made Lieutenant of the Realm and Protector of it during Richard his Minority certainly had his Competition come in Question they would have been but dangerous Trusts and against the Laws of all Nations and our own for the Civil takes sufficient Care for the removing of all suspected Tutors and our Common ordained upon the Lord 's loosing his ward for disparagement that the wardship of the Heir should never go to the nearest of kin but to the next to whom the Inheritance cannot descend Daniel says King Edward purposely to prevent the disorder and mischiefs that attend the disordering Succession setled the same in Parliament on Richard lest John of Lancaster should supplant him as Earl John had done his Nephew Arthur and this disingenuous Creature perverts the fear of Supplantation into a dispute of the Succession and Stow tells us of nothing but his being made Prince of Wales on his Brothers Death But this Uncle proved a better Keeper of the King in his Protectorate than this John or Richard the Third had but the Poor Princes Subjects kept their Faith too and not given 〈◊〉 perjured Author another Instance for the renouncing his Allegiance and a second president for the deposing of his King And here since this Historian has already cited two or three Popish Archbishops for the Countenancing of his Puritanism and the Doctrine of Bellarmin for the Counterpart of Buchanan conspiring in a perfect Harmony for the Deposition of their Kings and their Murder I 'le tell him of another Canterbury too that blew the Trumpet to the dethroning of the next King and the sacrificing of his Sovereign upon that Altar of his Lips For the first thing that the first Usurper attempted that aspiring Prince when he landed was the causing of Arundel then the Metropolitan to preach down King Richard the Prelate had ready a Bull procured from Rome promising Remission of Sins to all those that should aid the said Henry and after their death to be placed in Paradice which preaching as our Author says moved many to cleave to the Duke but this Popish Puritan knows our Bishops and Divines since the Reformation have taught him better Doctrine and he licks up the very Poyson of his deadly Foes only to spit the venom in the Face of the Government But with what face can he tell us of a Parliament here drawing up a Form of Resignation which was just as much a Parliament as their late Major part of Members that were to be obey'd in their Association An Invader Usurper and a banisht Subject takes upon him in the name of his Sovereing to Summon it and so did our late Rebels fight and fire at his Majesty but still with his own good Leave and Authority this Convok't that Parliament as Cromwel secluded his with an Army at his heels only those had secured their King in the Tower these in the Isle of Wight and shall these their Journals of Rebellion make up a Book of Presidents Is such a fellow fit to breath under a mild Government that calls for Blood where there is so much Mercy that Recommends to your reading an Impeachment of his King and refers you to the Charge and Articles that were drawn up for his Deposition as a worthy Subject and well deserving to be read Why did he not tells us too as well deserving to be imitated Jan. 20 48. The Sollicitor Cook presented the Charge against CHARLES STEWART Engrost ordered that it be returned to him to be exhibited Preposterous Lump of Law and Logick revers'd that prints himself the Contradiction to common Equity and Reason can such a Body Politick justly convene it self only to Rebel against its head and to take away that Breath from whence it needs must have its being and can those Laws be made to conspire his Death from whom themselves acknowledge they receive their Life But as to the matter of Fact it self you shall see what Sence some of the Times had of it The King of France was so sensible of this Injurious Proceeding that it ran him into a fit of Frenzy Richard being related to him by the Marriage of his Daughter he acquaints his Lords with his Resolution of Revenge and they shew'd themselves as ready to take it too but were prevented here in England by their taking away his Life which made them desist not able to serve him after his Death This is but an Evidence how the Villany was resented abroad and you may find they were as much upbraided with it at home and that to their very face when a Parliament was sitting and their Usurper on the Throne by the Loyal Prelate of Carlisle whose Memory may it live as long as Loyalty can flourish or our Annals last so solid and 〈◊〉 were the Suggestions so significant the Sense of this pious Soul that it silenc'd all the Senate that was sitting and nothing but the prospect of some private or publick Favor and Preferment hindred their Conviction their King was cool enough in prosecuting of his bold Truths being scarce warm in his own Government yet at last upon Debate and Consultation they confin'd the bold Bishop for a while for the Liberty that he took and could only condemn his bold Indiscretion for shewing them so much the badness of their Cause Hollinshed tells us this poor Prince was most unthankfully us'd of his Subjects In no Kings days were the Commons in greater Wealth or the Nobility more cherisht how near some of our pamper'd Jesuruns that are satten'd to rebel confirm the danger of too much Luxury and ease the present fears from their experienced Attempts can best attest But the fatality that befel that unhappy Prince affords us the best politicks for the prevention of the like Fate And now for his Henry the Fourth he is forc't to 〈◊〉 for his depending on the Parliaments choice when in that was his least Relyance for as little as he makes of his claim from Henry the Third it is apparent from some Rolls of Parliament that he challenged the Realm upon that account and the Lords were interrogated what they thought of that claim upon which without delay they consented he should Reign and as another Evidence of his Right to Rule shewed them the Seal of King Richard as a Signification of his Will that he should fucceed him but that which for ought I see he lay his greatest weight upon was but what all Usurpers must most relie on the Sword and he himself assures them just after the Sermon was ended at the time they consented to be his Subjects that he would take no advantage against any Man's Estate as coming in by Conquest and Conquest is one of the first claims he puts in at his Coronation and as Haward relates it in his Life not the least mention of his being elected is there mingled with his Claim But neither did the success of a prosperous Wickedness
in Imitation of the Scots solemn one which they afterward swallowed up too and called their Assembly of Divines by special Ordinance then itwas as soon ordained according to the Resolution of the Lords and Commons that all that Hierarchy should be utterly Abolisht as an Impediment to Reformation and Religion Thus you see their Mar Prelates their Pryns their Leightons with their Libels then first led the Dance for the destroying that Order and I wish we had never seen so great an Assembly as the Senate of England seduced to follow them but shall we not suggest the danger of a second Destruction when the same Designs were afoot Did not a Temporal Peer some ten years agon fall very foul upon these Spiritual ones in a Libellous Letter that laid all the Obloquies that Malice or Lyes could invent upon their Lordships Was not there Papers Publisht when the late Popish Peer was to be put upon his Tryal to prove that they then had not so much as Right to sit as Peers tho they never set themselves aside but with a salvo jure Did not they debate it even now in Parliament where such a thing was never questioned but when the Order it self was brought into Question Did not these very Republicans about the same time publish that the Clergys having a share in the Soveraignty would ever be a Solecism in the Government Was not the Paper of Vnion about the same time to be presented to the Parliament just such another piece as Pennington's Petition Designing Knaves your selves supersede all such serious Expostulation Your selves are satisfyed you had several Designs on Church and State which you may well disown now since the sad success seems now to make you Fools too that presumed upon your Parliaments patronizing whatever the most profligate Person could propose and defyed your King for getting better Patriots consider only the sacredness of that Order the Antiquity of the Constitution and the fundamental Law upon which it is founded And then tell me whether without Irreligion Innovation or Rebellion by which it once was it can be once again abolisht Malitious 〈◊〉 those that in the worst of Times could in publick Parliament compare them to the Pharisees to the Dog in the Fable to the Destroyers of Vnity upon pretence of Vniformity yet those were forc'd to confess that the very first Planters of Christianity the Defenders of the Faith against Heresies within and Paganism without both with their Ink and with their Blood were all BISHOPS And here I am sure Establisht even with Christianity it self a Convention of them being called by Austin the first Founder of it here The Noble Peer that was for Clipping the Wings of the Prelates was compelled from the Suggestion of his own Conscience to allow forc't in spight of Faction to grant that their Function was deduced from all Ages of the Church a Function confirmed by