Year of the Reign of King Henry the 3. and for many ages past and are and should be no more then as Sr Edward Coke saith a Grand Enquest as men that were most Cognisant that best knew the grievances of their Countries with what might be their proper remedies and their abilities or disabilities to aid their Sovereign and assist the publick good being the truest most intelligent and most considerate Judges of their own Interest and the right and only use of their being Elected appeareth by the use and reason thereof to be no other in Parliaments then Informers of grievances and are to be Petitioners for Laws or Remedies When it is Judicis Officium that is to say the Suprema potestas which in England was never yet proved or rightly understood to reside in the People or any other then the King and in valde dubiis opinionibus in quibus non appareat quae sit magis communis rationes quae ex utraque parte efficaces adducuntur Trutinare non est dubitare de iis quae lege vel apertaratione monstrantur Qua propter opinio quaelibet contralegem veram rationem vana est And if any should be so wild or gone out of their reason as to endeavour to make an Assent to be aequivalent or as much as an innate Authority or any Effect of a Superiority or so much as a resemblance thereof they may as well undertake to assert that the Prelates Earls Barons and Commonalty of Engl. had power to create Edward the black-black-Prince Son and heir apparent of King Edward the 3d Prince of Wales and to give him the Principality thereof because that great and victorious King in the 11th year of his Reign did grant it unto him concilio et concensu Praelatorum Comitum Baronum Communitatum Regni sui non suorum Angliae in generali Parliamento when in the preamble thereof he declared that he did it de serenitate Regalis praeeminencia and the Commons in Parliament in the 50th year of the Reign of that King after that the Archbishop of Canterbury had spoken much in the commendation of Richard de Burdeaux Son and heir of Edward late Prince of Wales Son and heir apparent of the Realm did with one voice pray the Lords so ignorant were they then of their own supposed co-ordination and so over-valuing the power of the Lords that they would make him Prince of Wales as his father was Who answered that it lay not in them but in the King so to do but promised to be Mediators for him So as they who would pretend to such a large representation of the people are to remember that they can give no power but such as they are themselves justly and by law entitled unto as Subjects obeying in their Elections the words intention and true meaning of their Sovereign who did cause them to be Elected to come unto his Parliament with a consenting performing and obeying power only but not an equall coordinate or Superior and that it hath been a ruled and allowed case thorough all the Nations of the World and the Ages thereof that nemo plus juris dare potest quam in se ipso habet And however that prudent Prince King Edward the 1st did for the avoiding of some troubles which a remnant of his and his fathers unquiet Barons would have put upon him and his people whom he was bound to protect condescend to that Act of Parliament that no Tallage or aid should be granted without the consent of the Archbishops Bishops Earls and Barons Knights Citizens Burgesses and Freeholders of the land put himself and them under the frailty of the good and kind will and intentions of a part of his subjects yet he could not find either any cause or reason to doubt or suspect that they or any of their posterity should so little follow the conduct or manage of their understanding the care of their self-preservation and the prevention of the ruine of their private in the publick as not to submit to that known and almost every where approved rule or Aphorisme of wisdom that Publica privatis anteponenda sunt and that of the Poet Tunc tuares agitur paries cum proximus ardet Or that any if not an enemy to himself his posterity and his Country as much as a Traytor to his King would in a case of publick necessity when every man was as greatly concerned to defend themselues their King Country and posterities by a giving giving a timely aid and assistance ai if it had been pro Aris focis and Hannibal had been at Porta's have been either forward or backward to gard and relieve themselves their King and Country and not make hast to imitate the Romans who at other times Factious and Seditions enough would not suffer the more prudent Fabious the preserver of his and their Country even in the mioest of their discontents and murmurings that he made no more hast to fight and beat the enemy to want their help either with men or money When as Bornitius saith Quicquid boni homo Civisque habet possidet quod vivit libere vivit quod bene quod Beate omniumque rerum bonorum usu interdum etiam copia ad voluptatem utitur fruitur totum hoc beneficium Reipublicae civilique ordini acceptum est reserendum And that omnis homo res singularum in Republica conservari nequeant nifi conservetur Respub sive communis adeoque singuli sui causa impendere videntur qnicquid conferunt in publicum usum And St Chrysostome was of the same opinion when he said that ab antiquis temporibus communi omnium sententia principes a nobis sustinere debere visum est ob id quod sua ipsorum negligentes communes res curare universumque suum otium adeo impendunt quibus non solum ipsi sed quae nostra sunt salvantur And Zechius saith Regi competunt ratione excellentiae ejus dignitatis quae Regalia dicuntur and that multa adjumenta sunt ei necessaria ut dominium totum externa tueri valeat With whom accordeth Bodin informing us that Sine majestatis contemptu fieri non potest ea res enim peregrinos ad principem aspernandum subditos ad deficiendum excitare consuevit For surely it was never rightly understood that their Membership of the House of Commons in Parliaments did abridge or lessen the Superiority of their Sovereign as may be evidenced by the procedures and affairs of all the Parliaments of England from the beginning of their admission thereunto untill the late unhappy distempers thereof It having been by long experience Tried and found to be in Government a Policy as successfull as prudentiall to gain in the making of Laws the approbation and good-liking as much as may be of those that are to obey and be guided by them to the end that they may the more
correction or explicacation mad therein So as that meeting and re-referrence proved to be only an essay for a pacification For that haughty Earl Montfort hated the King and endeavouring all he could his destruction so thwarted all his actions and domineer'd over him as the King told him openly That he feared him more than any Thunder or Tempest in the world Being not pleased with what had been proposed at that revisionary Treaty for what concerned his own particular interest and satisfaction would rather bleed and embroil the Nation than acquiesce in those excellent Laws and Liberties which the King had granted in his Magna Charta and Charta de Foresta which like two Jewels of inestimable price in her ears did help to bless secure and adorn our BRITANNIA whilst She sate upon Her Promontory viewing and guarding Her British-Seas and did therefore draw and entice as many as he could to go along with his envy malice ambition and designs With which Ordination Sentence and Award of the King of France against the Barons many were notwithstanding so well satisfied with the King and so ill with Symon Montfort's proud and insolent demeanour as they withdrew themselves from the rebellious part of the Barons and although some for a while staggered in their Opinions and Loyalty because though the King of France condemned the provisions made at Oxford yet he allowed King John's Charter whereby he left as they pretended the matter as he found it for that these Provisions as those Barons alledged were grounded upon that Charter But a better consideration made many to dispence with their ill-taken Oaths and return to their Loyalty as Henry Son of the Earl of Cornwall Roger de Clifford Roger de Leybourne Hamo L'Estrange and others And it is worthy a more than ordinary remarque that that King of France and his Councel upon view and hearing of so many Controversies and Tronsactions betwixt our King Henry III. and his rebellious Barons could not be strangers to the former and latter attempts ill-doings and designs of that Party of the English Baronage did so little approve thereof and of their Parliamentary Insolencies and Oxford Provisions as his Grand-child or Successor Philip le Bel King of France who reigned in the time of our Edward I. did within less than forty years after Pour oster saith l'Oyseau a very learned French Author de la suitte le Parlement qui lors estoit le conseil ordinaire des Roys voir leur faisoit Teste bien sauvent luy oster doucement la cognossance des affaires d'Estat to the no great happiness as it afterwards proved of the French Nation erigea un cour ordinaire le rendit sedentaire a Paris dont encore il a retenu ce teste de son ancienne institution qu'il verifie homologue les Edicts du Roy. And now the doors of Janus Temple flew quite open the Prince with Lewellin Prince of Wales Mortimer and others invade and enter upon the Lands of Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester and some of the opposite Nobility and the Earl of Leicester was as busie on the other side in seizing Gloucester and Worcester Whereupon the King doubting Montfort's approach to London being not yet ready for him works so as a mediation of Peace was assay'd upon condition that all the Castles of the King should be delivered to the keeping of the Barons the provisions of Oxford inviolably observed all strangers by a certain time should avoid the Kingdom except such as by a general consent should be held faithful and profitable for the same Here saith the Historian was a little pause which seemed but a breathing in order unto a greater rage The Prince fortifies victuals and garrisons Windsor Castle And the King to get time summoned a Parliament at London where he won many Lords to his party and with them Richard Earl of Cornwal his Brother King of Almaine Henry his Son William Valence with the rest of his Brethren marches to Oxford whither divers Lords of Scotland repair unto him as Iohn Comyn Iohn Baliol Lords of Galloway Robert Bruce and others with many English Barons Clifford Percy Basset c. from thence with all his Forces went to Northampton took Prisoner young Symon Montfort with fourteen other principal men thence to Nottingham spoiling the Possessions appertaining to the Barons in those parts The Earl of Leicester draws towards London to recover and make good that part of his greatest importance and seeks to secure Kent and the Ports which hastens the King to stop his proceedings and to succour the Castle of Rochester which he besieged whereby Success and Authority growing strong on the King's side the Earls of Leicester and Gloucester in behalf of themselves and their Party write unto the King humbly protesting their Loyalty alledge that they opposed only against such as were enemies to Him annd the Kingdom and had bely'd them unto which the King returned answer that Themselves were the perturbers of him and his State enemies to his Person and sought His and the Kingdoms destruction and therefore defy'd them the Prince and the Earl of Cornwal sending likewise their Letters of defyance unto them who doubting the hazard of a Battel send the Bishops of London and Worcester their former encouragers unto the King with an offer of 30000 Marks for damage done in those Wars so as the Provisions of Oxford might be observed Which not being condescended unto or thought fit to be allowed Montfort with his Partners seeing no other means but to put all to the hazard of a Battel made himself more ready than was expected placed on the side of an Hill near Lewis where the Battel was to be fought certain Ensigns without men which seemed afar off to be Squadrons ready to second his men whom he caused all to wear White Crosses both for their own notice and signification of the candour and innocency of his cause which he desired to have believed to be only for Justice And as Rebels first assaulting their King unexpectedly began to charge his Forces who were divided into three parts The first whereof was commanded by Prince Edward the King's Son William de Valence Earl of Pembroke and John Warren Earl of Surrey and Sussex the second by the King of Almaine and his Son Henry and the third by the King himself The Forces of the Barons ranged in four parts whereof the first was led by Henry de Montfort and the Earl of Hereford the second by Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester and Hertford Iohn Fitz-John and William of Mount-Chency the third by the Londoners and Richard Segrave and the fourth by Symon de Montfort Earl of Leicester himself and Thomas de Pelvesion And both sides fighting with as great manhood as fury the Prince and his Batalion cum tanto impetu in hostes irruil so beat and routed those that stood against him as he made them give back many
prospicere volueritis nullo modo omittatis Nos enim hoc idem caeteris Praelatis duxerimus injungendum T. R. apud Heref. 12. die Junii Eodem modo mandatum est Episcopis Lincoln Winton Cestr ' Elyen ' Sarum Coventry Litchfield Bathon ' Wellen ' cum adjectione subscripta quia tantam eorundem Malitiam sub fictae veritatis colore per diversas partes praedicari faciunt ad comâ—â—ovenda corda populorum vestrum s 〈…〉 o cordis affectu peroptamus adventum ut nostro vestro aliorum Praelatorum medianti Testimonio veritas praevalere possit evidenter pateat non Nos sed praefatos Rebelles nostros subortis jam dissentionibus clà m praefecisse ut igitur ad honorem Dei nostram vestram communem Regni Utilitatem vestro mediante Consilio quo uti intendimus possint ipsa negotia procedere gressus vestros in quantum poteritis versus Nos maturetis nè per moras dictas dissentiones augeri contingat ut sic exitium consequantur duriorem But whilst that great Rebell Montfort Brother-in-law to his King and one of the God-Fathers to the Prince his Son taking himself to be too great to be a Subject and not being able to contain himself within the limits of Gratitude and Allegiance or to resist the Intreagues of the King of France a long before dangerous and profest Enemy to his KING and Soveraign and altogether unwilling to lose the Opportunity of a Factious and discontented part of the English Baronage driving his Charriot furiously like Jehu though not with so good an Authority impowered as he thought to make every one come behind him and believing himself to be in so firme a league with his Fortune and Security and assisted by Lewelline Prince of Wales who had confederated with him to raise a Disturbance upon the Lands and Estates of Mortimer Clifford the Earl of Gloucester and other Barons Marchers so as they might not be in a condition to Aid or Relieve the King and he needed not dread any danger of losing the Prey which he had gained but might make what use he would of his haughty and domineering Spirit give Laws to his Assisting Partners and not be obliged to keep his Agreement with Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester and Hertford about the Dividend of the spoil or share of the Regal Power became Taxed for doing more for his own Particular than the Publick Good usurping the Redemption of Prisoners at his pleasure and to prolong the business did not to use the means of a Parliament to end it his Sons also and Peter de Montfort his Kinsman presuming upon his Success and Greatness growing Insolent which made the Earl of Gloucester to desert him and his Party and the more Loyal Barons not well pleased to have their King led about Captive and those who had so deeply engaged with Montfort for the Provisions extorted from the King at Oxford could not well digest so great an Affront put upon him and themselves and to have the King and Kingdom governed at the Discretion of Twenty-four Conservators after reduced to a much lesser number into which every one could not be admitted calmely considering the great Confusions Envies and Ambitions which would happen by so like to be so dangerous and unquiet an Innovation were content and propounded That those Ordinances or Provisions should be made void and the King restored to his former Rights and Condition but Peter de Montfort a Principal Rebel as well as a near Kinsman of Symon de Montfort's with four others opposed it and was made Governour of Hereford not long before the Prince's escape from his Imprisonment there Which was principally contrived by the means of Roger de Mortimer who seeing His Soveraign in so great a distress and nothing but Ruine and Misery attending himself and all other the King 's Loyal Subjects could take no rest until he had by his Intelligence and Correspondency held with Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester William de Valence Earl of Pembroke newly returned into England the Lord Clifford and other the Loyal Barons Marchers wrought some way for the Deliverance of the Prince in order to that of the King Which was in this manner effected A swift Horse was sent as a Present to the Prince then Prisoner in the Castle of Hereford whither the Army had afterwards brought the King in no better a condition with intimation that he should obtain leave to ride out for a Tryal or for Recreation into a place called Widmersh and that upon sight of a Person mounted upon a White Horse at the foot of Culington Hill and waving his Bonnet which was as it was said the Lord of Croft an Ancestor of the now Bishop of Hereford of that Sir-name and Ancient Family he should hast towards him with all possible speed which being so accordingly done as he though all the Country thereabouts were thither called to prevent his Escape setting spurs to that Horse out-rid them all and being come to the Park of Culington was met by Roger de Mortimer with five hundred armed men who turning upon the many Pursuers chased them back with a great slaughter to the Gates of Hereford but by Henry Knighton and others it is related that Roger de Mortimer having sent the Prince a swift Horse for that purpose which he obtaining leave of Peter de Montfort to try if he were of use for the great Saddle first wearied out other Horses and then got on the swift Horse a Boy with two Swords whom the said Roger de Mortimer had sent being near with another Horse and turning himself to Robert de Ross then his Keeper and to others By-Standers said I have been in your Custody for a time but now I bid you farewel and so rode away the said Roger de Mortimer with his banner displayed receiving him at a little Hill called Dinmore conveyed him safe to his Castle at Wigmore Which did put Montfort and his Fellow-Rebels into such a Consternation and Care of themselves and the Custody of their Royal Prisoner as besides their many Cautions to watch his motions and stop the Princes passage into the parts beyond the Seas a Writ was sent to the Sheriff of Herefordshire in the King's Name commanding the most of the Gentry of that County amongst whom Hugo de Croft was mentioned to come Cum equis armis toto posse suo ad desensionem villae de Hereford and to the King wheresoever he should be under the pain of Forfeiture of all that they had and for ever to be disherited SECT VIII Of the Actions of the Prince after his Escape his Success at the Battle of Evesham Release of the King his Father and Restoring him to his Rights PRince Edward being thus at liberty did by the help of Mortimer Clare Earl of Gloucester the Earl Warren William de Valence Earl of Pembroke the Lord Clifford and
restored to them Besides they declared to the Legat That they had irreverently ejected out of the Kingdom the Bishops of Winchester London and Chester whereby the Councell of the Kingdom was in great part weakned willed that they might be restored to their Lands without Redemption that the Provisions of Oxford might be observed and that they might have Hostages delivered unto them into the Island to hold the same peaceably for five years to come until they might perceive how the King would perform his Promises But this Stubbornness so exasperated the King as the next year following with a mighty Army he did so beset the Isle as he shut them up and Prince Edward with Bridges made on boats entred the same in diverse places and constrained them to yeild And in the 52d year of his Raign devastavit saith Matthew Paris per totum Regnum de Comitatu in Comitatum qui stabilem contravenientibus intentarent ut videlicet si quid Possessiones alienas sive Ovium vel Boum vel aliquid usurparet injustè subiret Sententiam capitalem In the mean time the Earl of Gloucester with his Army marched to London where by the Citizens he was received But the Legat residing in the Tower so prevailed with him as he rendred himself to the King and was shortly after reconciled by the Mediation of the King of the Romans and the Lord Philip Basset upon the forfeiture of 12000 Marks if he should ever raise any Commotion Which being effected the King went with an Army into Wales against Lewellin their Prince for ayding Simon Montfort and the Earl of Gloucester against him but his Wrath being for 32000 l. Sterling appeased a Peace was concluded betwixt them and four Cantreds which had been taken from him by right of Warr restored Whereby those bloody long and ruining Controversies betwixt that unfortunate Prince King Henry the Third and a great ill disposed part of his Subjects led and managed by some of his overgrown Nobility and haereditary great Officers of his Crown and Estate which had in and from his Infant age to Fifty-Seven vexed and disquieted him and his Government were drawing towards an end And whilst â—e laboured to repress those Disorders which the Warrs had produced issued out his Writs to all the Sheriffs and Justices Itinerants to leavy 400â— with all speed out of the extract Rolls of Fines and Americaments to be paid into the Exchequer for the expences of William de Beverlaco Prince Edwards Chaplain sent to Rome about his Affairs And in the same year beholding with tears the Ruines of the burnt and deformed Church of Norwich after the Bishops Excommunication of all that had consented unto it And Trivet the Judg punishing the Offenders he fined the City in 3000 Marks of Silver towards the repairing of that Church and a Cup of Gold of the value of one hundred pounds In the 54 th year of his Raign Parliamentum tenuit apud Marleburgh in quo de Assensu Comitum Baronum no mention at all being made of the Commonalty as well high as low in the Record but is justly to be charged as a fault or mistake upon Mr. Pulton's Translation of our Statutes into English edita sunt statuta The Legat Ottobon signed with the Croysado both the King's Sons Edward and Edmond the Earl of Gloucester and divers other Noble men undertaking a War for the Recovery of the Holy Land Prince Edward in that long and Perillous Journey carrying with him his beloved Consort Elianor then young with Child and Mortgaging Gascony to the King of France for 30000 Marks who was also personally engaged in the same Expedition and left his aged Father the King broken with the cares and toyles of War and Imprisonment who after his Son Prince Edward's departure being in the Fifty-fifth year of his Raign having borrowed Moneys of his Brother Richard King of Almaine to help to set forward his Son Edward and falling desperately sick and past all hopes of Recovery assigned unto his said Brother all the Revenues of the Crown except Wardships Marriages Releifes Escheats of the Counties Eyres of the Justices and the Juries which he retained in his own hands to his own use A Nostre soustenance as the words of the Record are de Nostre Reyne e de Nos mesnees e a Nos de Nos dettes aleger And shortly after being doubtful of his Recovery from that sickness whilst Prince Edward his Son and Heir to the Crown was engaged in that so called Holy War Wrote his Letter of Advice unto him speedily to return into England upon his Fatherly Blessing notwithstanding his Vow and Engagement in that affair in such manner as might be most for his Honour in these words viz. Rex Edwardo Primogenito suo karissimo salutem paternam Benedictionem Tenore Literarum vestrarum Nobis super vestro Comitivae Vestrae statu prospero jocundo benedictus Deus transmissarum audito pleniùs intellecto laeti efficiebomur hilares in immensum ettam ante receptionem ipsarum Literarum tanta tam gravi infirmitate detinebamur quòd onmes singult existentes Physici alii de vita Nostra commâ—â—iter desperabant nec tempore quo later praesentium à Nobis recessit de Nostra Convaltscentia spes aliqua habebatur verùm tamen prout Altissimo de statu Nostro placuerit ordinare vos indè per Nostros Nuntios reddemus frequentiùs certiores undè cùm vos in Haereditatem not by Election Regni Nostri tanquam Primogenitus Haeres Noster post Nos succedere debeatis vos post receptionem praesentium ad partes remotiores nullatenùs transferatis antè qùam de statu Nostro certitudinem habueritis pleniorem tùm quia si Papa crearetur mandaret charissimo fratri nostro Regi Alem illustri Avunculo vestro cui custodia Regni praedicti de concilio vestro commissa fuit oporteat ipsum pro statu sui Regni Alem ' ad Curiam Romanam modis omnibus personaliter accedere ità quòd ad depressionem quorundam male volorum infra Regnum Nostrum existentium sicut nostis intendere non posset ut expediret tà m quia si occasione mortis Nostrae quod absit vos oporteat ad propria remeare causa Regiminis Regni praedicti recipiendi cum Rege Franciae qui ad partes Franciae in brevi reversurus est ut dicitur honestè redire poteritis decentèr super quibus omnibus tale concilum habeatis quale vobis honori Vestro ac ipsi Regno paci tranquillitati ejusdem Magis videritis expedire hoc sub obtentu paternae Benedictionis nullatenùs omittatis ut vobis de voluntate Nostra constet in praemissis consulimus bonâ fide quòd ad propria redeatis sine morâ quià vestris Regni praedicti Negotiis ad votum ordinatis dispositis poteritis cum
of his Royall Ancestors had untill the aforesaid Imprisonment of his Father constantly and successively walked did Resolve as long as he could to continue therein Insomuch as 3. E. 1. Indictum est Parliamentum Londoniis ubi Leolinus princeps Walliae being summoned to come to do his Homage pretended that he durst not come without hostages which the King taking ill refused to give sed tamen dissimulato negotio inceptum Parliamentum consummavit post Parliamentum vero Rex raised an Army to subdue him hoc Anno solvit populus Regi quinto decimam bonorum quae patri suo dicebatur praeconcessa Anno. 5. E. 1. in subsidium guerrae Wallensis concessa est Regia populo vicesima pars bonorum Anno 6 tenuit Parliamentum Gloverniae in quo edita sunt Statuta quae Gloverinae appellantur and it appeareth by the Act of 7. E. 1. that the Prelates Earls and Barons were present at the making thereof 2. E. 1. Habitum est Parliamentum Salopiae in quo per deputatos ad hoc Justiciariis David the Brother of the Prince of Wales sine condemnatus tractus suspensus Eodem Anno tenuit Rex Parliamentum apud Acton Burnell ubi editum est statutum quod a loco cognominatum est 18. E. 1. Upon the death of Margaret daughter of the King of Norway by the daughter of Alexander King of Scotland ad quam jure haereditario defuncto avo patruo matre regnum Scotiae devolvi debebat quis fuit justus haeres Scotiae apud omnes in dubium vertebatur and there being many competitors amongst which there were of the English Baronage Johannes de Hastings Dominus Abergavenny Johannes de Vescy vice patris sui Nicholaus de Sules Willielmus de Ros and the Pope claiming the superiority and the determination of the Title Eodem Anno post Pascha Rex Angliae Scotiam apprcpinquans Parliamentum tenuit apud Northumbr ubi consultis Praelatis ac utriusque juris peritis wiser and fitter men then Common people use to be revolutisque priorum temporum Annalibus and the memorialls of the Abbies and Monasteries vocari fecit Praelatos Majores Regni Scotiae corameis in Ecclesia parochiali de Northumbr jus suum in superius dominium Regni Scotiae fideliter declaravit petivitque ut haec recognoscerent protestando se jus Coronae suae usque ad effusionem sanguinis suae defensurum And the Kings Right and Superiority being fully evidenced all the pretenders to that Crown did under their Hands and Seals not only acknowledge his Superiority but that they would hold that firm and stable which he should declare therein and yeild the Kingdom to such as he should adjudge which no where appears to have been done by the consent of the Common people of England and Scotland and was of the greatest concernment to those of Scotland And in another Charter of the same date declaring Cum autem non possit praefatus Rex Angliae isto modo cognitionem facere nec complere sine judicio nec indicium debeat esse sine executione nec executionem possit debito modo facere sine possessione seisina ejusdem terrae Castrorum did deliver seisin to the King as the Supream Lord untill the Right should be determined Ita tamen that before the seisin taken he should give good Security to deliver it back to such as should be adjudged to have Right to the Kingdom of Scotland cum tota Regalitate dignitate dominio libertatibus consuetudinibus Justiciis legibus usibus quibuscunque cum pertinentiis in eodem Statu c. So as an account and Restitution be made within 2 Months after to those that should be adjudged to have Right unto that Kingdom of the issues and profits thereof salvo Regi Angliae homagio illius qui Rex erit Quo facto although Ericus King of Norway did at the same time by his Attorneys or Procurators appear coram concilio Regis Angliae with his Commission omnibus inspecturis to claim 100000l Sterling a penalty for not admitting the said Margaret his daughter to be heire to the Kingdom of Scotland and 700 marks per Annum dowry which he gave with her c. who being heard and severall days given and refusing ulterius prosequi post diligentem hujus negotii disquisitionem inter caeteros competitores de assensu communi Rex Angliae without any license or confirmation of his Parliament post varias disceptationes vendicantium regnum illud adjudged it to John de Baylioll as descended from the Eldest Daughter of David King of Scotland excluso Roberto de Brus who claimed from a younger received his homage and fealty and caused him to be Crowned sitting super lapidem Regalem said by these people to have been the Stone upon which Jacob Slept when he journeyed from Barsheba to Aran. About the same time 200 Ships or Barks of Normandy sailing homewards with Wines from Gascony Domineering as if sibi solis maris cessisset libertas they were by 60 English Ships taken and 15000 of their men slain and the King of France by his Embassadours demanding Satisfaction or to have the matter determined in his Court in Gascony being of a very great concernment to the English Nation the King deliberato habito concilio sending the Bishop of London adjunctis sibi aliis viris prudentibus to the King of France suo concilio offered that if any found themselves aggrieved they should upon a safe conduct come for Justice ad Curiam suam quae nulli subjecta fuit whereupon a great contention arising betwixt the two Kings and the King of France seising divers Castles of the King of England in Gascony and citing him personally to appear at his Court at Paris to answer for that transgression which being upon a safe conduct performed and a peace thereupon concluded and that shortly after cavilled at by the King of France The King in the 22 year of his Reign convocato Londoniis Parliamento cui Johannes Rex Scotorum interfuit being in the same year and Parliament to which he had by his writs caused some of the Commons of England to come to assent unto what should be there ordained de concilio Praelatorum Procerum consentium without any mention of the Community agree that terram sub-dole ablatam recuperandam fore gladio And thereupon the King not the Parliament sent his Embassadours again unto the King of France and declared that since he had Violated the Leagues and Agreements made betwixt them and their Royall Progenitors Non videbatur sibi his great Councel and Parliament not being at all named quod ipsum Regem Angliae ducemque Aquitaniae hominem suum reputabat nâ—c ipse homagio suo astringi ulterius intendebat And mandavit Justic. suis hic breve suum patens in haec verba Edwardus Dei Gratia Rex Angliae Dominus Hiberniae
