Selected quad for the lemma: power_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
power_n	law_n	prince_n	sovereign_a	3,774	5	9.4515	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A89323	The Armies dutie; or, Faithfull advice to the souldiers: given in two letters written by severall honest men, unto the Lord Fleetwood Lieutenant-Generall of the Armie, and now published for the instruction of the whole Armie, and the good people of this Common-wealth.	H. M.; Fleetwood, Charles, d. 1692.	1659 (1659)	Wing M28; Thomason E980_12; ESTC R202841	20,242	29

Tirants or being disquieted by their own ignorant disorders and confusions Your dutie to the people is like to that of a Guardian to an Heir Not to give them an Estate but to set down rules how it shall be ordered for them and they put in quiet Possession of it to their most advantage and securitie and this dutie is the more incumbant upon you because you have broken and trampled to pieces beyond repair all those old Christian forms wherein they formerly injoyed their liberties though with continuall Disputes and subject to daily injuries and oppressions Now before we propose to your Lordship any Form or Order to be settled it is fit that we discover to you the Errours and inconsistencies of your present practices and appearing design both in themselves and in relation to the peoples liberties First it 's a grand errour in the foundation if you imagine it possible to secure libertie or justice to the people onelie by advancing good men to power over them and trusting to the grace in their hearts to rule in righteousnesse good men upon the single account of mortalitie can be no lasting bottom whereupon to settle liberty and justice It 's beyond the wisdome of man to contrive an infallible provision in the present age that the ruling power in the succeeding age shall fall onelie into good mens hands but what age ever produced men of such enlightned pure minds that of themselves could discern right at all times without the least cloud of their private interest upon their understandings and also pursue such dictates of their minds without interruptions by corrupt affections we mention this not as if our Souls did not wish that all powers were vested in the best of men but because we know that every man is vanitie and a Lie and yet we believe it is often whispered in your eares by some weak well meaning men that honest mens liberty would then be secure and they satisfied if they could see good men put into power saying we should then need no lawes for they would be a law to themselves having Gods law in their hearts but those that thus by consequence beg advancement know not what they ask scarce intending to be the peoples lords and to rule them as their slaves which is necessarily employed in the arbitrarie power they ask neither do they apprehend what horrid impietie it is for any man in England now to erect and exercise an arbitrarie power they see not the blasphemous arrogancy of such as rule without lawes being indeed an attempt to erect their throne in it 's kind higher then Almightie Gods who rules and judges onelie according to his lawes without which there is neither justice nor injustice in things humane or divine therefore the peoples security of libertie and justice must be founded upon excellent lawes or constitutions for the continued order from generation to generation wherein the people shall chuse their own lawes and magistrates and if good men in power will in simplicitie and integritie joyn heads hearts and hands to establish such an order or forme of Government they will be worthilie esteemed the founders though not the foundation of our Liberties Secondlie 't is a grosse mistake to think that the securing the peoples Liberties and the creating of a Soveraign Prince over them under whatsoever title can consist together we mean such a Prince or Potentate the tenure of whose power shall not be upon the people and who shall not be subject and accomptable to the Lawes of this Commonwealth doubtlesse the people may not be free where there shall be a chief Magistrate whose deserved real honour and greatnesse may justly make him disdain to look down upon the Throne of the greatest Monarch yet if he shares in the Soveraigntie he subverts Libertie and the foundation of his own glorie the very essence or formall reason of a Nations freedom consists in the peoples making their own Lawes and Magistrates and therefore it is a contradiction to say we are free under a Prince controling our Lawes in their Creation or Execution and imposing his Officers upon us at his will and the consequence of that practice even in our late Kings hath caused all our present bloudie ruines his Officers being naturally inclined and resolved to serve their Creator to the subversion of our Lawes and Liberties besides if a Prince be invested with the least Punctilio of the Soveraigntie it is exceeding vain to imagine that he should not naturally aspire to the top of it every thing having an innate desire of its owne perfection and there being no other visible meanes to preserve from the peoples reach that part which hee hath but the destruction of their Libertie you may as well suppose fire not to ascend as such a Prince not to be wishing and aspiring to be an absolute Lord if he had neither ambition nor pride in himself nor in his appendixes his Court Parasites yet the unavoydable reciprocall fear in the people and such a Prince least each should dispoil the other of his