the Apostles a Function dignifyed with the Piety of the Fathers a Function glorified in the Blood of the most Primitive Martyrs admired by all the Reformed Churches abroad and till that time flourished in our own at home The Sacredness of the Institution you see is sufficiently declared the Saviour of our Souls sending such to work out our Salvation His Embassadors his own Apostles sent their Successors the primitive Martyrs and least Laborious Cavil and Industrious Detraction should make these primitive Prelates be bare Elders prime Ministers or Assembly Men the very Text the Testament it self tells us even in all its Translations they were BISHOPS tells us that was their Title his Disciples his own Emissaries officiated under that Denomination and all our Ecclesiastick Writers deliver it down to posterity that by that very order all the Christian Churches throughout all Asia where they were first Establisht to their Progress Westward as far as they were propagated were all under their Government and Jurisdiction I need not insist on it on their being the most Divine or the most Antient Order in the whole World Envy and their Enemies Faction and their very Foes confess it all that 's left is to shew how the Laws of the Land confirm it And that those of the very Britains 〈◊〉 themselves and Danes demonstrate the Brittish Bishops were Assembled in a Synod for a thousand years agon and Athelstan one of the First Soveraigns of the Saxons with whom I am sure they never then disputed the Legislative even in his own Laws allows them the Management both of Matters Civil as well as Ecclesiastical from a just Presumption of their Knowledg in the Statutes of the Land they presumed as much upon their Equity and Justice and made them Managers of all the Measures and Weights and such was their publick Administrations then and so since that they were still made the Chief Ministers of State which made them not only Famous in their Ages but beneficial to posterity and tho I never enjoy'd the Benefits of their Bounty shall for ever Reverence their pious Memory It was from their Liberal Largesses most of those solid seminaries of sound Learning and Loyalty were first founded and establisht They can boast of more Bishops for their Founders than ever Kings for their nursing Fathers tho their Princes goodness was the more to be admired in preferring those that did so much good and were these thou venom'd Head the Vipers of their Age the Cheats the Hypocrites of those Barbarous Times whose blessed and most Monumental Labours can make the most Civil ones now to Blush In the time of the Danes the first Harold himself call'd Harefoot at a Convention of the Princes and Prelates at Oxford was Proclaim'd and Crown'd King by Elnotheus Archbishop of Canterbury and sure then the Law allowed him to meddle with Matters of State In all our old Councils for five hundred years before the Conquest and for above two hundred after Bishops and Abbots made up the best part of those petty Parliaments and that so long before these Contenders for their excludeing them their suffrages ever sate in that Assembly as part of the Senate And that antient piece that tells us of the manner of holding Parliaments tells us too that such Ecclesiasticks were always summoned Seditious Souls let those that are to take Care of them too have the same Subjects Liberty you so much Labour for Let Bishops be allowed their Birth-Right as well as your Lay-Lord-ships too your Magna Charta was made for the Loyal Bishops as well as the Rebellious Barons and that expressly declares the Church shall enjoy all her Rights inviolate and tells us as plainly one of them was to sit in Parliament your selves know a discontented Canterbury and I hope you 'll side with him because he was so claim'd for four hundred years agon his Privilege of Peerage in Opposition to His Prince petitioned for his Right and protested against the wrong for fifteen
would not be compleat and perfect from which I shall infer upon the First here was an Act past upon the King 's declaring he would give his consent had there been nothing else but his bare Assent required that declaring that he would might have been taken for granted and his not opposing it afterward sufficient not to have rendered it all null and void and the great Imprimaturs the other two Houses had given it with their Legislative have might in some Sense made it somewhat Obligatory But here 't is absolutely declared void as wanting the very Sanction that makes it a Law or any thing besides waste Paper Mr. Hunt tells us we would not say an House of Commons can make a Prince of Wales because the Prince of Wales was once confirmed by an House of Commons And I 'll tell Mr. Hunt just such another Tale The King cannot make his Coin without Metal and Allay but does therefore the Metal and Allay make the Kings Coin 't is his Royal Stamp 't is his own Impression that makes the Money Currant as well as the Laws From that of King James we may justly conclude That if here as they say there were nothing required but barely the Kings consent to the making it Law that might well in such an extraordinary Case as this be thought unnecessary to be demanded since the King that came so far for asserting his Right could not but in Reason be supposed very willingly to consent to any Recognition of it But they knew it might be an Acknowledgement of his Subjects without his Assent But never an Act of Parliament without such a Soveraign Sanction In short 't is the Privilege of all our three States Lords Spiritual Temporal and Commons 't is their Birth-right and that of every Subject to have a Concurrence in the making all Laws and why should I be thought to Love my Native Right less than Mr. Hunt yet still this Peoples concurrence need not to be Co-ordinate with their Kings or their Kings but a bare Concurrence with the People 'T is a Solecism to sober Sence to say Subjects can be Co-ordinate with him to whom they are Subjected and as absurd when they would salve it with saying As such a Senate they are not Subordinate when even for that their politick Existence they depend upon the breath of their Soveraign 'T is Remarkable to see and observe how Providence has defeated not only all their Attempts upon the Government but even their most Malicious Suggestions What pains did he take to turn over his Annals of Scotland and pick perhaps out of his Hector Boethius an Author that lived at his University when he writ far from the place where the Records were kept as a Learned and Ingenuous Author of that Nation observes which were the only things that could inform an Historian well in the Descent of the Crown or from the prejudic'd Writings of Buchanan whom none but one so partial as himself such an Enemy to our own Government as that was to the Scots would have consulted in any thing that related to the Crown and that only to make his Soveraign descended from a Bastard He might from that Author have told us too The Scotish Kings have all their Power from the People and therefore the People's above the King that the Multitude have the same power over Kings that they have over the Multitude who can depose him and if he won't submit to their Charge they can raise War against him or any private Person kill him But how has Time and Truth convinced the World that his Assertion is plain lye and I am sure without it his Inferrence had been false the King 's Learn'd Advocate there has shewn from Records That Robert the First King of the Stewarts there was married to this Elizabeth Mure that she was his first Wife that from a copy of an Act of Parliament held at Scoon the Succession was recognised to the Sons he had in his first Marriage which were the same Hunt has made first Spurious and then would not allow them Legitimized by the second Marriage because the first intervened contrary to the Canon of the Church that then obtained and the Opinion of all Civilians at present and as he might have found it in the very Codes of Justinian With what Face can he now behold his own Impostures or turn over a Leaf of his Seditious falshood without trembling The most adequate punishment I believe would be to confine him to read his own Works Blushes and Shame If he be not proof against both must torment him more in the review than he rack'd his tortured thought in the Penning it the sham of the Black-Box may as well be credited by the next Age as this has done that of the Black-Plaister when such Hunts shall Write their History of King Charles his Court after the same rate that Welden has that of King James when they shall not 〈◊〉 contend at the same time to make Bastards of those that are Legitimate but Legitimate those that are truly Bastards and the one all against Record Charter Statutes Ancient the other against the many Modern and Express Declarations of their present King This piece of this Seditious and Discontented Lawyer these now unquestionable Falshoods will be rever'd by the next age as a Revelation if not sufficiently exploded in this and I know that Welden is hugg'd at present by the Faction as an Oracle of Truth only for giving of his God the Lye and reputed as an Author sacred only for Libelling of his Soveraign that was truly so and representing that Providence as a Plague to his Royal Progeny that has signaliz'd it self in nothing more than in Miracles for its Preservation Most of the rest of his sublimated Sedition is spent in exposing the Divine Right of Kings the Right of their Succession and in truth of the Bible and its Author the Almighty he begins to confute St. Paul with that bandied Argumentation out of St. Peter that Kings are the Ordinance of Man and with that very Text on the Front does that Devilish piece de jure Magistratuum in one of its Editions begin So Mr. Hunt enters upon the Stage of his Argumentation with a perverted Text as well as one a reputed Papist that was supposed to be set a Work by the Pope for raising a Rebellion against our most Protestant Queen Elizabeth of whom I have two or three Editions by me such Encouragement does Treason and Sedition still meet with amongst our Puritans and the Popish part of the World for Re-impression and Improvement and from this damnable Libel upon Christi anity it self and the Badge of its Profession the Gospel a piece so lewdly Seditious that both the Catholicks and Phanaticks that hugg its Doctrine yet had not the Confidence to entitle them selves to the work from this and Brutus his vindicioe has Mr. Hunt and his Apostate absolutely borrowed
