those who have hurried your Convention into such Extremities as Rebels insensible of Religion or Law and that as excusable as many honest dissenting Men among the Commons may be the rest will not be reckoned among the true Children of the Church of England nor of her Communion I am thinking to write of this matter to a Bishop a Learned and an Honest Man tho I believe I know his mind by my own before hand If the Yeas among you alleadged reasons of weight enough to silence all the scruples which the Case must needs raise you will much oblige me to acquaint me with them For I declare to you that as little as I pretend to Learning I fancy I am Schollar enough to be pretty well assured there was none to be alleadged able to satisfy a Man who has never so little smack of the Duty of Christianity but strangely persuade my self there Votes were grounded upon the detestable maximes of Doleman and Buchanan Knox Goodwin Milton and such Presbyterian Saints whose Books as often as they have been forbidden and condemned by the Parliaments and Church of England I expect should now be Re-printed by order of the Convention not that I believe the leading Gentlemen troubled themselves at this time much with scruples There is no better remedy against the Disease than that Fanatical spirit which was predominant in your Assembly chiefly in the House of Commons made up for the most part of Non-Conformist Presbyterians who by the Laws of Q. Elizabeth and later Statutes ought to have been excluded But let your new King alone for that matter let him once be but steady in his Throne he will quickly bring in more Christian Principles among you Tho my Lords the Bishops I am persuaded will be the first Reformed according to the primitive Apostolick Pattern and being eased of the heavy load of useless Riches and worldly Honours reduced according to my Lord Shaftsbury's wish to a Pension of bare 100 l. per Annum some of them to my grief deserve it but too well and if I should resolve to make one amongst you I will not answer I shall Vote against it But I declare to you I shall concur in nothing else and it shall be no fault of mine if those Lords with whom I have any credit joyn not to undoe all you have done as soon as the Nation which I hope it quickly will shall open its Eyes and become sensible of the infamy which your Convention has thrown upon it The truth is there need no meeting for the matter For that were to suppose some Authority in what you have done whereas it has none and is every way extravagant You must needs have lost your Wits if you imagine we shall ever take the Votes of your Houses for Laws You will know that England acknowledges no other Law but those which are made by Lawful Authority that is by the King in Parliament Search all Parliaments search all Court-Rolls there are no other to be found I appeal to the very Lawyers who after they had been of Councel to all the Seditious Men and Conspirators of late times were chosen to be yours These Famous Lawyers and you your selves know that no Authority but the King 's alone can call the Peers and Commons together and you acknowledg'd it by not daring at first to take the Name of Parliament upon you You are therefore Convened by the bare Authority of the Prince of Orange and that Authority you gave him tho' you had none to give him Put case you had he was incapable either to receive or exercise it For having enter'd the Kingdom in Arms Declared against the King and attempted upon His Sacred Person and Liberty he incurred the Crime of High Treason and forfeited all his Rights Honours and Prerogatives in case he be a Subject If he be not he is a publick Enemy and against whom the Nation is bound to stand by the King and not to obey him under pain of High Treason And yet this is the Authority by which you sit and which by your own confession cannot make an Assembly such as our Laws call a Parliament And yet this notwithstanding your Convention which stretch its Power to the utmost cannot pretend to more than Parliament Power has done what no Lawful Parliament ever durst do Judge their King Declar'd His forc'd Retreat to be an Abdication of the Government and the Throne Vacant and finally dispos'd of it to the use of P. of Orange I beseech you send me word what Presidents your Learned Councel brought for these Resolves Those of the Spencers and other Traytors of those times or those of Cromwel I know none else who maintained that as often as a King Governs not according to Law his Subjects may take Arms and compel him to it But you know all Parliaments have placed this case amongst Crimes of High Treason The truth is you have bethought your selves of a subtile expedient which I expect should be clapt for a colour upon your Proceedings viz. that you did not vacate the Throne but only fill'd it when it was vacant But in good faith this is to top upon a whole Nation with your false distinctions In