if aids and Scutage were assessed by Parliament the military Tenants were to be the only Collectors thereof 35. E. 1. In the Statute Ne rector prosternat arbores in Caemiterio it is said that because we do understand that Controversies do oftentimes grow between Parsons of Churches and their Parishioners concerning Trees growing in the Church-yards both of them pretending that they do belong unto themselves we have thought it good rather to decide the controversy by writing then by Statute and declaring them to be parts of the goods of the Church the King did Prohibit the Parsons of rhe Church that they do not presume unadvisedly to fell them but when the Chancel or the body of the Church wanted necessary reparations in which cases the Parsons of their Charity shall do well to relieve the Parishioners with bestowing upon them the same Trees which he will not command to be done but will commend it when it is done So happy and ready was the obedience better Wisdom of the Subjects of this Kingdom in the ancient and former Ages when an agreement made before the King or his word was adjudged to have the power force of a Fine any one of his Writs or Edicts wanted not the operation and efficacy in many things of an Act of Parliament or Statute and so degenerate and unhappy are our present times as to suffer our interest and wrangling peevish disputes to disobey or lay aside not only the King's mandates and edicts in the ordinary and necessary course of his Government but in extraordinary and his Supream power in Parliament Who was as well furnished with Common as he was with Civil Lawyers which as a militia togata were as strong and impregnable forts and bulwarks to help to guard his Crown and Dignity namely Henry de Bracton John de Breton the sincere and upright John de Metingham Elias de Beckingham together with Accursius Doctor utriusque Juris Civil and Canon Gilbert de Thorneton first his Attorney general afterwards Chief Justice ad placita cor am Rege Gilbert de Rowbery Roger Brabazon and William Howard a Justice of the Court of Common Pleas cum multis in legibus eruditis side dignis as to this day it appeareth in the steddy and unarbitrary pleadings and Records of his glorious Reign In whose Time it was not denied to be Law and Right Reason that that verificatio patriae Contra Chartam Regis non est admittenda And did in the making of his Laws but imitate his great Ancestors For King Ina who Reigned in Anno Domini 712. Conredi patris sui Heddae Ercenwaldi Episcoporum suorum omnium senatorum suorum natu majorum sapientum populi sui in magna servorum Dei frequentia who in his making of his Laws did believe it necessary in his Imprimis to use the word precipimus King Alured who began his Reign in Anno Domini 871. made his Laws with a Proposuimus esto and in those which were published by Johannes Brompâ—on with a Praecipimus King Aethelstan who Reigned in the Year 930. made his Laws prudenti Ulfhelmi Archiepiscopi aliorumque Episcoporum suorum concilio with a Signif 〈…〉 Decrevimus Statuimus omnibus clare significat and saith Brompton Mandat praepositis suis and declared many of his Laws with a Volo diximus Ediximus Placuit nobis King Edmund that began his Reign in Anno 940. made his Laws solemni Paschatis Festo frequentem Londini tam Ecclesiasticorum quam Laicorum coetum celebravit cui inter fuerunt Odo Wolstanus Archipraesul plurimique alii Episcopi with an Ego Edmundus Rex omnibus qui in ditione ac potestate mea sunt clare significo Decrevimus Edwardus Rex saith Brompton made his Laws with a mandit Praecipit omnibus praefectis amicis ut justa judicia judicent injudiciali libro stant quod unum quodque placitum terminum habeat King Edgar who began his Reign in Anno 959. made his Laws frequenti senatu with a Sancivit Porro autem has populo who were not then understood to be Law-makers quas servet proponimus leges publici juris beneficio quisque fruitor and like his Predecessors made them short and imperative and his Canons in Ecclesiastical Affairs with a Docemus King Ethelredus who began his Reign in Anno Domini 979 made his Laws sapientum concilio habito Woodstoci Merciae quae legibus Anglorum gubernatur solely imperatively with an Esto Canutus Anglorum Dacorum Norweglorum beginning his Reign here in England in Anno Domini 1016 made his Ecclesiastical Laws solely and imperatively with an Imperimus sapientum concilio ad natale Domini And his humanae politica sapientum concilio with an Omnibus observari praecipio Edocemus Esto and touching his Dominions of Mercia with an Haec eadem in Mercia pro suis vendicat praeterea praecipimus and an Esto Satisfacto poenas dependito Compensato Castigetur Exterminetur in potestatem detur Plectitor Mulctator mando Invitus cogatur Habetor omnibus singulis in Dei nomine obtestor praecipio Gulielmus Rex Anglorum cum Principibus suis constituit post conquisitionem Angliae quâ—dam decreta with a Volumus firmiter praecipimus Statuimus Decretum est Interdicimus Prohibimus when the English had in the 4th Year of his Reign fletibus precibus by the assistance of his Norman Subjects also obtained of him a confirmation of King Edward the Confessors Laws and to be governed by them it is said to have been concilio Baronum after an enquiry throughout all England and Certificate returned per universae Angliae consulatus Anglos nobiles sapientes suâ— lege eruditos what those Laws and Customs were Et cum Rex quae audisset cum aliis sui regni legibus maxime appretiatus est praecepit ut observaretur per totum regnum And they that will peruse the laborious Collections of my ever honoured friend Mr Edward Falconbergh one of the Deputy Chamberlains of the Exchecquer the truest lover and carefullest preserver of the Records entrusted to his Charge that ever come into that place the very ancient Gervasius Tilburiensis Mr Agard Scipio le Squier many other learned men in the revolution of more then in that Office 600 Years last past not excepted of the proceedings upon the very many Quo Warranto's brought before the Justices Itinerant in their several Circuits throughout all the parts of the Kingdom in the Reign of King Edward the first as well High as Low Lords Spiritual and Temporal Abbots and Priors Great or Small therein sparing not his own Brother Edmond Earl of Kent may have premisses enough to conclude that that Stout and Magnanimous Prince did as our Common English saying is lay about him and had a mind to let his friends the Kings and Princes at the
pour contempt upon our Kings and Princes and not cause them to wander in the Wilderness where there is no way but offer up our daily Prayers unto God to send help to our Jacob in all his many difficulties Elenchus Capitum OR THE CONTENTS Of the Sections or Chapters § 1. THat our Kings of England in their voluntary summoning to their Great Councils and Parliaments some of the more Wise Noble and Better part of their Subjects to give their Advice and Consent in matters touching the publick good and extraordinary concernment did not thereby create or by any Assent express or tacite give unto them an Authority Coordination Equality or share in the Legislative power or were elected by them page 1 § 2. Of the Indignities Troubles and Necessities which were put upon King John in the enforcing of his Charters by the Pope and his then domineering Clergy of England joyned with the Disobedience and Rebellion of some of the Barons encouraged and assisted by them p. 7 § 3. Of the succeeding Iealousies Animosities Troubles and Contests betwixt King John and his over-jealous Barons after the granting of his Charters and his other transactions and agreements with them at their tumultuous meeting at Running Mede with the ill usages which he had before received of them during all the time of his Raign p. 26 § 4. The many Affronts Insolencies and ill Usages suffered by King Henry 3. until the granting of his Magna Charta Charta de Foresta p. 29 § 5. Of the continued unhappy Jealousies Troubles and Discords betwixt the Discontented and Ambitious Barons and King Henry 3. after the granting of his Magna Charta Charta de Foresta p. 36. § 6. That the Exceptions mentioned in the King of France's Award of the Charter granted by King John could not invalidate the whole Award or justify the provisions made at Oxford which was the principal matter referred unto him p. 58 § 7. Of the evil Actions and Proceedings of Symon de Montfort and his Rebellious partners in the name of the King whilst they kept him and his Son Prince Edward and divers of the Loyal Nobility Prisoners from the 14th of May in the 48th year of his Raign until his and their delivery by the more fortunate Battle at Evesham the â—th day of August in the 49th year of his tormented Raign p. 66 § 8. Of the Actions of the Prince after his Escape his success at the Battle of Evesham Release of the King his Father and restoring him to his Rights p. 98 § 9. Of the proceedings of King Henry 3. after his Release and Restauration until his death p. 100 § 10. That these new contrived Writs of Summons made by undue means upon such a disturbed occasion could neither obtain a proper or quiet sitting in Parliament or the pretended ends and purposes of the Framers thereof and that such an hasty and undigested constitution could never be intended to erect a third Estate in the Kingdom equal in power with the King and his great Councel the House of Peers or consistent with the pretended Conservatorships or to be coordinate with the King and his Great Councel of Peers or to be a Curb to any of them or themselves or upon any other design than to procure some money to wade through that their dangerous Success p. 108 § 11. Of the great Power Authority Command and Influence which the Praelates Barons and Nobility of England had in or about the 49th year of the Raign of King Henry 3. when he was a Prisoner to Symon Montfort â—d these Writs of Election of some of the Commons to Parliament were first devised and sent to summon them And the great power and Estate which they afterwards had to create and contain an Influence upon them p. 122 § 12. That the aforesaid Writ of Summons made in that Kings name to elect a certain number of Knights Citizens and Burgesses the probos homines good honest men or Barons of the Cinque Ports to appear for or represent some part of the Commons of England in Parliament being enforced from King Henry 3. in the 48th and 49th year of his Raign when he was a Prisoner to Symon de Montfort Earl of Leicester and under the power of him and his party of Rebellious Barons was never before used in any Wittenagemots Mikel-gemots or great Councels of our Kings or Princes of England p. 147 § 13. That the Majores Barones Regni and Spiritual and Temporal Lords with their Assistants were until the 49th year of the Raign of King Henry 3. and the constrained Writs issued out for the election of Knights Citizens and Burgesses whilst he was a Prisoner in the Camp or Army of his Rebellious Subjects the only great Councels of our Kngs. p. 151 § 14. That these enforced Writs of Summons to the Lords Spiritual and Temporal accompanied with that then newly devised Engine or Writ to Elect Knights Citizens and Burgesses to be present in Parliament were not in the usual and accustomed form for the summoning the Lords Spiritual and Temporal to the Parliament p. 204 § 15. That the Majores Barones or better sort of the Tenants in Capite Iustly and Legally by some of our Ancient Kings and Princes but not by any positive Law that of the enforced Charter from King John at Running Mede being not accounted to be such a Law were distinguished and separated from the Minores or lesser sort of the Tenants in Capite p. 207 § 16. That the General Councels or Courts mentioned before the Rebellious meeting of some of the English Baronage and the constraint put upon King John at Running Mede or before the 49th of Henry 3. were not the Magna Consilia or generale Consilium Colloquium or Communia Consilia now called Parliaments wherein some of the Commons as Tenants in Capite were admitted but only truly and properly Curiae Militum a Court summoning those that hold of the King in Capite to acknowledge Record and perform their Services do their Homage and pay their Releifs c. And the Writ of summons mentied in the Close Rolls of the 15th year of the Raign of King John was not then for the summoning of a great Councel or Parliament but for other purposes viz. Military Aids and Offices p. 218 § 17. That the Comites or Earls have in Parliament or out of Parliament Power to compel their Kings or Soveraign Princes to yield unto their â—onsults Votes or Advices will make them like the Spartan Ephori and amount to no more than a Conclusion without praemisses or any thing of Truth Law or Right Reason to support it p. 229. § 18. Of the methods and courses which King Edward the first held and took in the Reformation and Cure of the former State Diseases and Distempers p. 286. § 19. That the Sheriffs are by the Tenor and Command of the Writs for the Elections of the Knights of the Shires and Burgesses of
the Parliament Cities and Burrough-Towns the only Iudges under the King who are fit and unfit to be Members in the House of Commons in Parliament and that the Freeholders and Burgesses more than by a just and impartial Assent and Information who were the fittest were not to be the Electors p. 371. § 20. Of the small numbers of Knights of the Shires and Burgesses which were Elected and came in the Raign of King Edward the first upon his aforesaid Writs of Election and how their numbers now amounting unto very many more were after encreased by the corruption of Sheriffs and the Ambition of such as desired to be Elected p. 382. § 21. Who made themselves Electors for the chusing of Knights of the Shires to be Members of the House of Commons in Parliament after the 21st year of the Raign of King Edward the first contrary to the Tenor of his aforesaid Writs of Summo 〈…〉 made in the 22 year of his Raign for the Election of Knights of the Shire and Burgesses to come to the Parliaments and great Councils of several of our Kings and Princes afterwards p. 387. § 22. Of the Actions and other Requisites by the Law to be done by those that are or shall be Elected Knights Citizens and Burgesses to attend our King in their great Councils or Parliaments praecedent and praeparatory to their admission therein p. 388. § 23. That the Members of the House of Commons being Elected and come to the Parliament as aforesaid did not by vertue of those Writs of Election sit together with the King and the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in one and the same Room or Place and that if any such thing were as it never was or is likely to be proved it cannot conclude or infer that they were or are co-ordinate or had or have an equal power in their Suffrages and Decisions p. 393. § 24. What the Clause in the Writs for the Election of Knights Citizens and Burgesses to come unto the Parliament ad faciendum consentiendum do properly signifie and were intended by the said Writs of 〈◊〉 to be Members of the House of Cowmons in Parliament p. 398. § 25. Of the many variations and alterations of our Kings Writs of Summons to their great Councels or Parliaments excluding some and taking in others to be assistant in that high and Honourable Court with its Resummons Revisions drawing of Acts of Parliament or Statutes dy the Judges or the Kings learned Councel in the Laws and other Requisites therein necessarily used by the sole and individual authority of our Kings and Princes p. 411. § 26. What is meant by the word Representing or if all or how many of the people of England and Wales are or have been in the Elections of a part of the Commons to come to Parliament Represented p 548. § 27. That no Impeachment by all or any of the Members of the House of Commons in Parliament or of the House of Peers in Parliament hath or ever had any authority to invalidate hinder or take away the power force or effect of any the pardons of our Kings or Princes by their Letters Patents or otherwise for High Treason or Felony Breach of the Peace or any other crime or supposed Delinquency whatsoever p. 573. § 28. Of the protection and priviledge granted unto the Members of the House of Commons in Parliament by our Soveraign Kings and â—rinces during their Attendance and Employments in their great Councils of Parliament according to the Tenor and purport of their Commissions p. 607. § 29. Neither they claim or ever were invested by any Charter or Grant of any of our Kings or Princes or otherwise of any such Priviledge or Liberty nor was or is in England any Law or Usage or Custom that a Parliament sitting cannot be Prorogued or Dissolved as long as any Petition therein exhibited remaineth unanswered or not determined p. 633. § 30. That in those Affairs peculiar only to so great and venerable an Assembly which should not be trivial or proper to lower and lesser Iurisdictions assigned for the determining of lesser matters for the publick ease and benefit our Kings and Princes have a greater burden and care upon them as Gods Vicegerents besides that of Parliaments to manage and take care of the Kingdom for the benefit and good of themselves and their people p. 637. § 31. That our Great Councils or Parliaments except anciently at the three great Festivals viz. Christmas Easter and Pentecost being ex more summoned and called upon extraordinary emergent occasions could not either at those grand and chargeable Festivals or upon necessities of State or Publick Weal and preservation ex natura rei continue long but necessarily required Prorogations Adjournments Dissolutions or endings p. 641. § 32. That Parliaments or Great Councels de quibusdam arduis concerning the defence of the Kingdom and Church of Enggland neither were or can be fixed to be once in every year or oftner they being always understood and believed to be by the Laws and Ancient and reasonable Customs of England ad libitum Regis who by our Laws Right Reason and all our Records and Annals is and should be the only Watchman of our Israel and the only Iudge of the necessity times and occasion of Summoning Parliaments p. 650. § 33. That all or any of the Members of the House of Commons in Parliament are not properly or by their original constitution intended or otherwise entituled or properly truly justly lawfully seized or to be stiled or termed Estates neither are to be so understood or believed to be and being to be no otherwise than subject to a Temporary Election and by the Authority of their Kings Writs paid their Wages and Charges by those that sent and elected them can have no Iust or Legal Right thereunto p. 656 § 34. A Series or accompt of the many Seditions Rebellions and Discords that have successively happened since the beginning of the Raign of King Henry 2. to our succeeding Kings and Princes until this present Age wherein we now live by mistaken and never to be warranted principles p. 717. A Vindication of the Antient and Present Establish'd Government of the Kingdom of ENGLAND under our Kings and Monarchs appointed by GOD from the Opinion and Claim of those that without any Warrant or ground of Law or Right Reason the Laws of God and Man Nature and Nations and the Records thereof would have it to be Originally deriv'd from the People Co-ordinate with the Houses of Peers and Commons in Parliament or by their Election SECT I. That our KINGS of ENGLAND in their voluntary Summoning to their Great Councels and PARLIAMENTS some of the more Wise Noble and better part of their Subjects to give their Advice and Consent in Matters touching the Publick Good and Extraordinary Concernment did not thereby Create Or by any Assent Express or Tacite give unto Them an Authority Co-ordination Equality or Share in the Legislative
that the Orders concluded in Parliament were not observed in the levying and disposing of the Subsidy and over-strict courses had been taken in the valuation of mens Estates William Valence the Queens Uncle was grown the only man with him and nothing was done without him the Earl of Provence his Father a poor Prince was invited to come into England to participate of the Treasure and Riches thereof Symon de Montfort a French man born banished out of France by Queen Blanch was entertained in England preferred secretly in marriage with the King's Sister Widow of William Earl of Pembroke the great Marshal made Earl of Leicester and Steward of England in the right of his Mother Amice Daughter of Blanchmains Earl of Leicester Which incensing many of the Nobility and in them not a few of the common people did begin to raise a Commotion wherein they procured Richard Earl of Cornwal Brother to the King and Heir-apparent the King having then no Child to head their Party and manage their Grievances which amongst many pretended were That he despised the counsel of his natural Subjects and followed that of the Pope's Legate as if he had been the Pope's Feudatory Upon which harsh Remonstrance the King having sent to sound the affections of the Londoners found them to be against him Summoned a Parliament in the 22d year of his Reign at London whither the Lords came armed both for their own Safety and to constrain him if he refused to the keeping of his promises and reformation of his courses wherein after many debatements the King taking his Oath to refer the business according to the order of certain grave men of the Kingdom Articles were drawn sealed and publickly set up under the Seals of the Legate and divers great Men But before any thing could be effected Symon Montfort working a Peace for himself with the Earls of Cornwal and Lincoln with whom he and the other Barons had been before displeased the Earl grew cold in the business which the other Lords perceiving nothing more was at that time done Symon Norman called Master of the King's Seal and said to be Governour of the affairs of the Kingdom had the Seal taken from him and some others whom the Nobility maligned displaced And in the same year an Assassinate attempting to kill the King as he was in Bed instigated thereunto by William de Marisco the Son of Jeffrey de Marisco was for the Fact drawn in pieces with Horses and afterwards hang'd and quarter'd And some years after the King having a Son born his Brother the Earl of Cornwal having likewise Issue did by permission of the State which before he could not obtain undertake the Cross and with him the Earl of Salisbury and many other Noblemen The Earl of March the Queen-Mother and certain Lords of Poicteau incited the King to make a War with France to which some of the English who claimed Estates therein were very willing but the matter being moved in Parliament a general opposition was made against it the great expences thereof and the ill suceess it lately had and it was vehemently urged That it was unlawful to break the Truce made with the King of France who was now too strong for them notwithstanding many of the Peers in the hopes of recovering their Estates so prevailed as an Aid demanded for the same was granted but so ill resented by others as all the King's supplies from the beginning of his Reign were particularly and opprobriously remembred as the Thirteenth Fifteenth Sixteenth Thirtieth and Fortieth part of all mens Movables besides Carucage Hydage Escuage Escheats Amerciaments and the like which would as they said be enough to fill his Coffers in which considerations also and reckonings with the Pope's continual exactions and the infinite charge of those who undertook the Holy War were not omitted besides it was declared how the Thirtieth lately levyed being ordered to be kept in certain Castles and not to be issued but by the allowance of some of the Peers was yet unspent the King no necessary occasion for it for the use of the Commonwealth for which it was granted and therefore resolutely denyed to grant any more whereupon he came himself to the Parliament and in a submissive manner craving their aid urged the Popes Letter to perswade them thereunto but by a vow made unto each other all that was said was not able to remove their resolutions insomuch as he was driven to get what he could of particular men by Gifts or Loans and took so great a care of his poorer Subjects at or about the same time as he did by his Writ in the 23d year of his Reign command William de Haverhul and Edward Fitz-Odo That upon Friday next after the Feast of St. Matthias being the Anniversary of Eleanor Queen of Scotland his Sister they should cause to be fed as many Poor as might be entertained in the greater Hall of Westminster and did in the same year by another Writ command the said William de Haverhull to feed 15000 Poor at St. Peters in London on the Feast-day of the Conversion of St. Peter and 4000 Poor upon Monday next after the Feast of St. Lucie the Virgin in the great Hall at Westminster And for quiet at home whilst he should be absent in France contracted a marriage betwixt his youngest Daughter Margaret and Alexander eldest Son of Alexander III. King of Scotland but his expedition in France not succeeding his Treasure consumed upon Strangers the English Nobility discontented and by the Poictovins deceiving his Trust in their not supplying him with money he was after more than a years stay the Lords of England leaving him constrained to make a dishonourable Truce with the King of France and to return having been relieved with much Provisions out of England and Impositions for Escuage a Parliament was in the 28th year of his Reign assembled at Westminster wherein his Wars the revolt of Wales and Scotland who joyned together and the present occasions of the necessary defence of the Kingdom being pressed nothing could be effected without the assurance of Reformation and the due execution of Laws whereupon he came again himself in person and pleaded his own necessities but that produced no more than a desire of theirs to have ordained that four of the most grave and discreet Peers should be chosen as Conservators of the Kingdom and sworn of the Kings Council both to see Justice observed and the Treasure issued and ever attend about him or at least three or two of them That the Lord Chief-Justiciar and Lord Chancellor should be chosen by the general voices of the States assembled or else be of the number of those four and that there might be two Justices of the Benches two Barons of the Exchequer and one Justice for the Jews and those likewise to be chosen by Parliament that as their Function was publick so should also be their Election At which time the