and a Case upon our late Elections much 〈◊〉 and to say as some 〈◊〉 That such a Prescription cannot be forfeited proceeds from a confounding of the word in this Case with that Prescription by which some of them have a Title to their Estate for their Common Objection about this their Elective power is That the King may as well deprive them of their Birth-right when this their Birth right might commence by an Original Right but the Power of this Electing must Necessarily and Originally first come from the Crown But yet they know too that this their very Birth-right is in many Cases forfeitable by their own Act to the Crown and for their Burgage it self should we abstract from that Elective power that attends it nothing else but an 〈◊〉 tenure of their very King And if in the Saxons time as the popular advocates would persuade us the Commons were call'd to sit in Parliament 't is certain they could not come as Burgesses too for all that Borhoe in their Toungue signified if we can believe my Lord Coke and from which the word Burgh was since deriv'd its signification was only this Those ten Companies or Families that were one anothers pledge and so should they prove it to us as clear as the Sun as well as they have left it much in the 〈◊〉 still those their Commons could never be of those that had any Right to come but only such as the Grace of the King should call and even in Edward the first 's time those very Barons some say that were only most wise were summon'd by the King and their Sons if they were not thought so prudent as their Fathers were not call'd to Parliament after their Fathers death Therefore since Prescription since Parliament it self depended all heretofore upon the pleasure of the Prince I cannot see how the Subject shall ever be able to make it his Original Right and tho some are so bold as to say such a prescription cannot be forfeited or resign'd by the Subject resum'd or restor'd to the Crown for they must maintain those propositions or else they have no reason for their Murmering since there has been none alter'd or destroy'd but what has been by Inquiry of the Kings Quo Warranto or their own Act of Resignation yet sure if the Common Law did not favour the King in this Case Common Equity would since those Priveleges were but the very Grant of his own Ancestors But if we must consider nothing but Mr. Sidney's Original Power and Right and all that lodg'd in his good People of England it may be their Birth-right too to Rebel they may and must Murder their Monarch and that by their own Maxims when they think him not fit to Govern or Live I have heard it often said that the Members in Parliament represent the people and for that Reason are call'd their Representatives but if this Original Power which is delegated to them upon such a Representation must Subject their Soveraign as Mr. S. will have it to these his Judges of the particular Cases arising upon such a Subjection then they must e'en represent their King too and every Session of Parliament that he Summons is but an unhappy Solemnity whom himself Assemblies for his own deposition if such positions should obtain 't is those that indeed would make the Monarch fearful of Parliaments and not those idle Suggestions of Mr. Hunt that the Weekly Pamphlets were endeavouring to make him forego them and it was this very opinion that promoted the last War which he would not have so much as mention'd Lastly if this Original Power of the People be delegated to their Representatives this People that did so Communicate it can at their pleasure recall it and exercise it themselves for that is essential to the Nature of a Communicated Power for upon supposition of the peoples having such a Power it would be of the same Nature that their Kings is for Power of Supremacy wherever it be lodg'd is still the same and you see that the Power which the King has is often Commission'd to the Judges in his several Courts of Justice and yet I cannot see how his Majesty by Virtue of such a Commissionating of his Servants does Exclude himself from the Administration of those Laws that he has only allow'd others to Administer or from a recalling of that power to himself which he has only delegated to another for 't is a certain Maxim in reason that whatsoever Supream does empower others with his Authority does still retain more than he does impart tho I know 't is a Resolution in our Law Books that if any one would render himself to the Judgment of the King it would be ofnone effect because say they all his power Judicial is Committed to others and yet even they themselves will allow in many Cases their lies an Appeal to the King But what ever was the Sense of my Lord 〈◊〉 in this point who has none of the fewest Faults and failings tho his Voluminous Tracts are the greatest ease and Ornament of the Law his resolution here is not so agreeable to Common Equity and Reason therefore I say in reason it must follow That Mr. Sid. people having but delegated their Power to the Parliament still retain a power of concurring with preventing or revoking of that power they have given but in charge to their Representatives and if so then they can call them to an Account for the ill exercise of that power they have intrusted them with set up some High Court of Justice again for upon this very principle the last was erected not only for the Tryal of their King but for hanging up every Representative that has abus'd them as they are always ready to think in the exercise of that Original power with which he was by his Electors intrusted these sad Consequences which necessarily flow from this lewd Maxim would make their house of Commons very thin and they would find but few Candidates so ready to spend their Fortunes in Borough Beer only for the Representing of those that might hang them when they came home upon the least misrepresentation of their proceedings and these sad suggestions of the sorrowful Case of such precarious representatives are 〈◊〉 Consequences from the very 〈◊〉 of our Republican even in those very Arguments that he uses for the subjection of his King for if his King 〈◊〉 man must be Subject to the Judgment 〈◊〉 his People that make him a King 〈◊〉 he cannot be so Impudently 〈◊〉 but he must allow his Members of Parliament that are much more made by them by Continual Election and 〈◊〉 very breath of their Mouth 〈◊〉 be as 〈◊〉 accountable to their Makers for if 〈◊〉 should recur in this Case as he has 〈◊〉 other refuge to the Peoples having excluded themselves from this 〈◊〉 Power once in themselves by conferring it on their Representatives 〈◊〉 farewel to the very Foundation
the Pest and Plague of the People are priz'd with our Republicans as the Philosophers and the Schools do their propositions of Eternal truths they imbibe the Poyson and exalt improve it too they sublimate the very Mercury of Mr. Hobs and whereas he equals us only in a state of Nature our Levellers will lay us all Common under the Inclosures of a Society and the several restrictions of so many Civil Laws But to what tends this their turning all the Power of a Parent into Tyranny as if a Father could not have an Authority over his Child unless he be bound to make it his Slave as if the Chastisement of a Father could not Evidence his Supremacy over his Son unless like the Saturn of the Easterlings he Sacrifice him to the Fire and torment it in the Flame But this paternal Right of the Father must suffer by these Factious Fools from the same sort of Inferrences they bring against the Divine Right of their King which may only serve with some Loyal Hearts to confirm the great sympathy there is between them for as by the Law of Nature a Father can't be said to injure his Son so neither by those of the Land can our Soveraign wrong his Subjects For say these Seditious ones your Divinest Monarchs by that Doctrine can Hang Burn Drown all their Subjects they should put in Damn too for once since they may as well infer from it his sending them to the Devil but cannot common Sense obtain amidst these transports of Passion can they not apprehend a Father to have any paternal Authority over his Family unless he be able to Murder every Man of it The Civil Laws the municipal ones of his Land if a Member of a Society supersede such a feverity and if a Patriarchal Prince must be supposed as were several of old after the 〈◊〉 then the Affection of a Father And the