share of Soveraigntie will compell the Prince to provide for his own securitie and do your Lordship think he will believe himself safe untill he hath set himself above the peoples reach and brought them to depend upon his will It may be he that you would create Prince with a small share of Soveraginty would at first thinke his power great yet in continuance he would esteem it smal men naturally reaching beyond what they have attained Liberty therefore and Principalitie are incompatible and can never last together It seems strange to a People that they should be free and yet serve and be imposed upon it 's strange to a Prince that he should be chief Lord and not command The meane of Libertie is the Mother of Murder and Tyrannie any Freedome from Princes Commands being intollerable to them they by Violence take it away or attempt it and that forceth a Violent brutish Tyrany instead of Government We need not look farre for an instance of this the bloud and sufferings of our Ancestours and our own Age witnesse it hath not our Princes and Ancestours been alwayes strugling for four hundred yeares and thousands perished in it that are known besides the ruine of many Worthies which no History durst mention unlesse with Infamie to please the Tyrants And your Lordship hath seen with what an Earth-quake Libertie subverted Principalitie when it found Opportunitie Therefore if you wish us and our Posterities no greater good then onely Quiet it behooveth you to make us wholly Free or wholly Slaves Thirdly It is no small fayler of foresight that you may imagine it feasible in this Nation at this time to establish a Principalitie or Monarchie of any probable continuance unlesse you can destroy all present Reall Properties and vest all or most of the Lands of ENGLAND in your Monarch Every Princes Power of Command must arise either from a voluntarie Submission and willingnesse of

a People to serve him as their Lord or from a Violent Compulsion of them to be subject to Him and both those are founded upon an inequalitie between him and them either reall or apparent A Peoples willingnesse to serve a Prince if any such be ariseth from their apprehension of some great inequality and dispropor●ion between him and them either in vertue interest or power The two first are proper to a Prince in his native countrey or one that hath dominion over only a sovereign Prince who may be thought powerfull to one people the last may be proper to protect a people and that may be chosen as the least of some impudent mischiefs but if any people ever were or shall be voluntarily subject to a Prince upon their high opinion of his unequall transcendent vertue that related only to his person and never was or can be a solid foundation for an hereditary Monarchy but an unequall interest in the lands may be and is the common cause either of a voluntary or constrained subjection no man serves for nought 't is the need that people have of the Lords interest that procures him servants and enables him to compell subjection so Joseph that new moulded the Egyptian Monarchy devised a way for the King to get all the possessions into his hands that so the people might serve Pharaoh which was a necessary consequence 'T is evident that the relation of masters and servants would soon be banished the world if all mens interests vertues and strength were equall and much sooner would the names of princes and subjects be for ever razed out of memory surely then my Lord 't is beyond dispu e that if you intend to settle a Monarchy over us it must be by violence for it cannot enter into your heart to imagine that you shall find a man whose glorious vertues shall be as a Sun amongst the stars compared with all the vertues in this nation and those also to be surely intailed upon his heirs neither can your Lordship pretend to find any family whose interest in the lands is now so unequall to the bulk of the people that the nation should be induced by their interest to serve them Now that a compulsive subjection to a Monarchy must be the product of an unequall power is as good as written with a Sun-beam he that forceth must be stronger then-he that is forced and 't is as evident that such a power is the only naturall fruit of an unequall interest in the lands upon which the beast of force must graze that bears the Monarch power to force a nation cannot be inherent in a single person and multitudes of hands neither can nor will serve him to subj●ct a nation unlesse they be h●red Christ himself says no man goes to warfare at his own charge and nothing can afford the constant growing hire of the Princes own but his interest in the lands and if he put the hirelings to rob and pilfer for their own ●ire upon the fruits of the lands which the people esteem their own that is by taxes the basis and root of the power by which the forces live hath not an appearance to be in the Monarch nor do his forces seem to have a necessary dependance upon him but may as well rob for themselves and at best they must remain a fluctuating body without root the Monarch not being able to plant them upon his lands with condit●ons of service and therefore they will be esteemed of the land owners only as the common thieves whose hands are against every man and ought to have every mans hand against them and the robbery being in such a case to be renewed continually upon the land-owners and the wound alwaies smarting 't is of more constant danger to subvert the Monarch then it were for him to cut the throats