Selected quad for the lemma: prince_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A49825
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The vindication of the dead: or, six hours reflections upon the six weeks labour in answering Mr. Ashton's Speech published by authority
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Lawton, Charlwood, 1660-1721.
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1691
(1691)
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Wing L739E; ESTC R221695
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7,695
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Liberties that our Age has produc'd and all good Men ought to reflect upon the great Violations of their Liberties in this case by such unheard of Methods as the late Tryals give us an Account of The Council for the Crown in the Tryal of Croan excepting against Jury-men without shewing Cause and not being publickly animadverted upon for so doing it gave them confidence to do the same thing in my Lord Preston's Tryal and had they had need they would doubtless have ventured to set by Men after they had been Sworn to pass upon the Life of the Prisoner as in Croan's Tryal they set by Mr. Harrison Goldsmith Mr. Parker Tobacconist Mr. Johnson Herald Painter c. all Men of Wealth and Reputation a procedure so palpably unjust that my Lord Nott m could not believe it when it was told him § 5. Nor must I neglect to reiterate that unusual way of Charging the Jury in these Tryals the Bench often tells them that they believe in their Conscience that the Prisoners are Guilty of such and such a thing and that they must bring in their Virdict Guilty now the Jury is to have no belief but what arises plainly and positively from the Evidence brought before them their Consciences are to be directed by plain Proof that appears so to them not to be guided by other Men's Reasons and if their belief be determined any other ways than from the Evidence before them all Tryals will be rendred very Precarious and I am very sorry to see our Reformers out bid in this point all the Extravagancies of which they so much complain'd of If these things are necessary to support what is done I will recommend farther to them the Scotch Boots and all the inventions of Tyranny in all Country's but let us not pretend Jealousie for our Laws and our Liberties and encourage the most dangerous outrages against them And God grant succeeding Times may never learn by their Example God grant that a Judge may never dare to leave a matter of Law as similitude of hands was to a Jury nor them to find matter of Fact but according to the Evidence produced and may he grant likewise that it may be scandalous to the last Degree in a Jury-man to turn Prosecutor and busle for Evidence had some of the Judges and Jury-men in the late Reigns been made Examples we should have found these more tender in this but perhaps some Men were cautious in that knowing they should have occasion to use the Presidents in this But I return to what more particularly concerns Mr. Ashton the Man as P. in his Charge calls him who ought to be honoured by every Party if they have a fence of bravery in themselves it is a shame that those that extolled the Gallantry of Sydney should lessen his Character by saying how easy it is for an English Man to dye for few have or can dye like Mr. Ashton Let us acknowledge Virtue in our Enemies and have a greatness above Sect above Mode and above Party 't is English Men come to this they are not worthy of that liberty about which they make such ado § 6. Thus much for Mr. Ashton I will now pass to the consideration to Passive Obedience the Justice of this Cause and the Legitimacy of the Prince of Wales The prevaricating Sons of the Church of England have so plainly contradicted by their Practices all that they have formerly Written they have been all such Sherlocks that a Man had need be well satisfied of his Religion to keep him from Hobbism Let those that Read this Pamphlet Read the Authors Quoted in the History of Passive Obedience let them peruse Tillotson's Letter to my Lord Russel when he was preparing to dye Let them consider impartially what all of them would have had the World believe they meant at that time and then if they can let them forbear abhorring such Practical Atheists as are our Swearing admired Divines I blame them sufficiently for Ascribing such Luscious Authority to Princes they have tempted them to Exercise an uncontroleable Rule and now they as vilely flatter the Mobb I am not bound to defend all Mr. Ashton's Principles which they had taught him but I am confident they would have been Orthodox with the Body of the Church of England had the Declaration of Indulgence never been put out by King James and whatever the Answerer saith pag. 9 and 10. though too many prevaricate by Submission and Obedience yet there are but few of the Sons of that Church who submit to the Pr. of Or. as or