Pope sending his Legate with a large power to exact money for himself his Agent was disgracefully returned with an answer That the Kingdom was poor the Church in debt and it was of a dangerous consequence to the State to be exposed to the will of the Pope and therefore seeing a General Councel was shortly to be held at Lyons if the Church would be relieved it were fit to be done by a general consent of that Councel And the Emperour Frederick at the same time by his Letters to the King which were openly read desiring as he had often before That the Pope might have no supplies ou of England for that therewith he did oppress him by seizing upon his Castles and Cities appertaining to the Empire notwithstanding his often submissions desire of Peace and offers to refer the cause to the arbitration of the Kings of England and France and the Baronage of both Kingdoms and entreating that he might not receive a detriment whence as a Brother and Friend he expected a favour added that if the King would be advised by him he would by power free the Kingdom from that unjust Tribute which Pope Innocent III. and other Popes had laid upon it Which pleasing the Assembly the business took up so much time as the design of a share in the Government something like if not worse then a Co-ordination meeting with no concessions or effect they only granted an Aid to the King for the Marriage of his Daughter 20 s. of every Knights Fee not without much ado and repetition of all his former Aids although at the same or much about that time they could not be ignorant that he had by his Writ commanded Hugh Gifford and William le Brun that upon Friday next after the Epiphany they should cause to be fed in the Hall at Windsor ad bonum focum omnes pueros pauperes egenos quos invenire poterint ita quod aula impleatur si tot inveniantur The Charters were again ratified which confirmation is printed in the perclose or latter-end of those in the 9th year of that persecuted Prince after a proposal of Conservators and election of Judges and Lord Chancellors rejected which was urged and much insisted upon After which and his return from an expedition with great charges into Scotland a Parliament was summoned where he moved for an Aid against an Insurrection in Wales and for money to supply his wants and pay his Debts which were so great as he could not stir out of his Chamber for the clamour of those to whom he ow'd money for Wine Wax and other necessaries of House-keeping which wrought so little as to his face they denied to grant him any thing and enquiry being made what Revenues the Romans and Italians had in England they found them to have been annually 60000 Marks which being notified to the General Councel at Lyons the Pope was so vexed therewith as he was said to have uttered these words The King begins to Frederize it is fit that we make an end with the Emperour that we might crush these pety Kings for the Dragon once destroyed these lesser Snakes will soon be trodden down In the 32d year of his Reign a Parliament being convoked he was upon requiring another aid sharply reproved for his breach of promises and it was alledged that his Judges were sent in Circuit under pretence of Justice to fleece the people that his needless expences amounted to above 800000 l. and advising him to recal the old Lands of the Crown and pull them from his Favourites enriched with the Treasure of the Kingdom told him of his Oath made at his Coronation Complained that the Chief-Justiciar Chancellor and Treasurer were not made by the Common-Councel of the Kingdom according as there were in the time of his Magnificent Predecessors although they could not at the same time deny him that Right which was justly due unto him that he had by his Writs commanded the said William de Haverhul and Edward of Westminster quod singulis diebus à die natalis domini usque ad diem circumcisionis computatis illis duobus diebus impleri faciant magnam aulam Regis de pauperibus and in the same year by his Writ commanded William de Haverhul his Treasurer and Edward Fidz-Odo to feed upon the day of Edward the Confessor pauperes in magna aula Westmonasterium sicut fieri consueverunt ipsis Monachis Pittanciam eodem die sicut consueverunt faciant The King promised redress but nothing was effected so that after sundry meetings and much debate the Parliament was prorogued until Midsummer following and at the next Session he tells them that they were not to impose a servile condition upon him or deny him that which every one of them might do to use whom they pleased as Counsel Every Master of a Family might place or displace what Servants he pleased Servants were not to judge their Masters nor Subjects their Prince or hold them to their conditions and that he that should so encline to their pleasures should not be their King but as their Servant And being constrained to furnish his wants with the sale of his Plate and Jewels his Crown of Gold and Edward the Confessor's Shrine and with great loss received money for them enquired who had bought them whereunto answer being made that the City of London had bought them That City said he is an inexhaustible Gulf if Octavius ' s Treasure were to be sold they would surely buy it Howsoever being besides constrained to borrow 20000 l. of the City of London he wrote to every Noble-man and Prelate apart to borrow money but got little the Abbot of Ramsay lent him 100 l. but the Abbot of Burgh could not spare him so much although the King told him It was more Alms to give unto him than to a beggar that went from door to door The Lords in the 4th year of his Reign assembled again at London and pressed him with his promises that the Chief-Justiciar Chancellor and Treasurer should be constituted by the general Councel of the Kingdom but by reason of the absence of the Earl of Cornwal nothing was done therein The King demanding aid of his Prelates and Nobility assembled in Parliament they by agreement amongst themselves stoutly denied it which greatly troubling him he shewed them the Note or Roll what moneys some few Abbots had lent unto him with an Ecce how little it was with which not being able to remove their fixed resolutions he with some anger expostulating told them Ero nè perjurus juravi sacramento intransgressibili transfretans jura mea in brachio extento à Rege Francorum reposcam quod sine capioso thesauro qui à vestra liberalitate procedere debet nequaquam valeo and that not prevailing called aliquos sibi familiares affatus eos dit quid perniciosius exemplum aliis praebetis vos qui Comites Barones Milites strenui estis
were slain and drowned and the Londoners put to flight whom the Prince over-charging and pursuing by the space of four miles and putting many of them to the Sword was so out of sight and far gone from the King's Army as made them weaker than otherwise they would have been but at his return instead of a Victory found about 5000 of his Fathers Army slain the King of Almaine Robert de Bruce and John Comyn who had brought many Scots to the King's aid taken Prisoners with twenty-five Barons and Bannerets on the King's party and the King himself having his Horse killed under him made a Prisoner and shut up in the Priory Ita reversus Edwardus gravi praelio excipitur So as the Prince at his return was freshly set upon by the prevailing party The Earl Warren William de Valence and Guy de Lusignan and Hugh Bigod with forty armed Knights fled to Pevensey And the Prince when he was returned to the Town of Lewis sought his Father in the Castle but not finding him there went to the Priory where he found him In the mean time the conquering Barons assault the Castle which they that were within so stoutly defended as the besiegers withdrew which heartned the Prince so as he recollectis suis voluit iterum praeliari recollecting his Forces had a mind to try his and his Fathers fortune again and fight it out quo cognito miserunt Barones mediatones pacis which the Barons understanding sent unto him mediators to treat of a Peace promising the next morning to do it with effect at which time the Fryers Minors and Praedicants passing and labouring betwixt both parties the matters were adjourned until feria sexta some days after when Prince Edward and Henry the King of Almaine's Son were given as Hostages for their Fathers the Kings of England and Almain and sub spe pacis quietis delivered to Earl Symon de Montfort in the hopes of a peace and agreement ita ut cum deliberatione tractaretur quae Provisionum Statutorum essent pro utilitate Regni tenenda quae delenda so as they might at leisure and with deliberation treat and consider what Provisions and Statutes probably those which had been made at Oxford the Darlings of their designs were for the good of the Kingdom to be kept or what Laws were to be abrogated such in all likelyhood as might clip the King's Regalities and make them to be as much if not more King then Himself And that in the mean time the Prisoners on both sides should without any Ransom be set at liberty Insomuch as the Sunday following all that had been taken on both sides were licensed to go to their own habitations and the King as the said Symon de Montfort had directed him did write to those which were in the Castle of Tunbridge in Kent to deliver it up to Earl Symon which they did very unwillingly SECT VII Of the evil actions and proceedings of Symon de Montfort and his rebellious partners in the name of the King whilst they kept Him and his Son Prince Edward and divers of the Loyal Nobility Prisoners from the 14 th of May in the 48 th year of his Reign until His and Their delivery by the more fortunate Battel at Evesham the 4 th day of August in the 49 th year of his tormented Reign THe old Lyon thus taken and imprisoned by the misfortune of his gallant Whelp 's over-chasing and pursuing of a part of his enemies in the day and extremity of the Battel his Rebels when they had him were at a stand what to do with him They durst not let him loose for that would but restore him to his strength and power which his liberty might have regained If they should have murdered him that would have been so wide from a fix'd accomplishment of their wickedness as though it might have gained them a quiet or for some time continued possession of a Kingdom yet it was not at all likely to have been settled to them and their heirs whilst there was so wise and valiant a Prince and so many descendents of the Royal Line in remainder which would have been always wrestling and contending for it by the aid and assistance of a numerous Loyal and Potent Nobility and the common people who would be able easily to distinguish betwixt right and wrong would be more likely to love the former hate and bend all their forces and ill wishes against the latter and mock and take all opportunities of revenge in the redemption of an immured Sovereign his Crown Dignity and Lineage And therefore it would better suit with their wickedly-begun enterprizes and already-gotten advantages to make use of crafts and policy and render his own power the means the faster to ensnare and entangle him by putting Him and his friends in hope of a peace which they would not be very hasty in until they had gotten his Castles and Strength into their hands and drawn unto their party that part of his Subjects that had not intermeddled in the quarrels betwixt them but like men amazed stood at a gaze wondring at it and might well distrust and be jealous of their former pretences and promises when the Prince that had made himself a Pledge and Hostage for his Father that he might have his liberty found it was never intended but to keep him with all his hopes and fortunes as much a Prisoner as himself And by those and other arts and contrivances with their rebellious Army not disbanded but kept on foot to serve themselves and their Prisoners carried the King about with them from place to place to countenance against his will their evil designs and actions the people not of their party not daring to come either unto Him or Them without Letters of safe conduct which in the King's name whilst they play'd Rex with it and his Seal they could grant and write what they pleased in the language of their own design with which the Patent and Close Rolls of that year and the next with their Dates and Teste when they had him in their custody are well stor'd and in the mean time made it to be a great part of their care and business to cause to be delivered up unto them such Castles and places of strength as either they feared or had not in their Possession as Windsor Notingham Bamburgh Carlisle cum multis aliis c. Of which amongst many one to to Drugo Barentyn who had then in Windsor-Castle the custody of Peter de Moutfort taken in Arms against the King may serve for instance viz. Rex Drugoni de Barentyn Constabular castri de Windsor salutem quia specialia negotia vobis communicanda habemus vobis mandamus in fide quâ nobis tenemini firmitèr injungentes quatenus omnibus aliis praetermissis sitis ad nos London hoc instante die Mercurii ad ultimum nobisnm locutum hoc nullatènus omittatis nos enim
in his name 〈◊〉 and Clam ' as it were an Hue and Cry against his own â—on upon his fortunate Escape sent the same day notice untâ— John de Eynill a Judge and a man much adhering to the Barons and trusted by them of the Prince's Escape from his Imprisonment at Hereford and believing that he would apply himself to John de Warren William de Valence and others disaffected in Pembrokeshire and the Marches of Wales as in the Language of some in those Rebellious times they were then phrased and thence to go beyond the Seas unless prevented commanded him in fide homagio and under the Forfeiture of all that he had that cum equis armis toto posse suo sub omni festinatione he should come to Him at Worcester to march against his Enemies Et eodem modo commanded all that held of him in Capite as well Earls Barons Knights as Bishops Abbots and Priors those only excepted which were of the Earl of Gloucester's Party in manner following viz. Rex Johanni de Eynill salutem Cùm Nos quidam Magnates Fideles Nostri in partibus Hereford circá tranquilliâ—atem pacem Partium illarum jampridèm agentes pro viribus laboravimus prout status partâ—on earundem requirit sperantes Edwardum filium Nostrum ad hoc Adductorem praecipuum serventiorem prae caeteris invenisse Idem Edwardus die Jovis in Ebdomade Pentecostes circà horam vespertinam à militum Comitiva quos secum adspaciandos extra Hereford duxerat cum duobus Militibus quatuor Scutiferis propositi sui consciis Spreto concilio Nostro Magnatum fidelium Nostrorum praedictorum Subito ex inopinato recessit volens nt pro certo credimus se ad Johannem de Warrennia Willielmum de Valencia Complices suos qui nuper absque conscientiâ Nostrâ voluntate contra pacem Nostram applicuerunt in partibus Pembrochiae ac etiam ad quosdam Marchiones Rebelles Nostros pacis Nostrae Perturbatores transferre ut exinde partes adâ—at transmarinas vel alios illue mittat qui adventum Alienigenarum in regnum Nostrum per partes Pembrochiae cùm alibi non pateat eis aditus ad Nostram Regni Nostri confusionem procurent quia praefati Rebelles Nostri licet adhuc pauci existant per hoc potestatem vires suas augere possent nisi â—orum insolentia antèquam ulterius invaleseat citiùs reprimatur Nos de vestrâ aliorum fidelium Nostrorum fidelitate constantia specialitèr confidentes vobis Mandaâ—us in fide homagio dilectione quibus Nobis estis astricti sub periculo amissionis omnia quae in Regno Nostro tenetis ac sub debito Sacramenti quo omnes singuli de Regno Nostro sunt ad hoc specialiter obligati quod volumus firmitèr observari injungentes quatenùs statim visis Literis istis â—mnibus aliis praetermissis cum equis armis toto servitio vestro Nobis debito nec non toto posse vestro sub omni festinatione de die nocte usque Wygorniam veniatis parati exinde in manu forti ire Nobiscum super inimicos Nostros praedictos hoc sicut Exhaeredationem Nostram vestram perpetuam Regni Nostri Confusionem vitare volueritis vitam propriam diligitis nullo modo omittatis nec de summonitione exercitûs brevitatem temporis allegetis quia urgentissima necessitas tempus non patitur ulterius prorogari nè inter moras per adventum Alienigenarum quos iidem Rebelles Nostri expectant eorundem vires in Nostri Regni Nostri perniciem augeri contingat qui adhuc dum pacisci existunt de facili Nobis poterunt subjugari Teste Rege apud Hereford tricesimo die Maii. Eodem modo scribitur omnibus Tenentibus de Rege in Capite tà m videlicet Episcopis Abbatibus Prioribus quà m Comitibus Baronibus Militibus omnibus aliis exceptis illis qui sunt pro parte Comitis Gloucestriae Robert de Ferrers Earl of Darby having threatned to burn and spoyl the Lands and Estate of the Abby of Bildwas and made the Abbot to pay him a Fine of 100 Marks for the Redemption thereof a Wâ—it was sent to Thomas le Blund who had in Sequestration the Lands of the said Earl of Derby that he should out of the Issues and Profits thereof pay unto the said Abbot and Covent the aforesaid 100 Marks in these words viz. Rex Thomae le Blund Custodi terrarum Roberti de Ferrar ' Comitis Derby salutem Cùm tempore turbationis nuper habitae in Regno Nostro praefatus Comes minatus fuerit Abbati Conventui de Bildewas de incendio domorum depraedatione bonorum suorum per quod idem Abbas Conventus metu ducti finem fecerunt per centum Marcas cum Comite predicto quas eidem solverunt ut accepimus Nos corum paupertati pio compatientes affectu eis gratiam facere volentes in hac parte vobis mandamus quod de exitibus terrarum tenementorum praedictorum eisdem Abbati Conventui centum Marcas habere facias in recompensationem centum Marcarum praedictarum hoc nullatenùs omittatis T. R. apud Hereford 1â— dic Junii The same first day of June the King being carried along with the Rebel-Army Captive to Hereford and having commanded all that held of him in Capite to attend him there cum equis armis issued out his Writ or Proclamation to Gilbert de Preston and the rest of the Justices of the Court of his Bench to Surcease all Pleas and Proceedings to the end that none be damnifyed in any Actions at the present depending before them Super Brevia and that all things may remain as they were before untill the King should give further Order as the Writ or Proclamation imported Rex Gilberto de Preston ' sociis suis Justiciariis suis de Banco salutem t Quia pro arduis urgentissimis Nostris Regni Nostri negotiis jam vocari fecimus omnes qui de Nobis tenent in Capite quòd cum equis armis cum servitio suo Nobis debito nec non toto posse suo quod perquirere poterunt ad Nos omnibus aliis praetermissis in partibus ubi nunc agimus festinantèr accedant factuâ—i quod eisdem duxerimus injungendum propter quod ipsi persecutioni vel defensioni Loquelarum suarum quae sunt coram vobis per Brevia Nostra ad praesens intendere non possunt Volumus quòd omnia Placita de Banco remaneant in eodem statu in quo nunc sunt donec aliud inde praecepimus ideò vobis Mandamus quòd hoc publicè proclamari faciatis Teste Rege apud Hereford 1 o die Junii per ipsum Regem Justiciarium alios de Consilio Teste Rege apud Heref. 1 o die Junii The
fourth day of that June in the year aforesaid a Writ or Commission was in the imprisoned Kings Name sent unto the Mayor Bayliffs and Citizens of Bristol mentioning That the Prince his Son contemning the Councell of him and his Barons had joyned with his Rebels for so they would style his more faithful Subjects and endeavoured to go beyond Seas to bring in Forreigners and to make out Warrants and Precepts in the Name of the King pretending it to be well pleasing unto him quod absit say that distressed Kings Commanders and Tutors against his will and make him break his Oath and Peace made for the good of the Kingdom and to withdraw his Subjects from their Obedience commanded them to Obey his well beloved and faithful Simon de Montfort Earl of Leicester and John la War ' Subconstable of the Castle of Bristol or their Substitutes cum equis armis toto posse suo as they tendred his Good and their own Estates and in no manner of way to yield any Obedience to the Prince his Son contrary to his command and for that he had been given to understand that some ill-minded People have falsely suggested that he hath not been made privy to what hath been done in his Name required them to send 10. or 12. of their diâ—â—râ—â—tâ—st and most honest Citizens to him to be better informed of his Will and Pleasure therein and that in the mean time strongly guarding the said Town and Castle they do not suffer his said Son or any on his behalf to enter therein as the Writ hereunto Subjoyned dated at Hereford will declare viz. Rex delectis sidelibus suis Maiori Ballivis probis Hominibus suis Bristoll salutem Cùm Edwardus filius Noster Nostro Magnatum Nostrorum spreto Consilio se ad quosdam Marchiones ac etiam alios inimicos Rebelles Nostros transâ—â—derit ut sic partes adeat transmarinas vel alios illuc mittat qui Alienigenas in Regnum Nostrum ad Nostram ejusdem Regni Confusionem introducant nisi ipsius temeraria Praesumptio citius reprimatur ac idem Edwardus nomine Nostro diversa facit Mandata fingendo â—a Nobis complacere quod absit quòd hujusmodi Mandata contra Sacramentum Nostrum suum pacem in Regno Nostro co 〈…〉 iter â—uratam existant ut sic corda vestra aliorum fidelium Nostrorum à fidelitate Nobis debitâ avertant Nos de vestrae fidelitatis constantià quam ergà Nos â—actenùs indeâ—essè gessistis plenam gerentes fiduciam vobis Mandamus in fide dilectione quibus tenemini rogantes firmiter injungentes quatenus dilecto fideli Nostro Simoni de Monteforti Comiti Leycestriae Johanni la War ' Subconstabulario suo Castrâ— praedicti vel Ballivis suis ibidem tam equis armis toto posse vestro in omnibus quae ad custodiam Castri praedicti pertinent auxiliantes sitis consulentes ità quòd fidelitatem etiam commendare debeamus hoc sicut honorem Nostrum vos corpora vestra omnia quae tenetis in regno Nostro diligitis nullo modo omittatis Mandatis praesati Filii Nostri in nullo obtemperantes contra mandatum Nostrum praedictum quia intelleximus quòd aemuli quidam Nostri vobis falsa suggerunt quòd hujusmodi mandata Nostra â Nostrà conscientiâ non emanant placeret Nobis quòd decem vel duodecim de probioribus discretioribus hominibus Villae Vestrae ad Nos accederent Voluntatem Nostram super hoc pleniùs audituri nihilominùs etiam circa custodiam Villae vestrae praedictae tà m virlitâ—r streâ—â—è vos habeatis prout alias vobis mandatum quòd nec praesatus Filius Noster nec aliqui ex parte sua Villam praedictam ingrediantur seu aliquatenùs in Villâ praedict ' receptenter T. R. apud Hereford quarto die Junii The King being at Hereford the 12 th day of that June in the year aforesaid complaining that his Son adhered as Symon Montfort and his Partners constrained him to say to his Rebells and did publish themselves to be zealously willing to keep the Peace and Agreement which had been made by the Consent of him and the whole Commonalty of the Kingdom which if not comprehended in the Nobility which certainly they believed was then a great Untruth neither possible or probable and in regard that the Bishop of London was a Witness to the said Agreement and best acquainted with his actions therein which might manifest who hath been most desirous of a Peace commanded him and all the rest of the Prelates without delay to come to advise with him at Glouc. The like Writ being sent unto the Bishops of Winchester Ely Chester Salisbury Coventry and Lichfield Bath and Wells with this addition viz. And because under a colour of Truth they did all that they could to draw unto them the hearts of the People and that by the Testimony of the King himself and of them and the rest of the Praelates although the truth will appear that it was not the King but those Rebells for so in dread of his own and of his Son's Murder and Death he was necessitated to call them that caused those Troubles and Discords concerning which they were to make all hast as the Writs themselves Sub hâc formâ did import Rex Episcopo London salutem Quot quantos labores Nos vos alii Praelati ac etiam Magnates Nostri pro pace Regni firmanda liberatione Edwardi filii Nostri sustinuerimus benè nostis per cujus siquidem liberationem tumultuosis credamus pacem dedisse negotiis quae jam majori strepitu recidivant idem enim Edwardus Nostro fidelium Nostrorum spreto consilio sicut vobis Praelatis praedictis jampridèm significavimus quibus Rebellibus Nostris jam adhaeret qui se Regii Honoris nec non Tranquilitatis Pacis totius Regni praecipuos dicunt esse Zelatores Ordinationes nuper London which have been yet invisible de Nostro dicti filii Nostri ac totius Communitatis Regni Nostri Assensu unanimi confectas concorditèr approbatas in omnibus ut asserunt observare volentes 〈◊〉 Voce praedicant aliud Opere manifestant quia de Nostro Proposito Voluntate etiam de Actibus ipsorum circà praemissa vobis qui Ordinationum praedictarum conscii estis testes esse debetis ac etiam praecipui Pacis Amatores veritatem patere volumus evidentèr vobis Mandamus sub debito Fidelitatis quibus Nobis estis astricti firmitèr injungentes quatenùs omni dilatione excusatione postpositis ad Nos sub omni festinatione usque Gloucestriam accedatis super praemissis which shews that supposed Parliament had no long continuance Consilium vestrum impensuri hoc sicut honorem Nostrum vestrum diligitis indempnitati totius Regni
other the Lords Marchers soon raise a powerful Army multitudes of the Counties of Hereford Worcester Salop and Chester coming to his aid took the Castle and City of Worcester had the Castle of Monmouth delivered unto him which he demolished surprized the Town of Kenilworth in Warwickshire whither young Simon de Montfort had brought up many of the Northern Barons of that Party to the number of 20 Banners took no less than Thirteen of the chief of them young Simon and others escaping into the Castle In the mean time the said Symon Earl of Leicester carrying the King along with him as his Prisoner upon Lammas day being the first day of August receiving intelligence that the Prince was at Worcester and not knowing that Kenilworth was taken marched towards Evesham about break of the day on purpose to meet with those Barons which his Son had brought out of the North of which the Prince being advertised advanced speedily after him and got betwixt him and Kenilworth Mortimer and the Earl of Gloucester so disposing the Forces which they commanded as that he was almost invironed Seeing himself therefore in that streight he forthwith drew out his men and prepared for Battell it being then the Nones of August and ascending the Hill discovered Prince Edward and his Army on the top thereof which was divided into three parts the first led by Himself the second by the Earl of Gloucester the third by Mortimer the business being so ordered that no other Colours appeared then the Banner of young Symon and the rest taken at Kenilworth which caused the Earl to suppose that many of them had been of his own Party but upon further View he understood the contrary for the Prince afterwards took down those Colours and instead of them erected his own and the Earl of Gloucesters Banners on the one side and Mortimers towards the West which unexpected sight caused such a Discouragement in the Army of the Barons as that the Welsh betook themselves to flight and the rest being over-powerd were totally routed so that few escaped the Slaughter Of those who were Slain and not taken Prisoners were as to the Principal Persons Symon de Monfort Earl of Leicester himself whose Head Hands and Feet being cut off were sent to the Lady Mortimer then at Wigmore Castle Henry de Montfort his Eldest Son Hugh le Dispencer then Justice of England Ralph Basset of Drayton Thomas de Astely Peter de Montfort William de Mandeville John de Beauchamp of Bedford Guy de Baliol and divers other persons of Quality with a multitude of the common Sort Of those that were wounded and taken Prisoners the Chief were Guy de Montfort a younger Son of the said Symon de Montfort John Fitz-John Humphry de Bohun the younger John de Vescy Peter de Monfort Junior and Nicholas de Segrave And it was said that when the Earl of Leicester discerned the Form of the Princes Battalia he swore by the Arm of St. James his usual Oath they have done discreetly but this they have learned of me let us therefore commend our Souls to God because our Bodies are theirs and encouraging his men told them they were to Fight for the Law of the Land yea the Cause of God and Justice and advising Hugh le Despencer Ralph Basset and some others to flie and reserve themselves for better times they refused so to do but rather chose to die with him Who although he was an Arch-Rebell and in that a Pest or Plague unto the Nation yet the deluded People could not think it enough to honour and follow him in his Life time but would in the Fame of his supposed Miracles have worshipped him for a Saint after his Death if the King had not prohibited them SECT IX Of the Proceedings of King Henry the Third after his Release and Restauration until his Death THE long imprisoned and sadly misused King thus happily released out of his Thraldome but yet with the Loss of some of his Own as well as too much of his Subjects Blood by a Wound casually received in the battle was now rid of his Jaylor whom he feared and hated as he said himself more than any man living and he that before was forced to write and speak as Montfort and the rebellious Barons would dictate unto him obey their Orders as soon as they were proposed declare his Son and Loyal Subjects Rebels and the Rebels his most faithful Councel could like a Bird out of the Snare of the Fowler when he was at liberty and had escaped their Tyranny give them their proper Names and Titles call their whole business a Rebellion and made them glad to receive their Pardons under the Character of his Enemies as in the Pardons of John Fitz-John Basset and others and with the Victorious Prince the Redeemer of him and the Kingdom went to Winchester where a Parliament being convoked all who adhered to Simon de Montfort were disinherited and their Estates conferred upon others at the King's pleasure the Liberties of London forfeited and taken from them in which year that valiant Prince his Son as Mat. Paris hath recorded it fought a single Combat with Adam de Goâ—rdon the Out-law near Farneham where finding him in the Woods and personally engaging with him the fight continued so long and with such Animosity and Courage on both sides as they as well as the Spectators marvailing at each others extraordinary unwearied Valour the sturdy Out-law was at last content upon the Prince's offer to procure his Pardon to throw down his Arms and was restored to Favour and his former Estate And the King notwithstanding the Success at the Battle of Evesham and his Advantages gained thereby continuing his Endeavours to free his Kingdom from the Danger Damage and Disturbance of any further Rebellion having gathered together a formidable Army treated upon Hostages given with young Simon de Montfort for a Peace to be granted unto him as to his own particular and for the delivering up of the Castle of Kenilworth wherein he had despitefully behaved himself by cutting off the hand of one of his Courriers whom he had intercepted and sending it unto him in a ridiculous jeeâ—ing manner not only from himself but some of his Complices that were forfeited and disherited But they that were in the Castle denying to surrender it either to the King or Symon in regard that they were intrusted by the Countess of Leicester who was beyond the Seas and without her Order they would not do it In the mean time whilst the King besieged Killingworth Castle which held out half a year a great Party of those that were disherited growing desperate retired to the Isle of Ely which they did begin to fortifie and from thence making Incursions into the adjacent parts did great Mischief Which to repress â—aith Mathew Paris citantur Communium Communes ad â—os vallandos eorum egressum impediendum which in great numbers