of ten thousand land-owners at once and possesse the lands to plant his forces upon as their standing-quarters upon their masters own lands either for their lives or during his pleasure Surely my Lord it 's not to be denied that a Monarch in his domestick dominions hath no greater rooted continuing power over a nation then he hath an interest in the lands surmounting in value the interest of the whole people as that interest grows by murders oppression and the other common artifices of Princes unlesse the wrath of God interposeth so doth his power root and flourish all other seeming power of a Monarch hangs as the ignorant use to say by Geometry and is without bottome 't is a tree whose root is dead and may be kept up a little while by dead props that decays with it 'T is like an armies foraging into an enemies countrey and plundering not being able to gain the possession of a town castle or house there as a root of power over it Indeed no form of domestick government can be establisht to be of duration in a nation chiefly living upon their lands if property in the land do not accompany the Empire that is if that order which governs be it one man or the few or the people do not possesse a greater share of the land of that countrey then the rest of the people that are governed and therefore where the Administration is most popular servants and all such as have no estates are reckoned to have no share or voices in the government And we conceive thatt the founders of governments have either framed their models according to the ballance of property which they found amongst the people or else have divided the property and reduced it to their form And your Lordship may remember when God himself formed the people of Israel by Moses hand into a free Common-wealth there was not only a suitable division of the lands at the first but a perpetuall law of Jubilee to prevent alienation of lands and the growth of any to such unequall interest as his power might be dangerous to the government and when that people rejected Gods form of their Common wealth for a Monarch he foretold them 1 Sam. 8. 11. 17. that the first work of their King would be to alter the modell of property in the lands settled by God and take away the best of their fields vineyards and olive-yards and give them to his servants for strengthening himself and so they should become his servants And if we should not trouble your Lordship too much we would shew from History that all the lasting Monarchies that ever were in the world have been built upon this foundation of possessing the greatest interest in their countreys lands either immediately or by their Peers and their powers being the naturall result of that they have had their births decays and deaths together Some kingdomes we say have been founded upon the Monarchs immediate interest or property in the lands as many ancient Eastern Kings and the Turk with other Eastern Princes at this day who are sole proprietors or Landlords of the whole Territories where they

to your Lordship at present onlie let us beg your serious consideration how much the honor of the profession of the Gospel is concerned in what we move your Lordship to expect from you And that you would say to your self is it not better that I mine perish then that a publick scandal be brought upon Gospel profession by my injustice treacherie to my Countrie under a shew of holiness if we shall observe by your Lordships actions from henceforth that there are some apearances that God hath begun to imprint upon your heart the sense of your publick dutie and that he will put that honor greatness upon you to be the restorer of his peoples liberties in this Nation we shall then think our selves obliged to write again to your Lordship or wait upon you to strengthen your hands In the interim we shall praie without ceasing that wisdom courage and strength may be given you from the Father of all mercies and that out of his fulness you may be in all things prepared for the accomplishing his own work of righteousness And if in judgement to this Nation your heart should be hardned by these poor lines your Lordship will be left more inexcusable and however some satisfaction in the discharge of your duties will arise to the Conscices of My Lord Your Lordships Most affectionate humble servants So far as you follow Christ My Lord WE presumed lately to mind your Lordship of your present oportunity and most important duty and our souls wish that the the secrets of your thoughts upon it were revealed that our hearts and prayers might be towards you and for you accordingly we must tell your Lordship that you have since wounded the hearts of many precious Saints by conducting your Armie officers in an action of such gross hypocrisie and palpable flattery as that addresse you made to your new Protector we have reason to believe that it had been impossible for your Lordship to have said privately to an honest man without blushing what you have said there to the world under your hand and if your Lordship will remember with God in your eye what is said of your father and your brother in it and of an unknown connexion between his person and your cause which a lso you cannot now and as now state to your own conscience as just we are confident your heart will smite you and if your own heart condemn you God is greater then your heart and must much more condemn you Truly my Lord we were much startled in our hopes from you and praiers for you and we hear the same of