is by some Keeper So it is now with us in our Politick Disease where granting if you please that the Distemper does not proceed from the Head but the Corruption of other parts yet in the Cure Applications must be made to the Head as well as to the Members if we mean poor England shall recover its former perfect health and therefore it will be found perhaps Essential to our being to ask something in the condition we now are to which the King as yet may have a Right and which except he please to part with the Phenomena of Government cannot be salved That is our Laws cannot be executed nor Magna Charta it self made practicable and so both Prince and People that is the Polity of England must die of this Disease or by this Delirium must be Governed ab extrinseco and fall to the Lot of some Foregin Power Noble Ven. But Sir since the business is come to this Dilemma why may not the King ask more Power of the Parliament as well as they of him Eng. Gent. No question but our present Councellours and Courtiers would be nibbling at that bait again if they had another Parliament that would take Pensions for their Votes But in one that is come fresh from the People and understand their Sense and Grievances very well I hardly believe they will attempt it for both Council and Parliament must needs know by this time-a-day that the Cause of all our Distractions coming as has been said an hundred times from the King 's having a greater Power already than the condition of Property at this present can admit without Confusion and Disorder It is not like to mend Matters for them to give him more except they will deliver up to him at the same instant their Possessions and Right to their Lands and become Naturally and Politically his Slaves Noble Ven. Since there must be a voluntary parting with Power I fear your Cure will prove long and ineffectul and we Reconcilers shall I fear prove like our devout Cappuchin at Venice this poor Mans name was Fra. Barnardino da Udine and was esteemed a very holy Man as well as an excellent Preacher insomuch that he was appointed to Preach the Lent Sermons in one of our principal Churches which he performed at the begining with so much Eloquence and Applause that the Church was daily crouded three hours before the Sermon was to begin the esteem and veneration this poor Fryar was in elevated his Spirit a little too high to be contained within the bounds of reason but before his Delirium was perceived he told his Auditory one day that the true Devotion of that People and the care they had to come to hear his word Preached had been so acceptable to God and to the Virgine that they had vouchsafed to Inspire him with the knowledg of an Expedient which he did not doubt but would make Men happy just even in this Life that the Flesh should no longer Iust against the Spirit but that he would not acquaint them with it at that present because something was to be done on their parts to make them capable of this great Blessing which was to pray zealously for a happy Success upon his Endeavours and to Fast and to visit the Churches to that end therefore he desired them to come the Wednesday following to be made acquainted with this blessed Expedient You may Imagine how desirous our People were to hear something more of this Fifth-Monarchy I will shorten my Story and tell you nothing of what crouding there was all night and what quarrelling for places in the Church nor with what difficulty the Saffi who were sent by the Magistrate to keep the Paece and to make way for the Preacher to get into the Pulpit did both But up he got and after a long preamable
of desiring more Prayers and Addressing himself to our Senate to Mediate with the Pope that a week might be set apart for a Jubilee and Fasting three days all over the Christian World to storm Heaven with Masses Prayers Fasting and Almes to prosper his Designs he began to open the Matter That the Cause of all the Wickedness and Sin and by Consequence of all the Miseries and Affliction which is in the World arising from the enmity which is between God and the Devil by which means God was often cross'd in his Intentions of good to Mankind here and hereafter the Devil by his temptations making us uncapable of the Mercy and Favour of our Creator therefore he had a Design with the helps before mentioned to mediate with Almighty God That he would pardon the Devil and receive him into his Favour again after so long a time of Banishment and Imprisonment and not to take all his power from him but to leave him so much as might do good to Man and not hurt which he doubted not but he would imploy that way after such reconciliation was made which his Faith would not let him question You may judge what the numerous Auditory thought of this I can only tell you that he had a different fort of Company at his return from what he had when he came for the Men left him to the Boys who with great Hoops instead of Acclamations brought him to the Gondola which conveyed him to the Redentor where he lodged And I never had the curiosity to enquire what became of him after Doct. I thank you heartily for this Intermess I see you have learnt something in England for I assure you we have been these twenty Years turning this and all serious Discourses into Ridicule but yet your Similitude is very pat for in every Parliament that has been in England these sixty Years we have had notable Contests between the Seed of the Serpent and the Seed of the Woman Eng. Gent. Well Sir we have had a Michael here in our Age who has driven out Lucifer and restored the true Deity to his Power but where Omnipotency is wanting which differs the Frier's Case and mine the Devil of Civil War and Confusion may get up again if he be not laid by prudence and Vertue and better Conjurers than any we have yet at Court Noble Ven. Well Gentlemen I hope you have pardoned me for my Farce But to be a little more serious pray tell me how you will induce the King to give up so much of his Right as may serve your turn Would you have the Parliament make War with him again Eng. Gent. There cannot nor ought to be any Change but by his Majesty's free Consent for besides that a War is to be abhorred by all Men that love their Country any Contest of that kind in this case viz. to take away the least part of the Kings Right could be justified by no man living I say besides that a Civil War has miscarried in our days which was founded at least pretendedly upon Defence of the People's own Rights In which although they had as clear a Victory in the end as ever any Contest upon Earth had yet could they never reap the least advantage in the World by it but went from one Tyranny to another from Barebones Parliament to Cromwell's Reign from that to a Committee of Safety leaving those Grave Men who managed Affairs at the beginning amazed to see new Men and new Principles Governing England And this induced them to Co-operate to bring things back just where they were before the War Therefore this Remedy will be either none or worse than the Disease It not being now as it was in the Barons time when the Lord who led out his Men could bring them back again when he pleased and Rule them in the mean time being his Vassals But now there is no Man of so much Credit but that one who behaves himself bravely in the War shall out-vye him and possibly be able to do what he pleases with the Army and the Government And in this corrupt Age it is ten to one he will rather do Hurt than Good with the Power he acquires But because you ask me how we would perswade the King to this I answer by the Parliament's humbly Remonstrating to His Majesty that it is his own Interest Preservation Quiet and true Greatness to put an end to the Distractions of his Subjects and that it cannot be done any other way and to desire him to enter into debate with some Men Authorized by them to see if there can be any other means than what they shall offer to compose things if they find there may then to embrace it otherwise to insist upon their own Proposals and if in the end they cannot obtain those Requests which they think the only essential means to preserve their Country then to beg their Dismission that they may not stay and be partakers in the Ruin of it Now my Reasons why the King will please to grant this after the thorough discussing of it are two First Because all great Princes have ever made up Matters with their Subjects upon such Contests without coming to Extremities The two greatest and most Valiant of our Princes were Edward the First and his Grandchild Edward the Third these had very great Demands made them by Parliaments and granted them all as you may see upon the Statute-Book Edward the Second and Richard the Second on the contrary refused all things till they were brought to Extremity There is a Memorable Example in the Greek Story of Theopompus King of Sparta whose Subjects finding the Government in disorder for want of some Persons that might be a Check upon the great Power of the King proposed to him the Creation of the Ephores Officers who made that City so great and Famous afterwards The King finding by their Reasons which were unanswerable as I think ours now are that the whole Government of Sparta was near its Ruin without such a Cure and considering that he had more to lose in that Disorder than others freely granted their desires for which being derided by his Wife who asked him what a kind of Monarchy he would leave to his Son answered a very good one because it will be a very lasting one Which brings on my Second Reason for which I believe the King will grant these things because he cannot any way mend himself nor his Condition if he do not Noble Ven. You have very fully convinced me of two things First That we have no reason to expect or believe that the Parliament will ever increase the Kings Power And then that the King cannot by any way found himself a New and more absolute Monarchy except he can alter the Condition of Property which I think we may take for granted to be impossible But yet I know not why we may not suppose that although he cannot establish to all Posterity such an
so whenever we enjoy this happiness to have the full benefit of those Constitutions which were made by our Ancestors for our safe and orderly living our Government is upon a right Basis therefore we must enquire into the Cause why our Laws are not executed when you have found and taken away that Cause all is well The Cause can be no other than this That the King is told and does believe that most of these great Charters or Rights of the people of which we now chiefly treat are against his Majesties Interest though this be very false as has been said yet we will not dispute it at this time but take it for granted so that the King having the Supreme execution of the Laws in his hand cannot be reasonably supposed to be willing to execute them whenever he can chuse whether he will do it or no it being natural for every man not to do any thing against his own Interest when he can help it now when you have thought well what it should be that gives the King a Liberty to chuse whether any part of the Law shall be currant or no you will find that it is the great Power the King enjoys in the Government when the Parliament hath discovered this they will no doubt demand of his Majesty an abatement of his Royal Prerogative in those matters only which concern our enjoyment of our All that is our Lives Liberties and Estates and leave his Royal Power entire and untoucht in all the other branches of it when this is done we shall be as if some great Heroe had performed the adventure of dissolving the Inchantment we have been under so many years And all our Statutes from the highest to the lowest from Magna Charta to that for burying in Woollen will be current and we shall neither fear the bringing in Popery nor Arbitrary Power in the Intervals of Parliament neither will there be any Dissentions in them all Causes of Factions between the Country and Court-party being entirely abolisht so that the People shall have no reason to distrust their Prince nor he them Doct. You make us a fine Golden Age but after all this will you not be pleased to shew us a small prospect of this Canaan or Country of rest will you not vouchsafe to particularize a little what Powers there are in the King which you would have discontinued would you have such Prerogatives abolished or placed elsewhere Eng. Gent. There can be no Government if they be abolished But I will not be like a Man who refuses to sing amongst his Friends at their entreaty because he has an ill Voice I will rather suffer my self to be laught at by you in delivering my small Judgment in this Matter but still with this protestation that I do believe that an Infinity of Men better qualifi'd than my self for such sublime Matters and much more the House of Commons who represent the Wisdom as well as the Power of this Kingdom may find out a far better way than my poor parts and Capacity can suggest The powers then which now being in the Crown do hinder the execution of our Laws and prevent by consequence our happiness and settlement are four The absolute power of making War and peace Treaties and Alliances with all Nations in the World by which means by Ignorant Councellours or Wicked Ministers many of our former Kings have made Confederations and Wars very contrary and destructive to the Interest of England and by the unfortunate management of them have often put the Kingdom in great hazard of Invasion Besides that as long as there is a distinction made between the Court-party and that of the Country there will ever be a Jealousie in the people that those wicked Councellours who may think they can be safe no other way will make Alliances with powerful Princes in which there may be a secret Article by which those Princes shall stipulate to assist them with Forces upon a short warning to curb the Parliament and possibly to change the Government And this apprehension in the People will be the less unreasonable because Oliver Cromwel the great Pattern of some of our Courtiers is notoriously known to have Inserted an Article in his Treaty with Cardinal Mazzarin during this King of France's Minority That he should be assisted with ten thousand Men from France upon occasion to preserve and defend him in his Usurped Government against His Majesty that now is or the People of England or in fine his own Army whose revolt he often feared The Second great Prerogative the King enjoys is the sole Disposal and Ordering of the Militia