Laws of Nature were sufficient to fecure the Son or 〈◊〉 the Servant from any 〈◊〉 but what some proportionable 〈…〉 so also did this Divine Right 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Soveraign as entirely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the great Turk yet the 〈◊〉 part of those Civil Sanctions to which the Divinest of them all would be 〈◊〉 or at least the precepts of the Divinity their God under 〈◊〉 they 〈◊〉 that will oblig'd them both 〈◊〉 Justice and Mercy the two great Attributes of him whom they represent But since they would make this Empire of a paternal Power so 〈◊〉 in Reason let us see how it has all along 〈◊〉 in the Letter of the Law and if it has there 〈◊〉 been 〈◊〉 upon as a Notion so 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 The most illuminated Reason of our eminent 〈◊〉 must submit to be much in the dark The Romans from the result of their Imperial Sanctions look'd upon themselves to have such an absolute Power and Authority over their Sons and Daughters that they tell us expressly it was a peculiar Prerogative and privileg'd of the Citizens of Rome and that there was no other Nation that could Exercise such a Jurisdiction they could 〈◊〉 for ever by this Power of the Parent any thing that was acquired by the Son and give it to any whom they pleas'd whereas it might have been an Argument enough of a paternal Power had they been but only usufructuaries and the Dominion remained in the Child and such a Sense of Soveraignty do the Civilians express to reside in the Father of a Family that they gave him the same Appellation with that of a King and tell us by the name of a Family the Prince of it is also understood and tho Mr. Hunt tells us a Story out of the Cabala of the Jews Laws and the Tract of Maimonides that they lookt upon their Children 〈◊〉 of Course when they came to Thirteen and that then they could claim it as their right to be free I must tell him from the Constitutions of the Imperial that must be of more force among us unless we resolve still that even Christians shall Judaize that no Sons were ever emancipated or emitted out of the power of the Parent unless they could prevail upon him for his own consent that by no meanshe could be compell'd to it and they had no freedom de Jure till their Fathers were de facto dead And tho 〈◊〉 in his Comment on that part of the Institution says They became sui Juris at 25 from their Manner and Custome yet concludes the Law of Nature oblig'd them still to their Parent which no civil one could disanull The Duty that their Digests say was due to this Paternal power which they 〈◊〉 almost as Sacred was exprest by the word piety and a learn'd Civilian of our own laments that there is no more provisions 〈◊〉 in our English Laws for the Duty of the Child and the protection of the Parent and with them so great was the crime of parricide that they could not a long time invent an adequate punishment for such an unproportionable Guilt tho they had one for Treason against the Prince And tho our own Laws do not make the Paternal power savour so much of Soveraignty yet we shall see they sufficiently evince that the Parent has a power very Analogous too it whereas Mr. Hunt will not allow it to have the least Relation which remisness of our Civil Institutions might well proceed from a presumption of our knowledge of the express command in the Decalogue of which the Romans were ignorant tho we have no formal Emancipation now in use which does imply a power of Government yet our old Lawyer tells us still that Children are in the power of their Parents till they have extrafamiliated them by giving them some portion or Inheritances and the Custody of them while minors which 〈◊〉 went to the King upon the presumption I suppose of his only ability to be a second Father that was settled in the Parent both by Common-Law and Statute for there lay a good action against any one for seducing a Mans Son as well as Servant out of his power which does imply that there is a power out of which he may be seduced and thus I have endeavor'd to shew the first Foundation of power to have been in the Fathers of Families And it signifies nothing whither every Father of it Reigns in it as a King now and therefore Mr. Hunt his impertinence is inconclusive and part of his Assertion a plainly when he would infer from the continuance of the Parents Authority over their Children together with the Soveraign power distinct that therefore there was never any Foundation of a Patriarchal power for he might as well tell us That because we have no Parents now but what are Subject to the Municipal Laws of the Land therefore there was never any Patriarch in the Bible never an Abraham an Isaac or a Jacob that had an absolute Dominion over their own Families or none now amongst some
or opinion the rants of our implacable Republicans that are pleas'd with nothing that recommends a Monarchy no tho it be the very Bible and the Book of the Almighty Cannot those silly Souls that are transported out of Sense conceive that there is a difference in Assertion to say That Monarchy is by Divine Right and that every Monarch Rules by the same Right Divine then indeed we should run into Sidney's Absurdities of making every Rebel that could but reach at a Crown a Cromwell or a Monmouth as much a Divinity Monarch as our best and Lawful Soveraign tho it must be granted that those Successions even of Lines that have for a long time descended lineally do intimate to us somewhat of the Divine Will that it shall so succeed and even the paternal Successions in this sort of Royal Government was given us for our Instruction that God approv'd of it from the time he gave the Children of Israel and Judah their first Kings who throughout all the History of the Bible succeeded from Father to Son but that which garbles and really grieves our Republicans is that even the Divine Right of Monarchy it self can be Asserted that we have so much as the Intimation of the Will of God any Reason to conclude from his Word that he has given the Approbation to the Kingly Government any preference to Monarchy it self they quarrel at the very Bible for mentioning so much as a King or Prince and they would make the version Libel the Original when it makes a Melchisideck the King of Salem or Hamor the Hivite Prince of the Country they would have their INDEX too and expunge a whole Chapter of Genesis for talking of ten Kings besides Abraham and make all the Old Testament an entire Apocripha that does but mention a Monarch And for this Plato tells us plainly that Moses made them all Commonwealths and that afterward over those they call'd Kings the Sanhedrim and Congregation of the People did preside tho the Text tells us Moses was King in Jesurun and so the King it seems made it a Common-wealth These Rebels to the Majesty of their King are as refractory to what the Divine Majesty has approved they damn the very History of the Creation and the Original composure and Constitution of Nature because it once made a Monarch in a single Man and has puzl'd them to find out any more of Adams Common wealth but among his Beasts they Curse the Dispensations of Providence for preserving a Monarchical Government throughout the Universe and has left them nothing but two or three Rebellious States they condemn the deluge for not destroying Noah too but left so much of Regal Authority to remain in the Ark this makes them when they are perplext with the pesterings of some Loyal Positions to put us upon deducing our Kings Pedigree from Adam or as Mr. Sidney says from the Eldest Son of Noah the Foolishness and unreasonabless of their Postulates the ridiculousness of those demands I cannot better answer to my Satisfaction or theirs then by sending them to St. John's Coll. in Oxford I 'll promise them there if they 'll be but pleafed there they shall see even the most everlasting Line drawn down from the Garden of Eden to White-Hall from the first Adam to their present Soveraign K. James and if they don't like the Heraldry let them dispute it with the Painter I cannot tell how to gratify the Impertinence of their demands but with as pleasant a message But if a Man can be serious among such Buffoons I must tell them 't is one thing to say that Noah and Adam Rul'd by a Right Paternal and another that every Monarch must have the same Paternal Right from Adam and Noah 'T is one thing to say that God approv'd of Princes to Govern and another that he appointed to every Prince the same Right of Government the form of Regal Government I hope from the Royal Authority of the Patriarchs may be Justified to be of Divine Institution tho the Succession of the whole series of Succeeding Soveraigns be not resolv'd all into the same Title I can tell them of not only an absurdity but a plainlye would be the Consequence of such a position for then there must have been no Battels Fought after the Flood no Ten Kings in one Chapter of the Testament none of that long Catalogue of Egyptian Princes and in truth at present but one Vniversal Monarch in the World tho that some Learned and Laborious Heads do too industriously sometimes attempt to deduce from Scripture by the Almighty to have been once design'd and Babel for the seat of such an Empire For it would be a great piece of Paradox indeed and a greater of Impertinence to persuade such Seditious Authors there was ever any thing of an Vniversal Empire design'd that won't allow there was ever