virtue of what Law I beseech you could you declare the Throne vacant can a parcel of Seditious Men met at the tumultuous call of an Usurper give sentence in such a cause Is the Kingdom of England Elective and is there any uncontested President to be found which Authorizes the People to dispose of the Crown or declare it Vacant can an Heriditary Kingdom become Vacant otherwise than by the Death of the Lawful Occupant This way perhaps your new King might have made it Vacant but tho' it were is there no Heir The Prince of Wales for whose Birth all England and the Prince of Orange himself so solemnly Congratulated with his Father is He no longer in the World And is He not considerable enough to be thought of His age is not capable of breaking the Original Contract which you have fancy'd between King and People and therefore the Throne if it be Vacant must belong to Him. I know the Prince of Orange would make a Counterfeit of Him and this becomes his Conscience But tell me in yours whether all these impotently malicious surmises which are spread by his Emissaâ—ys be not palpably shameful So shameful that he has not yet ventur'd to press you as great an Influence as he has among you to come to a Declaration in that point It is reserved it seems to your Parliament in which Oates and his Brethren of the Post will swear some mishappen Oath for Burnet to lick over and you upon their credit enact him suppositions in virtue of some new Law which shall reach backwards as That the Queens of England to purpose shall be no where validly Delivered but in the Banquetting-House both Houses of Parliament present I will say nothing of your Grievances as much more cry than
wool as there is in them But I will stop a little at the New Oathes which you substitute in place of those which are appointed by Law. You my Lord have taken the Oaths of Allegiance Supreamacy and the Test as well as your Neighbours Do you believe those Oaths oblig'd you to perform what you swore and ty'd you to the King to whom you swore or do you not In likelyhood you do not since those Oaths notwithstanding you thought your self free to take up Arms against your King and to joyn with His Enemies of necessity then you must either be Perjur'd or believe there is no regard to be had to Oaths as indeed you were no Slaves to yours We must be confident Men to reproach the Papists longer with their Lyes and their Equivocations to which abundance of them are no greater Friends than we when your Convention not only teaches but orders us to make such May-Games of our Oaths Besides they were Enacted by Parliament the bare dispensing with which in favour of Papists is a principal part of your Out-cry against His Majesty with what face can you take them quite away and pop in others in their room you who by changing your Convention into a Parliament acknowledge you have not the Authority of a Parliament How could you do what you make a Crime in the King who at worst has an Authority which you have not Zeal I suppose for Protestant Religion will be pleaded for your Proceeding and your strange Votes against the King. And yet it would puzzle the most Religious Man of quirk among you to cite the Article of Protestant Religion or Act concerning it which justifie your Zeal There is none which enables Subjects to dispose of the Crown in case their King profess not the Protestant Religion On the contrary the last Act of Vniformity formally detests the Doctrine of those who teach that Subjects may take up Arms against their King. And tho' some Law had made the Profession of the Protestant Religion necessary to be King of England it were to be understood of the Protestant Religion Established by Law yet you take the boldness to declare the Throne Vacant whatever you pretend to in reality because the King is of the Romish Religion and at the same time set up a Man who has always been of a Religion contrary to Law as well as the King since the Prince of Orange is a Protestant Dissenter for the Law is against Protestant Dissenters as will as Papists But I see you take upon you to do what the Fanaticks have so often demanded and no Legal Parliament yet would ever grant to take away the Penal Laws from Protestant Dissenters and leave them still in force against Papists Where I ask again what Authority you have to alter the Laws and what pretence to Dispense with them when you fall out with the King for Dispensing Turn it which way you will these Proceedings are unmaintainable and as you are no Stranger to our Laws you will I make no doubt acknowledge that there is no speaking of them and your Votes the same day And then the King is traduced with designing Arbitrary Power when the Arbitrary Power of the Convention has subverted more in a week than our Kings in a hundred years It has subverted the Fundamental Law of Succession all that have been made for the security of Kings and the State those of Supreamacy