by Sea and Land Raising Forces Garisoning and Fortifying places Setting out Ships of War so far as he can do all this without putting Taxations upon the People and this not only in the Intervals of Parliament but even during their Session so that they cannot raise the Train-bands of the Country or City to Guard themselves or secure the Peace of the Kingdom The third point is That it is in His Majesties Power to Nominate and Appoint as he pleases and for what time he thinks fit all the Officers of the Kingdom that are of Trust or profit both Civil Military and Ecclesiastical as they will be called except where there is Ius Patronatus These two last Powers may furnish a Prince who will hearken to ill designing Councellours with the means either of Invading the Government by Force or by his Judges and other Creatures undermining it by Fraud Especially by enjoying the Fourth Advantage which is the Laying out and Imploying as he pleases all the Publick Revenues of the Crown or Kingdom and that without having any regard except he thinks fit to the necessity of the Navy or any other thing that concerns the Safety of the Publick So that all these Four great Powers as things now stand may be adoperated at any time as well to destroy and ruine the good Order and Government of the State as to preserve and support it as they ought to do Nob. Ven. But if you divest the King of these Powers will you have the Parliament sit always to Govern these Matters Eng. Gent. Sir I would not divest the King of them much less would I have the Parliament assume them or perpetuate their Sitting They are a Body more fitted to make Laws and punish the Breakers of them than to execute them I would have them therefore petition His Majesty by way of Bill that he will please to exercise these four great Magnalia of Government with the Consent of four several Councils to be appointed for that end and not otherwise that is with the Consent of the Major part of them if any of them dissent In all which Councils His Majesty or who he pleases to appoint shall preside the Councils to be named in Parliament first all the number and every Year afterwards a third part So each Year a third part shall go out
Impositions upon the People this is reserved to the Parliament it self and the Execution of all Laws to the Judges and Magistrates And I can think of no other Affairs of State than these Doct. Do you intend that the Council for chusing Officers shall Elect them of the King's Houshold that is his Menial Servants Eng. Gent. No that were unreasonable except any of them have any Jurisdiction in the Kingdom or any place or preheminence in Parliament annexed to such Office but in these things which concern the powers and Jurisdictions of these several Councils wherein la guardia della laberta as Machiavil calls it is now to be placed I shall not persume to say any thing but assure your self if ever it come to that it will be very well digested in Parliament they being very good at contriving such Matters and making them practicable as well as at performing all other Matters that concern the Interest and greatness of the Kingdom Doct. I have thought that the Ephores of Sparta were an admirable Magistracy not only for the Interest of the People but likewise for the preservation of the authority of the Kings and of their lives too for Plutarch observes that the Cities of Mesene and Argos had the same Government with Lacedemon and yet for want of erecting such an Authority as was in the Ephores they were not only perpetually in broils amongst themselves and for that reason ever beaten by their Enemies whereas the Spartans were always victorious but even their Kings were the most miserable of Men being often call'd in question Judicially and so lost their Lives and many of them murdered by Insurrections of the People And at last in both these Cities the Kings were driven out their Families extirpated the Territory new divided and the Government turn'd into a Democracy And I ever thought that this expedient you propose for I have heard you discourse of it often before now would prove a more safe and a more noble reformation than the Institution of the Ephores was and that a Prince who is a lover of his Country who is Gracious Wise and Just such a one as it has pleased God to send us at this time shall be ten times more absolute when this Regulation is made than ever he was or could be before and that whatsoever he proposes in any of these Councils will be received as a Law nay as an Oracle And on the other side ill and weak Princes shall have no possibility of corrupting Men or doing either themselves or their People any kind of harm or mischief But have you done now Eng. Gent. No Sir when this Provision is made for the Execution of the Laws which I think very effectual not to say Infallible although it is not to be doubted but that there will be from time to time many excellent Laws Enacted yet two I would have passed immediately the one concerning the whole Regulation of the Elections to Parliament which we need very much and no doubt but it will be well done that part of it which is necessary to go hand in hand with our Settlement and which indeed must be part of it is that a Parliament be Elected every year at a certain day and that without any Writ or Summons the People Meeting of course at the time appointed in the usual place as they do in Parishes at the Church-House to chuse Officers and that the Sheriffs be there ready to preside and to certifie the Election And that the Parliament so Chosen shall Meet at the time appointed and Sit and Adjuorn as their business is more or less urgent But still setting yet a time for their coming together again but if there shall be a necessity by reason of Invasion or some other Cause for their Assembling sooner then the King to Call the Councellors of these Four Councels all together and with the consent of the major part of them intimate their Meeting sooner but when the day day comes for the Annual Meeting of Another Parliament they must be understood to be Dissolved in Law without any other Ceremony and the new one to take their place Doct. I would have this considered too and provided for That no Election should be made of any person who had not the majority of the Electors present to Vote for him so the Writ orders it and so Reason dictates for else how can he be said to represent the County if not a fifth part have consented to his choice as happens sometimes and may do oftener for where seven or eight stand for one vacant place as I have know in our last Long Parliament where the Votes being set in Columns he who has had most Votes has not exceeded four hundred of above two thousand who were present Noble Ven. This is a strange way I thought you had put every Man by himself as we do in our Government and as I understood they do in the House of Commons when there is any nomination and then if he has not the major part he is rejected Eng. Gent. This is very Material and indeed Essential but I make no doubt but if this Project should come in play in Parliament this and all other particulars which would be both needless and tedious to discourse of here will be well and effectually provided for The next Act I would have passed should be concerning the House of Peers that as I take it for granted that there will be a Clause in the Bill concerning Elections that no new Boroughs shall be enabled to send Members to Parliament except they shall be capacitated thereunto by an Act so it being of the same necessity as to the Liberty of Parliament that the Peers who do and must enjoy both a Negative and Deliberative Voice in all Parliamentary Transactions except what concern Levying of Money Originally be exempted from depending absolutely upon the Prince and that therefore it be declared by Act for the future that no Peer shall be made but by Act of Parliament and then that it be Hereditary in his Male Line Noble Ven. I am not yet fully satisfied how you can order your Matters concerning this House of Peers nor do I see how the Contests between the House of Commons and them can be so laid asleep but that they will arise again Besides the House of Commons must necessarily be extreamly concerned to find the House of Peers which consists of private persons though very great and honourable ones in an Instant dash all that they have been so long hammering for the good of all the People of England whom they represent were it not better now you are upon so great alterations to make an Annual Elective Senate or at least one wherein the Members should be but for Life and not Hereditary Eng. Gent. By no means Sir the less change the better and in this Case the Metaphysical Maxime is more true than in any viz. Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate for
themselves in any thing And it is full as impossible that any person or persons so inconsiderable in number as Magistrates and Rulers are should by force get an Empire to themselves Though I am not ignorant that a whole people have in imminent Dangers either from the Invasion of a powerful Enemy or from Civil Distractions put themselves wholly into the hands of one Illustrious Person for a time and that with good Success under the best Forms of Government But this is nothing to the Original of States Noble Ven. Sir I wonder how you come to pass over the Consideration of Paternal Government which is held to have been the beginning of Monarchies Eng. Gent. Really I did not think it worth the taking notice of for though it be not easie to prove a Negative yet I believe if we could trace all Foundations of Polities that now are or ever came to our knowledge since the World began we shall find none of them to have descended from Paternal Power we know nothing of Adam's leaving the Empire to Cain or Seth It was impossible for Noah to retain any Jurisdiction over his own three Sons who were dispersed into three parts of the World if our Antiquaries Calculate right and as for Abraham whilst he lived as also his Son Isaac they were out ordinary Fathers of Families and no question governed their own Houshold as all others do but when Iacob upon his Death-bed did relate to his Children the Promise Almighty God had made his Grandfather to make him a great Nation and give his Posterity a fruitful Territory he speaks not one word of the Empire of Reuben his first-born but supposes them all equal And so they were taken to be by Moses when he divided the Land to them by Lot and by Gods command made them a Commonwealth So that I believe this fancy to have been first started not by the solid Judgement of any man but to flatter some Prince and to assert for want of better Arguments the jus Divinum of Monarchy Noble Ven. I have been impertinent in interrupting you but yet now I cannot repent of it since your Answer hath given me so much satisfaction but if it be so as you say that Government was at first Instituted for the Interest and Preservation of Mankind how comes it to pass That there are and have been so many absolute Monarchies in the World in which it seems that nothing is provided for but the Greatness and Power of the Prince Eng. Gent. I have presumed to give you already my Reason why I take for granted that such a Power could never be given by the Consent of any People for a perpetuity for though the People of Israel did against the will of Samuel and indeed of God himself demand and afterwards chuse themselves a King yet he was never such a King as we speak of for that all the Orders of their Commonwealth the Sanhedrim the Congregation of the People the Princes of the Tribes c. did still remain in being as hath been excellently proved by a learned Gentleman of our Nation to whom I refer you it may then be enquired into how these Monarchies at first did arise History being in this point silent as to the Ancient Principalities we will Conjecture that some of them might very well proceed from the Corruption of better Governments which must necessarily cause a Depravation in manners as nothing is more certain than that Politick defects breed Moral ones as our Nation is a pregnant Example this Debauchery of manners might blind the understandings of a great many destroy the Fortunes of others and make them indigent insuse into very many a neglect and carelesness of the publick good which in all setled States is very much regarded so that it might easily come into the Ambition of some bold aspiring Person to affect Empire and as easily into his Power by fair pretences with some and promises of advantages with others to procure Followers and gain a numerous Party either to Usurp Tyranny over his own Countrey or to lead men forth to Conquer and Subdue another Thus it is supposed that Nimrod got his Kingdom who in Scripture is called a Great Hunter before God which Expositers interpret A great Tyrant The Modern Despotical Powers have been acquired by one of these two ways either by pretending by the first Founder thereof that he had a Divine Mission and so gaining not only Followers but even easie Access in some places without Force to Empire and afterwards dilateing their Power by great Conquests Thus Mahomet and Cingis Can began and established the Sarazen and Tartarian Kingdoms or by a long Series of Wisdom in a Prince or chief Magistrate of a mixt Monarchy and his Council who by reason of the Sleepiness and Inadvertency of the People have been able to extinguish the great Nobility or render them Inconsiderable and so by degrees taking away from the People their Protectors render them Slaves So the Monarchies of France and some other Countries have grown to what they are at this day there being left but a Shadow of the three States in any of these Mocarchies and so no bounds remaining to the Regal Power but since Property remains still to the Subjects these Governments may be said to be changed but not founded or established for there is no Maxim more Infallible and Holding in any Science than this is in the Politicks That Empire is founded in Property Force or Fraud may alter a Government but it is Property that must Found and Eternise it Upon this undeniable Aphorisme we are to build most of our subsequent Reasoning in the mean time we may suppose that hereafter the great power of the King of France may diminish much when his enraged and oppressed Subjects come to be commanded by a Prince of less Courage Wisdom and Military Vertue when it will be very hard for any such King to Govern Tyrannically a Country which is not entirely his own Doct. Pray Sir give me leave to ask you by the way what is the Reason that here in our Country where the Peerage is lessened sufficiently the King has not gotten as great an Addition of Power as accrews to the Crown in France Eng. Gent. You will understand that Doctor before I have finisht this discourse but to stay your Stomach till then you may please to know that in France the greatness of the Nobility which has been lately taken from them did not consist in vast Riches and Revenues but in great Priviledges and Jurisdictions which obliged the People to obey them whereas our great Peers in former times had not only the same great Dependences but very Considerable Revenues besides in Demesnes and otherwise This Vassallage over the People which the Peers of France had being abolisht the Power over those Tenants which before was in their Lords fell naturally and of course into the Crown although the Lands and possessions divested of those Dependences did