they endeavoured to doe but were over-reached by the Military Arts and Stratagems of the Montfortian Party the King having the Castle of Kenilworth surrendred unto him Symon and Guy de Montfort Sons to the Earl of Leicester with the disinherited Barons who escaped from the Battel of Evesham defending the Isle of Ely the King and the Prince going with an Army against them streightly besieged them and tendred them afterwards gentle Conditions wherein the King 's Privy Councel were divided for that Mortimer having the whole Earldom Honor and great Estate of the Earl of Oxford after the battle of Evesham granted unto him and many others who had great Quantities of the disherited Parties Lands given unto them were unwilling to forgo what the King had for their Valour and Fidelity bestowed upon them and therefore would hold what they had but Gloucester and the Twelve Ordained to deal for the Peace of the State and other their Friends which were many stood stifly for a Restoration Which raised new Displeasures so as Gloucester retired from the Court and sent a Messenger to require the King to remove Strangers from his Court and observe the Provisions made at Oxford according to his last Promise made at Evesham otherwise he should not marvel if himself did what he thought fit whereupon in the one and fiftieth year of his Raigne at S t. Edmunds-Bury was a Parliament summoned unto which were cited Comites Barones Archiepiscopi Episcopi Abbates and all who held by Knights Service were to appear with Horse and Armour for the vanquishing of those disherited Persons who contrary to the Peace of the Kingdom held the Isle of Ely John de Warren Earl of Surrey and William de Valentia were sent to the Earl of Gloucester who had leavied an Army upon the Borders of Wales to come in a fair manner to that Parliament which he refused to do but gave it under his hand that he would never bear Arms against the King or his Son Edward but to defend himself and pursue Roger Mortimer and other his Enemies for which he pretended to have taken Armes The first Demand in that Parliament which was made by the King and the Legat was That the Clergy should grant a Tenth for three Years to come and for the Years past so much as they gave the Barons for defending the Coasts against the Invasion of Strangers Whereto they answred That the War was begun by unjust Desires which yet continued and it was more necessary to treat of the Peace of the Kingdom to make use of the Parliament for the benefit thereof and not to extort Moneys considering the Land had been so much destroy'd by the War as it would never be recovered When it was required That the Clergy might be taxed by Laymen according to the just Value They answer It was neither Reason nor Justice that they should intermeddle in collecting the 10 th which they would never consent unto but would have the Antient Taxation to stand It was desired That they would give the 10 th of their Baronies and Lay-fees according to their utmost values They answered That they were impoverished in attending the King in his Expeditions and their Lands lay untilled by reason of the Wars It was moved That in liev of a 10 th they should give among them 30000 Marks to discharge the King's Debts contracted concerning the Kingdom of Sicily They answered They would give nothing in regard that all those Taxations and Extortions formerly made by the King were never converted to his own Use or the Benefit of the Kingdom Demand being made That all the Clergy-men which held Baronies or other Lay-fees should personally serve in the Wars They answer They were not to sight with the Material Sword but the Spiritual and that their Baronies were given of mere Almes Being required to discharge the 9000â— which the Bishops of Rochester Bath and the Abbot of Westminster stood bound to the Pope's Merchants for the King's Service at their being at the Court of Rome They answered That they never consented to pay such Loan and therefore were not bound to discharge it Then the Legate from the Pope required That without delay Praedication should be made throughout the Kingdom to incite men to take the Cross for the Recovery of the Holy Land Whereunto Answer was made That the greatest part of the People were already consumed by the Sword and that if they should undertake that Action there would be none left to defend the Kingdom and the Legate seemed to desire to extirpate the Nation and introduce Strangers Lastly when it was urged That the Praelates were bound to yield to all the Kings Demands by their Oath at Coventry where they did Swear to aid him by all means possible they could They answered that when they took that Oath they understood no other Aids than Spiritual and wholsome Councell So nothing but Denyals being obteyned in that Parliament the Legat imployed some to Sollicite the disherited Lords that held the Isle of Ely to leave off their Robberies and return to the Peace of the King the Faith and Unity of the Church according to the Form provided by the Dictum de Kenilworth made by a Commission of the King no Dict or Act of Parliament to 12 of the Peers for the Redemption of their Inheritances given away by the King for Five say some other Seven years Profits They who had no Lands were to give their Oaths and to find Sureties for their Peaceable Behaviour and make such Satisfaction and undergo such Penances as the Church should appoint they who were Tenants should lose their right to their Farmes saving the right of their Lords they who did instigate any to Fight against the King should forfeit the Profit of their Lands for two years and if any Person should refuse those Conditions they should be de Exhereditatis and have no power of recovering their Estates in which Composition or Dictum some Persons and particularly Symon de Montfort himself and his Heirs were excluded To which they answered That they hold the Faith received from their Catholick Fathers and their Obedience to the Roman Church as the Head of all Christianity but not to the Avarice and wilful Exactions of those who ought to Govern the same And that their Praedecessors and Ancestors whose Heirs they were having Conquered the Land by the Sword they held themselves to be unjustly disherited and that it was against the Popes Mandate they should be so dealt withal That they had formerly taken their Oaths to defend the Kingdom and Holy Church all the Prelates thundring the Sentence of Excommunication against such as withstood the same and according to that Oath they were prepared to spend their Lives and seeing they Warred for the benefit of the Kingdom and Holy Church they were to sustain their Lives by the Goods of those that detained their Lands which the Legat ought to cause to be
Advantage and to take care that there should be some Bridle or Method to restrain them And there being besides Twenty-Four Cities in England where two Citizens were to be chosen out of each by the direction of that novel Writ and a great number out of as many Boroughs and Corporation-Towns then in England at the arbitrary and corrupt Power of the Sheriffs as it after proved and hapned with its Thirty-Nine Shires and two Knights to be chosen out of each the Counties and Boroughs of Wales not being at that time to be put into the Account and Four out of every of the Cinque-Ports the number would so swell and increase as might very much exceed that of the Peers and Barons which in the largest Estimate would not then arrive unto Two Hundred and Eighty and according to the then more common Accompt and they then summoned ad libitum Regis not many more than Sixty in which high and honourable Court and House of Lords Spiritual and Temporal should that very great surpassing number of Commons have their equal Suffrages as it may be believed they never were intended to be allowed the lesser number would be over-powered by the greater the more noble prudent and concerned by those that were little at all and introduce a Community or Vassalage upon themselves and their Posterity which the Roman Senators and Patritii in a Common-Wealth made out of a Monarchy for fear of Tyranny were unwilling to admit and when they were seditioned and mutinyed unto it left their Chiland Seri nepotes to endure the dire Effects of their often Changes from Kings to Consuls from Decem-virates unto Tribunes of the People Censors Tribunes-Military bloody Proscriptions and Wars betwixt the Patritii and Plebeians pacified and succeeded by a Dictator after that a Trim-virate after that an Emperor and semper Augustus Caesar with an arbitrary Power until good and wholsome Laws of their own making gave an Allay unto it For such a Miscellany of Imis cum Summis of Inferiours with Superiors could not be deemed to be either more or better enabled than the Prelates and Baronage of the Nation the Moratiores bomines Men of better Extraction Education the ancient extraordinary grand Councel of our Kings and Princes not meanly but eminently skilled in matters of State and Policy Religion War forreign Languages and Affairs of their own State and others and in the quieting the Troubles of it Nor could that their Device at that time have much Assurance of any good Success therein when the Prince was a Prisoner and Hostage for his Father who was long after in no better a condition against the Laws of Wars and Rules of Hostages and the Tenor of those Writs of Summons carried nothing in them of a perpetual Constitution or any thing more than pro hac vice and for that only time and purpose Or that such a Parcel of the lower ranks of People could be more knowing and intelligent than the King of France assisted by his grand and learned Nobility Clergy and Wisdom of his Parliament of Paris were not long before when they determined those grand and long-depending bloodily-agitated Controversies betwixt that persecuted King and some of his then ungovernable Barons concerning the disloyal and unhappy Provisions enforced from Him at Oxford some Years before And such a novum inauditum betwixt a Monarch and King no Feudatory and his rebellious Subjects referred to the Advice of themselves or their Partizans touching the Claim of their Pretences in their own particular Cases being not easily to be found in any the Annals Histories or Records of this or any other Kingdom or Nation For many of the Milites or Knights in that new Contrivance to be Elected were at that time as to their Estates of so general and lost Esteem as Twenty or Fifteen pounds per Annum was by the Statute of the First Year of the Raign of King Edward the Second which was not much above Forty Three Years after conceived to be no contemptible Rate or Proportion of Livelihood for a Knight when William de Felton an Ancestor of a Family now of good Note in the County of Suffolk being in the Third Year of the Raign of King Edward the Third presented before the Justices itinerant to be seized of the Mannot of Botingdon quod valet per Annum Twenty Pounds to be Thirty Years Old nondum Miles ideo in misericordia and many Gentlemen of good Extractions and Families did heretofore appear to have been long after retained under Earls and Barons in the Wars and Service of their Prince and not seldom as Domesticks and more especial Servants in their then large and honourable Families and have been their Receivers Stewards or Feodaries worn their more special Livings and taken Wages Dyet and Allowance for themselves and a limited Number of Men and Horses altho some of them have been Gentlemen of good Value and Descent and very many of those which have been since Elected are not denyed to have been Persons of ancient and worshipful Families The Citizens and Burgesses Merchants excepted such as did Sordidas artes exercere as the Civil Law stileth them Men that usually made their Gain or manner of Living by Deceits and Lying and were as our Common Law above Two Hundred Years after declared them saith Littleton to be Men with whose Daughters to Marry would be to a Gentleman such a Disparagement as the Parents and Kindred might Legally complain of it and the Testimony saith the Caesarean or Civil Law of a Gentleman was to go as far or to be valued as two of them And how unequal they were like to be in their Births Reputations and requisite Parliamentary Abilities who being to be very Burgesses and City or Town-Trading Inhabitants according to the Intention of those Writs could not be expected to be other than such as were only bred and instructed in the Arts Tricks Deceits and Mysteries as they have been since well called of Trade and the most of their Estates and Livelihood gained by it being much more wickedly than Honest as their Apprentices and Journey-men who know the Secret thereof can Witness nor to be able or serviceable to their Prince in any thing more than to attend Him if He should need or call him as a Merchant to some great and publick Mart or Fair to help him to buy or sell such Things as should be there Marchantable or that the Knights to be chosen in the Shires who in those times made the Military Exercises to be their greatest Care and Employment would not be more necessary and fit to attend their Soveraign to perform the Office and Intention of those Writs to defend their King themselves their Country Friends and Neighbours and to do that which every Gentleman and such as were è meliori luto of the more refined Clay better born and bred than the rude Vulgus or common sort of People would of
Project Four Abbesses to help them to Cordials in that languishing State of Loyalty they then were in The Earls and Barons were then and long after Great and Noble by Descent Birth Extraction Lands Estate Alliance Command Power and Authority not a few of them by Consanguinity or Affinity deriving their Progeny from the lines of several of their Kings and Princes and much of their Honors and Support from their Bounty and Munificence as they were pleased to dispence them by their influence favors or bounty for great and heroick Actions and Services done for them and the Weal publick and their Authority could not be small either in the Fear or Force of it when at the time of the Norman Conquest all the Lands and Services thereunto belonging of the Kingdom were either the Kings in Demesne or in the Possession of those Great Men and Commanders unto whom he had granted them and that again distributed by them to their Servants Friends or Followers to hold by Knights Service Soccage Copy-hold Leases for Years or Villenage with some Services imposed as going in Person to War to defend them and their Soveraign Castle-guard Carre and Manuopara and the consented unto Reservations or willing Oblations of doing much of their works of Husbandry in the hopes of their Justice in their little Courts or petit Soveraignties Protection and Assistance against the injuries and oppression of wrong Doers and the Comfort of a large and free Hospitality and Charitable uses together with the Foundation and Endowments of many Abbies Priories and religious Houses which obliged both the secular and regular Clergy to love and honour them and the liberi homines or Freeholders were as unto many of them only such as had been manumissed and had from the condition of Servants or Villaines attained unto the degrees of libertini or ingenui or so fortunate as to have some small Parcells of Lands in Fee simple or Tail or for life by Gift Purchase Marriage or Copy-hold granted and given by them most of the Saxon race being so unhappy as to be content to become Tenants to the Conquerours of their own Lands whilst the Nobility and Great Men being more desirous of Service than Money or Rents granted the Service of Men or Tenants that held by Knights Fees or Service or parts thereof one unto another which in those times were in so high Esteem and of such a Value as Ten Knights Fees were reckoned a Satisfaction for a Release of the Claim of that great Office of High Steward of England in Fee by Roger Bygott Earl of Norfolk and his Heirs to Symon de Montfort Earl of Leicester Seven and a half whereof being paid King Henry the Third upon a Reference of the Controversy betwixt the said Earles unto him made his Award That the said Symon should Execute the said Office of High Steward and the said Roger should bring his Action for the other Two Knights Fees and a half and the English Nobility having all the great offices and places of Honour of the Kingdom and about the Persons of their Kings with their Influence Power and Authority in their great Councels or Parliaments and thereby the Opportunities of pleasing and displeasing hurting or helping whom they would were as to many of them and not a few of the common People like the righteous Job in his Prosperity when they came out to the Gates of the City the Eares that heard them blessed them the Eyes that saw them gave Witness unto them they delivered the Poor that cryed and the Fatherless and them that had none to help them the Blessing of those that were ready to perish came upon them they caused the Widdows hearts to sing for joy were Eyes to the blind Feet to the lame and Fathers to the poor brake the Jawes of the Wicked and pluckt the Spoyl out of their Mouths their Root was spread out by the Waters and the Dew lay all night upon their Branches they gave ear unto them waited and kept silence at their Councel And could not be slighted or taken to be Benefits of a small size or esteem but to be very great and worthy the seeking and obtaining when Threescore and Ten Thousand Knights Fees every one of which being then no small Estate either as to the extent of the Lands or the Value thereof as Ordericus Vitalis who lived in the time of the Conqueror hath numbred them or but about Thirty two Thousand as Mr. Selden believeth were given by William the Conqueror to his Nobility Great Men and Followers to be holden of him his Heirs and Successors in Capite and all the other Lands of the Kingdom except those large quantities which were King Edward the Confessor as appertaining to the Crown of England and what else he kept in his own Possession and Demesne and besides what he endowed and founded divers Abbys Monasteries Priories and Nunneries withal to hold of him and his Heirs and Successors in Capite and by Knights Service were again as unto a great part thereof distributed and granted by his Nobility great Men and Followers to their Dependants Servants Tenants and Friends to hold of them by Knight-Service Which drawing to it by the Feudal Laws part of the fundamental Laws of England and incorporated therein Wardships no Slavery Burden or Grievance if rightly used or understood but a Protection Comfort and Benefit as well publick as private Reliefs Education Protection and Marriage of their Heirs in their Minority which was the greatest Concernment of their Families did put and render the Commonalty under the Patronage and Tutelage of the Nobility and great Men Subordinate to the King their Soveraign and common Parent which many other Nations and the greatest Pretenders and Enjoyers of Liberties in the Christian World have not onely deemed but experimented to be an Happiness Insomuch as if it were to be tryed by the Suffrage and Experience of our English Ancestors if they could from the Dead be produced and heard to speak in the Affairs and Case of England and a due Consideration had of the Security had and long enjoyed by the Northern parts thereof by the Tenures by Cornage assisted by that of Knight-Service and Capite and the Residence of the Baronage of those Countryes against the dayly and nightly Incursions and Spoil of their then ill Neighbours the Picts and Scots which amounted unto as much or more than the costly Wall and Fortifications which the Romans built and provided against them together with the Safety and Guard which a great part of England hath been often defended by the Lords Marchers against the Hostilities and Unquietness of the Welch it 's former Owners would bring us in a verdict of O felices bona si sua nôrint Which must needs attract the Love good Will Fear Awe and Obedience of the People who so well understood their own conditions and that of the Nobility as to believe that to quarrel or be
great Barons and Lords Spiritual and Temporal could not imagine would ever be able either to forget the Good which they and their Fore-Fathers had received and they and their after-Generations were like to enjoy under them or get loose from those many great Ties and Obligations of a never-to-be-forgotten Gratitude which they had upon them but thought themselves very secure from any danger that might happen by any of their Incroachments or Usurpations by placing any Power or but a Semblance of Authority for once in the lower Ranks of the People nor could have believed that the common People of England after their solemn Protestations to preserve them and the Government could after the Murder of their King in their last horrid Rebellion have Voted them to be useless and dangerous and being unwilling to leave any of the Divels their Masters business unfinished did solemnly enforce the deluded Seditious People under as many severe Penalties as they could lay upon them not any more to submit to any Government by a King and House of Lords to whom our Kings had given no Power to make their own Choice but lodged and onely entrusted it in the Sheriffs many of which the rebellious Barons had by Usurpation of the King's Authority provided before hand to be at this present of their own Party or were like to be so or under their Awe and Guidance wherein they were perceived by the King some Years before upon their ill-gained Provisions at Oxford to have been very diligent in making Sheriffs of their own Party those great Offices being in those times and many Years before and some few Years after alwayes put into the Hands and Trust of the Baronage or Men of great Estate and Power Whose Number by Tenures and Summons by Writs to our King 's great Councels or Parliaments Creations or Descents accounted in the Raign of King Henry the Third to be no less than Two Hundred and Forty if not many more and like the tall and stately Cedars of our Nation might well deserve the Titles of Proceres and Magnates especially when many or most of them were in their Greatness Goodness and Authority in their several Stations like the Tree which Nebuchadnezzar saw in his Vision high and strong The height whereof reached to the Heaven the leaves were fair and the fruit thereof much the beasts of the field had shadow under it and the fowles of the heaven dwelt in the boughs thereof and as ex pede Herculem the Length and Greatness of Hercules's Foot declared the vast Proportion and Magnitude of the residue of his Body it was easy to compute how little were then the Common People how great the Nobility whom the Brittaines ancient Inhabitants of our Isle as the Learned Francis Junius the Son of the no less Learned Francis Junius hath observed justly stiled them Lhafords Lords and their Wives Lhafdies Ladies because they usually gave Bread and Sustenance to those that wanted it gave License of Marriage to the Widdows of their Thanks by Knight Service punished their Tenants so holding their Lands by Writ Cessavit per Biennium and a Forfeiture if not redeemed was Entituled to a Writ of Contra formam Collationis for not performing the Duties and Offices of their Endowments and the large Revenues and Emoluments appropriated thereunto And with the many Accessions and Devolutions of other Mannors Lands Revenues Estates Baronies Titles of Honour and Offices of State by Marriages Descents in Fee or remainders in Fee-tail munificent Guifts and Grants of their Kings and Princes upon Merit and great Services done for them and their Country or by Purchases guarded by the strength of the Statute De donis Conditionalibus made in the 13th Year of the Raign of King Edward the First with the Tye and Obligation of their Tenures and the Restraints of Alienation made them to be such Grantz Magnates as the common People did in their Disseisins Intrusions and Outrages done one unto another which in the elder times were very frequent colour and Shelter those Injuries by or under some Title or Conveyances made unto some of the Nobility or great Men of the Kingdom which caused some of our Kings to grant out Commissions of Ottroy le Baston vulgarly called Trail Baston to find out and punish such Evil doings and by the making of some of our later Laws to restrain the giving of Liveries so as until the Writs of Summons granted by King Edward the First in the 22d Year of his Raign to Elect some Knights of the Shires Citizens and Burgesses to give their Assent in Parliaments to such Laws and Things as by the advice of his Lords Spiritual and Temporal should advise should by him be ordained there having been an Intermission of those or the like kind of Writs of Summons from the first Contrivance thereof in the time of the Imprisonment of King Henry the Third in the 49th Year of his Raign it was and ought to be believed as a matter or thing agreeable to Truth right Reason and the Laws and Records of the Kingdom that the Commons and Freeholders of England were long before and for many Ages past as ancient as the British Empire and Monarchy were to be no part of our Great Councels or Parliaments were never Summoned or Elected to come thither but had their Votes and Estates and well Being as to those great Councels included in the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and as to their assent or dissent good or ill liking represented by them and retaining their well deserved Greatness were so potent and considerable as Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester could after the Battle of Evesham where he had Fought for the King March with a formidable Army composed for the most part of his own Servants Tenants Reteiners and Dependants from the Borders of Wales to London quarrel and capitulate with his King that had been but a little before extraordinary Victorious and with John Warren Earl of Surrey did after the Death of King Henry the Third before the Return of his Son Prince Edward from the Wars in the Holy-Land to take the Crown upon him at the Solemnization of the Funeral of the deceased King in the Abbey-Church of Westminster with the Clergy and People there Assembled without their License and Election go up to the high Altar and swear their Fealty to the absent King Edward the First his Son So beloved feared and followed as the great Earl of Warwick was said in some of our Histories to have been the Puller down and Setter up of Kings could with the Earl of Oxford in the dire Contests betwixt King Henry the Sixth and Edward the Fourth for the Crown of England rescue and take by force King Henry the Sixth out of the Tower of London where he was kept a Prisoner attend him in a stately and numerous Procession to the Cathedral Church of St. Paul the one carrying up his Train and the other
bearing the Sword before him to the Church where they Crowned him and after a Frown of Fortune did stoutly by the help of the Lancastrian Party give Battle to King Edward the Fourth at Barnet-field where but for a Mistake of Oxford's and Warwick's Soldiers and their Banners and Badges fighting one against the other in a Mist instead of King Edward the Fourth's Men they had in all Probability prevailed against him And the Interest Alliance and Estate of that Earl of Oxford was so great notwithstanding shortly after in the Kingdom as although he had very much adventured suffered and done for King Henry the Seventh led the Vanguard for him at Bosworth field against King Richard the Third and eminently deserved of him as the Numbers and Equipage of his Servants Reteiners Dependants and Followers did so asfright that King and muster up his Fears and Jealousies as being sumptuously Feasted by him at Hedingham Castle in Essex where he beheld the vast Numbers goodly Array and Order of them he could not forbear at his Departure telling him That he thankt him for his good Cheer but could not endure to see his Laws broken in his Sight and would therefore cause his Attorney General to speak with him which was in such a manner as that magnificent and causelesly dreadful Gallantry did afterwards by Fine or Composition cost that Earl Fifteen-Thousand Marks Did notwithstanding their great Hospitalities Magnificent manner of Living founding of Abbies Monasteries and Priories many and large Donations of Lands to Religious Uses and building of strong and stately Castles and Palaces make no small addition to their former Grandeurs which thorough the Barons Wars and long lasting and bloody Controversies betwixt the two Royal Houses of York and Lancaster did in a great Veneration Love and Awe of the Common People their Tenants Reteiners and Dependants continue in those their grand Estates Powers and Authorities until the Raign of King Edward the Fourth when by the Fiction of common Recoveries and the Misapplied use of Fines and more then formerly Riches of many of the common People gathered out after the middle of the Raign of King Henry the Eighth by the spoil of the Abbey and religiously devoted Lands in which many of the Nobility by Guifts and Grants of King Henry the Eighth King Edward the Sixth and Queen Elizabeth in Fee or Fee-tail had very great shares brought those great Estates of our famous English Baronage to a lower condition than ever their great Ancestors could believe their Posterities should meet with and made the Common People that were wont to stand in the outward Courts of the Temple of Honour and glad but to look in thereat fondly imagine themselves to have arrived to a greater degree of Equality than they should claim or can tell how to deserve And might amongst very many of their barbarously neglecting Gratitudes remember that in the times in and after the Norman Conquest when Escuage was a principal way or manner of the Peoples Aides especially those that did hold in Capite or of Mesne Lords under them to their Soveraign for publick Affairs or Defence the Lords Spiritual and Temporal being then the only parts of the Parliament under their Soveraign the sole Grand Councel of the Kingdom under him did not only Assess in Parliament and cause to be leavied the Escuage but bear the greatest part of the Burden thereof themselves that which the common People did in after times in certain proportions of their Moveables and other Estates or in the Ninth Sheaf of Wheat and the Ninth Lamb being until the Dissolution of the Abbies and Monasteries in the latter end of the Raign of King Henry the Eighth when they were greatly enriched by it did not bear so great a part of the Burdens Aides or Taxes or much or comparable to that which lay upon the far greater Estates of the Nobility there having been in former Times very great and frequent Wars in France and Scotland no Escuage saith Sir Edward Coke hath been Assessed by Parliament since the 8th Year of the Raign of King Edward the Second Howsoever the Commons and Common People of England for all are not certainly comprehended under that Notion their Ancestors before them and their Posterities and Generations to come after them lying under so great and continued Obligations and bonds of an eternal Gratitude and Acknowledgement to the Baronage and Lords Spiritual and Temporal of England and Wales for such Liberties and Priviledges as have been granted unto them with those also which at their Requests and Pursuits have been Indulged or Permitted unto them by our and their Kings and Princes successively will never be able to find and produce any Earlier or other Original for the Commons of England to have any Knights Citizens or Burgesses admitted into our Kings and Princes great Councels in Parliament until the aforesaid imprisonment of King Henry the Third in the 48th and 49th Year of his Raign and the force which was put upon him by Symon Montfort Earl of Leicester and his Party of Rebels SECT XII That the asoresaid Writ of Summons made in that King's Name to Elect a certain Number of Knights Citizens and Burgesses and the Probos homines good and honest Men or Barons of the Cinque Ports to appear for or represent some part of the Commons of England in Parliament being enforced from King Henry the Third in the 48th and 49th Year of his Raign when he was a Prisoner to Symon de Montfort Earl of Leicester and under the Power of him and his Party of rebellious Barons was never before used in any Wittenagemots Mikel-gemots or great Councels of our Kings or Princes of England FOr saith the very learned and industrious Sir William Dugdale Knight Garter King of Armes unto whom that Observation by the dates of those Writs is only and before all other Men to be for the punctual particular express and undeniable Evidence thereof justly ascribed which were not entered in the Rolls as all or most of that sort have since been done but two of them three saith Mr. William Pryn instead of more in Schedules tacked or sowed thereunto For although Mr. Henry Elsing sometimes Clerk to the Honourable House of Commons in Parliament in his Book Entituled The ancient and present manner of holding Parliaments in England Printed in the Year 1663. but Written long before his Death when he would declare by what Warrants the Writs for the Election of the Commons assembled in Parliament and the Writ of Summons of the Lords in Parliament were procured saith That King Henry the Third in the 49th Year of his Raign when those Writs were made was a Prisoner to Symon de Montfort and could not but acknowledge that it did not appear unto him by the first Record of the Writs of Summons now extant by what Warrant the Lord Chancellor had in the 49th Year of the Raign of that King caused