of Uniformity in Religion and so many other that there will hardly remain more than just to keep Nisi prius es going For in what concerns Criminal matters all Laws have been laid aside by the illegal Proceedings against divers Papists and others Peers as well as Commons Imprison'd against Law and this at the very time in which complaint was made of bringing one into the Kings-Bench who ought to have been Try'd in Parliament Peers are priviledg'd Persons how then can you take upon you to Arrest even Popish Peers you who neither had the Authority nor Name of a Parliament The Law allows the meanest Man in the Nation his Habeas Corpus and by it his Liberty upon Bail and yet you refused it to Peers The Chancellor is the Third Man in the Kingdom and has the priviledge not only of his Peerage but of his Office which makes the usage he has received Treason And yet you have put and kept him in Prison notwithstanding that even tho' you had been a Lawful Parliament all you could do is to Address to the King to punish him for Male-administration if he be guilty But I will enlarge no farther upon your irregular doings whereof I do not think it possible to pack a greater number into one Vote I will only tell you that to my thinking your Convention has outdone the long Parliament it self in bare fac'd contempt of the Laws Those Seditious Paricides stumbled not as you do at the Threshold They demanded and tho' by very bad means obtained a Parliament They acknowledged the Kings Power when they met they sought and to his and the whole Nations misfortune got his consent to an Act for not Disolving or Proroging them without their own consent They then kept at least some measures you keep none and they were a Parliament you are not I know you ill if you will always be content the World should think something better of the most execrable Paracides that ever were and take you for the less modestly wicked of the two For what concerns your new King he has nothing but Force to trust to the only thing which can silence the Laws and preserve him But I am persuaded that you who are his Favourites will be the first to repent the trusting your Liberty in such bad hands Those Brutes of Hollanders are far from the Free-men which he found them He persuaded them to rid themselves of their best Patriots as he has persuaded you to rid your selves of your King and is like to make you sensible one day that your great Liberty which you found it seems uneasy will bid fair to enslave you If persuasions will not do there are other expedients in the World which may and if we will believe malicious Tongues have been thought of I for my part am resolved to stay at home till I see which way matters are like to go Whatever you Write I cannot but think them wondrous tottering still tho' he has appeared in his Robes perhaps suspecting that if he had stay'd his Coronation day he might never have worn them Between you and me the Description you make puts me in mind of Kings in old Tapestry with their Crowns and their Mantles always on even in Bed. 'T is like that day he went to Bed with his to expose the Raree-Show a while longer But let him Reign over those who find him and his ways to their mind happen what will I will not taint my Family and my Credit no not with Treason if sure to be pardoned and the Infamy
A LETTER from an Absent LORD to one of his FRIENDS in the Convention My Lord SInce you seem surpriz'd that I answered not the Letter in which your Lp. so earnestly prest to see me at London and at the Convention in my place in the House of Peers you will undoubtedly be more surpriz'd to understand now that the Letter from the House which I have received as well as the rest of the Lords who stay in the Country wrought no more upon me than the many reasons alledged by your Lp. To deal ingenuously I will freely tell you that it absolutely confirm'd me in my former Resolution to tarry at Home and have nothing to do with your Assembly strongly suspecting that we were sent for only for Forms sake and that nothing was fear'd more than a full House of Lords for your Lp. I suppose will agree with me that if we had all come up you would not have been able to carry every thing according to the Pleasure of your new King since the Vote of the House of Commons prevailing with much adoe by bare two or three Voices he was forced to make use of Threats and Promises to gain eight or ten more to pass it You will easily believe that I and the greatest part of those who remain in the Country would not have Voted on that side And therefore I leave it with you to judge whether your self and some sixty more who Voted with you could have carried it against above one hundred and fifty who have had no hand in your Doings Wherefore I could not but perceive that when they made Letters be written to us in the Name of the Upper-house and engaged our particular Friends to urge our repair to London