and do still remain to the Owners whereas here in England though the Services are for the most part worn out and insignificant yet for want of Providence and Policy in former Kings who could not foresee the danger a far off Entails have been suffered to be cut off and so two parts in ten of all those vast Estates as well Mannours as Demesnes by the Luxury and Folly of the Owners have been within these two hundred years purchased by the lesser Gentry and the Commons which has been so far from advantaging the Crown that it has made the Country scarce governable by Monarchy But if you please I will go on with my discourse about Government and come to this again hereafter Noble Ven. I beseech you Sir do Eng. Gent. I cannot find by the small reading I have that there were any other Governments in the World Anciently than these three Monarchy Aristocracy and Democracy For the first I have no light out of Antiquity to convince me that there were in old times any other Monarchies but such as were absolutely Despotical all Kingdoms then as well in Greece as Macedon Epirus and the like and where it is said the Princes exercised their Power moderately as in Asia being altogether unlimited by any Laws or any Assemblies of Nobility or People Yet I must confess Aristotle when he reckons up the Corruptions of these three Governments calls Tyranny the Corruption of Monarchy which if he means a Change of Government as it is in the Corruptions of the other two then it must follow that the Philosopher knew of some other Monarchy at the first which afterwards degenerated into Tyranny that is into Arbitrary Power for so the Word Tyranny is most commonly taken though in modern Languages it signifies the ill Exercise of Power for certainly Arbitrary Government cannot be called Tyranny where the whole Property is in the Prince as we reasonably suppose it to have been in those Monarchies no more than it is Tyranny for you to govern your own House and Estate as you please But it is possible Aristotle might not in this speak so according to Terms of Art but might mean that the ill Government of a Kingdom or Family is Tyranny However we have one Example that puzzles Politicians and that is Egypt where Pharaoh is called King and yet we see that till Ioseph's time he had not the whole Property for the Wisdom of that Patriarch taught his Master a way to make a new use of that Famine by telling him that if they would buy their Lives and sell their Estates as they did afterwards and preserve themselves by the Kings Bread they shall serve Pharaoh which shews that Ioseph knew well that Empire was founded in Property But most of the Modern Writers in Polity are of Opinion that Egypt was not a Monarchy till then though the Prince might have the Title of King as the Heraclides had in Sparta and Romulus and the other Kings had in Rome both which States were Instituted Common-Wealths They give good Conjectures for this their Opinion too many to be here mentioned only one is That Originally as they go about to prove all Arts and Sciences had their Rise in Egypt which they think very improbable to have been under a Monarchy But this Position That all Kings in former times were absolute is not so Essential to the intent I have in this Discourse which is to prove That in all States of what kind soever this Aphorisme takes place Imperium fundatur in Dominio So that if there were mixed Monarchies then the King had not all the Property but those who shared with him in the Administration of the Soveraignty had their part whether it were the Senate the People or both or if he had no Companions in the Soveraign Power he had no Sharers likewise in the Dominion or Possession of the Land For that is all we mean by Property in all this Discourse for as for Personal Estate the Subjects may enjoy it in the largest Proportion without being able to invade the Empire The Prince may when he pleases take away their Goods by his Tenants and Vassals without an Army which are his Ordinary Force and answers to our Posse Comitatus But the Subjects with their Money cannot invade his Crown So that all the Description we need make of this Kind or Form of Government is That the whole possession of the Country and the whole power lies in the Hands and Breast of one man he can make Laws break and repeal them when he pleases or dispense with them in the mean time when he thinks fit interpose in all Judicatories in behalf of his Favourites take away any particular mans personal Estate and his Life too without the formality of a Criminal Process or Trial send a Dagger or a Halter to his chief Ministers and command them to make themselves away and in fine do all that his Will or his Interest suggests to him Doct. You have dwelt long here upon an Argumentation That the Ancients had no Monarchies but what were Arbitrary Eng. Gent. Pray give me leave to save your Objections to that point and to assure you first That I will not take upon me to be so positive in that for that I cannot pretend to have read all the Historians and Antiquaries that ever writ nor have I so perfect a memory as to remember or make use of in a Verbal and Transient Reasoning all that I have ever read And then to assure you again that I build nothing upon that Assertion and so your Objection will be needless and only take up time Doct. You mistake me I had no intent to use any Argument or Example against your Opinion in that but am very willing to believe that it may be so What I was going to say was this that you have insisted much upon the point of Monarchy and made a strange description of it whereas many of the Ancients and almost all the Modern Writers magnifie it to be the best of Governments Eng. Gent. I have said nothing to the contrary I have told you de facto what it is which I believe none will deny The Philosopher said it was the best Government but with this restriction ubi Philosophi regnant and they had an Example of it in some few Roman Emperours but in the most turbulent times of the Commonwealth and Factions between the Nobility and the People Rome was much more full of Vertuous and Heroick Citizens than ever it was under Aurelius or Antonius For the Moderns that are of that Judgement they are most of them Divines not Politicians and something may be said in their behalf when by their good Preaching they can insuse into their imaginary Prince who seems already to have an Image of the Power of God the Justice Wisdom and Goodness too of the Deity Noble Ven. We are well satisfied with the Progress you have hitherto made in this matter pray go on to
the two other Forms used amongst the Ancients and their Corruptions that so we may come to the Modern Governments and see how England stands and how it came to decay and what must Rebuild it Eng. Gent. You have very good Reason to hasten me to that for indeed all that has been said yet is but as it were a Preliminary discourse to the knowledge of the Government of England and its decay when it comes to the Cure I hope you will both help me for both your self and the Doctor are a thousand times better than I at Remedies But I shall dispatch the other two Governments Aristocracy or Optimacy is a Commonwealth where the better sort that is the Eminent and Rich men have the chief Administration of the Government I say the chief because there are very few ancient Optimacies but the People had some share as in Sparta where they had power to Vote but not Debate for so the Oracle of Apollo brought by Lycurgus from Delphos settles it But the truth is these people were the natural Spartans For Lycurgus divided the Country or Territory of Laconia into 39000 Shares whereof Nine thousand only of these Owners were Inhabitants of Sparta the rest lived in the Country so that although Thucidides call it an Aristocracy and so I follow him yet it was none of those Aristocracies usually described by the Politicians where the Lands of the Territory were in a great deal fewer Hands But call it what you will where ever there was an Aristocracy there the Property or very much the Over-ballance of it was in the hands of the Aristoi or Governours be they more or fewer for if the People have the greatest interest in the Property they will and must have it in the Empire A notable example of it is Rome the best and most glorious Government that ever the Sun saw where the Lands being equally divided amongst the Tribes that is the People it was impossible for the Patricii to keek them quiet till they yielded to their desires not only to have their Tribunes to see that nothing passed into a Law without their consent but also to have it declared that both the Consuls should not only be chosen by the people as they ever were and the Kings too before them but that they might be elected too when the people pleased out of Plebeian Families So that now I am come to Democracy Which you see is a Government where the chief part of the Soveraign Power and the exercise of it resides in the People and where the Style is Iessu populi authoritate patrum And it doth consist of three fundamental Orders The Senate proposing the People resolving and the Magistrates executing This Government is much more Powerful than an Aristocracy because the latter cannot arm the People for fear they should seize upon the Government and therefore are fain to make use of none but Strangers and Mercinaries for Souldiers which as the Divine Machiavil says has hindred your Commonwealth of Venice from mounting up to Heaven whither those incomparable Orders and that venerable Wisdom used by your Citizens in keeping to them would have carried you if in all your Wars you had not been ill served Doct. Well Sir pray let me ask you one thing concerning Venice How do you make out your Imperium fundatur in dominio there Have the Gentlemen there who are the Party governing the possession of the whole Territory Does not property remain entire to the Gentlemen and other Inhabitants in the several Countries of Padua Brescia Vicenza Verona Bergamo Creman Trevisi and Friuli as also in the Vltramarine Provinces and Islands And yet I believe you will not deny but that the Government of Venice is as well founded and hath been of as long continuance as any that now is or ever was in the World Eng. Gent. Doctor I shall not answer you in this because I am sure it will be better done by this Gentleman who is a worthy Son of that honourable Mother Noble Ven. I thought you had said Sir that we should have done Complimenting but since you do Command me to clear the Objection made by our learned Doctor I shall presume to tell you first how our City began The Goths Huns and Lombards coming with all the Violence and Cruelty immaginable to invade that part of Italy which we now call Terra firma and where our Ancestors did then inhabit forced them in great numbers to seek a shelter amongst a great many little Rocks or Islands which stood very thick in a vast Lake or rather Marsh which is made by the Adriatique Sea we call it Laguna here they began to build and getting Boats made themselves Provisions of all kind from the Land from whence innumerable people began to come to them finding that they could subsist and that the barbarous people had no Boats to attack them nor that they could be invaded either by Horse or Foot without them Our first Government and which lasted for many years was no more than what is practised in many Country Parishes in Italy and possibly here too where the Clerk or any other person calls together the chief of the Inhabitants to consider of Parish-business as chusing of Officers making of Rates and the like So in Venice when there was any publick provision to be made by way of law or otherwise some Officers went about to persons of the greatest Wealth and Credit to intreat them to meet and consult from whence our Senate is called to this day Consiglio de pregadi which in our Barbarous Idiom is as much as Pregati in Tuscan Language Our security increased daily and so by consequence our Number and our Riches for by this time there began to be another inundation of Sarazens upon Asia Minor which forced a great many of the poor people of Greece to fly to us for protection giving us the possession of some Islands and other places upon the Continent This opened us a Trade and gave a beginning to our greatness but chiefly made us consider what Government was fittest to conserve our selves and keep our Wealth for we did not then much dream of Conquests else without doubt we must have made a popular Government we pitcht upon an Aristocracy by ordering that those who had been called to Council for that present year and for four years before should have the Government in their hands and all their Posterity after them for ever which made first the distinction between Gentlemen and Citizens the People who consisted of divers Nations most of them newly come to inhabit there aud generally seeking nothing but safety and ease willingly consented to this change and so this State hath continued to this day though the several Orders and Counsels have been brought in since by degrees as our Nobility encreased and for other causes Under this Government we have made some Conquests in Italy and Greece for our City stood like a Wall between the