interests from domestick disturbances and forreign invasions or Injuries Howsoever rather then want a Shift or that which they would have to be called Truth and Reason when it can be neither of them they think something may for their purpose be picked out of old Bracton to help in a Case of necessity it were a pity that the best Cause of God as they call'd it should be lost for want of a little help to Support it therfore rather then suffer it to sink and perish every one that was well affected and a well-willer thereunto should make use of all the Contrivances imaginable and do all that they can to perswade and believe otherwise it will Conduce to little purpose SECT XVII That the Comites or Earls have in Parliament or out of Parliament Power to Compell their Kings or Sovereign Princes to yeild unto their Consults Votes or Advices will make them like the Spartan Ephori and amount to no more then a Conclusion without Premises or any thing of Truth Law or Right Reason to Support it BUt the straw and stubble upon which the late long Parliament-Rebellion hath built a great part of their wicked and godless pretences by misusing and ill understanding of a piece of our learned Bracton snatched and torn from the true and genuine meaning and Intention of the Author will deceive their expectations and hopes in relying upon it if where he saith Item nec factum Regis nec Chartam potest quis Judicare Ita quod factum Domini Regis irritetur sed dicere potuit quis quod Rex Justitiam bene et si hoc eadem ratione quod male Ita imponere ei quod injuriam emendet ne incidat Rex Justic. in Judicium viventis Dei propter Injuriam Rex autem habet Superiorem Deum scilicet item legem per quam factus est rex Item Curiam suam viz. Comites Barones quia Comites dicuntur quasi socii Regis Wherein if the word Superiorem should relate or be intended by Bracton to the Law and the Kings Court of Parliament It would be as a little Grammer as good Latin Law or Right Reason and the Authors meaning who lived in the Time of the Imprisonment of King Henry the 3d. by Simon de Montfort and other his Rebellious Earls and Barons and by some Citations in his book may be believed to have then or after Written it his aforesaid book cannot be rationally thought by the Intire and whole Context thereof to have any design to incourage so Wicked and long continued a Rebellion or intend to render the King Inferior to the Law in Contradiction unto his own assertions that Rex parem non habet Rex facit Legem and make his Curia Court or Parliament whom he can call Continue Prorogue Dissolve wherein he hath a negative voice and as Sr Edward Coke saith is Principum Caput finis and as it were the Anima or Soul thereof And to suppose him to be Inferiour to a Court of his own Calling or disposing kept in his own house or Palace and composed of many of his especiall domestiques is and would be beyond the fancies of little Children or the reach of the silliest sort of Imagination And need not be afraid of their Earls and Barons supposed bridling of them in Parliament when the Barons may be Called or Summoned as our Kings pleased and the Earls and Greater Nobility also before the Reign of King Richard the 2. And our Kings have both before since always had as much liberty to Summon the Lords Spirituall and Temporall as they had before that Time 〈◊〉 not to Summon the Praelates or as they had before or since the Reign of King Richard the 2. to dispence both with the not Coming of the Spirituall and Temporall Lords by an allowance of their Proxies given to Members of their own house Et qui habet socium habet magistrum ideo si rex fuerit sine fraeno id est fine lege debent ei fraenum ponere nisi ipsimet fuerint cum Rege sine fraeno Et tunc clamabant subditi dicent Domine Jesu Christi c. It shall be rightly considered that however the word Magistrum and the word Socii by some inadvertency of the Author may unto those who would be willing to have it to seem to give a power to the Comites Barones which the later never either in their use or institution claimed or practised It may recieve a more genuine or proper interpretation to be no more then an Advisor or Instructor and more agreeable to the mind of the Author For the Comites were in the Roman Empire very antiently stiled Consules Comites and after in that and the Eastern Empire and all its limbs and branches rent and divided from it and in this Nation enjoyed the name or title of Consul a Consulendo and Comes only a Comitando or being in Comitatu Principis Comitatum ipsam Aulam familiam Principis which in Tacitus's time was called a Cohors Cortis or Curtis or Court and not Seldom by our old Historians as Odericus Vitalis Hoveden c. Ealdermen in the Saxon times and sometimes Comes which saith our Learned Selden were but at the first officiary dignities both here and in the Empire and Governed as Praefecti Comitatus Provinciarum and the Counties were in Edward the Confessors Laws called Consulatus some Vestigia or intimations whereof may be perceived in the grant or confirmation of the Earldom of Oxford to Alberick de Vere by the tertium denarium Comitatus the 3d penny of the fines and amerciaments of that County And were neither in England or the Western or Eastern Empire or any of their Historians or by any of our or their Antiquaries or Enquirers into the Secrets or Cabinets of time and its forsaken memorialls ever accompted to be either as Socii or Magistri or so recorded in any of their or our Records Annals or Histories And therefore we may without calling up the Ghost of our old Henry de Bracton who had in the Reign of King Henry the Third made his enquiries into all the ancient Laws and Customs of England and searched the vetera judicia mentioned divers cases and precedents formerly adjudged in the perusall of his Learned Works meet with his own expositions of what he there Wrote or could be thought to have been any of his Intentions For he in the words immediately proceeding not only saith that de Chartis vero Regis factis Regum non debent nec possunt Justiciarii nec privata persona disputare nec etiam si in illo dubitatio oriatur possunt enim interpretari in dubiis obscuris vel si aliqua dictio duos contineat intellectus Domini Regis erit expectanda voluntas interpretatio cum ejus sit interpretari
therefore those many Testimonies before-recited of Bractons contrary meaning if he may be as certainly he ought to be allowed to be his own Expositor may free and vindicate him from being either a Presbyterian or a Conventicler or Republican and make him to be the better believed for that he wrote that book after the 20th Year of King Henry the 3d. as will appear by his citations therein flagranti Seditione when the times were full of danger and Suspicion there were great thoughts of heart and commotions of mind and the Regall Authority was endeavoured to be depressed Lived after the 21st Year of the Reign of that King when the jealousies of that part of his Nobility which shortly after took Arms entred into an open War Rebellion against him had made him walk in that dreadfull Procession with burning Torches through Westminster-Hall to the Abbey Church or Cathedrall cursing the infringers of Magna Charta and Charta de Forestis and being a Judge Itinerant in the 51d Year of that Kings Reign was believed to have written that Book in the beginning of the Reign of King Edward the First could not be ignorant of what had been done and Transacted in the 42d Year of the Reign of King Henry the 3. in the aforesaid Provisions at a Parliament so called holden at Oxford and in the 49th Year of the Reign of King Henry the 3d during his Imprisonment by an unruly part of the Nobility But if the Earls could have been said to have been tanquam Socii fraena in Power and Authority with the King which they never were that could not Entitle the Barons who in the language of our Laws Records and Histories forreign or domestique were never called Comites or Socii of their Sovereigns But as Earls had surely something else to do and were not as Fraenas use to be Superior to Horses whose much greater strength could not otherwise be subdued by mankind to govern and rule their Sovereign as the greatly abused words of Bracton would have it when their ordinaria potestas in King Aelfreds and those elder times now very near 800. Years agoe was in Comitiis Comitativis praesidere in bellis sui Comitatus militibus imperandi in Curiasine Comitarâ— Regis conciliis publicis suorumque negotiis attendendi mandata Regia subditis suis Communicandi Rex enim ipsi Comiti in Curia sua plerunque residenti mandata detulit ille Vicecomiti his Centurionibus Centuriones decurionibus maxima cum expeditione pertulerunt And neither the Earls or Barons were or claimed to be Consortes Imperii or like the Spartan Ephori Or if the Title of Comites did or could give such a Right or Privilege unto them which may with great Evidence be utterly denied and the contrary as easily Justified the Commons or universality of the People will untill they can be so mad as to think themselves to be Earls Socii or Comites of their Kings and Princes or Barons be little the better for that mischievously overscrewed Text or words of Bracton Or The Earls or Barons being not likely in their honourable Assembly of Peers to claim or have more then a deliberative and consultive Power in matters only concerning the King and his Monarchicall Government but where it was inter Pares or amongst themselves or by his speciall licence when at the first Coronation of King Richard the 1st the Comites Barones serviebant in Domo Regis prout dignitates eorum exigebant Die Coronationis suae Johannes Rex accinxit Willielmum Marescallum gladio Comitatus de Striguil Gaufridum filium Petri gladio Comitatus de Essex qui licet antea vocati essent Comites administrationem suorum Comitatuum habebant tamen non accincti erant gladio Comitatus ipsi illo die servierunt ad mensum Regis accincti gladiis And therein Mr Selden that Monarch of learning and Dictator of Reason is to be so interpreted as it may consist with Reason and Truth when he declared that the Lords in their deliberative or judiciall Power in the Court or House of Peers in Parliament had a Power to give or pass judgement for or against their Sovereign for that in the precedent cited by him of King Edward thr Confessors appeal or accusation of Earl Godwin in the great Councell or Parliament of that King for the death of his Brother Alfred to whom he as well as the King had appealed for Justice as the words of the judgment thereupon given against Earl Godwin and the opinion of the Lords not contradicted there mentioned as Malmesbury Hoveden Huntington Brompton and Florentius do testify was that Comes nec Baro nec aliquis Regi subditus bellum battail or single combat saith the margin a kind of tryall then much in use amongst contending private Persons where other Evidence failed contra Regem in appellatione sua de lege potest vadiare sed in toto ponere in misericordia sua emendas offerre competentes whereupon it was advised that ipsimet filius suus duodecim Comites amici consanguinei sui essent coram Rege humiliter procederent onerati cum tantum auri argenti quantum inter brachia quilibet poterit bajulare illud sibi pro suo transgresso offerendo deprecando ut ipse male volentiam suam rancorem iram Comiti condonet accepto homagio suo fidelitate terras suas sibi integre restituat retradat illi autem omnes sub ista forma thesauro se onerantes ad Regem accedentes seriem modum considerantes locum eorum sibi demonstrabant Quorum considerationi Rex contradicere nolens quicquam judicaverant ratificavit wherein the utmost use that can be made of that Action and precedent to confine the Kings judicative Power in Parliament to that of the Peers and Lords Spirituall and Temporall is that the King upon Earl Godwins answer to the Kings accusing him for the Death of Alfrred his Brother and the Earls eaecusing himself with a Domine mi Rex salva reverentia gratia vestra pace dominatione fratrem vestrum nunquam prodidi nec occidi unde super hoc pono me in consideratione Curiae vestrae was not willing to be a Judge or giue Sentence in an appeal of his own and such a Concernment as the Death of his Brother for which one of the Peers was to be Arraigned and fitter to be tryed as the Lâ—w required by his Peers which by the Ancient Custom like Trialls might be done without any derogation from the Kings higher and supreme Authority and therefore gave a leave or licence to them in that single particular or extraordidinary case to do it And our Kings and Princes to avoid the imputation of Tyranny Oppression or Partiality may be the more willing to indulge the like in all cases and matters of Attainders and forfeitures of
the Common Laws of England some part of the Civil and Canon Laws and a great part of the Records of the Kingdom and much honoured for his love and care of Justice But being a Judge in those Times and seduced by another of that Rank to take such a place upon him upon the pretence of keeping up and supporting the Law and was upon his Majesties Restauration advanced into an higher degree seemed notwithstanding not to have been so much or so well read as he might have been in the Feudall Laws excellent constitution and frame of the Monarchick Government of this Realm when in that House of Commons either in a cool neutrality or over perswaded by by his fears of or desire of living in safety or to preserve the Common Law when against his will and well known Integrity he was in that house of Commons in Parliament heard by another Member that Sat next unto him to say or declare his opinion that the King was trusted by the People wherein he might have better considered that two parts of our Laws most precious and necessary both to and for the King and his People which were the Summoning and calling of Parliaments or Great Councells and the Tryals of his Subjects Guilts or Innocencies per Pares with Reliefs Herriots due to our Kings and Princes and unto Ten thousand Lords of Manors or thereabouts Subordinate unto their Kings in England and Wales with Fines and Amercements Felons and Out-Laws Goods Annum diem vastum cum multis aliis c. were solely and principally derived from the Feudall Laws Which with some of the Usages and Customs of the Nation and our Statutes and Acts of Parliament from Time to Time after made and added thereunto were the Laws which many of our Kings and Princes took an Oath at their Coronations to Protect and Defend as also the leges Consuetudines quas vulgus elegerit who if our Feudal Laws had not been so very ancient as they have been would not want such as would heartily desire and make choice of them to have Lands given to hold of their King in Capite and enjoy to them and their Heirs under his more especiall protection and was in the Reign of our famous Arthur King of Brittain esteemed so great an happiness as Consensu Historicorum eruditorum of that Age and Time Leland hath informed us Utherus Pendraco fuit pater Arthuri cujus Gorlas Corinnae regulus beneficiarius erat a Notion or Title anciently used of such as held their lands in Capite or by Knight Service And therefore howsoever the learned Bracton's Pen might seem to have erred in his expression or words of Fraenare Regis it might as it ought consonantly to the Proper and Genuine Sense Intention and Meaning of all his Arguments through the Context and Tenor of his whole Books being no little one be accepted and taken to be no otherwise then a restraining him as Kings and great and good men have usually been by good advice and Councell of friends or Servants as Naaman the Syrian's Servants did in their Lords returning back in an anger from the Prophet Elisha who came near unto him and perswaded him to wash in Jordan in order to his recovery from his Leprosy when otherwise that harsh word or phrase of fraenare Reges could not without great danger damage or forfeiture be used or any forcible perswasion put upon a free Prince by Authorities coutrary to their Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy Justly and Truly descending from the Feudall Laws which commandeth all men holding of them in Capite to do otherwise And although some of our Ancient Historians have informed us that in a Parliament holden at Merton in the 20th Year of the Reign of King Henry the 〈◊〉 upon the Bishops endeavouring to have a Law made that according to the Canon Law the Children born before Marriage illicitis amplexibus should by a subsequent Marriage of the Parents be esteemed legitimate the Temporall Lords restiterunt and laying their hands upon their Swords Jurarunt quod noluerunt leges Angliae mitare it was not any plain absolute deniall of the Kings Decisive and Legislative Power but only an Altercation Debate or Dispute betwixt the Spirituall and Temporall Lords in Parliament concerning that matter And neither the Bishops or the house of Commons or any of the Commons represented or not could not so much as attempt to force or bridle their King by Commotions or force of Arms which by the Feudall Laws and the most of our Laws and Customs derived from thence would have been legally adjudged a Rebellion and Fraenare Regis in that undecent expression si quod rei fecerit aut neglexerit quod Dominum contempsisse dicitur aut si Dominus per consequentiam laedatur persona cujus existimationem sartam tectam manere Domini interest for Concilio auxilio Domino adesse debet which was the Cause and ground of right Reason that in the Reign of our King Edward the 2. the Lord Beaumont or de Bello monte was in Parliament Fined for refusing to come to Parliament and give the King his advice or Councell And it is not many Years since that the Emperor of Germany Seised and Imprisoned Prince William of Furstenburgh a feudatory for appearing in Person at a Treaty betwixt the Emperor and the King of France against his Lord the Emperor And our Mesne Lords holding their Lands Jurisdictions Courts Baron and Courts Leet notwithstanding that Act of Parliament for dissolving the Court of Wards and Liveries and the tenures in Capite supporting it did from the 24th Day of February in the Year of our Lord 1645 when in the height of their Wars against their Sovereign they had but Voted the Dissolution of thrt Court and the Tenures in Capite for at that Time there appeared not to have been any Act of Parliament although an Act made in the Time of Oliver Cromwell might be an usher or used as a pattern in the drawing of that by a learned Judge of those Rebellions Times wherein the Reliefs Herriots were found necessary to be reserved unto his now Majesty his Heirs and Sucessors Which may sadly be believed to have been a Decapitation or cutting off the head of the Body-Politick or Government as a Prologue to the Tragicall and Direfull Murder in the cutting off the Head of their most Pious better Deserving King No King or Prince in the World Christian or Heathen black or white that had all their Subjects except their Nobility and the Bishops and such as hold their Lands by the Honorary Services of grand Serjeanty or by the tenures of Copyhold or by Copy of Court-Roll unto which our Littleton giveth no better a name or Title then tenure in Villainage or any service incident thereunto which being originally derived from the tenures in Capite were not many Years ago very nigh a fourth Part of the Kingdom that had so
the States of Holland West-Freisland did by a Publique Decree order that omnia Instrumenta Feudalia publica Feudalia Scrinia should be searched put kept in order And in his Epistle Ded. unto the Estates aforesaid Judges of the said Feudal Court Dated no longer ago then in the Month of Sept. 1665. from Alemar saith likewise that de qua Intromissa saepissime quaerebatur denuo instaurata fuisset adeo ut vos the Estates qui hoc tempore ejusdem reminiscentis Feudalis Curiae Senatores sive pares estis negligereaut aliis postponere non posse And yet they do think Themselves at this day to be as free a people as any in the World with an high and mighty Hoghen Moghen into the bargain And the Framers and Voters of that overturning as much as it could of our ancient Monarchy many of whom as House of Commons Members in that Parliament were Knights Baronetts Knights of the Bath and Knights Batchelors might have been something more cautious then they were and taken more care of the fatall Consequences that might and would inevitably happen yea more then by Chance by an unavoidable necessity or for the liberties of 10000 manors in England and Wales and a great many of manors liberties in Ireland which had no other originall or Foundation then Monarchy or the unrebellious Feudall Laws and it and their continuance for what could they imagine but Confusion and Villany would follow in the order of Baronetts Created by King James in the 9th Year of his Reign limited at the first unto the number of 200. now supernumerated unto almost 1500. to hold by the tenure of maintayning 30. foot-Soldiers at 8d per diem for 3 Years for the regaining of the Province of Ulster in Ireland what for any of the Honourable Knights of the Garter that have no priviledge of Peers in Parliament what for the Knights of the Bath that are to be made at the Creation of every Prince of Wales being the King of Englands eldest Son what for such as our Kings have honoured or shall be pleased to Dignify with the honor of Knighthood or the Sword or to be an Eques Auratus what care was taken in that levelling Act in the effect of turning the Tenures in Capite and by Knight Service into free and Common Socage for the honour and degree of Knighthood or of that more meritorious extraordinary one of Knight Banneretts Was it ever intended they should go all to Plow with some ill brewed Ale to wet their Whistles with their sword and guilt spurrs promiscuously some with blew or red Garters or ribbons and the rest without and could there be no Exception or proviso's inserted in that Act for those Honourable degrees which appertained so only to the Sovereign or a power derived from them as our Queens Regent in their Incapacities of wearing or brandishing a sword or personal fighting are by themselves or others commissionated by them only to grant or give those Priviledges which are not a Few and can have no other derivation or reason for their Commencement then a Militando not as Common Soldiers but ex strenua continuata militia tantum adipiscatur honor when by the Imperiall Laws Knights ex Jure concessione principis prescriptione consue 〈…〉 dine were anciently at the receiving of that honourable o 〈…〉 to swear not to reveal any thing by solemn Oath or Vow 〈◊〉 concerneth his Sovereign or his Countrey never to put on Armour against his Prince never to forsake his Generall never to fly the field of his Enemy c. had Jus Annulorum as the Equestris Ordo were amongst the Roman Knights used to be honoured with when at the Battle and overthrow of them at Cannes there were gathered amongst the slain 2 Bushell of Rings in England and other Northern Kingdoms had jus Imaginum Coate Armorius and besides what Sr Edward Coke cannot deny to be an ancient priviledge due unto Knighthood as hath been before said to be free ab omni Tallagio a Knight is not to have his Equitature or Horse distrained and taken in Execution although it be for the Kings Debt a Knight accused of any Crime Treason shall not be examined but before his Competent Judge against a Knight in warr no prescription runneth neither shall he be compelled to be Guardian to Children except they be the Children of Knights shall not suffer any Ignominious Corporall Punishment as hanging upon a Gibbet unless first Degraded nor be set at any ransome but such as he shall be able after to maintain his Degree And in time of peace hath been so much valued and esteemed as 3 Knights Associated in the Kings Commission of Oyer and Terminer might hear and determine forcible Entries and outrages in the same Country or Province A Coroner formerly an especiall officer of the Crown was to be a Knight a Sheriffs Certificate and return of the Tallies of the Kings Creditors and Monies paid as due unto them is to be accompanied with the hands of 2 Knights a Sheriff cannot remove a plaint out of an Inferiour into a Superior Court without the testimony of 4 Knights Knights and no other are to be sent by the Sheriffs to make the View de malo lecti the Knights of the shires elected to be members of the House of Commons in Parliament ought to be gladiis cincti and the Commons have in Parliament Petitioned the King and obteyned a grant that it might not be otherwise Ou autrement tiel notables Esquiers Gentilhomes del nation des mesmes les Counties come soyent ables d'estre Chivalier noul home destre tiel Chivaler que estoite enles degrees de vadlet ou Varlet saith Mr Selden de south an Infant holding his Lands in Capite or by Knight Service shall not be in Ward after he is Knighted a Knight inhabiting in any City or town Corporate shall not be Impannelled in a Jury for the Tayal of a Criminall in a Civil Action for Debt or the like wherein any of the Nobility are plaintiffs or defendents 2 Knights are to be Impannelled on the Jury A Knight shall not be distrained to serve in person for Castle guard although he do hold Lands by that Tenure A certain number of Knights are to elect a Jury in a Writ of grand Assize and none but a Knight should be permitted to wear a Coller of S. S. or Golden or Guilt Spurrs And the Dignity of Chivaler or Knight hath been in England so honorable as Earls besides their Greater Titles would many times use the Title of Chivaler only and at other times desire to receive the Honour of Knighthood from the King after they were Earls and our Kings have sometimes sent their Eldest Sons to be Knighted by other Kings And a Villain which Sr Edward Coke stileth a Sokeman or one that holdeth in Socage is not by the Law of Nations and Arms to
faceret And that greatly learned man could not but acknowledge that there were afterwards resumptions of Crown-Lands in the Reign of King Henry the 2. the alienation of some of the Crown-Lands severely charged upon King Richard the 2d Anno. 33. H 6. by an Act of Parliament and in the reign of King Edward the 4th at the request and upon the Petition of the Commons and were much more needfull then those that had been before in the Reign of King Henry the 2. made Leoline Prince of Wales to come and do him Homage and Baliel King of Scotland attending in our Pâ—rliament to arise from his State placed by the Kings and Stand at the Bar of the House of Peers whilst a cause was pleaded against him And it might not be improbable that that League betwixt that King and the aforesaid Christian Princes might be entred not amongst the Common Rolls and records of England but of Gascoigne where it was most proper and that some Vestigia of his great Actions might be there found of it as well as that of the 22th Year of his Reign of a Summons of divers English Barons to come to his great Councell or Parliament in England and it could not be unknown to that great man of learning that as Authors and Writers have learned and Writ one out of another so have many Wrote that singly and alone which many of the Contemporaries have either not been Informed of or did not think fit to Mention the dreadfull plagues of Egipt and the most remarkable that ever were in so short a Time inflicted by God upon any Nation of the Earth since the universall Deluge destroying all but the Righteous Noah his Family the several Kinds of Creatures perserved with him the passage of Moses thorough the Red-Sea in his conduct of the People of Israel into the land of Canaan were not to be thrown out of the belief of Christians all others Venerating the Sacred Scriptures because Plato or Pythagoras travailing into Egypt in the inquest of learning have given us no particular accompts thereof and it will ever be as truly said as it hath been that Bernardus non videt omnia the ancient institution rites ceremonies of the most Honourable Garter is not to be suspected because our Law and Statute books have not made such Discoveries Recherches or a worthy and most elaborate Record thereof as the learned and Judicious Mr Elias Ashmole hath lately done or our Glauviles Book de legibus Consuetudinibus Angliae is not to fall under the question whether he was the Lord Chief Justice of England that Wrote it because there hath not been so much heed taken of him as ought to be by our Common-Law Year-Books or Memorialls of Cases adjudged in our Courts of Justice and later Law Books when the learned Pancirollo in his Book de deperditis Ac etiam de novis repertis and the exquisitely learned Salmuthius in his Comment or Annotations thereupon or the learned Pasquier in his Recherches and our ever to be honored Mr Selden in his rescuing from the Injuries of Time those many before hidden truths which he in his history of Tithes Jauus Anglorum Analett Brittanniae Titles of honor de Synedriis Judeorum uâ—or Jus naturae Gentium Historia Ead mei cum multis aliis and those very many discoveries of learning and Truth which the world must ever confess ought to be attributed to his walking in unknown paths nullius ante trita pede have very Justly escaped any such suspicions and that long and Eminent Treaty for Peace at Nimiguen for divers Years last past managed by most of the Monarchs of Europe and their concerns wherein the care and mediation of our King in the charge of his Plenipotentiaries have not wanted gratefull Testimonialls of the many very much concerned Kings and Princes in the putting a stop to the Warrs effusion of Blood and devastation of so great a part of Christendom is not or ought to be placed amongst the non liquets or Doubtings of after Ages because which by some Incuria or neglect of our Recording of it amongst our Archives which the more is to be pittied is not much unlikely to happen it is not to be met with amongst our Records or Historians When the so much Deservedly admired speculations and Experiments of the excelently Learned Sr Francis Bacon Lord Verulam in his Philosophy more then Aristotle and many others had made those Discoveries of des Cartes Depths and Investigations of our Sr Kenelme Digby into the most abstruse parts of Learning and that great addition now every where allowed to be true to that most necessary and usefull Art or Faculty of Physick of the circulation of the Blood in the Bodies of men first Discovered and made apparent by our late Learned Doctor Harvey though the Egiptian Arabian and Grecian Doctors and the greatly Famed Galen and Hypocrates had in all their labors knowledge and Practice not so much as taken notice of it were never the worse but rather much the better that former ages and men in the length of Art and the short Curriculum of their lives often intermitted with Sickness and the Cares and Troubles of the World had no sooner communicated it neither ought the Truth and value of our allways highly to be esteemed Seldens Labours in the vindication of our Kings Sovereignty in our Brittish Seas suffer any abate because no Englishman before had undertaken it or of his learned Observations and Comments upon Sr John Fortescues Book de laudibus Legum Angliae because he did not mention or had Discovered that that over-tossed and turmoiled worthy and learned Chancellor was after the Expulsion of the 3 Henrys 4. 5. 6th of the House of Lancaster under the later of whom he had Faithfully served from the Inheritance of the Crown of England by King Edward the Fourth with his better Title enforced publickly to beg his Pardon and with much ado and by Writing and delivering unto him a Book contradicting the Title of those former Kings and asserting that of his own which appeareth in that Act of Parliament in the 13th Year of that King for the Reversall of his Attainder And those disturbers and misuses of our Fundamental Laws might do well to sit down and consider that our uncontrolled every where in England venerable Littleton can certify us that if a man hold Land of his Lord by Fealty only for all manner of service it behoveth that he ought to do some service to his Lord for if the Tenant ought to do no manner of service to his Lord or his Heirs then by long Continuance of time it would grow out of memory whether the Land were holden of the Lord or his Heirs and thereupon the Lord may loose his Escheat of the Land or some other Forfeiture so it is reason that the Lord and his Heirs have some service done unto them to prove