others when we saw that addresse yet our remembrance of your secret expressions even with tears of your sense of the Armies backslidings and your earnest intreaties of us to pray for you together with the great respect we have for your Lordship hath inclined us strongly to the best thoughts of you sometimes saying one to another surely he had not read our letter before his Addresse yet we have been so stumbled that we had troubled your Lordship no farther in this kind if God had not so placed the interest of his cause and people upon our spirits that we are restlesse within our selves untill we have said so much as may be either effectuall upon your heart or at least discharge our consciences and leave you inexcusable If therefore the Lord hath made us his remembrancers to you and revived his fear in your heart whilest you considered what we sent you we have reason to conclude that you are come to these resolves in your owne breast viz. 1. That the peoples arms of this nation have been committed to your charge in your severall capacities as a steward of that high trust for them to imploy them for their benefit in preserving their rights and freedome and that you must give an account to the eternall God of that stewardship 2. That you are under all possible sacred and indispensable obligations to be faithfull in your trust 3. That the cause for which you were trusted was to defend and maintain the peoples right to make laws for themselves and thereby provide for their own welfare and safety by such persons as they should chuse and that without the negative controule of the King and also to defend the freedome of their consciences persons and estates in being over the only government of their own laws without subjection to the will or mercie of any man And we suppose you may also conclude that you have now power and oportunitie cast upon you to secure this libertie unto Gods people according to humane prudence beyond the reach of wicked men and that if you should hide your talent of power in the napkins of fear cowardise ambition or self-interest you will be condemned from the mouth of your own conscience for an unprofitable and unfaithfull servant Now if God hath enabled your Lordship thus to consider with a pure understanding and with integritie of heart thus to resolve we know you are continually saying within your self men and brethren what shall I doe to shew my faithfulnesse to the cause of God and the people and to vindicate my possession from scandall and in hopes that God hath thus disposed your heart we shall endeavour to inquire into your particular dutie And in our search we may assert this generall maxime as an infallible pillar to guide you in your present dutie to your generation viz. that the peoples liberties cannot be lastingly secured to them by any other means then an institution of sense wise order or method wherein the people may make and execute their own laws and use their own arms and strength for the common good of the whole societie This may direct all your Lordships thoughts and debates about a settlement and keep in your eieperpetually the white mark wherein all your designes and contrivances of publick concernment ought to centre this may prepare you to passe a quick sentence upon all the ambitious proposals of your Court-parasites this may cut off all those Court debates about impowering a Prince to check and controul the people by his negative in their making their laws It ought to be no question whither the people should make their own laws God himself having resolved it the very point being the single point whereupon you joyned Battell at first with the King you defending that the Parliaments Ordinance for the Malitia was a Law without the Kings consent and he denying it to be of any force and affirming those Traitors that obeied that and not his Commissions of Array this by the Kings Confession was the first quarrel this libertie then being their bloud cannot be taken from them but by the highest robberie and contempt of Obligations to God and Man Therefore your Lordships dutie is no more then to contrive the best most prudent form and order wherein the people may injoy their own with the least hazard of being preyed upon by

reign and the people their tenants at will or at best for life upon conditions of service in war proportionable to the value af their farms whereby the Turk keeps an absolute power over his subject by their dependance upon his will for their bread and with his own proper revenue is able also to maintain an army of strangers to strengthen the other tie he hath upon his vassalls and upon this root of his property to the eye of humane reason his power has grown to that monstrous height Others kingdomes have been built upon the property in the lands which the Monarchs Peers have had joyntly with and under him so were these Western dominions after their conquest by the Northern people who divided a land when conquered into so many parcels as they had great Officers leaving the choice of the best and largest share to their Prince or leader he becoming their King and the chief Officers holding their large shares on him by some small acknowledgements became his Dukes Counts and Earls and the common souldiers who came indeed to seek a countrey to inhabit holding together with the poor natives some small parcels of land under those g eat-men upon such conditions as made them wholly dependant upon their Landlords and thus these Dukes and Earls paying homage and