any Clause in a Writ or add anything to it And if any person shall be so wicked as to do any Injustice to the Life Liberty or Estate of any Englishman by any private command of the Prince the person agrieved or his next of kin if he be assassinated shall have the same remedy against the Offender as he ought to have had by the good Laws of this Land if there had been no such Command given which would be absolutely void and null and understood not to proceed from that Royal and lawful Power which is vested in his Majesty for the Execution of Justice and the protection of his People Doct. Now I see you have done with all the Government of England pray before you proceed to the decay of it let me ask you what you think of the Chancery whether you do not believe it a Solecism in the Politicks to have such a Court amongst a free People what good will Magna Charta the Petition of Right or St. Edwards Laws do us to defend our Property if it must be entirely subjected to the arbitrary disposal of one man whenever any impertinent or petulant person shall put in a Bill against you How inconsistent is this Tribunal with all that hath been said in defence of our rights or can be said Suppose the Prince should in time to come so little respect his own honour and the Interest of his People as to place a covetous or revengeful person in that great Judicatory what remedy have we against the Corruption of Registers who make what Orders they please Or against the whole Hierarchy of Knavish Clerks whilst not only the punishing and reforming misdemeanours depend upon him who may without controul be the most guilty himself but that all the Laws of England stand there arraigned before him and may be condemned when he pleases Is there or ever was there any such Tribunal in the World before in any Countrey Eng. Gent. Doctor I find you have had a Suit in Chancery but I do not intend to contradict or blame your Orthodox Zeal in this point This Court is one of those Buildings that cannot be repaired but must be demolished I could inform you how excellently matters of Equity are Administred in other Countries And this worthy Gentleman could tell you of the Venerable Quaranzia's in his City where the Law as well as the Fact is at the Bar and subject to the Judges and yet no complaint made or grievance suffered but this is not a place for it this is but the superstructure we must settle the foundation first every thing else is as much out of Order as this Trade is gone Suits are endless and nothing amongst us harmonious but all will come right when our Government is mended and never before though our Judges were all Angels this is the primum quaerite when you have this all other things shall be added unto you when that is done neither the Chancery which is grown up to this since our Ancestors time nor the Spiritual Courts nor the Cheats in trade nor any other abuses no not the Gyant Popery itself shall ever be able to stand before a Parliament no more than one of us can live like a Salamander in the fire Noble Ven. Therefore Sir pray let us come now to the decay of your Government that we may come the sooner to the happy restauration Eng. Gent. This harmonious Government of England being founded as has been said upon Property it was impossible it should be shaken so long as Property remain'd where it was placed for if when the ancient Owners the Britains fled into the Mountains and left their Lands to the Invaders who divided them as is above related they had made an Agrarian Law to fix it then our Government and by consequence our Happiness had been for ought we know Immortal for our Constitution as it was really a mixture of the three which are Monarchy Aristocracy and Democracy as has been said so the weight and predominancy remain'd in the Optimacy who possessed nine parts in ten of the Lands And the Prince but about a tenth part In this I count all the Peoples share to the Peers and therefore do not trouble myself to enquire what proportion was allotted to them for that although they had an Hereditary right in their Lands yet it was so clog'd with Tenures and Services that they depended as to publick matters wholly on their Lords who by them could serve the king in his Wars and in time of Peace by leading the people to what they pleased Could keep the Royal Power within its due bounds and also hinder and prevent the people from Invading the Rights of the Crown so that they were the Bulwarks of the Government which in effect was much more an Aristocracy than either a Monarchy or Democracy and in all Governments where Property is mixt the Administration is so too And that part which hath the greater share in the Lands will have it too in the Jurisdiction And so in Commonwealths the Senate or the People have more or less Power as they have more or fewer possessions as was most visible in Rome where in the beginning the Patricii could hardly bring the People to any thing but afterwards when the Asiatick Conquests had inricht the Nobility to that degree that they were able to purchase a great part of the Lands in Italy the People were all their Clients and easily brought even to cut the throats of their Redeemers the Gracchi who had carried a Law for restoring them their Lands But enough of this before I will not trouble myself nor you to search into the particular causes of this change which has been made in the possessions here in England but it is visible that the fortieth part of the Lands which were at the beginning in the hands of the Peers and Church is not there now besides that not only all Villanage is long since abolished but the other Tenures are so altered and qualified that they signifie nothing towards making the Yeomanry depend upon the Lords The consequence is That the natural part of our Government which is Power is by means of Property in the hands of the People whilest the artificial part or the Parchment in which the Form of Government is written remains the same Now Art is a very good servant and help to Nature but very weak and inconsiderable when she opposes her and fights with her it would be a very Impar congressus between Parchment and Power This alone is the cause of all the disorder you heard of and now see in England and of which every man gives a reason according to his own fancy whilest few hit the right cause some impute all to the decay of Trade others to the growth of Popery which are both great Calamities but they are Effects and not Causes And if in private Families there were the same causes there would be the same effects Suppose now you had
own Lands and though they serve him for it yet that does not alter the Case for if you set poor men to work and pay them for it are you a Tyrant or rather are not you a good Common-wealths-man by helping those to live who have no other way of doing it but by their labour But the King of France knowing that his People have and ought to have Property and that he has no right to their Possessions yet takes what he pleases from them without their consent and contrary to Law So that when he sets them on work he pays them what he pleases and that he levies out of their own Estates I do not affirm that there is no Government in the World but where Rule is founded in Property but I say there is no natural fixed Government but where it is so and when it is otherwise the People are perpetually complaining and the King in perpetual anxiety always in fear of his Subjects and seeking new ways to secure himself God having been so merciful to mankind that he has made nothing safe for Princes but what is Just and Honest Noble Ven. But you were saying just now that this present Constitution in France will fall when the props fail we in Italy who live in perpetual fear of the greatness of that Kingdom would be glad to hear something of the decaying of those props What are they I beseech you Eng. Gent. The first is the greatness of the present King whose heriock Actions and Wisdom has extinguished envy in all his Neighbour-Princes and kindled fear and brought him to be above all possibility of control at home not only because his Subjects fear his Courage but because they have his Virtue in admiration and amidst all their miseries cannot chuse but have something of rejoycing to see how high he hath mounted the Empire and Honour of their Nation The next prop is the change of their ancient Constitution in the time of Charles the Seventh by Consent for about that time the Country being so wasted by the Invasion and Excursions of the English The States then assembled Petitioned the King that he would give them leave to go home and dispose of Affairs himself and Order the Government for the future as he thought fit Upon this his Successor Lewis the Eleventh being a crafty Prince took an occasion to call the States no more but to supply them with an Assemble des notables which were certain men of his own nomination like Barbones Parliament here but that they were of better quality These in succeeding reigns being the best men of the Kingdom grew Troublesome and Intractable so that for some years the Edicts have been verified that is in our Language Bills have been passed in the Grand Chamber of the Parliament at Paris commonly called the Chambre d' audience who lately and since the Imprisonment of President Brouselles and others during this King's Minority have never refused or scrupled any Edicts whatsoever Now whenever this great King dies and the States of the Kingdom are restored these two great props of Arbitrary Power are taken away Besides these two the Constitution of the Government of France itself is somwhat better fitted than ours to permit extraordinary Power in the Prince for the whole People there possessing Lands are Gentlemen that is infinitely the greater part which was the reason why in their Asembly of Estates the Deputies of the Provinces which we call here Knights of the Shire were chosen by and out of the Gentry and sate with the Peers in the same Chamber as representing the Gentry onely called petite noblesse Whereas our Knights here whatever their blood is are chosen by Commoners and are Commoners our Laws and Government taking no notice of any Nobility but the persons of the Peers whose Sons are likewise Commoners even their eldest whilest their Father lives Now Gentry are ever more tractable by a Prince than a wealthy and numerous Commonalty out of which our Gentry at least those we call so are raised from time to time For whenever either a Merchant Lawyer Tradesman Grasier Farmer or any other gets such an Estate as that he or his Son can live upon his Lands without exercising of any other Calling he becomes a Gentleman I do not say but that we have men very Nobly descended amongst these but they have no preheminence or distinction by the Laws or Government Besides this the Gentry in France are very needy and very numerous the reason of which is That the Elder Brother in most parts of that Kingdom hath no more share in the division of the Paternal Estate than the Cadets or Younger Brothers excepting the Principal House with the Orchards and Gardens about it which they call Vol de Chappon as who should say As far as a Capon can fly at once This House gives him the Title his Father had who was called Seignior or Baron or Count of that place which if he sells he parts with his Baronship and for ought I know becomes in time roturier or ignoble This practice divides the Lands into so many small parcels that the Possessors of them being Noble and having little to maintain their Nobility are fain to seek their Fortune which they can find no where so well as at the Court and so become the King's Servants and Souldiers for they are generally Couragious Bold and of a good Meen None of these can ever advance themselves but by their desert which makes them hazard themselves very desperately by which means great numbers of them are kill'd and the rest come in time to be great Officers and live splendidly upon the King's Purse who is likewise very liberal to them and according to their respective merits gives them often in the beginning of a Campagne a considerable sum to furnish out their Equipage These are a great Prop to the Regal Power it being their Interest to support it lest their gain should cease and they be reduced to be poor Provinciaux that is Country-Gentlemen again whereas if they had such Estates as our Country-Gentry have they would desire to be at home at their ease whilest these having ten times as much from the King as their own Estate can yield them which supply must fail if the King's Revenue were reduced are perpetually engaged to make good all exorbitances Doct. This is a kind of Governing by Property too and it puts me in mind of a Gentleman of good Estate in our Country who took a Tenants Son of his to be his Servant whose Father not long after dying left him a Living of about ten pound a year the young Man's Friends came to him and asked him why he would serve now he had an Estate of his own able to maintain him his Answer was That his own Lands would yield him but a third part of what his Service was worth to him in all besides that he lived a pleasant Life wore good Clothes kept good Company and had the
