Selected quad for the lemma: prince_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
prince_n	advantage_n	great_a	king_n	2,282	5	3.5039	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A50364	A discovrse concerning the svccesse of former Parliaments	May, Thomas, 1595-1650.	1642 (1642)	Wing M1404; ESTC R2156	5,547	16

A DISCOVRSE CONCERNING THE SVCCESSE OF Former Parliaments Imprinted at LONDON MDCXLII A DISCOVRSE Concerning Former Parliaments SIR I Have according to my small abilitie and the shortnesse of time fulfilled your command in sending to you this briefe and plaine Discourse concerning the ancient opinions and esteeme of English Parliaments for that was all which you desired without any reflection upon the proceedings of this present Parliament accept it only as a plaine peece of common talk which I would have delivered had I beene present with you Such discourses need no dresse of Rhetorique THe constitution of our English Monarchy is by wise men esteemed one of the best in Europe as well for the strength and honour of the Prince as the securitie and freedome of the people and the Basis on which both are founded is the conveniencie of that great Councell the High Court of Parliament Without which neither can the Prince enjoy that honour and felicitie which Philip de Commines a forrainer so much admires where he delivers what advantages the Kings of England have by that Representative Body of their people by whose assistance in any action they can neither want meanes or lose reputation Nor on the other side can the people have any possibilitie of pleading their owne rights and liberties For in the Interim betweene Parliaments the People are too scattered and confused a body to appeare in vindication of their proper interests and by too long absence of such Assemblies they would lose all For as Iunius observes Populus 〈◊〉 heritatem sua●… tac●tè non ut endo amitti● sic plerumque accidit ut quod omnes curare tenentur curet nemo quodomnibus commissum est nemo sibi commendatum putet The People insensibly lose their power for want of using it for so it happens that what all should look after no man does what is committed to all no man thinks his owne charge And in that Interim it happens that those Optimates Regni as he speaks who under the Prince are entrusted with government meaning Councellours Judges and other great Magistrates either through feare flatterie or private corruption doe often betray the peoples rights to the Prince The state of government standing thus If distempered times happen to be as our Chronicles have shewed some where by dissention betweene Prince and People the Kingdomes ruine hath beene endangered it doth not so much prove that the English government is not the best as that the best government may be abused For in everie Monarchy how limited soever the Prince his person is invested with so much Majestie that it would seeme a mockerie in State if there were no considerable power entrusted into his hands yea so much as that if he be bad or weak he may endanger the ruine of the Kingdome so necessary is it for all humane ordinances how wise so ever to leave somewhat to Chance and to have alwayes need of recourse to God for his assisting or curing Providence And though the Kingdome of England by vertue of the government thereof will be as hardly brought into a confusion as any in Europe yet there is no warrant against the possibilitie of it For it was ever heretofore seene that our Parliaments were rather a strength and advantage to an honourable wise Prince than a remedy against a bad or weak one or if wee change the expression they were rather an excellent diet to preserve a good raigne in strength than Physick to cure a bad one and therefore have been as much loved by sound and healthy Princes as loathed by them that were out of temper the later having thought them a depression of their dignitie as the former have esteemed them an advantage to their strength So that in such times only the true convenience of that great Councell hath been perceived by England and admired by forreine Authors in the other times it was that those wittie complaints have been in fashion as Sir Robert Cotton speaks of a bad time that Princes in Parliaments are lesse than they should be and Subjects greater But on the contrarie that they have been an advantage to Kings the constant Series of our historie will shew 1. By those great atchievements which they have enabled our wise Kings to make who were most constant in calling them and consenting to them 2. That no one Prince was ever yet happie without the use of them It may therefore seeme a Paradox that any Prince should disaffect that which is so high an advantage to him and a great wonder that some Kings of England not vicious in their dispositions nor verie shallow in their understandings have so much kicked against Parliaments And that such have been before we shew what reasons may be of it see the characters of some Princes whose successe and fortunes are knowne to all that read the histories as they are delivered by Polydore Virgil who in his sixteenth book speaks thus of Henry the third Fuit ingenio miti animo magis nobili quàm magno cultor religionis adversus inopes liberalis Hee was of a gentle nature a mind rather noble than great a lover of religion and liberall to the poore In his eighteenth Book thus of Edward the second Fuit