a particular one Establish'd That tell us no general revolts of a Nation can be call'd Rebellion and then I am sure they must maintain that there is no particular Supremacy from which the generality of the Subjects can be said to Reble but Mr. Sidney borrow'd this pretty Position too from that pernicious piece that was publish'd about the Rights of Magistrates for that tells us too That the Danes imprisoning their King Christien to his dying day the Swedes rejecting their Sigismund for his persisting in the Romish Religion were no Rebels I confess their Monarchys admitting so much mixture of Democracy may make the people there to have a greater power in publick Administrations but certainly cannot well extend to impower them to subvert the very publick Weal it self which must be said to consist in the supream head of it the King and tho they will seperate his Person from that publick political Consideration and say they may maintain the Monarchy tho they depose such a particular King this will not mend the matter for those that have a power to reject ONE Prince are as much empowr'd to refuse to Elect another and then the result of it must be this that our Republicans will admit no more of a particular Empire then a Vniversal In short those that had but the least Inclinations to be Loyal and did but Love and like an Establisht Monarchy that were not resolutely resolv'd to Rebel against the Light of Nature as well as the Resolution of the Laws would soon see and be satisfy'd of the Solid Reasonableness the Innocent Truth of these three several Propositions I have so lately Labour'd in First that Primogeniture obtain'd by the Institution of the Almighty and his continued Approbation in the Bible both in Paternal discent and Regal ones and that the Laws and Practise of Nations have confirm'd it in both since and that home to our Doors Secondly that Paternal Right and Power by the same Authority of the Almighty has been prefer'd by the Laws of Nature Maintain'd and by the Civil Sanctions of
all Nations Confirm'd Thirdly that Monarchy or Kingly Government isso far of a Divine Institution as it has receiv'd from God himself an ‖ Express approbation as it has been Intimated to us from the Worlds Creation and its first Regulated Establishment as it is Constantly Visible from all the Phaenomenons of Vnalterable Nature and as it has been Continually transmitted to posterity by the special Appearances of providence for its preservation And Last of all let me but only subjoyn the Excellency of this truly ancient venerable and divine Form of Government a Monarchy and then the many Mischiefs that attend the popular one a Democracy and then let the most prejudic'd and partial person judge not only which of the two has been always reputed most Eligible but which of them he himself would most affect to Chuse Sir Walter Raleigh as Learned an Head-piece perhaps of the last Age as any that he hath left behind him in this a Person rather prejudic'd against Monarchy than bigotted for it no such Court-Favourite as the Mercury makes of Salmasius A Dirty Dissolute Parasite of Kings and Pander of Tyranny this Learned Historian lets us know That the first the most ancient the most general and most approved Government is that of one Ruling by just Laws call'd Monarchy and whatever wits our more modern Commonwealths-men pretend to be this Gentleman that was more sage than the wisest of them does not make paternal Right such a ridiculous thing as they would represent it but tells us that in the beginning the Fathers of Nations were then the Kings and the Eldest of Families the Princes and of such an Excellency is its Form that it is the clear result of unprejudic'd Reason and most agreeable to the sense and security of Mankind For as the natural Intellect it self by which I mean bare humane understanding when in the infancy of the World people were guided more by their own Fancies and the Paternal Power which then was all the Regal from the tenderness it might be suppos'd to have towards those that were their natural issues as well as their civil subjects had indulg'd vice and been less rigorous in Executing impartial Justice on Offenders whereby people were left more at Liberty I say Nature then and Necessity it self made them find the Inconvenience even of too much Toleration and made even the most foolish fellows apprehend as well as the wise that the Condition of reasonable men would be more miserable than that of brute beasts that an Inundation of Anarchy and Confusion would overwhelm them more than the first Flood Did they not by a general Consent submit to Government and obey those that were set over them to Govern For they found that when they were most mighty to oppress others might in time grow more so and do them as much mischief And those that were equal in their strength found themselves equally dangerous and mischievous one to another and that the most unbounded Licenciousness prov'd always to some or other the most miserable Bondage and Slavery And this natural Reason inclin'd them too to acquiesce under those Monarchical Forms that were then the Government of the Times and which the Israelites themselves desired in a more special manner tho' they were forwarn'd of its Absoluteness and told by Samuel that it would be Tyranny it self for the same necessity convenience reason and natural instinct that persuaded them to submit to Government in General did also suggest to them the Excellency of Monarchy in Particular For as by want of all Government their reason told them they could not long possess any right and that Liberty being only a License to do what they list and so left nothing to be wrong So the same reason suggested that these their Rights were best defended and soonest decided by some single Person that was Supreme than when a Multitude had the Supremacy for in that there being so many suffrages as there are men accordingly there might be so many several interests and factions which must both hinder any sudden determination as well as make the sentence liable to more partiality and injustice when it is determin'd This made the Senate of Rome so tedious always in its determinations and the people as uneasie and unsatisfied in their Decrees Their Praetores Quaesitores Judices Quaestionum selecti some of them having under them no * less than an hundred Commissioners might be said to confound Causes instead of determining them Their Agrarian Laws that were made for the Division of their Fields most of them having been given by Romulus and the rest of their Kings resolv'd their rights to them with Justice and satisfaction to the people while their Kings Reign'd that gave them and were the sole Judges of their own Laws But when they were confounded into a Commonwealth and the Senate set themselves to decide the divisions of their Commons and their Fields what Seditions Confusions and Unsettlement did they create So that the Reasonable presumption there is of a more Equitable and speedy distribution of Justice from a single Sovereign because suppos'd to be less prejudic'd and less unable to be prevail'd upon by favour or affection may very well be thought to have recommended at first a Monarchical Form afford us now asmuch reason for the retaining it In the next place A King being a perpetual Heir to the Crown insomuch that the Politick Laws suppose him never to dye and when in a natural sense he does the Crown still descends to his immediate Successor This will make him 〈◊〉 to preserve the Rights of it inviolate and perpetuate the same Prerogative to his Posterity Whereas the people in all their popular 〈◊〉 administer only for years or at most for Life and what should hinder them then from defrauding that Publick whose Administration they must either soon quit or at last leave to those to whom they no way relate I allow in most such Communities there is commonly special provisions made by their Laws that an abusing that power with which they are intrusted or a robbing the Common-wealth of part of its Revenue shall be punish'd with some grievous Fine or perhaps made Capital for which the Romans had their several rules and regulations for their Magistrates and men in Office But there being so many ways to be injurious to the Publick that can so easily by those that administer its affairs be kept private and conceal'd it must certainly be concluded that those that have an Hereditary Power of Publick Administration as all Kings and they alone have that their Interest obliges them to preserve its rights inviolate from an unwillingness that nature it self will implant in them to injure their own Sons Successors and Posterity Whereas the same Interest which certainly is the most powerful Promoter either of good or evil will incite Senators in a Commonwealth more industriously more seriously to endeavour to serve them selves It is the