conversation of very pretty Maids that were his Fellow-servants which made him very well digest the name of being a Servant Eng. Gent. This is the very Case but yet Service in both these Cases is no Inheritance and when there comes a Peaceable King in France who will let his Neighbours be quiet or one that is covetous these fine Gentlemen will lose their Employments and their King this Prop and the rather because these Gentlemen do not depend as was said before in any kind upon the great Lords whose standing Interest is at Court and so cannot in a change be by them carried over to advance the Court-designs against their own good and that of their Country And thus much is sufficient to be said concerning France As for Spain I believe there is no Country excepting Sweden in Christendom where the Property has remained so intirely the same it was at the beginning and the reason is the great and strict care that is taken to hinder the Lands from passing out of the old owners hands for except it be by Marriages no man can acquire another man's Estate nor can any Grandee or Titulado or any other Hidalgo there alienate or ingage his Paternal or Maternal Estate otherwise than for his Life nor can alter Tenures or extinguish Services or dismember Mannors for to this the Princes consent must be had which he never gives till the matter be debated in the Consejo de Camera which is no Iunta or secret Consejo de Guerras but one wherein the great men of the Kingdom intervene and wherein the great matters concerning the preservation of the Government are transacted not relating to Foreign Provinces or Governments but to the kingdom of Castile and Leon of which I only speak now It is true there have been one or two exceptions against this severe Rule since the great calamities of Spain and two great Lordships have been sold the Marquisate del Monastero to an Assent ista Genoese and another to Sebastian Cortiza a Portuguese of the same Profession but both these have bought the intire Lordships without curtailing or altering the condition in which these two great Estates were before and notwithstanding this hath caused so much repining amongst the natural Godos as the Castilians call themselves still for glory that I believe this will never be drawn into an Example hereafter Now the Property remaining the same the Government doth so too and the King 's Domestick Government over his natural Spaniards is very gentle whatever it be in his Conquer'd Provinces and the Kings there have very great advantages of keeping their great men by whom they Govern in good temper by reason of the great Governments they have to bestow upon them both in Europe and the Indies which changing every three years go in an Age through all the Grandees which are not very numerous Besides Castile having been in the time of King Roderigo over-run and Conquered by the Moors who Governed there Despotically some hundreds of years before it could be recovered again by the old Inhabitants who fled to the Mountains When they were at length driven out the Count of Castile found a Tax set upon all Commodities whatsoever by the Moors in their Reign called Alcaval which was an easie matter to get continued when their old Government was restored by the Cortes or States and so it has continued ever since as the Excise has done here which being imposed by them who drove and kept out the King does now since his happy Restauration remain a Revenue of the Crown This Alcaval or Excise is a very great Revenue and so prevented for some time the necessities of the Crown and made the Prince have the less need of asking Relief of his People the ordinary cause of disgust so that the Cortes or Assembly of the States has had little to do of late though they are duly assembled every year but seldom contradict what is desired by the Prince for there are no greater Idolaters of their Monarch in the World than the Castilians are nor who drink deeper of the Cup of Loyalty so that in short the Government in Spain is as ours was in Queen Elizabeths time or in the first year after his now Majesties Return when the Parliament for a time Complimented the Prince who had by that means both his own Power and the Peoples which days I hope to see again upon a better and more lasting Foundation But before I leave Spain I must say a word of the Kingdom of Arragon which has not at all times had so quiet a state of their Monarchy as Castile hath enjoyed for after many Combustions which happened there concerning their Fueros and Privilegios which are their Fundamental Laws the King one day coming to his Seat in Parliament and making his demands as was usual they told him that they had a Request to make to him first and he withdrawing thereupon for he had no right of sitting there to hear their Debates they fell into discourse how to make their Government subsist against the encroachments of the Prince upon them and went very high in their Debates whch could not chuse but come to the king's ear who walked in a gallery in the same Palace to expect the issue and being in great Passion was seen to draw out his Dagger very often and thrust it again into the sheath and heard to say Sangre ha de costar which coming to the knowledg of the Estates they left off the Debate and sent some of their number to him to know what blood it should cost and whether he meant to murder any body He drew out his Dagger again and pointing it to his breast he said Sangre de Reys leaving them in doubt whether he meant that his Subjects would kill him or that he would do it himself However that Parliament ended very peaceably and a famous settlement was there and then made by which a great person was to be chosen every Parliament who should be as it were an Umpire between the King and his people for the execution of the Laws and the preservation of their Government their Fueros and Privilegios which are their Courts of Justice and their Charters This Officer was called El Iusticia d' Arragon and his duty was to call together the whole Power of the Kingdom whenever any of the aforesaid Rights were by open force violated or invaded and to admonish the King whenever he heard of any clandestine Councils among them to that effect It was likewise made Treason for any person of what quality soever to refuse to repair upon due summons to any place where this Iusticia should erect his Standard or to withdraw himself without leave much more to betray him or to revolt from him Besides in this Cortes or Parliament the old Oath which at the first Foundation of their State was ordered to be taken by the King at his admittance was again revived and which is in these words
in the Property of the Peers and Church whose Lands five parts of six have been alienated and mostly is come into the same hands with those of the King and Peers have inherited likewise according to the course of nature their Power But being kept from it by the established Government which not being changed by any lawfull Acts of State remains still in being formally whereas virtually it is abolished so that for want of outward Orders and Provisions the people are kept from the Exercise of that Power which is faln to them by the Law of Nature and those who cannot by that Law pretend to the share they had do yet enjoy it by vertue of that Right which is now ceased as having been but the natural Effect of a Cause that is no longer in being and you know sublata causa tâ—llitur I cannot say that the greater part of the people do know this their condition but they find very plainly that they want something which they ought to have and this makes them lay often the blame of their unsetledness upon wrong causes but however are altogether unquiet and restless in the Intervals of Parliament and when the King pleases to assemble one spend all their time in Complaints of the Inexecution of the Law of the multiplication of an Infinity of Grievances of Mis-spending the Publick Monies of the danger our Religion is in by practices to undermine it and the State by endeavours to bring in Arbitrary Power and in questioning great Officers of State as the Causers and Promoters of all these Abuses in so much that every Parliament seems a perfect State of War wherein the Commons are tugging and contending for their Right very justly and very honourably yet without coming to a Point So that the Court sends them packing and governs still worse and worse in the Vacancies being necessitated thereunto by their despair of doing any good in Parliament and therefore are forced to use horrid shifts to subsist without it and to keep it off without ever considering that if these Counsellers understood their Trade they might bring the Prince and People to such an Agreement in Parliament as might repair the broken and shipwrack'd Government of England and in this secure the Peace Quiet and Prosperity of the People the Greatness and Happiness of the King and be themselves not only out of present danger which no other course can exempt them from but be Renowned to all Posterity Noble Ven. I beseech you Sir how comes it to pass that neither the King nor any of his Counsellors could ever come to find out the truth of what you discourse for I am fully convinced it is as you say Eng. Gent. I cannot resolve you that but this is certain they have never endeavoured a Cure though possibly they might know the Disease as fearing that though the Effects of a Remedy would be as was said very advantagious both to King and People and to themselves yet possibly such a Reformation might not consist with the Merchandize they make of the Princes Favour nor with such Bribes Gratuities and Fees as they usually take for the dispatch of all Matters before them And therefore our Counsellors have been so far from suggesting any such thing to their Master that they have opposed and quashed all Attempts of that kind as they did the worthy Proposals made by certain Members of that Parliament in the beginning of King Iames's Reign which is yet called the Undertaking Parliament These Gentlemen considering what we have been discoursing of viz. That our old Government is at an end had framed certain Heads which if they had been proposed by that Parliament to the King and by him consented to would in their Opinion have healed the Breach and that if the King would perform his part that House of Commons would undertake for the Obedience of the People They did believe that if this should have been moved in Parliament before the King was acquainted with it it would prove Abortive and therefore sent three of their number to his Majesty Sir Iames a Croft Grandfather or Father to the present Bishop of Hereford Thomas Harley who was Ancestor to the Honourable Family of that Name is Herefordshire and Sir Henry Nevill who had been Ambassador from Queen Elizabeth to the French King These were to open the matter at large to the King and to procure his leave that it might be proposed in Parliament which after a very long Audience and Debate that wise Prince consented to with a promise of Secresie in the mean time which they humbly begged of His Majesty However this took Vent and the Earl of Northampton of the House of Howard who ruled the Rost in that time having knowledg of it engaged Sir R. Weston afterwards Lord Treasurer and Earl of Portland to impeach these Undertakers in Parliament before they could move their matters which he did the very same day accompanying his Charge which was endeavouring to alter the established Government of England with so eloquent an Invective that if one of them had not risen and made the House acquainted with the whole Series of the Affair they must have been in danger of being impeached by the Commons but however it broke their designe which was all that Northampton and Weston desired and prevented Posterity from knowing any of the Particulars of this Reformation for nothing being moved nothing could remain upon the Journal So that you see our Predecessors were not ignorant altogether of our condition though the Troubles which have befallen this poor Kingdom since have made it much more apparent for since the Determination of that Parliament there has not been one called either in that King's Reign or his Son 's or since that hath not been dissolved abruptly whilst the main businesses and those of most concern to the publick were depending and undecided And although there hath happened in this Interim a bloody War which in the Close of it changed the whole Order and Foundation of the Polity of England and that it hath pleased God to restore it again by his Majesty's happy Return so that the old Government is alive again yet it is very visible that its deadly Wound is not healed but that we are to this day tugging with the same difficulties managing the same Debates in Parliament and giving the same disgusts to the Court and hopes to the Country which our Ancestors did before the Year 1640. whilst the King hath been forced to apply the same Remedy of Dissolution to his two first Parliaments that his Father used to his four first and King Iames to his three last contrary to his own visible Interest and that of his people and this for want of having Counsellors about him of Abilities and Integrity enough to discover to him the Disease of his Government and the Remedy which I hope when we meet to Morrow Morning you will come prepared to enquire into for the Doctor says he will
advise you to go take the Air this afternoon in your Coach Noble Ven. I shall think it very long till the morning come But before you go pray give me leave to ask you something of your Civil War here I do not mean the History of it although the World abroad is very much in the dark as to all your Transactions of that time for want of a good one but the grounds or pretences of it and how you fell into a War against your King Eng. Gent. As for our History it will not be forgotten one of those who was in Employment from the Year 40. to 60. hath written the History of those 20 Years a Person of good Learning and Elocution and though he be now dead yet his Executors are very unwilling to publish it so soon and to rub a Sore that is not yet healed But the Story is writ with great Truth and Impartiality although the Author were engaged both in Councils and Arms for the Parliaments side But for the rest of your Demand you may please to understand that our Parliament never did as they pretended make War against the King for he by Law can do no Wrong and therefore cannot be quarrelled with The War they declared was undertaken to rescue the King's Person out of those Mens hands who led him from his Parliament and made use of his Name to levy a War against them Noble Ven. But does your Government permit that in case of a disagreement between the King and his Parliament either of them may raise Arms against the other Eng. Gent. It is impossible that any Government can go further than to provide for its own Safety and Preservation whilst it is in being and therefore it can never direct what shall be done when it self is at an end there being this difference between our Bodies Natural and Politick that the first can make a Testament to dispose of things after his death but not the other This is certain that where-ever any two Co-ordinate Powers do differ and there be no Power on Earth to reconcile them otherwise nor any Umpire they will de facto fall together by the Ears What can be done in this Case de jure look into your own Country-man Machiavell and into Grotius who in his Book De jure Belliac Pacis treated of such matters long before our Wars As for the ancient Politicians they must needs be silent in the Point as having no mixt Governments amongst them and as for me I will not rest my self in so slippery a Place There are great disputes about it in the Parliaments Declarations before the War and something considerable in the King's Answers to them which I shall specifie immediately when I have satisfied you how our War begun which was in this manner The Long Parliament having procured from the King his Royal Assent for their Sitting till they were dissolved by Act and having paid and sent out the Scottish Army and disbanded our own went on in their Debates