illi natura bona ingenium mite quem primò juvenili errore actum in leviora vitia incidentem tandem in graviora malorum consuetudines consilia traxerunt Non deerant illi animi vires si repudiatis malis suasoribus illas justè exercuisset He was of a good nature and mild disposition who first by the errours and rashnesse of youth falling into small faults was afterwards drawne into greater by the societie and counsels of wicked men There was not wanting in him a strength of mind if avoyding evill counsell hee could have made a just use of it And in his twentieth Book thus of Richard the second Fuit in illo spiritus non vilis quem consociorum improbitas insulsitas extinxit He was of a spirit not low or base but such as was quite destroyed by the wickednesse and folly of unhappy Consociates A reason of this accident may be that their soules though not vicious have not been so large nor their affections so publike as their great calling hath required but being too much mancipat d to private fancies and unhappie Favourites and long flattered in those affections under the specious name of firmnesse in friendship not being told that the adaequate object of a Prince his love should be the whole people and that they who receive publike honour should returne a generall love and care they have too much neglected the Kingdome and grow at last afraid to look their faces in so true a glasse as a Patliament and flying the remedy encrease the disease till it come to that unhappie height that rather than acknowledge any unjust action they strive for an unjust power to give it countenance and so by a long consequence become hardly

reconcilable to a Parliamentarie way Such Princes though it may seeme strange have been a greater affliction to this Kingdome than those who have been most wicked and more incurable for these reasons 1. They have not been so conscious to themselves of great crimes and therefore not so apt to be sensible of what they have beene accidentally made to doe against their people by evill counsell whose poyson themselves did not perfectly understand And therefore they are more prone to suspect the people as unkind to them than themselves as faultie and so the more hardly drawne to repent their actions or meet heartily with a Parliament 2. The second reason is from the People who naturally looke with honour upon the Prince and when they find none or few personall vices in him not considering that the true vertues of Princes have a larger extent than those of private men will more hardly be brought to think though themselves feele and suffer for it that he is faultie and therfore sometimes which would hardly be beleeved if experience had not shewed it the People have been so rash as that to maintaine for the King an unjust Prerogative which themselves understand not they have to their owne ruine and the Kings too as it hath after proved deserted that great Councell whom themselves have chosen and by whom only they could be preserved in their just rights untill too late for the Kings happinesse and their owne they have seene and repented their great folly Such a desertion was too sadly feene at the end of that Parliament of Edward the second where the two Spencers were banished and the tragicall effects that followed when the King found so great a partie both of Clergie and Laitie as enabled him to call home againe his banished Favourites and proved fatall to so many Parliamentarie Lords as the like execution of Nobilitie had never before beene seene in England over whose graves the People afterwards wept when it was too late and proceeded further in their revenge than became the dutie and allegeance of Subjects It is therefore a great mis-fortune to England and almost a certaine calamitie when the distempers of government have been let grow so long as that for their cure they must need a long Parliament For there are no wayes how just how moderate soever they be which that great Councell can take if they go far enough to make the cure but will provoke either by the meanes or the length of them the Prince his impatience or the peoples inconstancie For the first the Delinquents must needs be many and great and those employed and perchance highly favoured by him besides the reflexion which is made upon his judgement by their sufferings and that will be one reason of his impatience Another is that many prerogatives which were not indeed inherent in the Crowne but so thought by the Prince and by him and his bad Councell long abused to the prejudice of the People with some seeming advantage to him though well weighed they brought none are then after a long sufferance called in question For the People are used to entrust kind Princes with many of their owne rights and priviledges and never call for them againe till they have beene extremely abused But at such a time to make all cleare after so long a reckoning and those long reckonings in State being commonly fatall for Parliaments have seldome beene discontinued but by such Princes whose governments in the Interim have been verie illegall they usually question so much as that the Prince thinks himselfe hardly dealt withall such a Prince as we spoke of who not bad in himselfe but long misled by wicked counsell was not enough sensible of the injuries he had done The second obstacle that such Parliaments may find is the Peoples inconstancie and what age is not