and testify that the Land is holden of them and that without taking away the Fealty and repealing the Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy the Duty and Oaths of the Subjects remained as they did whilst they held their Land in Capite and by Knight Service Which probably as may sadly be lamented could never have hapned if the later men of the Law in England had not by the space of something more then Forty Years last past leaped over as it may be feared they have overmuch done the successive learned labours and Books in a long process of Time in the Reign of our Regnant Kings and Princes divers Judges and Sages of our Laws Recording from Time to Time Cases Judgments Decrees and Dicisions maturely and Deliberately adjudged therein But too much neglected those guidings better guides and faithfull Directors the Civill and Feudall Laws and suffred their Studies and practice to be imployed and incouraged in the Factious Seâ—iâ—ious Rebellious principles of those Times by following the gross Mistakes of Sr Edward Coke in his Discontent malevolence and Ill will unto the necessary and legall Regalities of the Crown and Idolizing as he did those grand parcells of forgery and Imposture entitled the Mirrour of Justice and the Modus tenendi Parliamentum and their neglecting the readings of Glanvile Bracton and Britton and other good Authors And the Civil Law was the Parent and Mother of many of the maximes and principles of that which is now called our Common Law And those men of the Law who without Books subsistence or Estates when they went beyond the Seas with their Sovereign and had not there the opportunities of the Knowledge or help of the Records of the Kingdom that might have been their best Instructers were for the most part but Young Gentlemen Born and Bred in the times of our Distempered Parliaments as those were that Tarried here who walked along with the Rebellion too much adhered unto them and came Weather-beaten again with his Majesty had understood as they might have done the Originall Foundation and Continuance of our Monarchick Government But King Edward the 1. who had passed over and overcome so many Hardships Difficulties Misfortunes and Storms of State was so unwilling to be afraid of a part of his Unquiet Baronage or to Humour the popularity and ignorance of any of the Common People or to be in fear of them or of any their Factious or Seditious Machinations making what hast his affairs would permit to return into England where his father having by his Death escaped the restless conflicts of a long and troublesome Reign and his Exequies and Ceremonies of buriall performed Róbertus Kilwarby Cantuariensis Archiepiscopus Gilbertus de Claro Comes Gloverinae a man that had been in Armes and opposite enough against his father and himself in the former convulsions of State and John Warren Earl of Surrey saith Samuel Daniel went up to the High Altar cum aliis Praelatis ac Regni proceribus Londiniis apud novnm Templum convenerunt Edwardum absentem Dominum suum Ligeam recognoverunt paternique Successorem honoris ordinaverunt assensu Reginae non Populi and before his return into England John Earl Warren and Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester in the Abby Church of Westminster sware unto him Fealty without asking leave of the People and proclaimed him King although they knew not whether he were Living or Dead caused a new great Seal to be made and appointed six Commissioners for the Custody of his Treasure and Peace whilst he remained in Palastine where by an Assassin feigning to Deliver Letters unto him he received 3 Dangerous Wounds with a poysoned knife then said and believed to have been cured by the Love of his Lady that Paragon of Wives and Women who sucked the Poyson out of the Wound when others refused the adventure and after 3 Years Travail from the time of his setting forth many conflicts and Disappointments of his aids and Ends left Acon well fortified and manned and returned homewards in which as he travailed he was Royally feasted by the Pope and princes of Italy whence he came towards Burgundy where he was at the foot of the Alpes met by Divers of the English Nobility and being Challenged to a Tournament by the Earl of Chalboun a man of extraordinary Renown Successfully hazarded his Person to manifest his valour thence came again into England with the great advantages of his Wisdom Courage and Reputation assisted by the memory of the fortunate Battle at Evesham and his Actions in the East SECT XVIII Of the Methods and Courses which King Edward the 1. held and took in the Reformation and Cure of the Former State Diseases and Distempers KIng Edward the 1st was together with his Queen Crowned at Westminster by Robert Archbishop of Canterbury Alexander King of Scotland and John Duke of Britanny attending that Solemnity which being finished he shortly after forced Leoline Prince of Wales who had taken part with Montfort against his Father King Henry the third to do him Homage and after a Revolt imprisoned and beheaded him did the like to his brother David and United Wales as a Province to England made the Statute of Snowden considered and perused their Laws allowed some repealed others collected some and added new as he well might there do for the Prince or King which Governed Wales had always used so to do and appointed one to give his assent to the Election of Bishops and Abbots And when The Pope demanded 8 yeares arreares for the rent or tribute of the Kingdoms of England and Ireland enforced from King John did by his letter answer that his Parliament was dissolved before it came and that sine Praelatis et Proceribus communicato concilio sanctitati suae super praemissa non potuit respondere et Jurejurando in coronatione suam praestito fuit obstrictus quod jura Regni sui servabit illibata nec aliquod quod diadema tangat Regni ejusdem no such clause or promise being in the Coronation Oath ut nihil absque illorum requisito concilio faceret Sent to Franciscus Accursius Docto of laws resident at Bononia in Italy the son of the famous Accursius the Civil lawyer to come with his wife family into England by his writ to the Sheriff of Oxfordshire commanded him to deliver unto the said Doctor Accursius the King 's manor house and castle of Oxford then no mean place for him and his wife to Inhabit Did so imitate the wisdom and providence of the Roman and Caesarean laws as Augustus Caesar and other of the Succeeding Emperours had done as he gave unto men learned in the laws which was more for the peoples good then in their suits and actions at law to court and live under the protection and humours of their popular Patroni's libertatem respondendi to give councell and advice to their clients in their concernments at law and
before mentioned Congress at Montpelier in France understand that he knew how to perform what he had promised and undertaken And it was high time to do it and look about him when the Benificiarii his Tenants in Capite would not be content to be gratefull and allways keep in remembrance the Obligations incumbent upon their Lands Estates Ancestors and Posterities past or to come and their Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy grounded thereupon unless they might so work upon the favours Indulgence and many times necessities of their Kings and Princes as to procure as much as they could of their Regall power and Authority into their hands as an addition to the many Manors and Lands formerly bestowed upon their forefathers severall Precious Flowers of the Crown as Fines and Amerciaments Assize of Bread and Beer Felons and Outlaws Goods Year Day and Wast Deodands Waifs Estreats and Herriot fossa furtas Pillory and Tumbrell c. And the then over-powering Clergy with their Multitudes of Abbotts Priors and several orders of Monks Fryars and Nuns working upon our former Kings and Princes Devotions and Liberalities heightned and procured by their too many tales and fictions of Miracles and Relicques attracted unto themselves and their several Houses and Societies as much of their Kings Regalities as could with any Justice to themselves or the rest of their Subjects and people or any reason be required or asked of them And were Anciently so fearfull to loose what they should not in that manner have gained as the Charter and Patent-Rolls of many of our ancient Kings never wanted the company of the many Confirmations of such kind of unbecoming grants and it may moreover justly be attributed unto the over-much Clemency and Indulgence of our Common Parents Kings and Princes that in their many Acts of Resumptions of no small quantities of Manors and Lands aliened from the Crown of England which as to its real Estate in Lands is almost reduced to an Exinanition or much too little for a Royal Revenue they have notwithstanding without any diminution permitted their Feudatories to enjoy those very many Regalities which made them live like so many Subreguli or Petty Kings or Princes under them and leave them so far exceeding the Old Saxon Heptarchy as Ten thousand Manors in England and Wales unto their great Regalities and Liberties can amount unto no less then a strange kind of Poliarchy in a Monarchy which like Esau and Jacob Strugling in the Womb never after agreed together which that great Prince King Edward the 1. suis aliorum miseriis edoctus did endeavour to prevent and leave it to his Heirs and Successors as it ought to be a most Ancient great and entire Monarchy Was so exact and carefull in the Causing of Justice to be done unto his people and Subjects as by himself or his Justices Itinerant and Juries Impannelled to enquire according to certain Articles given unto them in writing unto which they were to answer negatively or affirmatively not as is now used by the Justices of the Court of Kings Bench twice every Year upon the Impannelling of the grand Juries of the County of Middlesex or by the Judges in their several Circuits to the Grand Juries of the several Counties or places by their Learned speeches and recommending unto them what they should enquire and present what they know and not tarry untill by chance or malice it be brought unto them which for the most part proves to be as little effectual as if they should be required to have a care of their Bill of Fare or what good provision of Meat and Wine was to be had at Dinner from whence well Luxuriated and Tobaccoed as unto not a few of them if they get home at any reasonable time of the night they have done their Countrey service that they have and all is well and for the little that they know is like to continue But it was not thought to have been enough in that our great Justiciar King Edward the first his Reign when he Commissionated some of his Justices to Impannell Juries in every Ward of London where it was found and returned upon their Oaths in Anno 3. of his Reign Quod Civitas London cum suis pertin cum Com. Middlesex tenetur in Capite de Domino Rege pro certa Annua pentione soluta ad Scaccarium Dominum Regis per Vicecom London Quod Dominus Radolphus de Berners Mil. ten unum messuagium duo molend aquatic cum pertin in paroch Sancti Botolphi extra Algate quae vocantur the Knights fee quod quidem Tenementum debet invenire Domino Regi unum servientem Armatum in uno Turretto Turris London per xl dies tempore guerra ad proprios sumptus in ultima guerrae fecit defalc c. Dicunt etiam quod in Com. Midd. sunt 7 Hundred Wapp Tithing pertin ad Civit. London Palat. Westminster Keneton Judaismum Turrim Civit. London in manu sua Inquisitio facta per 12 Jur. de Warda Anketili de Alneranzo Civis Aldermanni London super certis Articulis ex parte Domini Regis E. Anno ejusdemtertio apud Sanctum Martinum magnum London eisdem Jur. tradit In which dicunt quod Civit. London Turr. ejusdem Westm. Com. Midd. sunt de Dominico Domini Regis quod reddant Domino Regi per Annum 400l Item dicunt quod Wynton Northampton Southampton Oxon Bristoll Ebor. al. Civitat Burg. quorum nomina ignorant sunt de Dominico Domini Regis reddunt certam pecuniae Summam annuatim sed quantum ignorant Et quod Dominus Johannes quondam Rex Angliae pater Domini H. Regis dedit Elianorae tunc temporis Reginae Angliae Ripam Regiam in Civitate London quae fuit de Jure est de Dominico Domini Regis In which that great princes inquisitions and desire of administring Justice to his people It is not to pass unobserved that amongst all his Quo Warranto's what Liberties were Claimed in every part of the Nation and every man that would enjoy them driven not to conceal but Claim them there was untill the 22 year of his Reign when the disused house of Commons first erected in and by Simon Montfort's aforesaid Rebellion was again ordained to be elected with some modification there was not any claim of Parliament Liberty nor in any of our after Kings Reigns nor is it at any time to be called a Liberty to be Crowded under that Denomination for that it was but Transitory not fixt to any person or Land and was but vaga incerta that opinion of a would be Learned Lawyer and Recorder in the County of Surry reprehended openly by a Judge that it was a privilege or liberty of Parliament to use some Art by a Counterfeit Deed or otherwise to make himself to be a Freeholder with an Intent to be a Parliament-man Which Jury presented Pourprestures in stopping up the way
the Fryday before St Michael in the same Year as q'eux Prelatz ove le Clergie par eux mesmes les Counties Barons par eux mesmes Chivalers Gentz des Countes Gentz de la commun par eux mesmes en treteront imparterent temps 4. Vendredi prochein suont mesmes le Vendredi en plein Parlement les Prelatz par eux mesmes les Countes Barons par eux mesmes les Chivalers des Countes par eux mesmes puis toutz en commun responderont and the like we read of the Prelats Earls Barons and great men eux mesmes Chivalers Gentz des Countes of the Knights Citizens and Burgesses and Commons separate consultations by themselves and their several answers to the Articles and businesses propounded to them in the Parliaments of 13. E. 3. N. 6. 10. 11. part 2. N. 5. to 9. 14. E. 3. N. 6. 11. 17. E. 3. N. 9. 10. 11. 55. 58. Ro. Parl. 20. E. 3. N. 10. 11. Ro. Parl. 25. E. 3. N. 6. 7. Ro. Parl. 28. E. 3. N. 55. 56. Ro. Parl. 36. E. 3. N. 6. 7. Ro. Parl. 40. E. 3. N. 8. Ro. Parl. 42. E. 3. N. 7. Ro. Parl. 47. E. 3. N. 6. Ro. Parl. 50. 51. when the Commons had a Speaker and departed to their accustomed place in the Chapter-House of the Abby of Westminster And â—aith Sr William Dugdale at the Parliament holden at Gloucester in Anno Domini 1378. in the Reign of King Richard the 2d in refectorio de armorum legibus tractabatur aulae autem hospitium communi Parliamento erat deputata Porro in camera hospitii quae camera Regis propter ejus pulchritudinem antiquitus vocata est concilium secretum inter Magnates versabatur ac in domo capitulari concilium commune In the said Kings Reign the Knights and Burgesses were called by name in presence of the King In the great alterations betwixt the Lords and Commons and King Henry the 4th in the 9th Year of his Reign and a pacification and endeavour to reconcile the Lords and Commons the King sent unto the Commons to come before him and the Lords In a Parliament holden the 13th year of his Reign the Commons of Parliament were called at the door of the painted Chamber in the Kings Palace of Westminster and came which shews that they did not usually sit there In the 33. of King Henry the 8. The Duke of Suffolk then Lord Steward commanded the Clerk of the Parliament to call the Names of the House of Commons unto which every one answered being all in the upper house below the Barr and then the King came Nor was or is it likely to be within the verge or neighbourhood of any truth or reason that such an inferior sort of men as some citizens and Burgesses to be elected out of so many Citys and Boroughs as those enforced writs of Elections in Anno 49. H. 3. Designed when the Nobility and Gentry and the Laws of those times not only held but believed it to be a disparagement to a whole Kindred to Marry with the Daughters of Burgesses who might be understood to be either their Tenants or Dependents should presume or be allowed to Sit in one and the same Chamber room or place with their King sitting in his throne or chair of estate encompassed with his more noble and greatest councell the Lords Spirituall and Temporal the Peers in Parliament where none but the Peers themselves and their Assistants are permitted to sit and do then also sit uncovered when the civill and Caesarian Laws and the Laws and reasonable Customes of nations do so distinguish betwixt the noble and ignoble as if a Gentleman be present the ignoble or common persons shall arise from their seats and give diligent heed when he speaks and it is a peculiar honor due unto gentry to sit upon benches or seats and those who are otherwise are not to take the right hand of them or the chiefest seats in the company or to sit next the Judge before them are not to be so much valued in their testimonies and more credit ought to be given to the Oaths of two Gentlemen produced as witnesses then to a multitude of the vulgar or ignoble persons though many and great privileges are and have been in the civill Laws given and allowed to the Honorable Order of Knighthood and that our Kings and common laws have given unto them great respects and privileges which are and have been to these our dreggy and worst of times enjoyed yet it can be no disparagement to that ever to be esteemed Order and Degree to have it affirmed and believed that it hath been from the 21th year of the Reign of King Edward the 1st to this our present century and scarcely slipt out of the memories of aged men no unusuall thing that many of the Knights of the shires and Burgesses elected to be members of the house of Commons have been the Secretaries Stewards Feodaries or domestick Servants Reteyners Tenants by Knights-service or Petit Serjeanty Castle-guard or managers of some part of the Lands and Estates of the Nobility and great men of the Kingdom And as to that which some that are unwilling to Submit to the powers of truth and right reason will be ready to object that in the 3. year of the Reign of King Henry the 8th a Committee of the Lords have come into the House of Commons to confer with them and probably saith Mr Elsing might during the time of that Conference sit with them yet it was but pro hac vice and not constantly or at any other time And when King James in the 7th year of his Reign was pleased to order the Lords and Commons to sit in the Court of Requests the Lords on the right hand by themselves and the Commons on the left they did then sit distinctly as out of their separate houses to be Spectators of the creation of Prince Henry to be Prince of Wales and could be no more an argument for those contrivers who are enforced to pick up any thing that they can imagine may be for their purpose then that of the fatal over-eager prosecution of the late Earle of Strafford at the suit instance of the house of commons upon their unlucky bill of Attainder in Westminster-hall whether his late Majesty afterwards murthered and martyred had from their separate and distinct houses for that only business dislocated and transferred them SECT XXIV What the clause in the Writs for the Election of Knights Citizens and Burgesses to come unto the Parliament ad faciendum consentiendum do properly signify and were intended by the said Writs Of Election to be Members of the House of Commons in Parliament FOr Assensum dare est probari l. 2. c. de relation Consensus denotat aequalitates sententiarum cogitationis voluntatis And facere duplici modo accipitur aut
easily take effect be put in execution and that all occasions of Envy Dislike Hatred and Calumny might be taken from the Prince and his Ministers of State which advised or promoted them which as Zanzini di Recanati hath reported was a custom and usage of our Neighbours the French in and since the Reign of their Charlemayn and the succeeding Kings untill the Reigns of some of their later Kings and Princes Which could not be without some variations in the Writs of our Kings and Princes Summoning or calling some of their Subjects their great Councels or Parliaments which may be fully evidenced SECT XXV Of the many Variations and Alterations of our Kings Writs of Summons to their great Councels or Parliaments Excluding some and taking in others to be assistant in that high and honourable Court with its Resummons Revisions drawing of Acts of Parliament or Statutes by the Judges or the Kings Learned Councel in the Laws and other requisites therein necessarily used by the Sole and Individual Authority of our Kings and Princes FOr in the 22. or 23. E. 1. the Sheriffs were authorised to Elect Citizens and Burgesses which they have since used to do by their precepts to the Mayors Bayliffs c. The Writ for the City of London Anno 26. E. 1. was to Elect two Citizens another in 29 for 4 1. E. 2. for 2 32. E. 3. no more Anno 34. E. 3 to Elect 4 and had usually Elected and returned 3 or 4 Citizens to serve in Parliament upon sundry Writs requiring them only to Elect two as in Annis 6. 7. 8. and 15. E. 2. Annis 1. 6. 9. 11. 12. 14. 20. 21. 22 E. 3. and Mr Pryn's opinion was that such kind of Elections were made good and effectual only by the subsequent allowances of our Kings unto whom all those returns were made and who in those times determined all the rights of Elections and numbers of the Knights Citizens and Burgesses to be elected And heretofore Burgesses only of every Borough in Dorsetshire by assent of the rest elected and returned their Burgesses in the County Courts on the day of the Knights election all by one joint Indenture and so continued to do not only in 3. 5. 8. 9. H. 5. 7. and 20. H. 6. but after the Statute of 23. Henry 6. as the Indenture of 33. of Henry 6. doth attest In 27. E. 1. no Judges appear to have been Summoned to that Parliament Nor to another in the same Year Divers of the Writs of Summons in the Reigns of Edward 1. E. 2. E. 3. did specify the causes of Summoning the Parliament but for the most part they were generall as at this day and none speciall after the 7th Year of the Reign of Richard 2. The Parliament being prorogued for that the King could not be present the same day new Writs of Summons have been antiently sent forth and another day appointed as in 6. E. 1. 23. E. 1. 11. E. 2. Edward the First in the Thirty Third Year of his Reign having Summoned a Parliament to meet at Westminster die Martis in quindena Purificationis beatae Mariae Virginis proximo pro quibusdam negotiis regnum suum Angliae nec non stabilimentum terrae suae Scotiae directing his Writ to Edward Prince of Wales his Son aliis Magnatibus proceribus Regni sui to be there tractatur concilium suum impensur did the 22d day of that January direct other Writs unto them declaring that at that day propter aliqua impedimenta legittima postmodum a latere emergentia ibidem commode interesse non possumus quod nos taedet vobis mandamus quod die dominica proxima post festum sancti Mathei Apostoli proximo futuri ibidem personaliter intersitis nobiscum super dictis negotiis tractaturi hoc nullate 〈…〉 s omittátis And in the same Year added a clause in the later end of his Writ of Summons et habeas ibi nomina praedictorum militum Civium et Burgensium et hoc breve scire facias eisdem quod propter arduitatem negotiorum praedictorum celeriorem expeditionem eorundem volumus primo die Parliamenti personaliter interesse per quod nolumus nec intendimus aliquem ad dictum Parliamentum Summonitum quod eodem primo die personaliter non inter sit habere ullo modo excusatum c. In the 34th Year of his Reign Summoned the Earls and Barons to come to a Parliament ad tractandum de super auxilio ad Edwardum primogenitum filium Regis militem faciendum In the 35 Year of his Reign having Summoned a Parliament to be holden at Caerlisle in Octabis Sancti Hillarii in expectation that Petrus Sabinensis Episcopus a Cardinal of the Church of Rome and a Legate of the Popes whose Predecessor or himself had been a great Agent against him and his father for the Pope the Kings of France and the unquiet part of the Baronage in the sad Afflictions of the Crown would be there against that time Et idem Cardinalis came not to him to Carlisle untill the Sunday after Mid-Lent called Passion Sunday quae nunc instat did afterwards The 22d of February then next following Send his Writ to Thomas Earl of Lancaster his Nephew a man of great power and Estate and a darling of the People Commanding him in fide dilectione quibus tenetur firmiter injungentes quod dictis die loco modis omnibus personaliter intersitis nobiscum super praemissis habituri colloquium tractaturi vestrumque Concilium impensuri hoc sub foriffactura omni quae nobis foriffacere poteritis nullatenus omittatis Et eodem modo scribitur Episcopis aliis Baronibus King Edward the 2d his Son in the first Year of his Reign Summoned a Parliament to consult about his Coronation burying of his Father and the Solemnities thereof and his nuptialls and commanded the Archbishop of Canterbury to Summon the Chapter of his Church Archdeacon and Clergy of his Diocess the Dean and Archdeacon in their proper persons and the Chapter by one and the Clergy by two procuratores idoneos ad faciendum consentiendum his quae tunc de communi concilio favente Domino ordinari contigerit super negotiis antedictis hoc nullo modo omittatis Eodem modo scribitur Episcopis Lincoln London Cicestren Oxon. In the 2d Year of his Reign the Sheriff of Yorkshire returned a Writ of Summons to the Parliament that he had according to the Tenor of the Writ made Proclamation that none should come armed to the Parliament Some of our Kings after Writs of Summons to some Temporal Lords and Bishops have countermanded them and commanded others to continue at their Charges In the 7th Year of his Reign a Parliament being called to be holden at Westminster the King understanding that Johannes de Insula and some others had appointed the Assizes
by them for that the Soldiers and Mariners were not paid And to appoint one honest man out of every County to come along with them to see and examine their accounts 37. E. 3. The cause of the Summons was first declared before the names of the Receivers and Tryers were published according to the use at this day and of all Parliaments since 29. E. 3. And it is said in the end of the shewing the cause of the Summons Et outre le dit Roy volt que si nul se sent greever mett avent son petition en ce Parlement ci ne avoir convenable report sur ce ad assignee ascuns de ses Clercks en le Chancellarie Recevoirs des ditzpetitions In eodem Anno Proclamation was made in Westminster Hall by the Kings command that all the Prelates Lords and Commons who were come to the Parliament should withdraw themselves to the painted Chamber and afterwards on the sâ—m◠〈◊〉 there being in the same chamber the Chancellor Treasurer 〈◊〉 some of the Prelates Lords and Commons Sr Henry Greeâ— the Kings Chief Justice told them in English much of the French Language being then made use of in the Parliament-Rolls and Petitions that the King was ready to begin the Parliament but that many of the Prelates Lords and Commons who were Summoned were not yet come wherefore he willeth that they should depart and take their ease untill Monday Anno 40. E. 3. The Lord Chancellor concluded his speech touching the Summons The Kings will is que chescun que ce sont grievez mett devant sa petition a ces sont assignez per lui de ces recevoir aussi de les triers Six days were not seldom allowed for receiving and trying petitions which were sometimes prolonged two or three days ex gratia Regis and the reason supposed for such short prefixions was because the sitting of Parliaments in former times continued not many days Toriton a Town in Devonshire was exempted from sending of Burgesses to Parliament and so was Colchester in 6. R. 2. in respect of new making the walls and fortifying that Town for Five Years In divers Writs of Summons of King Edward 3. He denied to accept of proxies ea vice 6. 27. And 39. E. 3. Proxies were absolutely denied ista vice 6. R. 2. And 11. R. 2. The like with a clause in every of those Writs of Summons legitimo cessante impedimento Anno 45. E. 3. Ista vice being omitted a clause was added Scientes quod propter arduitatem negotiorum Procuratores seu excusationem aliquam legittimo cessante impedimento pro vobis admittere nolumus and thereupon the Lords that could not come obtained the Kings License and made their proxies and although at other times they did make Proxies without the Kings License yet in such cases an Affidavit was made of their sickness or some other Lawfull impediment as in 3. 6. 26. And 28. H. 8. The antient form and way of such Licenses in 22d E. 3. being in French and under the Kings Privy-Seal as Mr Elsing hath declared and therein the Abbot of Selby's Servant was so carefull as he procured a Constat or Testimoniall under the Kings Privy-seal of his allowance of the said procuration and another was granted to the said Abbot in 2. H. 4. under the signet only Eodem Anno The Parliament having granted the King an ayd of 22 s. and 3 d. out of every parish in England supposing it would fully amount to Fifty Thousand Pounds but the King and his Councell after the Parliament dismissed finding upon an examination that the rate upon every parish would fall short of the summ of mony proposed for that supply did by his Writs command the Sheriffs of every County to Summon only one Knight for every County and one Citizen and Burgess for every City and Borough that had served in the said Parliament for the avoiding of troubles and expences to appear at a Councell to be holden at Winchester to advise how to raise the intended summ of money Anno 46. E. 3. An ordinance being made that neither Lawyer or Sheriff should be returned Knights of the shire the Writs received an addition touching the Sheriff only which continues to this day viz. Nolumus autem quod tu vel aliquis alius Vicecomes shall be Elected but the King willeth that Knights and Serjeants of the best esteem of the County be hereafter returned Knights in the Parliament Eodem Anno There was no Judges Summoned to the Parliament In Anno 50. Some particular Knights were specially commanded by the King to continue in London 7 days longer then others after the Parliament ended to dispatch some publique affairs ordained by Parliament and had wages allowed for those 7 days to be paid by their Countries Some being sent from Ireland to attend the Parliament a Writ was sent by the King to James Boteler Justice of Ireland to leavy their expences upon the Commonalty of that Kingdom which varied from those for England After the bill which in the usuall language and meaning of those times signified no more then a petition delivered the Chancellour willed the Commons to sue out their Writs for their fees according to the custom after which the Bishops did arise and take their leaves of the King and so the Parliament ended Anno 51. E. 3. the Prince of Wales representing the King in Parliament Sate in the Chair of State in Parliaments after the cause of Summons declared by the Lord Chancellour or by any others whom the King appointeth he concludes his speech with the Kings Commandment to the House of Commons to choose their Speaker who being attended by all the House of Commons and presented by them unto sitting in his Chair of Estate environed by the Lords Spirituall and Temporall hath after his allowance and at his retorn and not before one of the Kings maces with the Royall armes thereupon allowed to be carried before him at all time dureing the Parliament with one of the Kings Serjeants at armes to bear it before him and to attend him during the time of his Speakership Anno 1. Richardi 2. The Parliament beginning the 13th of October was from time to time continued untill the 28th of November then next ensuing and the petitions read before the King who after answers given fist bonement remercier les Prelats Seigneurs Countes de leur bones graundez diligences faitz entouz l'Esploit de dites besognes requestes y faitzpur commun profit de leur bien liberal done au liu grantez en defens De tout le Roialme commandant as Chivaliers de Contes Citizens des Citeos Burgeys des Burghs quils facent leur suites pour briefs avoir pour leurs gages de Parlement en manere accustumes Et leur donast congie de departir In a Parliament of 5. R. 〈◊〉 there were severall adjournments and the Knights and