for the settling and mending our Government the King being displeased with them for it and with himself for putting it out of his Power to dissolve them now the business which they pretended for their Perpetuation was quite finished takes an unfortunate Resolution to accuse five principal Men of the Commons House and one of the Peers of High-Treason which he prosecuted in a new unheard-of way by coming with armed Men into the Commons House of Parliament to demand their Members but nothing being done by reason of the absence of the five and Tumults of discontented Citizens flocking to White-Hall and Westminster the King took that occasion to absent himself from his Parliament Which induced the Commons House to send Commissioners to Hampton-Court to attend his Majesty with a Remonstrance of the State of the Kingdom and an humble Request to return to his Parliament for the Redressing those Grievances which were specified in that Remonstrance But the King otherwise Counselled goes to Windsor and thence Northwards till he arrived at York where he summons in the Militia that is the Trained-Bands of the County and besides all the Gentry of which there was a numerous Appearance The King addressed himself to the latter with Complaints against a prevailing Party in Parliament which intended to take the Crown from his Head that he was come to them his loving Subjects for Protection and in short desired them to assist him with Moneys to defend himself by Arms. Some of these Gentlemen petitioned His Majesty to return to his Parliament the rest went about the Debate of the King's Demands who in the mean time went to Hull to secure the Magazine there but was denied Entrance by a Gentleman whom the House had sent down to prevent the seizing it who was immediately declared a Traytor and the King fell to raising of Forces which coming to the Knowledge of the House they made this Vote That the King seduced by Evil Counsel intended to levy War against his Parliament and People to destroy the Fundamental Laws and Liberties of England and to introduce an Arbitrary Government c. This was the first time they named the King and the last For in all their other Papers and in their Declaration to Arm for their Defence which did accompany this Vote they name nothing but Malignant Counsellors The Kings Answer to these Votes and this Declaration is that which I mentioned wherein His Majesty denies any intention of invading the Government with high Imprecations upon himself and Posterity if it were otherwise and owns that they have Right to maintain their Laws and Government This is to be seen in the Paper it self now extant and this Gracious Prince never pretended as some Divines have done for him that his Power came from God and that his Subjects could not dispute it nor ought he to give any Account of his Actions though he should enslave us all to any but him So that our War did not begin upon a point of Right but upon a matter of Fact for without going to Lawyers or Casuists to be resolved those of the People who believed that the King did intend to destroy our Liberties joyned with the Parliament and those who were of opinion that the prevailing party in Parliament did intend to destroy the King or dethrone him assisted vigorously His Majesty with their Lives and Fortunes And the Question you were pleased to ask never came for both parties pretended and believed they were in the right and that they did fight for and defend the Government But I have wearied you out Noble Ven. No sure Sir but I am infinitely obliged to you for the great care you have taken and still have used to instruct me and beg the continuance of it for to morrow morning Eng. Gent. I shall be sure to wait upon you at nine a Clock but I shall beseech both of you to bethink your selves what to offer for I shall come with a design to learn
gate and therefore I conceive it not to be imaginable that either Christ or his Apostles did ever account that the true Religion should be planted in the World by the framing of Laws Catechisms or Creeds by the Soveraign Powers and Magistrates whether you call them Spiritual or Temporal but that it should have a Progress suitable to its beginning for it is visible that it had its Original from the Power and Spirit of God and came in against the stream not onely without a Numa Pompilius or a Mahomet to plant and establish it by humane Constitutions and Authority but had all the Laws of the World to oppose it and all the bloudy Tyrants of that age to persecute it and to inflict exquisite torments on the Professors of it In Nero's time which was very early the Christians were offered a Temple in Rome and in what other Cities they pleased to be built to Jesus Christ and that the Romans should receive him into the number of their gods but our Religion being then in its purity this was unanimously refused for that such a God must have no Companions nor needed no Temples but must be Worshipped in Spirit and Truth The Successors to these good Christians were not so scrupulous for within some Ages after the Priests to get Riches and Power and the Emperors to get and keep the Empire for by this time the Christians were grown numerous and powerful combined together to spoil our Holy Religion to make it fit for the Government of this World to introduce into it all the Ceremonious follies and Superstitions of the Heathen and which is worse the Power of Priests both over the Persons and Consciences of Men. I shall say no more of this but refer you to innumerable Authors who have treated of this Subject particularly to a French Minister who hath written a Book Entituled La Religion Catholique Apostolique Romaine instituee par Nume Pompile and to the incomparable Machiavel in his Posthume Letter Printed lately in our Language with the Translation of his Works But I have made a long digression and to come back again shall onely desire you to take notice when I say that anciently Popery was no inconvenience in this Kingdom I mean onely Politically as the Government then stood and do not speak at all of the prejudice which mens Souls did and will ever receive from the Belief of those impious Tenents and the want of having the True Gospel of Jesus Christ preached unto them but living in perpetual Superstition and Idolatry The consideration of these Matters is not so proper to my present purpose being to Discourse onely of Government Notwithstanding therefore as I said before that Popery might have suited well enough with our old Constitution yet as to the present Estate which inclines to Popularity it would be wholly as inconsistent with it and with the Power of the Keys and the Empire of Priests especially where there is a Forreign Jurisdiction in the case as with the Tyranny and Arbitrary Power of any Prince in the World I will add thus much in Confirmation of the Doctor 's Assertion That we ought to prevent the Growth of Popery since it is now grown a Dangerous Faction here against the State Noble Ven. How can that be I beseech you Sir Eng. Gent. Sir I will make you Judg of it your self I will say nothing of those foolish Writings that have been put forth by Mariana Emanuel Sa and some others about the lawfulness of destroying Princes and States in case of Heresie because I know all the conscientious and honest Papists of which I know there are great numbers in the World do not only not hold but even abhor such cursed Tenents and do believe that when the Pope by Excommunication hath cut off any Prince from the communion of the Church can go no further nor ought to pretend a Power to deprive him of his Crown or absolve his Subjects from their Oaths and Obedience But I shall confine my self to the present condition of our Papists here You know how dangerous it is for any Kingdom or State to have a considerable wealthy flourishing party amongst them whose interest it is to destroy the Polity and Government of the Country where they live and therefore if our Papists prove this Party you will not wonder why this People are so eager to depress them This is our Case for in the beginning of Queen Elizabeths reign there was an alteration of Religion in our Country which did sufficiently enrage the Holy Father at Rome to see that this good Cow would be Milked no longer He declares her an Heretick and a Bastard his Sanctity not having declared null that incestuous Marriage which her Father had contracted before with his Brothers Wife and which that King had dissolved to Marry her Mother and afterwards Excommunicated our Queen depriving her as much as in him lay of the Kingdom some of the Zealots of that Party having a greater terrour for those Thunder-bolts than I believe many have now began to Conspire against her and Plots grew at length so frequent and so dangerous that it was necessary as the Parliaments then thought to secure the Queen by making severe Laws against a People who did not believe themselves her Majesties Subjects but on the contrary many of them thought themselves in Conscience obliged to oppose and destroy her and although that Excommunication as also the pretended doubtfulness of the Title both died with that renowned Queen yet a new desperate Conspiracy against the King her Successor and the whole Parliament ensuing not long after her decease those rigorous Laws have been so far from being repealed that very many more and far severer have been since made and are yet in force Now these Laws make so great a distinction between Protestants and Papists that whereas the former are by our Government and Laws the freest People in the World the latter are little better than slaves are confined to such a distance from their Houses are not to come near the Court which being kept in the Capital City mostly deprives them from attending their necessary occasions they are to pay two third parts of their Estates annually to the King their Priests are to suffer as Traitors and they as Felons for harbouring them in fine one of us if he do not break the Municipal Laws for the good Government of the Country need not fear the King's Power whereas their being what they are is a breach of the Law and does put them into the Princes hands to ruine them when he pleases nay he is bound by Oath to do it and when he does it not is complained against by his People and Parliaments take it amiss Now judge you Sir whether it is not the interest of these People to desire and endeavour a change whilest they remain under these discouragements and whether they are not like to joyn with the Prince whose connivance at the inexecution of
those Laws is the onely means and hope of their preservation whenever he shall undertake any thing for the increase of his own Power and the depressing his Parliaments Noble Ven. What you say is very undeniable but then the Remedy is very easie and obvious as well as very just and honourable which is the taking away those cruel Laws and if that were done they would be one People with you and would have no necessity and by consequence no desire to engreaten the King against the Interest and Liberty of their own Country Eng. Gent. You speak very well and one of the Reasons amongst many which I have to desire a composure of all our troubles by a setled Government is that I may see these People who are very considerable most of them for Estates Birth and Breeding live quietly under our good Laws and increase our Trade and Wealth with their expences here at home whereas now the severity of our Laws against them makes them spend their Revenues abroad and inrich other Nations with the Stock of England but as long as the State here is so unsetled as it is our Parliaments will never consent to countenance a Party who by the least Favour and Indulgence may make themselves able to bring in their own Religion to be National and so ruine our Polity and Liberties Noble Ven. I wonder why you should think that possible Eng. Gent. First Sir for the Reason we First gave which is the craziness of our Polity there being nothing more certain than that both in the Natural and also the Politick Body any sinister accident that intervenes during a very Diseased habit may bring a dangerous alteration to the Patient An Insurrection in a decayed Government a thing otherwise very inconsiderable has proved very fatal as I knew a slight flesh-wound bring a lusty Man to his Grave in our Wars for that he being extreamly infected with the French Disease could never procure the Orifice to close so although the designs both at home and abroad for altering our Religion would be very little formidable to a well-founded Government yet in such an one as we have now it will require all our care to obviate such Machinations Another Reason is the little Zeal that is left amongst the ordinary Protestants which Zeal uses to be a great Instrument of preserving the Religion establish'd as it did here in Queen Elizabeths time I will add the little Credit the Church of England hath amongst the People most men being almost as angry with that Popery which is left amongst us in Surplices Copes Altars Cringings Bishops Ecclesiastical Courts and the whole Hierarchy besides an Infinite number of Useless Idle Superstitious Ceremonies and the Ignorance and Vitiousness of the Clergy in general as they are with those Dogma's that are abolished So that there is no hopes that Popery can be kept out but by a company of poor People called Fanaticks who are driven into Corners as the First Christians were and who only in truth Conserve the Purity of Christian Religion as it was planted by Christ and his Apostles and is contained in Scripture And this makes almost all sober men believe that the National Clergy besides all other good qualities have this too that they cannot hope to make their Hierarchy subsist long against the Scriptures the hatred of mankind and the Interest of this People but by Introducing the Roman Religion and getting a Foreign Head and Supporter which shall from time to time brave and hector the King and Paliament in their favour and behalf which yet would be of little advantage to them if we had as firm and wise a Government as you have at Venice Another Reason and the greatest why the Romish Religion ought to be very warily provided against at this time is That the Lawful and Undoubted Heir to the Crown if his Majesty should die without Legitimate Issue is more than suspected to Imbrace that Faith which if it should please God to call the King before there be any Remedy applied to our Distracted State would give a great opportunity by the Power he