full of such examples which before we name let us consider whether there be any reason for it This perchance may be one that the People naturally are lovers of noveltie affecting with greedinesse everie change and againe loathing it when it ceases to be a noveltie Long-discontinued and reforming Parliaments seemes to carrie the face of a change of government and those things may then happen which doe in the shift of Princes that some people may for a while flatter themselves with new and strange hopes that prove frustrate or else with quicker redresses of inconvenience than the great concurrence of so many weightie businesses can possibly admit how industrious soever that great Councell be distracted with so great a varietie and the people after some time spent grow wearie againe of what before they so long had wished to see Besides the people are more and more poysoned daily by the discourses of the friends kindred and retainers to so many great Delinquents as must needs be at such a Parliament who though they be no considerable partie in respect of the whole Common-wealth yet ply their particular interests with more eagernesse than most doe the publike They subtilly perswade the people that whatsoever the Parliament does against those great Delinquents is aimed against the Kings honour and that he is wounded thorow their sides And this opinion is somewhat furthered when the People fee how many prerogatives of the Prince as wee said before are after long enjoying called in question So that by this meanes their inconstancie seemes to be grounded upon loyaltie to the King and they perchance with honest but deceived hearts grow wearie of the great Councell of the Land Another reason may be that the Prince himselfe averse from such a Parliament for the reasons aforesaid can find power enough to retard their proceedings and keep off the cure of State so long till the People tired with expectation of it have by degrees forgot the sharpnesse of those diseases which before required it By this meanes at last accidentally a miracle hath been wrought after a long Parliament which is that the People have taken part with the great Delinquents against the Parliament for no other reason than because those Delinquents had done them more wrong than the Parliament could suddenly redresse And so the multitude of those great Delinquents crimes hath turned to their owne advantage But in such reforming Parliaments upon whom so much businesse lyes not only the inconstancie of the people hath been seene in historie but the unstedfastnesse of the Representative Body it selfe and the distractions of that Assembly whilst they forsake each other under so great a burden have let that burden fall dishonourably to the ground The most unhappie instance in this case was that Parliament of Richard the second begun at Westminster and adjourned to Shrewsbury in the nineteenth yeare of his reigne a Parliament that discharged their trust the worst of any that I read of where there was as much need of constancie and magnanimitie as ever was to redresse those great distempers which were then growne upon the State and as much mischiefe ensued by their default both upon Prince and People which might have beene well prevented and his happinesse wrought together with their owne in the judgement of best Wtiters if they had timely and constantly joyned together in maintaining the true rights of Parliament and resisting the illegall desires of their seduced King But being fatally distracted the major part of Lords and Bishops wrought upon by the King and the House of Commons too far prevailed with by Bushy the Speaker and his Instruments they utterly deserted the Common-wealth and looking only upon the Kings present desire assented to such things as made the Prerogative a thing boundlesse that he himselfe as the Storie reports was heard glorying to say That there was no free and absolute Monarch in Europe but himselfe Upon which the same bad counsell which had before brought him out of love with Parliaments brought him to as great an abuse of that power which hee had now gotten over a Parliament And then followed the blank Charters and other horrid extortions besides the suffering of some Lords whom the people most loved and shortly after by a sad consequence his owne ruine Nor doe wee read that any of those Lords who under colour of loyaltie and love as they called it to his person had trodden downe the power and priviledge of a Parliament under his feet had afterwards so much loyaltie to him as to defend his Crowne and Person against the force of an Usurper who without any resistance or contradiction unjustly ascended the Royall Throne the sad occasion of that miserable and cruell civill war which in the following ages so long afflicted the Kingdome of England This was the worst example of any Parliament but in other times though bad too they have proved better Physick than any other earthly wayes or meanes could be yet their greatest vertue and excellencie is seene when they have been used as a diet by honourable and just Princes such as this Nation hath been often blest with and such who have thought it no disparagement or depression of their dignitie to be ruled by the sway of that great Councell than a wise guider of a ship would think it to follow his Compasse or any Mathematician to be directed by his necessarie rules and instruments FINIS