the King to have the Answers to their Petitions in writing in manner of a Patent under the great Seal of England for every County City and good Town one Patent for the comfort of the People which the King granted by the advice of the Praelates and Grands most of which were the Judges Officers of State and Privy Councellors of the King which Patent was sealed and entred in the Patent Roll under which was written la Charter ensealer pour les Communs After which the King summoned three Parliaments in 20 21 and 22. But no Statute was made in either of them The next Statute was made in Anno 25 E. 3. in which year the King had two Parliaments and Statutes made but mention nothing by whom they were made only the Commons do pray that the Petitions reasonably prayed by the Commons be granted confirmed and sealed before the departure of the Parliament And in the same Parliament n. 43. The Commons praying that the Statute made the last Parliament touching Reservations be published and put in Execution Unto which the King answered Let the Statute be viewed and recited before the Councel and if need be in any point let it be better declared and amended as the Statute of the King and the Realm be kept By which it appeareth that the Councel penned the Statutes Anno 27. E. 3. The King summoned a great Councel whither many Commons were sent and it was agreed that the Ordinances of the said Councel should be recited in the next Parliament Anno 28. E. 3. n. 16. The Commons prayed that the Ordinances of the Staple and all the other Ordinances made at the last great Councel which they have seen with great deliberation be affirmed in this Parliament and held for a Statute to endure for ever Unto which the King and Lords agreed with one mind so always that if any thing be to be put out let it be done in Parliament when need shall be and not in any other manner And accordingly there is an Addition at the end of the first Chapter against Provisors as in the Statute Roll and Print but not in rot Concilii Anno 27. nor yet in the Parliament Roll de Anno 28. E. 3. That whole Addition seeming to be added by the Councel alone and yet shewed to the Parliament for their consent before the said Statute was published And it is observable by that of 27 E. 3. n. 43. and this of 28 E. 3. n. 16. That the Statutes were most usually made long after the Parliament ended although in the Parliaments of 14 15. and 18 E. 3. they were engrossed and sealed in the time of Parliament sedente curia Statutes were made when some of our Kings were beyond Sea which happened often in the Raigns of E. 3. and H. 5. Anno 25. E. 1. a Parliament was held at London when the King was in Flanders by his Son Edward and the Statute made therein was put into the form of a Charter or Patent Anno 13. E. 3. were two Parliaments whilst the King was beyond the Seas but no Petitions or Statutes in either Anno 14. E. 3. a Parliament was holden in the Kings absence beyond the Seas by his Son Edward Duke of Cornwal Guardian of England but no Petition of the Commons nor Statute Anno 23. E. 3. a Parliament was held in the Kings absence by Lyonell the Kings Son Guardian of England and divers Petitions of the Commons were then answered but no Statute made thereof Anno 51. E. 3. the King could not be present at the beginning of the Parliament but granted a Commission to Richard Prince of Wales to begin the same Et ad faciendum ea quae pro nobis et per nos facienda fuerint And yet the Lords went to the King lying sick at Sheene the day before the Parliament ended where he gave his Royal Assent unto the Answers made unto the Petitions and commanded them to be read the next day in full Parliament but yet no Statute was made thereon notwithstanding the Commission for the Commission was but for matters to be done in Parliament as the words Ibidem facienda fuerint do import Anno 8. H 5. a Parliament was held in England by Humfrey Duke of Gloucester the King being then beyond the Seas wherein the Commons petitioned n. 16. That whereas it had been told them by divers Lords in this Parliament that the Petitions to be delivered to the Duke of Gloucester Guardian of England shall not be ingrossed before they be first sent beyond the Seas to our Soveraign Lord the King to have therein his Royal Assent and Advice wherefore may it please the said Lord Duke to ordain by authority of this present arliament That all the Petitions delivered by the Commons to the said Duke in the Parliament be answered and determined within this Realm of England during the said Parliament and if any Petition remain not answered and determined during the said Parliament that they be held for void and of none effect and that this Ordinance be of force and hold place in every Parliament to be held in the Realm in time to come To which was answered Soit avise per le Roy. Howsoever it may be conceived that all the Petitions with the Answers were sent to the King for his Advice and Assent which of them should be in the Statute and which not for in that Statute consisting of three Chapters which was made that year there are only two of the answers to their Petitions determined that is made into the said Statute viz. pet n. 4. in the 2d cap. and pet n. 7. in the 3 cap. The Commons did not Petition for any thing contained in the 5th cap. neither is there any thing recorded thereof in that Parliament Roll although one other of the Commons Petitions n. 15. for Women Aliens the Widows of Englishmen to have Dower was granted absolutely and the Petition n. 8. against Retail of sweet Wines altogether and the Petition n. 9. That Gascoign Wine should not be sold for above 6 d. the Gallon were granted with be it as is desired if it please the King Yet neitheir of these Petitions are in the Statute The usual time for making the Statutes was after the the end of every Parliament yea after the Parliament Roll was engrossed Anno 3. R. 2. The Temporal Lords met in the great Councel after the Parliament was ended where the Clerk read unto them the Enrolment of the Ordinance in that Parliament touching the power of the Justices of the Peace At which time it is probable the Statute was made and that Ordinance quite altered Anno 11 H. 4. n. 28. and 63. The Petitions and their Answers agreed on in Parliament are entred in the Roll with the rest which past into the Statute of that year and in the margent was written with another hand Respectuatur per dominum Principem concilium and neither of those are in the
Parliament and that learned and pacifique Prince having been much tempted thereunto in his great want of Money by an offer of 200000 l. per annum which was more than the whole profits of the Excise upon Ale Beer Cider Coffee c. All the Salaries Cheats Charges and Allowances Filchings Lurches and False Accompis deducted could or did amount unto that kind of Revenue being since his late Majesties death to be no more than a moyety thereof And these Tenures in Capite were so inherent in the Crown of England as divers of the learned Judges of England in their Arguments in the Exchequer-Chamber in the Raign of King Charles the Martyr made no Scruple to assert that the Tenures in Capite were of so high a nature that they could not be taken away by any Act of Parliament And to take away from our Kings and Princes the love and honour of the people as well as they had done the Tenures in Capite the Nerves and Sinews of our Monarchick Government it was the especial work and design of those Enemies of our former happiness to take away also the Honour of his Crown and Hospitality and could not think they had done all their work until they had thrown the Pourveyance into the bargain of the Tenures in Capite which nothing but the value of the Kingdom it self could make an Equivalent recompence or purchase and the unhappy contrivers thereof might have put a better value upon it when in Michaelmas Term in the third year of the Raign of King James the first all the Judges of England did certify that it was a Praerogative of the King at the Common Law and that all the Statutes which have been made to correct abuses in the Purveyances took not away the Purveyances but confirmed them Et qui tollit Iniquitatem firmat proprietatem confirmat usum And all those mischiefs done by one that unhappily might have taken more heed of an Assembly which some flatteringly called the Collected Wisdom of the Nation when he could not well esteem them so to be when by Fudling Drinking Bribing and all the base Cheats imaginable they had procured themselves to be made Members of that much miscalled Parliament And yet after his late Majesties miraculous restoration being advanced unto great preferments and at the last a Grand Minister of State did so think well of his own doings as he publickly at the Table of Sir Harbottle Grimston Master of the Rolls in Chancery-Lane in the hearing of many worthy persons Sir Nicholas Strode John Hern Esquire and others one of them yet living ready to testify it what a most especial Service he had done for the King and Kingdom when he was a Member in Parliament and known to be the Kings Sollicitor General by a motion without any the Kings privity or direction to dissolve and destroy the Tenures in Capite and accept a Recompence for them which Serjeant Glyn a former Grand Rebel to his Majesty and after his Restauration crept in as the most of them did and got to be Members of Parliament was ready to assist by the offer of a Recompence by an Excise upon Ale Beer Sider and Coffee a Limb of that Dutch Devil which they had made use of in their Rebellion and time of his late Majesties and now Majesties persecution At which the Company standing amazed and Sir Nicholas Strode said that he should never have fought for the late blessed Martyr or come to his setting up his Standard at Nottingham if he could have foreseen it the most of the Nation at that time and almost ever since verily believing that it had been the folly and evil doing of Sir Edward Hyde the late Lord Chancellor afterwards Earl of Clarendon and therefore was sufficiently railed upon Cursed and Banned for it and yet he was so Faultless and Innocent therein as it can be witnessed by the now Earl of Clarendon his Son Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and Lord privy Seal in the Kingdom of England that this overbold presumptuous motion of a Servant and Councel at Law of that unfortunate weather-beaten Prince not being at all informed how or by whom the project came to be first hatched or moved his late Majesty calling together his privy Councel and advising upon that most unhappy proposition wherein the Rebel Parliament in February 1647. had made some Vote Act or Ordinance against the aforesaid Tenures under the notion of the Court of Wards being but two years before his Royal Fathers Murther and Oliver Cromwel had made some Act of his Worships miscalled Parliament some few years after as it behoved for the destruction of those Tenures in Capite when he intended as much as he could to take away the Kingship and Monarchy until he could make himself fit to govern a foolish besotted rebellious people they having before not at all made any mention or request to have the said Court of Wards put down or the Tenures in Capite by their High and mighty 19 Propositions nor were any complaints of grievances made thereby nor in all our Parliament Records or Journals or Historians since or before the Raigns of King Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror doth there appear to have been any Petitions in Parliament against them neither in that as it were intended deposing Remonstrance of the 15th of December 1641. wherein nothing was omitted that might injure or calumniate per fas aut nefas the Kings Authority or Government there appears to have been nothing against either the Tenures in Capite or Court of Wards And it can be proved that the Royal Martyr during his imprisonment in the Isle of Wight had designed that if ever he came again to his Rights he would upon all his Crown or Chequer Leases reserve some military Services notwithstanding all which his late Majesties great want of present Money and some setled Revenue perswaded him to hearken more than otherwise his own great Judgment would have done The Earl of Radnor was much against their dissolution alledging that the constitution it self was good and was not in it self to be cast away by any Male-administration Sir Geffery Palmer was very much for the preservation of the Tenures and so were many other and the Lord Chancellor Clarendon very much and so greatly as he called to the said Sollicitor General and said will you also put down the Pourveyances saying with some passion by God we seem to be against the late Commonwealth and yet are acting for it And his late Majesty was so unwillingly drawn to be in Love with that ever to be deplored Parliament contrivance to decapitate the Monarchy and not only that but Ireland and render all the Inferiour part thereof to be in a paralitique or dead palsical over-benummed in its Members as before that Act passed he sent for one Mr. Darnel an ancient and experienced Clerk and Attorney in the Court of Wards and Liveries to propose some expedient for the Regulation of
upon their Soveraign at his Court at the three great Feasts of the year viz. Christmas Easter and Whitsontide as the excellently Learned Sir John Spelman hath informed us where the Bishops might give an accompt as in so many Parliaments which needed no Summons Prorogations or Adjournments for it was not to be doubted but that almost every man might understand when those Grand Feasts or Solemnities began or ended what had been done or was to be done in their several Diocesses and the Earls within their several Counties and Provinces of which Anciently they had a Subordinate Government and were to render accompts thereof When though not praecisely the very same in number as to the Festivals of the year wherein our Old King Alfred and many of our succeeding Kings and Princes used to be yearly attended by their Bishops Earls and Nobility whereby they might the better often understand the Circumvolutions and various Accidents in their Kingdom in every year might have some resemblance with that of the great Charles or Charlemain the hugely as Eginard who was his principal Secretary witnesseth powerful valiant and vertuous King of France which Kings Daughter Bertha our Saxon King Ethelbert is said to have married and at her Instance upon the preaching of Augustine the Monk to have converted himself and all his Subjects to the Christian Faith and Religion and celebrated with great Solemnity and Magnificence the great Festivals of Christmas and Easter which with the addition of another being the Feast of Pentiost was never omitted to be sumptuously kept by all our succeeding Kings until the latter end of the Raign of our K. H. the 3d. The French with great Solemnity holding their Parl. or great Coun at their 2 great Festivals of Christmas Easter Unless any other great Affairs caused them to summon those their great Councels at other times which coming after the Raign of 〈…〉 H. 3. to be 10 laid aside by reason of their many voyages into Normandy long lasting often Wars with France or Scotland troubles discords at home as Parliaments especially when after the 48th year of the Raign of King Henry the third the attendance upon Parliaments was much more troublesom to the Commons in Parliament after their admissions into that great assembly though they had their charges and expences in going tarrying and returning allowed them by King Edward the first which was first begun 〈◊〉 mon Montfort and his rebellious partners only in 〈◊〉 H. 3. When the King was their Prisoner in the 〈◊〉 two Knights of the Shire for the County of York wh 〈…〉 those that were afterwards permitted to be present by 〈◊〉 Edward 1. in the 22 year of his Raign and in the Raign of our succeeding Kings did esteem it to be a damage to to them in their other employments affairs and loss of time better becoming their capacities until the impressions and effassinations of Pride Fear Flattery Ambition and Self-Interest had within a small time after their aforesaid admission into Parliament incited or inticed them to be packt by Roger Mortimer Earl of March in the Raign of King E. 2. to Grant Aids to help to advance his wicked and accursed purposes as is expressed in one of the Articles and Charges against the said Earl in the 4th year of the Raign of King E. 3. or to set up for a Trade or Factory for themselves or their Friends or such as they could purchase as a lamentable experience hath of late years told us And we find no such Doings or Factorings before that or 49. of King Henry the 3d. For King Athelstone held a Parliament at Exeter and the succeeding Saxon and Danish Kings Summoned and held their Parliaments at several places and Dissolved and Met again as their occasions and the more weighty and extraordinary Affairs of the Kingdom required The Norman Conquerour and William Rufus and Henry the 1. other than at their aforesaid Grand Festivals did neither restrain themselves to certain times or places either as to the Summoning Continuing Proroguing or Adjourning of their more than common or ordinary business which requiring short Councels and an hasty Prosecution or putting into Actions what their deliberate Advices had resolved upon could necessarily produce no long continuances but were not seldom without Prorogations or Adjournments as Mr. Pryn and all our Ancient and Contemporary Writers and Historians have plentifully testified In the 9th year of the Raign of King Henry the 2d A Parliament was called at Westminster where by reason of the frowardness of the Archbishop Becket and his Suffragan Bishops the King was displeased and the Parliament ended In the 20th year of the Raign of that King he called a general Assembly of the Bishops and Nobility at Clarendon where John of Oxford the Kings Clerk was President of that Councel and a charge was given for the King that they should call to memory the Laws Ecclesiastical of his Grandfather King Henry the 1st and to reduce them to writing which was done the Archbishop and Bishops putting their Seals thereunto and taking much against the Arch-bishops will their Oaths to observe them In the 33th year of his Raign a Councel of Bishops Abbots Earls Barons both of the Clergy and Laity was holden at Gaynington sub Elemosinae titulo vitium rapacitatis included therein saith Walsingham requiring Aid towards the Wars of Jerusalem the Kings of England and France resolving to go thither in Person the King of England taking upon him and wearing the white Cross. A Parliament was called at Nottingham by King Richard the first after his return from his Captivity which continued but four days a Parliament in 7. Johannis a great Councel or Parliament was holden at London and Adjourned to Reading whither the King not coming at the day appointed it was three days after Adjourned to Wallingford In the Raign of King Henry the 3d. His Great Councels or Parliaments were many times Prorogued or Adjourned in whose Raign the Popes Nuncio Summoning the Praelates of England to give an Aid to the Pope they excused themselves and alledged that the King was sick and the Arch-bishops and Bishops were absent and that sine iis respondere non possunt nec debent whereupon the Nuncio endeavouring to adjourn that Convocation they refused to come again after Summons without the Kings License in 6 H. 3. a Parliament 7. a Parliament in 8. a 3. Anno 10. a 4th Anno 11. a 5th a Parliament in 16. another in 17. Anno 19. a Parliament Anno 21. a Parliament Anno 22. a Parliament Anno 25. a Parliament Anno 28. 2 Parliaments Anno 35. a Parliament 36. a Parliament 37. a Parliament in 38. another being called in Easter Term which by reason of the absence of some Lords who pretended they were not Summoned according to Magna Charta was Prorogued to Michaelmas following Anno 42. another Parliament at London
Durham Earls of Northampton Arundel Warwick Oxford Suffolk and Hugh le Despenser Lord of Glamorgan to the whole so misnamed Estate of Parliament when the King could not be one of them not at all being present purporting that whereas the King at his Arrival at Hoges in Normandy had made his Eldest Son the Prince of Wales Knight he ought to have of the Realm forty Shillings for every Knights Fee which they all granted and took Order for the speedy levying thereof 25 E. 3. Sir John Matravers pardon was confirmed by the whole missettled Estates whereof the King could not be accompted any of them for he granted the pardon 28 E. 3. Richard Earl of Arundel by Petition to the King praying to have the Attainder of Edmond Earl of Arundel his Father reversed and himself restored to his Lands and Possessions upon the view of the Record and and the said Richard Earl of Arundels Allegation that his Father was wrongfully put to death and was never heard the whole Estates saith that ill Translator adjudged he was wrongfully put to Death and Restored the said Earl to the benefit of the Law which none could do but the King who was petitioned and having the sole interest in the forfeiture was none of those which were wrongfully called the whole Estates 37 E. 3. Where it is said that at the end of the Parliament the Chancellor in the presence of the King shewed that the King meant to execute the Statute of Apparel and therefore charged every State to further the same the King could not be understood to charge himself After which he demanded of the whole Estates so as before mistaken whether they would have such things as they agreed on to be by way of Ordinance or of Statute they answered by way of Ordinance for that they being to take benefit thereby might amend the same at their pleasure And so the King having given thanks to all the as aforesaid miscloped Estates for their pains taken licensed them to depart which should be enough to demonstrate that the Granter and Grantees were not alone or conjoynt and that the King giving thanks to the Estates did not give it to himself 42 E. 3. The Archbishop of Canterbury on the Kings behalf gave thanks to the whole in the like manner mis-termed Estate for their Aids and Subsidies granted unto the King wherein assuredly the Archbishop of Canterbury did not understand the King to be any part of the whole Estate which the King gave thanks unto The Commons by their Speaker desiring a full declaration of the Kings necessity require him to have consideration of the Commons poor Estate The King declared to the Commons that it was as necessary to provide for the safety of the Kings Estate as for the Common-wealth Anno 6. Regis Richardi 2. after Receivers and Triers of Petitions named Commandment was given that all persons and Estates which imported no more being rightly understood than conditions or sorts of men miscalled as aforesaid should the next day have the cause of summoning the Parliament declared 11 R. 2. The Parliament was said to have been adjourned by the common Assent of the whole Estates the first time of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal being called the Estates without or with the Commons joyned with them no such names or words appellations or Titles were either known or in use nor any such words or Titles as Estates being to be found in the Originals or Parliament Rolls before Anno 11 R. 2. for no more appeareth in the Original than in and under these expressions viz. Et mesme le vendredi auxint a cause ce fest solempnite de pasch estoit a progeno ii coveient le Roi les Seigneurs tautx autres entendre a devotion le Parlement coe assent le toutz Estats le Parlement estoit continez del dit vendredi tanque Lindy lendemain de la equinziesme de Pasch adonquez prochem ensuent commandez per le Roy a toutz les Seigneurs Communs du dit Parlement Quils seroient a Westminster le dimengo en la dite quinzieme de pascha a plustaid sur ceo noevelles briefs furent â—aiots a toutz les Seigneurs somons au dit parlement de yestre a la dite quinzieme sur certaine peine a limiter per les Seiguro qui seroient presents en dit Parlement a la quinzieme avant dite le quel Limdy le dit Parlement fust recommence tenat son cours selont la request des Communs grant de nostre Seigur le Roi avant ditz And then but the inconsiderate hasty new created word of the Clerks in a distracted time when the great Ministers of State in two contrary Factions to the ruin of the King and many of themselves as it afterwards sadly happened were quarrelling with each other and all the Bishops so affrighted as they were enforced to make their Protestation against any proceedings to be made in that so disturbed a Parliament In Anno 21. R. 2. The Bishop of Exeter Chancellor of England taking his Theme or Text out of Ezechiel Rex unius omnibus erat proved by many Authors that by any other means than by one sole King no Realm could be well governed For which cause the King had assembled the Estates in Parliament to be informed of the rights of his Crown withheld which Oration afterwards was to the same effect seconded by Sir John Bussey Knight Speaker of the House of Commons King Richard the second being as a Prisoner in the Tower of London made the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Hereford his Procurators to publish his Rem 〈…〉 of the Kingdom to the whole Estates Which whether at at that time distinguished or divided into three doth not appear viz. into Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons could not comprehend the King who was not to be present but gave the direction and authority to his said Procurators and could never have been understood to have been present or one of them himself or to have made such a prosecution against or for himself After the claim made unto the Crown of England in Parliament by Henry Duke of Lancaster and a consultation had amongst the Lords and Estates not expressing that the Commons were a 3d. or any part thereof it being then altogether improbable that King Richard the 2d or any other representing for him was there present and to make one of the said pretended Estates as much out of the reach of probability that King Richard himself was one or a Person then acting against himself the Duke of Lancaster himself then affirming that the Kingdom was vacant And when the Usurping King Henry the 4th openly gave thanks to the whole Estates wherein is plainly evidenced that himself neither was or could be understood to be then or at any other time one of the said Estates The first day of the Parliament the Bishop of London