would have in Intervals of Parliament either to Introduce immediately that profession with the help of our Clergy and other English and Foreign Aids or else to make so fair a way for it that a little time would perfect the work â—nd this is the more formidable for that â—a very Zealous and Bigot 〈…〉 and therefore may be supposed to act any thing to that end although it should manifestly appear to be contrary to his own Interest and Quiet so apt are those who give up their Faith and the Conduct of their Lives to Priests who to get to themselves Empire promise them the highest Seats in Heaven if they will sacrifice their Lives Fortunes and Hopes for the Exaltation of their Holy Mother and preventing the Damnation of an innumerable company of Souls which are not yet born to be led away with such Erroneous and wild Fancies Whereas Philip the Second of Spain the House of Guise in France and other great Statesmen have always made their own greatness their first Aim and used their Zeal as an Instrument of that And instead of being cozen'd by Priests have cheated them and made them endeavour to Preach them up to the Empire of the World So I have done with the Growth of Popery and must conclude that if that should be stopt in such manner that there could not be one Papist left in England and yet our Polity left in the same disorder that now afflicts it we should not be one Scruple the better for it nor the more at quiet the Growth and Danger of Popery not being the Cause of our present Distemper but the Effect of it But as a good and setled Government would not be at all the nearer for the destruction of Popery so Popery and all the Dangers and Inconveniences of it would not only be further off but would wholly vanish at the sight of such a Reformation And so we begin at the wrong end when we begin with Religion before we heal our Breaches I will borrow one Similitude more with our Doctor 's favour from his Profession I knew once a man given over by the Physitians of an incurable Cachexia which they said proceeded from the ill Quality of the whole Mass of Blood from great Adustion and from an ill habit of the whole Body The Patient had very often painful Fits of the Chollick which they said proceeded from the sharpness of the humour which caused the Disease and amongst the rest had one Fit which tormented him to that degree that it was not expected he could out-live it yet the Doctors delivered him from it in a small time Notwithstanding soon after the man died of his first Distemper Whereas if their Art had arrived to have cured that which was the Cause of the other the Chollick had vanished of it self and the Patient recovered I need make no
Application nor shall need to say much of the Succession of the Crown which is my next Province but this I have said already That it is needless to make any Provision against a Popish Successor if you rectifie your Government and if you do not all the Care and Circumspection you can use in that Particular will be useless and of none effect and will but at last if it do not go off easily and the next Heir succeed peaceably as is most likely especially if the King live till the People's Zeal and Mettle is over end probably in a Civil War about Title and then the Person deprived may come in with his Sword in his Hand and bring in upon the Point of it both the Popish Religion and Arbitrary Power Which though I believe he will not be able to maintain long for the Reasons before alledged yet that may make this Generation miserable and unhappy It will certainly be agreed by all lovers of their Country that Popery must be kept from returning and being National in this Kingdom as well for what concerns the Honour and Service of God as the Welfare and Liberty of the People and I conceive there are two ways by which the Parliament may endeavour to secure us against that danger the first by ordering such a change in the Administration of our Government that whoever is Prince can never violate the Laws and then we may be very safe against Popery our present Laws being effectual enough to keep it out and no new ones being like to be made in Parliament that may introduce it and this remedy will be at the same time advantagious to us against the Tyranny and Incroachments of a Protestant Successor so that we may call it an infallible Remedy both against Popery and Arbitrary power The second way is by making a Law to disable any Papist by name or otherwise from Inheriting the Crown and this is certainly fallible that is may possibly not take place as I shall shew immediately and besides it is not improbable that an Heir to this Kingdom in future times may dissemble his Religion till he be seated in the Throne or possibly be perverted to the Roman Faith after he is possest of it when it may be too late to limit his Prerogative in Parliament and to oppose him without that will I fear be Judged Treason Doct. But Sir would you have the Parliament do nothing as things stand to provide at least as much as in them lies that whoever succeeds be a good Protestant Eng. Gent. Yes I think it best in the first place to offer to his Majesty the true Remedy if they find him averse to that then to pursue the other which concerns the Succession because the People who are their Principals and give them their Power do expect something extraordinary from them at this time and the most of them believe this last the only present means to save them from Popery which they judge and very justly will bring in with it a change of Government But then I suppose they may be encouraged to propose in the first place the true Cure not only because that is infallible as has been proved but likewise because His Majesty in probability will sooner consent to any reasonable Demand towards the Reforming of the Government and to the securing us that way than to concur to the depriving his onely Brother of the Crown And possibly this latter as I said before may be the only way the Parliament can hope will prove effectual For if you please to look but an Age back into our Story you will find that Henry the Eighth did procure an Act of Parliament which gave him power to dispose of the Crown by his last Will and Testament and that he did accordingly make his said Will and by it devise the Succession to his Son Edward the Sixth in the first place and to the Heirs of his Body and for want of such to his Daughter Mary and to the Heirs of her Body and for want of which Heirs to his Daughter Elizabeth our once Soveraign of Immortal and Blessed Memory and the Heirs of her Body and for want of all such Issue to the right Heirs of his Younger Sister who was before he made this Will married to Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk and had Issue by him By this Testament he disinherited his elder Sister who was married in Scotland and by that means did as much as in him lay exclude His Majesty who now by God's Mercy Reigns over us as also his Father and Grandfather And to make the Case stronger there passed an Act long after in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth That it should be Treason during that Queen's Life and a Premunire afterwards to assert that the Imperial Crown of England could not be disposed of by Act of Parliament yet after the Decease of that Queen there was no considerable Opposition made to the peaceable Reception and Recognition of King Iames of happy Memory And those who did make a little stir about the other Title as the Lord Cobham Sir Walter Rawleigh and a few others were apprehended condemn'd according to Law And notwithstanding that since in the Reign of K. Charles the First there was a bloody Civil War in which Men's Minds were exasperated at a high rate yet in all the Course of it the Original Want of Title was never objected against His late Majesty I do not urge this to aver that the Parliament with the King's Consent cannot do lawfully this or any other great Matter which would be an incurring the Penalty of that Law and a Solecism in the Politicks But to shew that when the Passions of men are quieted and the Reasons other than they were it happens oftentimes that those Acts which concern the Succession fall to the Ground of themselves and that even without the Sword which in this Case was never adoperated And that therefore this Remedy in our Case may be likely never to take place if it please God the King live till this Nation be under other kind of Circumstances Doct. Sir you say very well but it seems to me that the last Parliament was in some kind of Fault if this be true that you say for I remember that my Lord Chancellor did once during their Sitting in His Majesty's Name offer them to secure their Religion and Liberties any way they could advise of so they would let alone meddling with the Succession and invited them to make any Proposals they thought necessary to that end Eng. Gent. Hinc ille lachrimae If this had been all we might have been happy at this time but this Gracious Offer was In limine accompanied with such Conditions that made the Parliament conjecture that it was only to perplex and divide them and did look upon it as an Invention of some new Romanza Counsellors and those too possibly influenced by the French to make them embrace the Shaddow for the
You ask me a very fine question Doctor If I say I would have the people stir in that case then the King and his Laws take hold of me and if I should answer that I would have them be quiet the people would tear me in pieces for a Iesuit or at least believe that I had no sense of the Riligion Laws and Liberty of my Countrey De facto I do suppose that if the people do continue long in this heat which now possesseth them and remain in such a passion at the time of the Kings death without setling matters they may probably fall into tumults and Civil War which makes it infinitely to be desired and prayed for by all good English men that during the quiet and peace we injoy by the blessing of his Majesties life and happy Reign we might likewise be so wise and fortunate as to provide for the safety and prosperity of the next generation Doct. But if you would not have the people in such a case take the Duke of Monmouth for their Head what would you have them do Eng. Gent. Doctor you ask me very fine questions do not you know that Machivel the best and most honest of all the modern Polititians has suffered sufficiently by means of Priests and other ignorant persons who do not understand his Writings and therefore impute to him the teaching Subjects how they should Rebel and conspire against their Princes which if he were in any kind guilty of he would deserve all the reproaches that have been cast upon him and ten times more and so should I if I ventured to obey you in this I am very confident that if any man should come to you to implore your skill in helping him to a drug that might quickly and with the least fear of being suspected dispatch an enemy of his or some other by whose death he was to be a gainer or some young Lass that had gotten a Surruptitious great Belly should come to you to teach her how to destroy the fruit I say in this case you would scarce have had patience to hear these persons out much less would you have been so wicked to have in the least assisted them in their designs no more than Solon Lycurgus Periander or any other of the Sages could have been brought to have given their advice to any persons who should have begged it to enable them to ruine and undermine the government of their own Commonwealths Doct. Sir this Reprehension would be very justly given me if I had intended by this question to induce you to counsel me or any other how to rebel my meaning was to desire you who have heretofore been very fortunate in prophesying concerning the events of our changes here to exercise your faculty a little at this time and tell us what is like to be the end of these destractions we are under in case we shall not be so happy as to put a period to them by mending our Government and securing our Religion and Liberty in a regular way Eng. Gent. Doctor I will keep the reputation of Prophecy which I have gained with you and not hazard it with any new predictions for fear they should miscarry yet I care not if I gratifie your curiosity a little in the point about which you first began to Interrogate me by presaging to you that in case we should have troubles and combustions here after his Majesties decease which God avert we must expect a very unsuccesful end of them if we should be so rash and unadvised as to make the great Person we have been lately speaking of our head and that nothing can be more dangerous and pernitious to us than such a choice I have not in this discourse the least intention to except against much less to disparage the personal worth of the Duke of Monmouth which the world knows to be very great but do believe that he hath Courage and Conduct proportionable to any imployment that can be conferred upon him whether it be to manage Arms or Counsels but my opinion is that no person in his circumstance can be a proper head in this case for the people having been already put on upon his scent of the title to the Crown will be very hardly called off and so will force the wiser men who may design better things to consent that he be Proclaimed King immediately except there be some other head who by his Power Wisdom and Authority may restrain the forwardness of the multitude and obviate the acts of some men whose interest and hopes may prompt them to foment the humours of the people Now the consequences of hurrying a man to the Throne so tumultuously without the least deliberation are very dismal and do not only not cure the politick distempers of our Countrey which we have talked so much of but do infinitely augment it and add to the desease our State labours under already which is a Consumption a very violent Feaver too I mean War at home and from abroad which must necessarily follow in a few years nor is it possible to go back when once we have made that step for our new King will call a Parliament which being summoned by his will neither will nor can question his Title or Government otherwise than by making Addresses and by presenting Bills to him as they do to his now Majesty Nob. Ven. It seems to me that there needs nothing more than that for if he consent to all Laws as shall be presented to him you may reform your Government sufficiently or else it is your own fault Eng. Gent. We have shewed already and shall do more hereafter that no Laws can be executed till our government be mended and if you mean we should make such as should mend that besides that it would be a better method to capitulate that before you make choice of your Prince as wise people have done in all ages and the Cardinals do at Rome in the Conclave before they choose their Pope I say besides this it is not to be taken for granted that any Bills that tend to make considerable alterations in the administration and such we have need of as you will see anon would either in that case be offered or consented to both Prince and People being so ready to cry out upon Forty-one and to be frighted with the name of a Common-wealth even now when we think Popery is at the door which some people then will think farther off and so not care to make so great alterations to keep it out besides the great Men and favourites of the new Prince will think it hard that their King should be so bounded and limited both in power and Revenue that he shall have no means to exercise his liberality towards them and so may use their interest and eloquence in both Houses to dissuade them from pressing so hard upon a Prince who is a true zealous Protestant and has alwaies headed that party and who is justly