Monarchy mixt and of this even Justin can tell us in one of his Books And for making their Monarchy more Divine did Romulus and Numa the Founder of their Religion as well as of Rome Officiate in it sometimes too So much did the Fathers of old prefer Monarchy to a Popular Government that Sir Walter Rawleigh tells us of the saying of St. Chrysostom that recommended even a Tyrant before no King at all and that is 〈◊〉 with a Sentence of Tacitus who tells us If the Prince be never so wicked yet still better than none And for that of a Commonwealth it was as bravely said by Agesilaus to a Citizen of Sparta discoursing about Government That such a one as a common Cobler would disdain in his House and Family was very unfit to Govern a Kingdom In short all the Presidents that Mr. Sidney has given us of the Romans driving out their Tarquins of the French rejecting the Race of Pharamond of the Revolt of the Low-Countries from Spain of the Scots killing James the Third and Deposing Queen Mary are all absolute Rebellions were ever Recorded so in History and will be Condemned for such by all Ages He should have mention'd for once too the murder of our Martyr'd Sovereign for to be sure he had the same sense of that upon which he was to have sate But if any thing can recommend their Commonwealth it must be only this That it cannot be so soon dispatch'd it being a Monster with many Heads to which Nero's Wish would not be so cruel That it had but one neck to be cut off at a blow The clamour this Republican made against Monarchs in general was whatever he suggests appli'd to our own in particular when he tells in the very same Page of the Power of the People of England and though he exclaims and all others do against this Arbitrary Power of Kings 't is certain themselves would make the People as Arbitrary The Question is not whether there shall be an Arbitrary Power but the Dispute is who shall have it there never was nor ever can be a People govern'd without a Power of making Laws and that Power so long as consonant to reason must be Arbitrary for to make Laws by Laws is Nonsense These Republicans by confession would fix it in many and the Multitude in Aristocracy 't is fix'd in a few and therefore in a Monarchy must be setl'd in ONE CHAP. VI. Remarks upon their Plots and Conspiracies AND now that they may not think I have foully Libell'd them in a Mis-representation of the dangerous Principles of their Republicans I 'll be so fair as to prove upon them too the natural product of their own Notions and that is the Plots of the same Villains assoon as they have been pleas'd to set up for Rebels And these will appear from Chronicle and History the Records of Time and the best Tryers of Truth these will not be falsified with Reflection but be founded upon matter of Fact And of these this will fall in our way as the first About the Year 1559 there was promoted in France a Plot and Conspiracy against their King and that founded upon the same pretext so many of ours have been of late in England that is Religion but truly fomented by what has been always the spring the very fountain of Blood and Rebellion discontent and disgust toward the Government For upon the death of Henry the Second and the Succession of Francis his eldest Son to the Throne the Princes of the House of Bourbon thinking themselves neglected and despised thrust out of Office and Employment at Court and finding the Family of the Guises still prefer'd whom they always as mortally hated resolved to revenge themselves upon the Crown that is to turn Rebels Of these Vendosme and Conde were the principal Engagers and drew in the two Castillions the Admiral and his Brother who for the removal of the Duke De Montmorency their relation from that Court to which he had prefer'd them were as full also of resentment against the Crown as those that came to engage them with an invitation to invade it and after all their several seditious Assemblies after all the many Meetings they had made after all the Treasonable Consultations they had held no design was look'd upon by them more likely to prove effectual than the making themselves Head of the Hugenots And so hot were they upon this Project the pursuit of another kind of Holy War that among our modern Crusadoes has been nothing else but a Religious Rebellion that notwithstanding the coldness of the King of Navarr they drew in most of the Protesting part of France to be truly Rebels for the sake of their Seducers while they made them believe they had only engag'd themselves to fight for the Religion of those they had so wickedly seduc'd And so conducing then were the principles of a Republick to a Rebellions Plot that one 〈◊〉 that was forc'd to turn Renegado to his Country for Misdemeanors committed in it and fled to Geneva as a Sanctuary for Sedition after he had lurk'd there like a concealed Criminal abroad upon his Return sets up for an open Rebellion at Home after he had layn so long in the lake the sink of Democracy you may be sure was well instructed how to resist a Monarch He soon blows the coals that could easily keep up the Blood of the warm Princes that was already set so well a boyling Him they pitch upon as the fittest tool to work out their design and in my conscience coming from that Common-wealth the Statsemen judged not amiss when they took him for an able Artist With his help and their own it went so far that Moneys Men and Amunition was provided and a Petition drawn for a Toleration of Religion though indeed but a Treacherous vell to cover their Intended Treason which was to seize upon the Young King upon his denyal of what they knew he would not grant surprize the Queen that still opposed them and put the Guises to the Sword whom she favoured But the Court being advised of the Conspiracy had retired to the Castle of Amboise and so far did they prosecute their Plot that their Petitioners were admitted into it though their Arm'd Accomplices that were without were compelled to fight for their Lives which Renaudie with the rest of the Ring-leaders of them lost and the Rabble to save theirs was forc'd to fly This was the praeliminary Plot and an unhappy prelude to a long and bloody Civil War fomented first by the fury of a Faction that set up for Rebels only because not favoured as they thought sufficiently by the Court and then seconded even to an Assaulting of the Crown in the Siege of Paris and almost the Subversion of the Monarchy as some Learned Historians surmise from the secret Emissaries of the Republick of Geneva I need not touch on the particulars in which the
several Kings and particular Princes The Druids as may be gathered out of Caesars Commentaries had in those Ignorant days all the Learning and the Law But too little alass to let us know whether their Princes were absolute Monarchs or limited Hereditary or Elective though 't is to be suspected they were both unconfined in their power as well as succeeded by their blood those poor Embryo's of Knowledg the very primitive Priests of Barbarous Heathens that in their highest felicity were no happier than the first asserters of the Gospel under Misery and Persecution their reverend Hermitages but the Woods the Dens and Caves of the Earth were far sure from disputing the right of Sovereignty when only capacitated to obey far from transmitting to us the frame of their Monarchy unless they had known the Egyptian learning of writing on the Barks of Trees and made their Libraries of the Groves in which they dwelt The Princes and Monarchs of their Times were wont to frequent those pious places for Worship and Adoration and had a Veneration too without doubt for those reverend Bards that sacrificed but were far I believe from subjecting their Regal Authority to that Divinely Pagan tho' then the sacred Jurisdiction tho' 't is reported that upon Caesar's invading them the very power of Life and Death and the Punishment for all manner of offences was in their sacred Breast and such as would not stand to their award were forbidden their Sacrifices which Interdiction then was the same I believe in effect with the modern power of our Church to Excommunicate but besides another reason and the best too why we have nothing delivered from those sacred Oracles of Religion and Law why the History of those times is still uncertain and was never transmitted is because they were expressly forbidden to transfer any thing to Posterity or to commit it to Books and Letters tho somewhat of that sort of Communicating must be supposed by that Inhibition to have been Imparted to them from the Egyptians Greeks Romans those Eastern Climes through which Learning and Letters had their first Progress But whether their Ignorance or such a prohibition were the Causes why nothing descends to us of the Government of our old Britains 't is granted by all and by this Author himself that it was Monarchical that Kings Reigned here ab origine if not Jure divino Though I look on their Antiquity no small Argument of their Divine Right and for the probability of their Haereditary Succession which I insinuated above can I confess since we are so much in the dark be only guessed by the light of Reason and that I shall make to warrant the Conclusion from the present Practise and Constitution of all barbarous Nations where the next of blood still mounts the Throne unless interrupted by Rebellion and that 's but the best Argument of our Author for the Power of his Parliaments and if only for this certain Reason we have more Authority to conclude it was then Haereditary then he only from the uncertainty of the Story has to conclude it otherwise In the next place I see no reason why his Sentiments should determine other Peoples thoughts and why we should not think that the following Heptarchy of the Saxons tho they had their seven Kings yet still might agree in one rule of Succession nay tho their Laws were so different too as he would insinuate which is not absolutely necessary to suspect neither for they being all one Nation and then but just called from their home