believe him the Rightful Lawful King and so consequently the Object of Passive Obedience those that were of that Church in both Houses would have appeared as much against that Alteration of the Oath as they did against Abjuration Nay the very Secretary that is of that Communion though he has gone greater lengths than those who are strictly and sincerely of that Principle can approve of would not I believe be able to stretch his Conscience to swear this an Elective Monarchy or the Quarrel Just or which is the same thing the Pr. of Or. Lawful Rightful King § 7. If the Prince of Orange 's Declaration had been pursued which was once by Mr. Ashton designed to have been Re-printed as a proof how well it hath been made good if the false steps of the late Reigns had been rectified if the Objected Imposture League and Murther had been proved the ill Ministers called to account and the Prerogative fully debated and settled in Parliament a Reformation that would have lookt worth our Hazards our Fortunes our Reproach and our Lives I say if this had been the effect of the Revolution it might have tempted a prudent Man to sit quiet But where are the Quo-Warranto-Projectors the surrenderers of Charters or the Regulators punished many of them are well and well prefer'd Is the Parliament House less crouded with Officers Danby is President of the Council and knows how to manage that matter Are the Elections and returns better secured The Quakers in the late Elections were no Freeholders in Barkshire Hartfordshire c. and Jack How was a better Churchman than Powle who was Speaker to the Convention upon the Corporation bottom at Windsor Are 〈◊〉 Lives Liberties and the Estates of Englishmen better guarded Unless you think mercenary Foreiners fitter for that purpose than such who having Relations amongst us would be and were tite to the National Interest I know nothing we are the better or wiser in but in the Methos of Taxing the Subjects and Guilding the Pill with popular Names Enacting Martial Laws Suspence of the Habeas Corpus c. while those very Persons who had taught us That the King could not be called to account by his Subjects and both swore themselves and obliged others to swear that it was not Lawful upon any pretence whatsoever to take Arms against him engaged both themselves and others to help the Pr. of Or. to
dethrone his Uncle and his Princesses Father the Lord 's Anointed and their own Lawful and Rightful Sovereign The Prince's Declaration and the Memorial of the States denied that this was his Design but St. Asaph has found it in the Revelations § 8. Now give me leave to examine the Justice of this Engagement the Answerer plainly points out that it was to stop the Increase of the French Monarchy But this will not go down till the French League is proved the contrary of which was most true insomuch that though d' Avaux had got the Secret of this Invasion and the King of France pressed King James to take Care yet he was jealous it was art in the French King to dip him in his Quarrel and could not believe the P. of O. would undertake what he thought so horrid and unnatural So that Van Cyters his false Protestations had more Credit than the true Informations of Barillion and some will think it was not impossible for that Parliament which K. James was Calling to have perswaded him to have taken a just Care to ballance Europe I am far from commending the way they were to be Chosen in perhaps I am as nice as any Man living of the Privileges of English-men but I believe the Men that were recommended to the Corporations were many of them Chosen into the Convention and some of them perhaps were but too hot Members there nor do I believe they could have been mealy-mouth'd under King James So that the Emissaries of the P. of O. might have perswaded them to talk loudly of the Growth of France and of the Growth of Popery without all that Expence of Blood and Treasure we have been at and God knows when it will be at an End though if he came to save the People of England he should have made us the better for his Preferment and our Redemption but considering the Natural Obligations he had to King James he should not have made him only the worse § 9. And here I cannot forbear mentioning one thing that is mightily discours'd viz. that he did not only dethrone him as a King but despoiled him as a Merchant and that when Sir Robert Howard denied by the Pr. of Or. Command to let him have his own Money out of his own Exchequer after he returned from Rochester and he was forced to borrow of a faithful Servant a Sum of Money to carry him off and out of his great Justice made over to that Servant some Money which he had in the East-India-Company as a Trader to reinburse him the Company willingly joyning in the disposal yet even here he is using all his Power to wrest this Money out of the Gentleman's hands and suffers all the Tradesmen to whom the dispossessed King was indebted to devour that