and a Recruit of an equal number come in And in three Years they shall be all new and no Person to come into that Council or any other of the four till he have kept out of any of them full three Years being as long as he was in And this I learnt from your Quarantia's at Venice and the Use is excellent for being in such a Circulation and sure to have their intervals of Power they will neither grow so insolent as to brave their King nor will the Prince have any occasion to corrupt them although he had the means to do it which in this new Model he cannot have These Men in their several Councils should have no other instructions but to dispose of all things and act in their several Charges for the Interest and Glory of England and shall be Answerable to Parliament from time to time for any malicious or advised Misdemeanor only that Council which manages the Publick Revenue shall besides a very copious and Honourable Revenue which shall be left to His Majesty's disposal for his own Entertainment as belongs to the Splendor and Majesty of the Government have Instructions to serve His Majesty if he pleases to command them and not otherwise in the regulating and ordering his Oeconomy and Houshold and if they shall see it necessary for extraordinary Occasions of treating Foreign Princes and Ambassadors or Presenting them and the like Ostentation of Greatness to consent with His Majesty moderately to charge the Revenue to that end I verily believe that this Expedient is much more effectual than either the Iustitia of Aragon was or the Ephores of Sparta Who being to check the King almost in every thing without having any share in his Councils or understanding them could not chuse but make a sullen posture of Affairs whereas these both seem and really are the King's Ministers only obliged by Parliament to act faithfully and honestly to which even without that all other Councellors are bound by Oath As for the other Council now called the Privy Council the King may still please to continue to nominate them at his pleasure so they act nothing in any of the Matters properly within the Jurisdiction of these four Councils but meddle with the Affairs of Merchants Plantations Charters and other Matters to which the Regal Power extendeth And provided that His Majesty call none of the Persons employed in these other four Councils during their being so nor that this Council do any way intermeddle with any Affairs Criminal or Civil which are to be decided by Law and do belong to the Jurisdictions of other Courts or Magistrates they being no established Judicatory or Congregation which either our Government or Laws do take notice of as was said before but Persons congregated by the King as his Friends and faithful Subjects to give him their Opinion in the Execution of his Regal Office As for Example the King does exercise at this time a Negative Voice as to Bills presented to him by the Parliament which he claims by Right no Man ever said that the Privy Council had a Negative Voice yet former Kings did not only as their Advice as to the passing or not passing of such Bills but often decided the Matter by their Votes which although it be a high Presumption in them when they venture to give him Council contrary to what is given him by his greatest Council yet never any of them have been questioned for it being looked upon as private Men who speak according to the best of their Cunning and such as have no publick Capacity at all But if this be not so and that this Council have some Foundation in Law and some publick Capacity I wish in this new Settlement it may be made otherwise and that His Majesty please to take their Counsel in private but summon no Persons to appear before them much less give them Authority to send for in Custody or Imprison any Subject which may as well be done by the Judges and Magistrates who if Secrecy be required may as well be Sworn to Secrecy as these Gentlemen and I believe can keep Counsel as well and give it too Nob. Ven. But would you have none to manage State-Affairs none Imprisoned for secret Conspiracies and kept till they can be fully discovered you have made an Act here lately about Imprisonments that every Person shall have his Habeas Corpus I think you call it so that no Man for what occasion soever can lie in Prison above a Night but the Cause must be revealed though there be great cause for the concealing it Eng. Gent. This Act you mention and a great many more which we have to the same purpose that is against Illegal Imprisonments shews that for a long time the Power over Men's Persons has been exercised under His Majesty by such as were very likely rather to employ it ill than well that is would rather Imprison ten Men for Honourable Actions such as standing for the People's Rights in Parliament refusing to pay Illegal Taxes and the like than one for projecting and inventing Illegal Monopolies or any other kind of oppressing the People This made first Magna Charta then the Petition of Right and divers other Acts besides this last take that Power quite away and make the Law and the Judges the only Disposers of the Liberties of our Persons And it may be when the Parliament shall see the Fruit of this Alteration we are now discoursing of and that State-Affairs are in better hands they may think fit to provide that a Return or Warrant of Imprisonment from one of these Four Councils which I suppose will have a Power of Commitment given them as to Persons appearing Delinquents before them wherein it shall be expressed That if the Publick is like to suffer or be defrauded if the Matter be immediately divulged I say in this Case the Parliament may please to make it Lawful for the Judge to delay the Bailing of him for some small time because it is not to be judged that these Councellours so chosen and so instructed and to continue so small a time will use this Power ill especially being accountable for any abusing of it to the next Parliament And I suppose the Parliament amongst other Provisions in this behalf will require that there shall be a Register kept of all the Votes of these several Councils with the names as well of those who consented as of such who dissented And as to the former part of your Question whether I would have none to manage State Affairs I think there are very few State Affair that do not concern either Peace and War and Treaties abroad the management of the Arms Militia and posse Comitatus at home the management of all the Publick Moneys and the Election of all Officers whatsoever the other parts of State Affairs which are Making and Repealing of Laws punishing high Crimes against the State with Levying and Proportioning all manner of
great alterations fright Men and puzzle them and there is no need of it at all in this Case I have told you before that there is a necessity of a Senate and how short this Government would be without it and how confused in the mean time the Roman Senate was Hereditary amongst the Patricii except the Censor left any of them out of the Roll during his Magistracy for some very great and scandalous offence and in that case too there was an Appeal to the People as in all other Causes witness the Case of Lucius Quintius and many others To shew that there can be no need of such a change here as you speak of you may please to consider that all differences between the several parts of any Government come upon the account of Interest now when this Settlement is made the House of Peers and the House of Commons can have no Interest to dissent For as to all things of private Interest that is the Rights of Peers both during the sitting of Parliaments and in the Intervals is left to their own House to judge of as it is to the House of Commons to judge of their own Priviledges And as for the contest of the Peers Jurisdiction as to Appeals from Courts of Equity Besides that I would have that setled in the Act which should pass concerning the Lords House I believe it will never happen more when the Government is upon a right Foundation it having been hitherto fomented by two different Parties the Court-party sometimes blowing up that difference to break the Session lest some good Bills for the People should pass or that the King by rejecting them might discontent his People to avoid which Dilemma there needed no more but to procure some person to prosecute his Appeal before the Lords some honest Patriots afterwards possibly might use the same policy which they learnt from the Courtiers to quash some Bill very destructive in which they were out-voted in the Commons House otherwise it is so far from the Interest of the Commons to hinder Appeals from Courts of Equity that there is none amongst them but know we are almost destroyed for want of it And when they have considered well and that some such Reformation as this shall take place they will find that it can never be placed in a more honourable and unbyas'd Judicatory than this And I could wish that even in the Intermission of Parliamentary Sessions the whole Peerage of England as many of them as can conveniently be in Town may sit in their Judicial Capacities and hear Appeals in Equity as well as Judge upon Writs of Errour Now as to your other Objection which is indeed of great weight that the House of Commons must needs take it ill that the Lords should frustrate their endeavours for the Peoples good by their Negative If you consider one thing the force of this Objection will vanish which is That when this new Constitution shall be admitted the Lords cannot have any Interest or temptation to differ with the Commons in any thing wherein the Publick good is concerned but are obliged by all the ties in the World to run the same course and fortune with the Commons their Interest being exactly the same so that if there be any dissenting upon Bills between the two Houses when each of them shall think their own Expedient conduces most to the advantage of the Publick this difference will ever be decided by right reason at Conferences And the Lords may as well convince the Commons as be convinced by them and these contests are and ever will be of admirable use and benefit to the Commonwealth the reason why it is otherwise now and that the House of Peers is made use of to hinder many Bills from passing that are supposed to be for the ease of the People is that the great Counsellors and Officers which sit in that House do suggest whether true or false that it is against his Majesties Will and Interest that such an Act should pass whereupon it has found Obstruction but hereafter if our expedient take place it cannot be so first because our King himself cannot have any designs going as was proved before which shall make it his advantage to hinder any good intended his people whose prosperity then will be his own And then because in a short time the Peers being made by Act of Parliament will consist of the best Men of England both for Parts and Estates and those who are already made if any of them have small Estates the King if he had the Interest would not have the means to corrupt them the Publick Moneys and the great Offices being to be dispensed in another manner than formerly so their Lordships will have no Motive in the World to steer their Votes and Councils but their own Honour and Conscience and the preservation and prosperity of their Country So that it would be both needless and unjust to pretend any change of this kind Besides this alteration in the administration of our Government being proposed to be done by the unanimous consent of King Lords and Commons and not otherwise it would be very preposterous to believe that the Peers would depose themselves of their Hereditary Rights and betake themselves to the hopes of being Elected it is true they have lost the Power they had over the Commons but that has not been taken from them by any Law no more than it was given them by any but is fallen by the course of Nature as has been shewn at large But though they cannot lead the Commons by their Tenures as formerly yet there is no reason or colour that they should lose their Co-ordination which I am sure they have by Law and by the Fundamental Constitution of the Government and which is so far from being prejudicial to a lasting Settlement as was said that it infinitely contributes to it and prevents the Confusion which would destroy it If I should have proposed any thing in this Discourse which should have Intrenched upon the King 's Hereditary Right or that should have hindred the Majesty and Greatness of these Kingdoms from being represented by his Royal Person I should have made your Story of the Capuchine Fryar very Applicable to me Noble Ven. I see you have not forgiven me that Novel yet but pray give me leave to ask you one Question Why do you make the Election of Great Officers to be by a small secret Council that had been more proper for a Numerous Assembly as it is in most Commonwealths Eng. Gent. It is so in Democracies and was so in Sparta and is done by your Great Council in Venice but we are not making such a kind of Government but rectifying an ancient Monarchy and giving the Prince some help in the Administration of that great Branch of his Regality besides it is sufficient that our Parliament chuses these Councils that is always understood the Lords and Commons with the Kings Consent