by our British King Vortiger for his assistance may probably be supposed to have retained for the Main the general Rules and Laws of their own Countrey tho when divided into those seven Kingdoms they might also make a sort of private by-Laws according to the different Emergences of particular affairs that occurred in their several Governments Can he prove that the Succession of the Saxons in their own Countrey was not Hereditary when they inhabited in their small Dukedom of Holstein and that consequently they retained the same sort of Election in their new acquired Government here that they left in their own at home this he does not undertake to suggest because not able to prove there having been a probable Monarchy all along Hereditary if Paternal Right was wont to descend so for that is proved by most learned Pens and these Saxons are believed to have been the relict of the race of Cimbrians that inhabited that Chersonese so called from its Inhabitants of whom Gomer the Son of Japhet was the Original Father or Prince But what ever was their Government before he allows them to have set up seven Monarchies here only can't think they agreed in one Rule of Succession because governed by different Laws which tho granted is so ridiculous an Infinuation that greater Differences atpresent between greater Kingdoms and Nations far more remote in Place far more different in Religion contradicts the Suggestion who for the most part now over the whole World agree in an Hereditary Succession to the Crown and the Argument would have been as strong and as apparently foolish if he design'd it for a Specimen of his folly that since France and Spain Sweeden and Denmark are govern'd by different Laws we can't imagin them to have one sort of Succession Which very Rebound of his own Pen wounds his Cause more than any direct stroak of his Adversaries for since we see those more different more distant Nations agree in one Rule 't is sure a Logical Inference a Majori that those that were less different might And for the Changes and Consusions of those Times which he urges as an Argument of their uncertain Succession that is in effect his very Alpha and Omega and his praefatory Suggestion only proved through his whole History that in times of Confusions and Rebellions Succession is uncertain and so is all Property and Common Right all meum and tuum all that the Law of God or Man can make his own But as obscure as he makes our Succession before the Romans came 't is not so dark and unintelligible but that we may gather light enough from it to have been Hereditary We won't rely on the Fable of Brute and the Catalogue of near 68 Kings that are said to have Reigned Successively here before the coming of the Romans yet allowing it an entire Fable we may draw from it this Moral at least that a Fabulous Tradition sometimes has somewhat of reality for its ground as the patching up a Centaure a Chymera with a thought results from several Objects that are simply real abstracting from the compounded Fiction And tho we might not have 68 Kings successive before the Roman Conquest yet that there were several appears and he owns and I conclude Hereditary from the common rule in all Barbarous Nations when ever discovered in which the further back we run in the History of the Old World the more we are confirmed
as also the more forward we go in discovering the New But tho from the Roman Invasion he leaps presently into the Saxon Heptarchy yet we may read too there were many petty Kings that they suffered here after their Conquest it being the Roman Pride of having Kings their Subjects and why those might not still retain an Hereditary Succession I cannot understand especially since Dr. Heylin reckons up 16 Kings that succeeded after the Roman Forces had left them naked as indeed they were without a Metaphor to the incursion of the Pict the first five or six of them lineally succeeding one another from Father to Son and the rest not known to have succeeded so only because there 's nothing left us of them but their Names After the consolidating of that Heptarchy into a single Monarchy the learned Man whom I before have cited has shown this disingenuous Author unfortunately to have stumbled in the very Threshold and proved by Authentick Citation that his elected Egbert was the next of kin to the Royal Stock that all the following Succession of the Saxon and Danish Monarchs ran in the blood or was disposed of by the Will and Testament of the deceased Prince The renowned City of London as he calls her is obliged to him for his Civilities and I shall thank him too for his Complement in letting her know that her Approbation had heretofore no small Influence on the Succession And for the securing the Crown on the right head 't is recorded to their Glory and may that glorious act of their Ancestors be still perpetuated in our lasting Annuals and imitated too by the Posterity of her present Inhabitants who then adhered to King Edmond their Lineal and Lawful Prince and that because they knew he was so A Prince Worthy of a better time and who had he found more faithful and but better Subjects might have been in Condition to have made it so His Citizens then clave to him when his very Clergy 〈◊〉 him but their Religion in those days was too little to expect their Loyalty much whereas ours now as the best Argument of their being truly Religious still show themselves as eminently Loyal The Citizens then for I shall insist upon it for their Encouragement now would not concur with Canute's Election by the Priests and Nobility And why because a perfect Exclusion of the right Heir and the next Lawful Son and Successor to their late King And the Fiction that the Factious Author tells us of a Child chosen in the Womb proves but the Story the Fable of a Monk for which he might as well have cited their Legends M Westminster Paris nor any other Authentick Historians ancient enough so much as mention it and our modern Baker says expresly upon 〈◊〉 Death his third Son Edmund call'd Iron-Side but the Eldest living at his Fathers Death succeeded and was Crowned at Kingston upon Thames That a great part of the Nobility favoured the Dane because they feared him but the Londoners stood firm to Edmund and 〈◊〉 the Authors of his Election and upon his very using of the word here I can't but observe what the worthy Dr. has sufficiently proved too how common among Historians that word Election is used only for a Confirmation or acknowledgment of the Right and how against Reason he still misapplies it to Choice why did he not undertake to prove from Baker too that this Prince was elected by the Londoners only because he says they were the cause of his Election which perhaps he would have done but that he found he must have made that Author contradict himself as I believe he has done the rest who tells us just before he was Crown'd at Kingston as the eldest living at his Fathers Death And the Interest of that Metropolis for the right Line was such and so considerable together with that Princes own Courage and Conduct that he remained Conqueror in three several Battels and had been so in the fourth too the last I believe the Dane would have dared to offer had not that false Edric the Traytor to his Father acted o're the same Treason to the Son and revolted in the fight when the Forces of the Foe where on the point of flying The taking but half his Kingdom at that Duel and Accommodation in the Isle of Alney was more 〈◊〉 than fortunate when still his trusty Citizens would have fought for the whole and spent their last blood for the right Line they had first espoused the parting with some of his right was quickly succeeded with the losing of all and his Life to the Bargain and England might well be too weak for its self when 't was made half Denmark so dangerous is it to Princes to forgo the least of their right which only introduces the loss of a greater share or to part with a piece of Prerogative for the patching up some popular divisions whose twisted Interest like Cords that are a twining if it catch but the Skirts of the Purple will soon wind away the whole robe the Observation is here verified upon our old Records and been newly transcribed in Blood in our latter days and the Son of our Royal Martyr treads the best Politicks for the Prevention in that unfortunate Testimony of his Father and if Soveraignty be somewhat that is Divine a Subjects robbing of the Crown must be next to that of a Church and a sin that savours as much of sacriledg But to let you know in short the design of this Historian's Complement upon which we have dwelt too long the pretty Parenthesis was applyed to another purpose 't was publisht at a time when the City was Influencing an House of Commons that were for altering Succession and they as great an Influence with the City At a Banquet of Politicks after their Parliament Feast and His time to let them know the Approbation of that renowned City had then no little Influence on the Succession And besides in the very same Page he had prepared for them the pretty President of the Saxons preferring a brave and deserving Bastard before a cruel and Legitimate Prince He means that Athelstan whom he resolves rather erroniously to suppose Illegitimate than Ingeniously to allow him as he truly was the Lawful Heir But Baker and others tell us the Truth tho' he will not and say this Athelstan was the Eldest and no way spurious But the telling of the Truth would have prevented this malicious Authors Factious insinuation of the D. Temper which to make the more remarkable he must mark out in Emphatical Italicks only to save the crying Monmouth and York But the Card is turned there now and the Loyal Heart Trump instead of his Clubs and to be hoped they 'l make good the best part of the Observation which he never designed they should stand and fall with their Loyal Progenitors in the defence of the right Line and the Royal Blood In short upon the whole united and