they mock'd both them and us and feared nothing so much as to see all the Peers of the Kingdom assembled For then resolutions so extravagant and so contrary to the good of the Nation as have been taken would never have past I pardon those of meaner extraction as who being sensible they were the first of their Race honoured with the Title of Lord and made equal to those in whose Families heretofore they would have been glad to have liv'd were the most eager to give the full swing to their new Honour which they have so ill acknowledged from the King who gave it I likewise Pardon the Lords whom the uneasiness of their Condition has cast into the wrong side and those who have been drawn in they themselves as it often happens among us not well knowing why But I must confess I understand not how divers others no ways subject to the same temptations could be tainted with Baseness enough to engage in an attempt so black and abominable as it is to renounce the Obedience which by Nature and Oath they owe to a lawful King only to become Slaves to the Prince of Orange 'T is likely another would tell me I speak like a Papist and an Advocate for Arbitrary Power but you well know that I am of the Church of England and that I have been so little employed in publick Matters and so little Favoured since the death of His late Majesty that I am not liable to the suspicion of Partiality 'T is true I have not only unconcernedly observ'd but sometimes prais'd the Kings zeal to favour his Papists as much as he could for I always thought and so to your knowledge did many of our Friends that the Protestant Religion had nothing to fear and that the noisy Designs to destroy it were no more than imaginary I was always persuaded and still am that more improper means to advance Popery could not be taken then those which were and so it would never sink into my Head that there was any harm towards Protestant Religion in all those Alarms which startled many Religious Protestants who by their own Fears and the Artifice of those who care not one pin for Religion have been dipt in the present doings of which I doubt we shall not see an end so soon Pray my Lord could a Man of sense be alarmed at an Embassy to Rome when we knew the Ambassador so well as we did And knew the first thing he did at Rome was to fall out with good Cardinal Howard and all that were able to instruct him in what might conduce to his purpose Nuncio Dada too was a likely man to endanger the Reformation I for my part could never believe otherwise but that he dreamt more of a Red Cap than making Converts Had he been put to defend his Religion against our Bishops in what a case would he have been whose Divinity stretcht no farther then to exclaim perpetually against and all to be Heretick the French often to the Scandal and sometimes Laughter of the Company especially when he would take upon him to play the Doctor To my thinking most of the Papists were much discontented and slighted him among themselves at least some have told me that the Pope himself was ill satisfied with him and would recall him but since he did it not it must needs be that he either ill understood the Affairs of England or cared little for them However it be these are the only hands through which past all the Traffick betwixt England and Rome whereof the one brought as bad Relations from thence as the other sent from hence And we may conclude that the the re-union of the two Churches were possible it would never be by the Politicks of the Ambassador or Learning of the NuncÃo I hear what is said of the Kings dispensing with the Test his employing and advancing Papists to very considerable Places his filling his Army with them and his design of suppressing our Religion and Liberty by them and I know how much it has been endeavoured this last twelve Months to heighten these things and fright us all To say the Truth I must acknowledge I was my self for sometime of the number of those who believed there might be something in it But it is now but too plain that there was nothing For had the King taken such Measures for such a purpose he had not been so shamefully betrayed whereas trusting to Protestants he has hardly found a Man who would venture his Life for Him. In good Faith my Lord the injury we have done our Religion grieves me strangely For what Prince will ever trust us more when all the Declarations of our Church and Universities our Oaths and whatever is most Sacred among Men bind us no longer then we think sit Our Bishops and Clergy as often as they Preach against Papists and reproach the inconsistancy of their Doctrine with the Duty of Subjects to their Soveraign are sure to meet with an Answer and I fancy there will fine Comments be made on a Coronation Sermon the Dean of Canterbury's Letter to my Lord Russel and the Oxford Censures c. I confess to you I know not what to say save that all good Protestants will look upon