fealty and small acknowledgements to the Prince became princes in their own divisions and thus the interest of the King and his Peers over-weighed the properties of all other the Inhabitants whereupon the power of our ancient Monarchy was founded and the Kings chief Officers were the tenants and vassalls of his Peers to whom he sent upon occasion of trouble forreign or domestick to leavy arms who gathered their vassalls together and either assisted the King or fought against him as they l●ked the quarrell their souldiers never daring to dispute their Lords commands knowing no immediate Lord but them Thus was the Kings power lesse or greater as he agreed with his Peers they having been able as your Lord ship knows to make and unmake Kings of England as they pleased and if their propertie in the lands had so remained nothing could have shaken the Monarchs power if he had kept an union with them but the inferiour people grew by degrees to better their tenures and to make some of their estates hereditary upon easie fines at every change as our coppy-holders of inheritance and some to have their estates their own free hold and in fine they came to abolish in England the tenures of vassailage vill●uinage which is yet in practice amongst our neigh-bour natiōs whose Monarchies stand by so much the stronger and the people having got a better interest in the lands soon obtained some share in the government they were then thought fit to be summoned to the national meetings then called Gamont since a Parliament to consider what way to supply their King with money which was to come only from their purses and properties the nobles then as now in France payiny no Tax or Tollage and the sense they had of their own properties in the lands made them soon after challenge it as their right that their King could take no tax toll or tollage unlesse they were pleased to give it him in their Parliaments and then the peoples yoakes growing more easy their wealth increased and lands being commonly suffered to be alienated the multitude became the purchasers and some bought off their serviccs that still remained due to their Lords and others bought their Lords lands who proved prodigalls and as occasion was offered the Churches lands and this together with some Kings endeavours to abate the power of their Peers in their Countreys reduced the English Peerage to an empty name the greatest quantity of the lands and with those the power being fallen into the Commons hands before the Warr who being then sensible they neither depended upon the King nor his Peers for their Bread conceived themselves obliged to serve none but God and therefore ought not to be commanded or to have lawes imposed upon them by the King or his Peers judging it the right of a people whose property rendred them free and independent to chuse their own lawes and Magistrates being intended onely for the preservation of their own properties and liberties and thus did our House of Commons gradually grow to that power which in latter time proved formidable to the Kings there wanting nothing to the destructon of the Throne whose pillars were broken but an occasion for the people to feel the power they had this was the naturall cause of our late Kings projecting to have brought German Horse or an Irish Army into England a mercenary Army being the last refuge of a Monarch devested of his Nobility though that also will prove but a violent dead prop and soon rotten unlesse he can suddainly reassume a greater property give them root by an interest in the lands upon conditions of serving him And this was the cause of the Kings raising his Guard at York and leaving the VVarre being the last means to support his power therefore we may say that the dying pangs of a Monarchial power in England caused our VVarrs as his violent stranglings for life much rather then that the VVarre caused the destruction of Monarchiall power the Parliaments Army did indeed prevent a possibility of the resurrection of that power by a forcible changing the property in the lands and so reviving a new Monarchy but the old was dead by a kind of natural desolution before the Parlament voted it uselesse burdensome and dangerous for surely 't is neither of the three where and so long as it's single property in the lands or in union with his Nobility makes the people live upon him and them though 't is most certainly all the three where it must be fed upon the peoples properties like the Snake in the Rustick's house till it be able to oppresse them My Lord wee hope it will be clear to your Lordship that England is now become an unnatural soyl for a Monarch The Governor of the World by various providences hath so divided the land amongst the bulk of the people that they can live of themselves without serving and it is preposterous to impose a Monarch upon us as to make a law that the weaker shall alwaies binde the stronger we believe it no less impossible to establish a lasting Monarch in England without alteration of the interest the multitude hath in the lands and naturall power then it were to settle a firm lasting free State or Commonwealth in the Turkish Territories suffering the Ottoman to Family to remain the sole Landlord of the Territories as now he is and we suppose that obvious objection that England hath been a Monarchy for many hundred years is clearly answered from what we have said if you will take us as conquered as much by your Army as by the Normans and think to settle a Monarchy like theirs in a