Gentleman for what belongs to the Royal Treasury to satisfy he ought to give greater encouragement to gratitude for Jeffrys himself could not prevail to destroy one of the Duke of Monmouth's menial Servants after his defeat and this present King should be ashamed to be hardest upon such as Mr. Ashton and this Gentleman were and to suffer all his Courts and to help them too to worry them every Term. This makes Mankind wonder § 10. But to return to the Invading Politicks The Dutch Ambassador ought not to have been ordered to deny those Preparations were against King James and it was fit to have tryed whether things might not have been amicable set right by Treaty before they entered into Conspiracies and Clandestine Confederacies with the Pope the Emperor and Spanish King with the Assistance of the Inquisition to Establish the true Protestant Religion Nor should Dickvelt have come hither to corrupt and to List the King's Subjects against him Those that can find Presidents and Arguments for these things can Reverse Nature and all her Laws can put off the sence of a God and a World to come whilst they basely lend their Pens to the blackest Villanies they may declaim for Lucifer and commend the Aspiring minds of the fallen Angels who have obtained a Government and Superintendency over Perjur'd and Wretched Souls over the Base the Treacherous and the Ungrateful and reign in the Hearts of none else and that Church Divine that can make the Message by the Three Noble Lords a very good natur'd Compliment may go a great way towards proving the Regicides Noble and Consciencious Patriots I think in my Conscience by his wording that Paragraph which I had almost slipped over he could have been willing the Life of his Soveraign should have been taken away to put an end to the War and the Charge he might have had Arguments from the Army Remonstrants 1648. And with Dr. Bur t 's help and from his Text have proved it the Lord 's doing a Man would think he had been in Holland that he allows all things to be done for Interest and the most unnatural barbarity to be good breeding if it does the business he le ts loose all the Ambition imaginable in Princes against all the Sacred Ties of Natural and Civil Relation against their Uncles their Neighbours their Allies their Friends and their Fathers-in-Law and sets down the wildest Maxims that were ever Advanced in Politicks and thinks to cast upon the Doctrines of the Church of England every Act of State wherein Princes have consulted their own secular Advantages and got a willing Clergy or perhaps but one of that Robe to Countenance what yet was not so apparently opposite to the sence of all good Men as our Pretences are For my part this Answerer shall no more send me to the French Cabinet than to the Netherlands to be instructed in honesty And I know no body that would have blamed the Pr. of Or. for obstructing the French Designs if he had not taken an unjust way to do it I wish he could have resettled the Edicts of Nantes and the Assembly of the States there the Liberties of the Oppressed and Liberty of Conscience but I am sorry he has chosen rather to be what After-ages will call a Pirate and a Robber than to be the acknowledged Benefactor and Protector of Mankind He has had great Opportunities but he has shown he knows not how to use them He has not a Soul large enough for the Post in which this fickle Nation has put him A Paultry Self-Interest governs his Councils and as ill Men govern him and make him mistake his way to Glory there were too apparent Prints of this Self-Interest in that part of his Declaration quoted by this Answerer in relation to the Prince of Wales and since that is a new insisted on by this Licensed Author though the Convention and present Parliament wisely let it alone because many of the Members knew there would be produced unanswerable and undoubted Proofs I will promise them they shall hear of it with a Witness in a particular Discourse since it would draw this Paper to too great a length I will conclude after I have solemnly returned my Thanks to the Government for at last publishing Mr. Ashton's Speech though not without the best Answer they could make to it which yet scarce ever was bought but to make the Speech in a Closet no Crime The Postscript SInce this went to the Press there is published part of what Mr. Ashton left in the Hands of a private Friend I hear the Court is much Enraged at it and there is much hunting after the Printer It seems the Government is very tender about the Proof of the Prince of Wales Mankind must be informed in that Matter and those that believe he is Legitimate only desire the next Parliament will give them a Fair Hearing And if they don't demonstrate him so by all the Series of Proofs necessary in such a Case and to the Satisfaction of the whole World they will be content to submit to and to joyn even with the Abdication Conquest or any other Title the King de Facto likes best FINIS