promised the People of England after that they had murthered their King and Laws that they would maintain and govern by the Fundamental Laws when they did all they could to subvert them after they had coined it to be High Treason in their cutting off the Head of the late Earl of Strafford and the Illustrious Family of the Prince of Orange William the great Restorer and Rescuer of the Ordines or States of Holland and West-Friezland without the rest of their United Provinces lying now interred under a stately Tomb at 〈◊〉 in Holland with his well deserved Attributes could not escape their Ingratitude when to please that Protector of the English villanies and provide as well as they could for their self preservation they made a League and Agreement with that great Master of Hypocrisy se neque Cel 〈…〉 um Oransionensem Principem at que ex ejusdem familiae Linea quempiam provinciae suae praefectum vicarium vel Archithalassim dehinc electum esse neque etiam quantum ad provinciae suae Ordinum suffragia aâ—â—inet permissaros obliging themselves for the Residue ut unquam eorum quisquam Foederatorum provinciae militiae praeâ—â—iuntur which they perswaded themselves would be sufficient enough to satisfie their particular Consciences if they could but procure their associate Confederates to be of the same perswasion and be as little to be trusted as themselves upon no other reason than that Quinimo eousque remedisse videtur ut ea quae reliqui provinciarum Ordines perversa Indicarunt varia uti loquuntur deductionibus D. D. Ordinum Generalium concilio judicata adeoque concepta adeoque conscripta fuerunt exhibita Idcirco jam ante inquirenti Nobiles ac provinciarum Hollandiae West Frisiaeque Ordines neutiquam dubitantes quin nonnulli provinciarum â—â—deratarum Ordines non aliam ob causam minus convenienter indicarent rerum omnium statum fundamentum quaecunque ex illo dependent ipsas denique veras rerum circumstantias haud plane edocti fuerunt nec quenquam fere quin postremum omnia singula eorundem acta factaque cognoverit sive alteri examini subjicere omni dubio procul solitae sollicitudini Nobilium procerum West Frisiae Ordinum quam in salutem reipublica quotidie intendant attributum sic nunc demum secundum promissa juxta decretum quarto die Junii proxime elapso praepotentibus D. D. Ordinibus General uti quoque literis deinde nono die exarat relinquarum provinciarum Gen. potentibus B. B. Ordinibus exhibita apertam sinceram veramque rerum omnium quae ad Instrumentum seclusionis pertinent detectionem foederatis Ordinibus exhibere voluerunt simul etiam omni ex parte nihil se quicquam in universo hoc negotio actum concessum confirmatumque fuisse quin id omne extra controversiam sibi absque alicujus provinciae damno aut praejudicio agere concedere seu confirmare labore licuerit in quantum patriae comodum ejusdemque Incolarum subditorum salus atque Incolumitas postulat being no good excuse but an Oliver satisfaction either in Latine English or Dutch but a trick of Olivers to work and model his own designs by affrighting them into the height of Ingratitude and an Act of Oblivion of their Oaths and League with their formerly united Confederates And our English in the troubles and stirs betwixt King John and some of his Barons when there were thirteen Knights in every County of England and Wales sworn to certifie the Liberties of the People and in the Raign of King Henry the third the like number there were no Liberties of a third Estate to be found in either of them And when the tired self created Republick never before heard of seen felt understood or exampled in England Wales Ireland or Scotland and its vast American Plantations and knew not how like Phaeton to guide their Ambitious Chariot and the horses would for want of conduct be disorderly run and tear themselves Chariot and all in peices and make the driver never more covet exaltations and fearing that the great Villanies and Oppressions which they had for many years together committed and pillaging of three Kingdoms might shortly after retaliate and give them bitter Meat to their sweet Sauce and supposing that they might have no small assistance from their Hypocrite Oliver Cromwel and his Rebel Army did so suffer him and his Officers and Mechanicks to creep into their Parliament or House of Rebels as in a short time the one part of the Army getting into London and the other quartering or encamping round about it and intermedling with the Government and procuring for themselves and their Friends Memberships in the House of Commons in Parliament as no small part of them had wrought themselves into that House of Commons and the Speaker Lenthal with as much weathercock fidelity as Rebellion fear and folly had suggested unto him ran away to the Army who triumphantly marching in a Militrary manner with their Cannon and Artillery brought him back again and seated him in his Traytors Chair which kind of House of Commons being thus tamed became easily perswaded by a Pack of Daemons on both sides to make a formal surrender of that which they would call the Peoples Liberties which could be no more than what was forfeited by Treason by them which had Rebelled against their King And where then could remain lurk or lye hid their so longed after third Estateship when Cromwel had over-reached them with an Instrument of his own making and allowed them especially when he pulled Mr. Pryn that had so championed the business as he stuft a large Book with arguments to evidence the Supremacy of both Houses of Parliament when a little before he had written a Book of the Superiority of the House of Peers in Parliament and was little to be pardoned when Mr. Pryn the Barrister wrote against Mr. Pryn a Bencher of Lincolns-Inn therein not their third Estateship or any such Republican Title at all but in lieu thereof caused some of his Janisaries amongst whom was an Irish Popish Priest with his Red-coat Musket and Bandaliers to pull out of that House of Commons Mr. Pryn and divers other of the Members and imprisoned him and some other in a Room or Alehouse under Westminster-Hall for a night and some short time after And without any belief as is probable of Sir Edward Cokes aforesaid new Modus tenendi Parliamentum made a frame or Modus of his own with six Knights of every County where there were before but two and in some Boroughs fewer than formerly and at another time pulled out their Members and shut up the House doors called our Magna Charta when it was pleaded Magna Farta which was not the Method praescribed in Sir Edward Cokes modus which Mr. Pryn saith would be an absolute or certain way to introduce levelling or a power in the Common people or to aggrandize the power
the horrible Murder and Cruel death of my Lord and Father my Brother Rutland and my Cosen of Salisbury and others And I thank you right heartily and I shall be unto you by the grace of Almighty God as Good and Gracious a Soveraign Lord as ever was any my noble progenitors to their Subjects and Leigement and for the faithful and loving hearts and also the great labour that you have born and sustained towards me in the recovering of my Right and Title which I now possess I thank God with all my heart and if I had any better to reward you withal than my Body you should have it the which shall alwaies be ready for your defence neither sparing nor letting for no Jeopardy praying you also of your hearty assistance and continuance as I shall be unto you very righteous and loving Leige Lord. And the bloody Wars betwixt the two great contending Families of York and Lancaster those Factions tired on both sides and the Attainders and Confiscations on both sides in the Raign of King Edward the fourth with the Marriage of King Henry the seventh with the Daughter and heir of King Edward the fourth his two Sons being Murdered by their Uncle Richard the third who died without Issue and King Henry the eight his quarrelling with the Pope and confiscating the monasteries and Abbies gratifying many of the Nobility with much of their Lands and much obliging them thereby and enriching many of the Tenents and making them and their families to be Gentlemen that durst not own or approach that Title before and the short Raigns of King Edward 6. and Q Mary busied by the one in the setting up of the Protestant Religion and the other in reducing Popery to its former Station gave a long tranquility from State disturbances augmented by Q. Elizabeths 44 years glorious peaceable Raign not only in the propagation defence of it here but in many other parts of Christendom and gave a peaceable entrance to King James her next Heir and Successor who met with two Grand Assaults of Treason the one of Sr. Walter Rawleigh and others who fetching that Lawless Doctrine and Peice of Law some hundreds of years before set up that allegiance is due to the Crown and not to the person of the King long before condemned in Parliament in the example of Hugh le Despencer in the Raign of King Edward the third and the other being the Gunpowder Treason was miraculously discover ed almost in the very instant of executing thereof and although villainously Wicked and Horrid fell much short of our last long Rebellion both as unto the length of time and Hypocrisy shedding of Blood Massacres abuse of God and the Holy Scriptures and the levelling and utter destruction of a most Ancient and Glorious Monarchy King James in the 22th year of his Raign over England departing this life not by taking an ill advised Medicine to expel an Ague as was villainously reported but upon a careful examination could never be proved to have been other than Innocent though recommended by the Earl of Warwick then as it after appeared none of our Monarchy Favorites King Charles the first his Son succeeding shortly after espoused the Lady Henrietta Mary Daughter of Henry the fourth King of France made a League Offensive and Defensive with the States of the United Provinces and besides two well exercised Regiments under English Commanders paid by the Dutch sent unto them four gallant Regiments more under the several Commands of the Earls of Oxford Essex and Southampton and Lord Willoughby of Eresby and a well Rig'd and Furnished Fleet against the King of Spain landed at Cales whence without doing the business designed they returned home The Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of Bristol in the mean time accusing in Parliament each other of Treason and Misdemeanors acted whilst the King as Prince was in Spain the one for the promoting the Marriage with the Infanta of Spain the other for hindering of it whereupon followed the imprisonment of the Earl of Bristol in the To wer of London and the King being put to great charges in his sending Embassadors and mediation in the obtaining a considerable part of the last Palatinate to be restored to his Brother in Law and to be made an eighth Elector to be joyned with the former seven and with the yearly payment of giving great pensions to the distressed King and Queen of Bohemia his four Nephews and two Neices under the burden of great Debts and Necessities much augmented by the costly furnishing out a Fleet of Ships and a gallant Army to invade the Isle of Ree in France to divert the King of France from subduing of Rochel the Inhabitants whereof had supplicated him for Aid which produced none other effect but the loss of all his hopes therein by the ill conduct of the Admiral to the loss of some gallant men yet was so unwilling to forsake those oppressed Protestants as he after sent two if not three other Fleets strongly furnished Ships with Men Arms and Ammunition to relieve them under more Skilful Commanders who endeavouring all that men could do were constrained to return home and leave those Protestants to the over-powering forces by Land of the King of France and in the midst of his own pressures and great wants of Money having no more of his own Royal Revenue to support these expences than about 800000 l. sterling per Annum for his Revenue much whereof by the usual Lickings and Cheats of his Trustees Officers and Receivers could never find the way to his Coffers And had been so incessant in his desires to help those oppressed Protestants of France as to procure Money to assist them in that his last attempt he sending to the Citizens of London to lend him 100000 l. They answered they could not for that they had heretofore lent unto his Father King James as much upon Privy Seals which had not been yet repaid although it was but lent by several Citizens to make up that some of Money but if his Majesty would give them a security by some of his own Revenues in Land to pay the first hundred thousand pounds with interest for it they would lend him another hundred thousand pounds and the particular mens names that lent the Moneys to make up the first 100000 pounds were expressed in a Schedule which done as will appear by the said Schedule which I have seen 12000 l. per Annum of old Rents of Assise in Richmondshire or in the County of York were by the King conveyed and granted absolutely unto some Citizens in trust for the City of London for the payment of the said two hundred thousand pounds with the Interest as aforesaid for the said one hundred thousand pounds lent unto King James the Wood and Timber only growing thereupon amounting unto as much as the aforesaid Sums of Money lent with the Interest which over-profitable bargain made by the City of London for
the hands or clutches of their Wolves Foxes and Harpies Birds or Beasts of prey mean while the King labouring by many Princely Answers to their Messages Letters and Proclamations to keep them from the Witchcraft of Rebellion the more they galloped into it and nominate the Earl of Essex to be their General and a great contribution of Plate and Money as before hath been mentioned to bring the King home to his Parliament who might have been more ready than they had he not been encompassed without any cause or provocation with as many Treasons Plots Falsehoods and Treacheries as he had Hairs upon his Head and Beard with no small want of Money and Friends in the midst of his three once flourishing Kingdoms flaming and on fire about his Ears which could not otherwise have brought such an accumulation of evils upon him And being somewhat supplied by many of his Exchecquer Receivers who brought unto him Remainders of Moneys upon their Accompts John Pym excepted that was the Kings and his Fathers Receiver in Arrear about 22 years and could not be at leisure lest he should thereby hinder the managing of his Treason against the King and so would have made a trusty Chancellor of the Exchecquer for the King marched as well as he could toward his Loyal Subjects of Wales whither to hinder and distress him the Earl of Essex with his Army of Rebels way-laying him at Edge-hill in Warwickshire where Loyalty and Rebellion fighting a bloody Battel and Robert Earl of Lindsey the Kings General being hurt and carried away Prisoner to Warwick Castle shortly after died his Son the Lord Willoughby offering himself an Hostage being not according to the Laws of War accepted and the Rebels Cannons levelled against the brow of the Hill where the King and the Prince sat but being disappointed left the Field and retired to Warwick and the King keeping it all that night the next day marched to Banbury and took it from thence fixed himself at Oxford to which very many Parliament Men that were Loyal retired and kept a true Parliament howsoever the Rebels made shift to get by parcels to London where they Publish how near they were to gain the Victor◠of which they could have given a greater eertainty of the Lord Wharton had not hid himself in a Saw-pit and Stephen Marshal a Factious Minister had not mistaken himself when in his Parish Pulpit at Finching field in Essex he had related an impudent Lye in the hearing of one that had been in that Battel that he had pickt up Bullets in his Velvet Cap to help the Rebels Souldiers when a Souldier that heard him so preach could have proved that he at another time had confessed that he was so affrighted that he had run away four or five Miles from the place where the Battel had been before he knew where he was after which they were so unwilling to forsake their Treasonable hopes as they rallyed and ingaged all the Friends the Devil could help them unto insomuch as the War grew more and more fierce as at the Kings Besieging of Gloucester the effascinated Citizens of Londons Trained Bands came to raise the Siege a sharp Fight was at Newbury where they were beaten and Weemes a Scotish Cannoneer taken Prisoner whilst he was levelling at the Person of the King in a Bloody Fight at Copreby Bridge where the Rebels had the worst and yet Weemes was pardoned and left to do more mischief when all he could say was in Gude Faith his Heart was to the King And the King was from place to place so victorious as he drove the Parliament Rebels by the help of his Nephews Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice and the gallant Conduct of Sir Ralph Hopton and the Greenviles and the courage of the Cornish men for which they had the Kings thanks publickly read and Registred in the Churches the Earl of Essex and his Rebel Parliamentarians were so driven and penn'd up at Lestichiel in Cornwal as their whole Army Cannon and Amunition Bag and Baggage were seized and the Earl of Essex and some other Commanders enforced to shift and save themselves in a Cock-boat Sir William Balfour getting away with some of the Horse notwithstanding all which and that that over-tender hearted Prince had experimented more than once their Rebellion was inexorable and that neither his Protestation upon the Sacrament nor the word stamped upon his Coyn for Religion and the Priviledges of Parliament could make them forsake their Rebellious Principles could not forbear to bring them if possible out of that sin of Witchcraft but when he might with a victorious Army have beaten them at Bramford did by some that were hired to betray 〈◊〉 Councels for by that time they had as much lea 〈…〉 the Art of Bribery as they had the glosses of Rebellion rouse their obdurate and feared Souls with Messages for Peace and divers Royal Ministers and Citizens of London had petitioned them to make Peace with the King who sent the Earls of Southampton and Dorset unto their then called House of Peers who were answered and received uncivilly enough as to their own Persons and the King their Master that sent them Printed and Published intercepted Letters betwixt the King and the Queen and relying more upon their confederating Brethren of Scotland than upon their God and the King his Vicegerent in all hast sent to invite them to come unto their Aid which they did and before they went home had 300000 l. Sterling paid unto them for their Rebel Assistance which putting a stop to the Kings Victories especially in that unfortunate Battel at Naseby and afterwards at Marston Moore by a misintelligence at the later betwixt Prince Rupert and the Earl of Newcastle the King condescended to a Treaty by Commissioners at Uxbridge where no other reason could be accepted but as if the King had been a Subject and they his Soveraign they appeared willing to transfer unto their Scotish Brethren a great part if not all of the Kingdom of Ireland every attempt and self-defence of the King and his Loyal Party bringing no better comfort than dispair he gave license to his good Subjects to retire into the Parliament Quarters or unjust Dominion and compound for their supposed forfeitures which much encreased their Treasure and Power for fighting against the King when they fought for him against his Rebels as if the King and they had been but one Incorporation and themselves the head and the King could be a Rebel to himself and them at the same time and Wat Tyler or Jack Cade or the late Massinello had Authority to make themselves Soveraigns which they had not impudence enough to adventure for it must needs appear to all Mankind to be a Gipsy jugling trick or Proteisme never before heard of in any part of the World The Noble Earl of Scarsdale refusing to compound but retiring home did ever after cloath himself in Sackcloth and every day to his death make a
of King Edward the Fourth with the allowance of Sir Edward Coke his justly adoring Commentator hath taught us That Tenures in Capite do draw and bring along with them as incidents thereunto Homage which is the most humble and honourable Service and Reverence that a Tenant can do unto his Lord when upon his Knees with his Sword ungirt and his Head uncovered holding his hands between the Hands of his Lord he sweareth and professeth to be his Man of Life and Limb and earthly Worship and to bear him Faith for the Lands and Tenements which he holdeth of him saving the Faith which he holdeth to his Soveraign Lord the King together with Fealty Service in War or instead thereof Escuage Socage Franck Almoigne Homage Auncestrel Grand Serjeanty Petit Serjeanty Tenures in Burgage and Villeinage and then the Lord so sitting Kisseth him And where the Service is not done by the Tenant in Capite or by Knight-Service in Person the Escuage Money or Fine that is to be paid in recompence thereof is to be Assessed by Parliament and if any Controversy do arise whether the Service were done personally or not it shall be tryed saith Littleton by the Certificate of the Marshal of the King in Writing And Tenant saith Sir Edward Coke is derived from the word Tenere and all the Lands in England in the hands of Subjects are holden of the King immediately or mediately for in the Law of England we have not properly any Alodium that is any Subjects Lands that are not Holden unless saith he you will take Allodium for a Tenant in Fee Simple as it is often taken in the Book of Dooms-Day and Tenants in Fee Simple are there called Alodii or Alodiales and he is called a Tenant because he holdeth his Lands of some Superior Lord by some Service and therefore the King in this Sence cannot be said to be a Tenant because he hath no Superior but God Almighty and Praedium domini Regis est directum Dominium cujus nullus est Author nisi Deus And Alodiarius Alode seu Alodium saith Sir Henry Spelman est Praedium liberum nulli Servituti obnoxium but were never so free as to be no Subjects or exempt from Obedience to our Kings in whose Land and Dominion they lived Ideoque Feudo oppositum quod hoc semper alicui subiacet servituti Feuda enim antiquò dicuntur Servitii Fidelitatis gratia proprietate feudi penes dantem remanente usu fructu tantummodo in accipientem transeunte ut ex C. de feud cogn ' collegit Barat ca ' 1. Quamobrem nec vendi olim poterant invito Domino nec ad haeredes Vassalli transiunt nisi de ipsis nominatim dictum esset sed laesa fidelitate adimerentur dicitur à Saxon ' Leod quasi populare dicitur Alodium ab à Privitiva Leed Gallicè Leud pro Vassallo quasi sine Vassallagio sine Onere quod Angli hodie Load appellant Alodium feudo opponitur in antiqua versione LL Canuti ca ' 73. Ubi Sax ' Bocland dicitur quod in Aluredi LL ca ' 36. tota Haereditas vocatur idem esse videtur quod hodiè Fee Simple Dicitur etiam Alodium terra libera quam quis à nemine tenet nec recognoscit licet sit in alieno Districtu Jurisdictione Ita quod solum est sub Domino districtus quoad Protectionem Jurisdictionem And believes the Aloarii mentioned in Dooms-Day Book do signify no more than our Sockmanni or Socage Tenants Cum Germanis Liberos Gallis Nobiles qui militiam ex arbitrio tractantes nullius domini Imperio evocati nulloque sendali gravamine Coerciti sui Juris homines non Feudales seil qui dominium tamen agnoscerent ut locus ille e Domesday citatus plane evincit qui fidelitatem apud nos Jurarent Censum quantulumcunque augebunt siâ—t etiam qui de nomine eos tenâ—isse asserunt ac si Hunnoniorum more adeo sole suum accepissent patrimonium And du Fresue Etymologizing the word Alodiarias saith It is Praedium etiam domino obnoxium possidet tenens Domesday quando moritur Alodiarius Rex inde habet Alleniationem terrae a releife excepta terra sanctae Trinitatis Gulielmus Gemeticensis Lib. 3. Ca. 8. Abbatique locum cum tota villa quam ab Alodiariis auro redemit Thomas Walsinghamus p. 419. Et in definitione Alodialis which he saith is Idem quod Tenens mentioneth Chartam Gulielmi ducis Normanniae p. 1042. In Monasticon Anglicanum Tom. 2. p. 959. Dedi etiam Ecclesiam Radulphi villae umon Allodialem in ipsa villa dedi quoque unum Allodialem in Amundevilla quietam ab omni Consuetudine Bignenius dicit quod significat Haereditatem paternam Terram Et Dominicus de Prorogat ' Allodiorum dictum oppinatur quasi Alo Leuden id est sine Subjectione a voce Leuden quae Germanis paâ—i subire fignificat sicut subjectionem servitium Spelmannus derivat a Leod populare Saxonice Ita ut Aleod sit idem quod Praedium populare oppositum Feudo quod est Praedium dominicale And the Learned du Fresne amongst the various Opinions mustred up by him Concludeth with a Deniquè plerique è doctioribus existimant vocem esse primogeniam Gallicam vel Francicam quae Praedium ac rem proprietario Jure possessum denotat Feudum novum absque domini Concensu alienatum revocari potest a Domino Decis 14. Feudum in dubio praesumitur esse haereditarium non ex pacto providentia Decis 30. n. 22. Feudum antiquum absque concensu domini alienatum ex communi D. l. sententia a filio revocari potest n. 11. And the Tenures in Capite and by Knight-Service were of so high an Esteem and Value amongst the English whereby to do unto their Kings and Country that Honor and Service which was due and might be expected from them in their several Degrees and Stations as the great Lords and other Men of Note did many times purchase or obtain of each other the Homages and Servitia of so many Men or parts of Knights Fees by Deeds or Charters and so much beyond any Money or other kinds of Estate Lands or Offices as Robert Earl of Leicester's Ancestor having at the Coronation of King John agreed to pay unto Roger Bigot Earl of Norfolk's Ancestor Ten Knight's Fees for the Purchase of that great Office of High Steward of England of which Seven and an half were paid and a Controversy arising afterwards betwixt the said Earls for the Satisfaction of the Remainder in the 31st Year of the Raign of King Henry the Third the King undertaking to make an Accord betwixt them adjudged Simon Montfort who afterwards ill requited him to have and execute the said Office of High Steward and that Roger Bigot Earl of Norfolk who afterwards joyned in the
Rebellion with Montfort against him should bring his Action for the other Two Knight's Fees and an half From which most necessary and excellent Feudal Laws have proceeded those grand Honors fixed and appurtenant to our ancient Monarchy of England in our Kings and Princes Grant to several great Families in England in Fee or Fee-Tayl as to be Constable of England Earl Marshal of England Lord Steward of England Lord Great Chamberlain of England Chamberlain of the Queens of England Die Coronationis suae Butler to our Kings at their Coronations c. And likewise the Statute de Donis or Entailes the neglect whereof in leaving all the ruined Families of the Nobility Gentry and better sort of the English Nation to feigned Recoveries introduced about the Raign of King Edward the Fourth by an unhappy and unjust Trick of Law to make the Losers believe that they shall recover the Value of their Lands so Lost amounting in the whole unto the greatest part of all the Lands in England of the Bagbearer of the Court of Common-Pleas who in the Conclusion is only Vouchee to Warrants and to make it good out of his own Land and by the small Fees and Profits of his Office was never yet known to Inherit or to have been a Purchaser of ten Acres of Land yet walks about and is never molested or called to Account for those vast Sums of Money or his Land if he ever had or was re vera intended to have had any was to be liable by his being a Common Vouchee in all the Common Recoveries which are suffered in that Court It being in those more Obedient and Loyal Times esteemed no small Honour to serve our Kings or hold Lands by such a Kind of Tenure as it may be believed to have occasioned that Adage or Common saying in England before the ever to be lamented taking away of Tenures in Capite and by Knight-Service and Pourveyance No Fishing to the Sea no Service to the King and those Royal Services affixed unto Lands and Territories have been so immutable amongst other our Neighbor Nations as in the Aurea Bulla fastned upon the Empire of Germany about the 30th Year of the Raign of our King Edward the Third the Three Spiritual Electors viz. the Arch-Bishops of Mentz Cologne and Triers or Trevers do hold their Lands and Territories by their several Tenures of being Arch-Chancellors the First of Germany the Second of Italy and the Third of France the King of Bohemia to be Archipincerna Duke of Bavaria or Count Palatine of the Rhine Archidapifer Duke of Saxony Archimariscallus Duke or Marquess of Brandenburgh Archicamerarius of that Empire and might be with or amongst them exampled from our Pattern which was long before as also from the Scots who have to this day some of the like official Dignities annexed to their Lands and Estates and as in the Raign of our King Henry the First Count Tankervile was by Inheritance and Tenure of his Lands Chamberlain of Normandy And although not so ancient as the Customs of the Patroni and Clientes in the beginning of the flourishing of the vast Roman Empire which was so greatly advantageous both unto the greater and lesser part of the People the Patroni in their Popularities and Ambitions to gain and please them in their way of Advancements to Annual Magistracies not seldom exercising their Eloquence in pleading their Causes or Suits in Law before the Lawyers had for another kind of Advantages by the Gratifications of Fees and Rewards made it to be the greatest part of their Profession which before were principally employed upon seldom Occasions in matters of Difficulty in Jurisconsults and Decisions some of the more eminent sorts of them having about the Raign of the Emperor Augustus Caesar obtained Licenses of him ad respondendum Yet after the Irruption of the Goths Vandals Longobards and Hunnes with other Northern Nations into that Empire they found it to be more beneficial to do as the Germans and many other Northern Nations have done to be Feudalists and to have Lands given unto them and their Heirs to hold by Service of War and other necessaries under those grand Obligations of Interests Oaths Gratitude Homage and Fealty which proved to be better more certain and beneficial both for the Patroni and Clientes the poorer sort of the People alwayes or very often wanting the Aid and Protection of the greater from Wrongs and Oppressions like to be put upon them And the Patroni and Greater procuring to themselves thereby a more constant Observance of Duty Honour and Additions to their former Grandeur the greater and lesser thereby mutually supporting and assisting each other which in the Consequence was as it did likely to prove much better than the charge and trouble the Patroni were used to be as in the frequent courting and Humoring of the common People with their costly Epulae's and Ludi's not only to gain their own Preferments in their Annual poursuites of Offices of Magistracy but to keep the popular Votings from Mutiny and ruining them as much as themselves And howsoever that they with us in England by a great infelicity to our languishing Monarchical Government after an horrid Rebellion and murder of our late King Anno. 12. Car. 2. by an Act of Parliament made upon his now Majesties happy Restoration for the taking away the Court of Wards and Liveries Tenures in Capite and by Knight service and Pourveyance and for settling a Revenue upon His Majesty in lieu of a great part of the lands of England and Wales which the Rebels besides their great Estates had forfeited unto him which they were willing to retain to themselves and thank him as fast as they could with a more detestable Rebellion the Praeamble mentioning most unfortunately for want of a right Information and understanding thereof That the said Court of Wards and Liveries Tenures by Knight service in Capite holden of the King or others and Socage in Capite have been by consequence more praejudicial then beneficial to the Kingdome as if the Nerves and Ligaments of the Crown of England and the ancient Support and Defence of the Honour and glory thereof for more then one thousand years could any way deserve to be so Charactered and that after the Intromission of the said Court which hath been since the 24 th day of February 1645. when the Divel and his Reformation had made a large progress in the chasing Religion out of the Kingdom and washing over in blood the Blessed Martyr King Charles the first 3 Kingdomes of England Scotland and Ireland many Persons could not by their Will or otherwise dispose of their Lands by Knight Service whereby many Questions might possibly arise unless some seasonable remedy be taken to prevent the same Our Soveraign Lord by the Assent of the Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled and by the Authority of the same did enact the taking away of the said Court