believe the Legend for a Bible and his History for the Revelations But yet this Prince though by Conquest and Composition he got half the Kingdom and upon Edmunds Death the whole foresaw what Power the pleas of Right and Succession might have for animating an Interest in the defence of the poor injured Heirs and therefore took all the ways to ingratiate himself with his wavering People his young and unexperienced Subjects and all manner of means for preventing the Lawful Heirs for attempting for their Right sticking at neither Murder Malice and Treachery and in order to the first he made a shew of governing with more Justice then he conquered and took mildness for the best means of his Establishment and to let the Nation know he designed only to subdue them sends away his Mercenaries ships away his Navy and for a popular Specimen of an Heroick Kindness to the memory of the Saxons he succeeded as a Satisfaction to their injured Dust prefers Edricks perjured Head to the highest place on the City Gate and with that Expedient reconciled himself at once to his own promise deserved Justice and the Peoples favour and yet for securing himself from any danger from the Lawsul Heirs so politickly Cruel that all the Royal Blood felt of his Injustice sent the two Sons of his late Co-partner in the Kingdom to be murdered abroad and got his Brother to be butchered at home such an experienced truth is it that Powers usurpt Successions altered like the blackest Villanies can only be Justifyed and defended by committing more At his Death 't is true he disposed of his Crowns by Testamentary Bequest and well he might when there was so little known for Kingdoms of Feudatory Law and private Estates then far from being entailed yet in that very Legacy you can observe what Power the Consideration had with him of Right and Blood for he leaves his own Paternal Dominions Norway to his Eldest son Swayn and to his Youngest Hardicanute his conquered England considering his Mothers Blood which was Emma Wife to the late King Ethelred might as indeed it did give him some precedency to his middle Brother Harold the one having somewhat of Saxon in him the other all Dane especially if he was as some say Illegitimate tho' Baker calls him an Elder Brother by a former Wife so that upon the whole the Contest that rose about the Succession was but whether he had Right and when at last Harald was preferred 't was upon the Resolution of his being Legitimate so that here his own Inference contradicts the end for which 't was brought and instead of altering the discent shows they industriously contended to keep it in the right Channel and allowing they were mistaken in their Opinions of his Birth the Lords to make amends for their error streight on his Death fetch home Hardicanute who dying without Issue the Right of Blood prevailed again and the Saxon entred in Edward the Confessor Edmunds Son only being past by because his very being was unknown and so they can only be blamed for not seeking for the right Heir among the supposed Dead Yet when this Edward had found him out he designed both him and his Son Atheling for successive Monarchs whose very name imported Hereditary and next of kin as much as our Prince of Wales while the second Harold but usurpt upon him against the sense of the Clergy who even then lookt upon it as a Violation of the Right of the Heir and also of their Holy Rites and tho Harald suggested that Edward had appointed him to be Crown'd Historians say that it was only to make him during the Minority of this Edgar a Regent and not an absolute King and Mat. Paris speaking of Edgar Atheling in the very first Leafe of his History in these very words says that to him belonged the Right to the Kingdom of England and if Birth could then give a Right I don't see how then or now any Power can defraud a Prince justly of his Birth-right And now we 'l begin our Remarks on the Norman Line upon which the very first words of Baker are these There were six Dukes of Normandy in France in a direct Line succeeding from Father to Son and yet this Inquisitive Monarch-maker lays his mighty stress his weighty Consideration on the single Suggestion of Duke William's being a reputative Bastard be it so have we not here the Majority of six to one that succeeded 〈◊〉 Legitimately and is not these then like all the rest of their Objections against the Government rather industrious Cavil then real Argument or allowing it still is it not most impertinently applyed to his present purpose to tell us that William the Conqueror was himself Illegitimate and yet succeeded his Father in the Dutchy of Normandy And therefore must we have another Natural and Illegitimate Duke to wear the Crown of England or was the Suggestion only made because they had such a Duke in Readiness that had already run the Popular Gantlet of Ambition and been sooth'd into the Prospect of a Scepter with the false Tongues of Flatterers and Sycophants or else was the Nomination of the Normans to supersede the Fundamental Laws of our Nation And our England a Dependent a Tributary to that Crown before the Conquest these Paradoxes must be reconciled by Miracle before such a ridiculous Instance can pass for Reason or Common Sense or vindicate the false suggester from Folly and Impertinence But even here too his very Assertion fails him and this Pretender to Truth both abuses his Reader with false Application and telling a Lye For this Duke William tho' a Bastard Born was not illegitimated so as to be barred the Crown and incapacitated for Inheritance for it appears as Baker says by many Examples that Bastardy was then no Bar to Succession and by the Canon and the Law of the Church that then obtain'd the Children born before Wedlock were de facto truly legitimated if he afterward espoused his Concubine and this his Factious Assistant Hunt himself allows when the Wretch endeavoured to Bastardize the Progenitors of his Sovereign and this many Writers say was the very Case of our Duke William whose Father took his Mother Arlotte to Wife afterward The Donation to William Rufus was again clearly Testimentary which might be allowed sure to a Conqueror whose will only gave what his Sword had gotten but however as I observed above in the Legatory Disposition of Canutus the Dane where he gave his conquered Kingdom to his Youngest and Norway his Paternal Right to Swayn his Eldest to whom 't was most due so here this Third Conqueror of Old Britain observ'd the same sort of Bequest and left Normandy his Fathers Inheritance and his own to Robert to whom it appertain'd in Reason and Right both these Instances no small Demonstration shewing how the Precedency of Blood even in those days obtained and with those too whom our Factious Innovator would
hundred years for so long our Monarchs can be Chronicl'd can in every Reign the Clergies being concerned in Parliament be proved upon Record and may they with the Monarchy last that with its Christianity commenc'd They seemed always to sympathize in their very sufferings never to cease but by consent and Bishops were never excluded from their Votes but when their King himself had never a voice The Sixth pernicious Principle they propose is for Marriages Alliances Treatises for War and Peace to be put in the power of the two Houses And shall the meanest Subjects be Mightier than their Soveraign Not allow'd the Marrying his Issue when where and to whom he pleases That the Parliament has presumed to intermeddle with this undoubted Prerogative of the Soveraign since the Birth-Right of the poorest Subject can no more be denyed then that the two Houses have also actually Rebell'd too but they never pretended to make Matches for their Monarch but when they were as ready to make War too There was somewhat of that Mutinous Ferment got among the Members in the latter end of King * James's his Reign who tho they mightily soothed their Soveraign with some Inconsiderable subsidies for the recovery of the Palatinate so small that notwithstanding the Preparation for War the poor Prince was forc'd to pursue Peace and to tell the Men at Westminster so much too that he intended to compass the Palatinate with an Allyance with Spain which he was not like to obtain from the smallness of their Subsidy and Aid But tho the Commons did not care much for the maintaining the War they were as much startled with this seeming tendance to Peace they knew their Prince poor and therefore thought that the time to show the Subject bold and so began the Puritan-Party to represent in a Remonstrance Popery Power Prerogative and their Averseness forsooth to the Spanish-Match The pious Prince tho none of the boldest to resist an invading People yet took the Courage to tell them they took too much upon themselves very warmly forbad them farther to meddle with his Government and deep Affairs of State and particularly with the Match of his Son with the Daughter of Spain And this account they 'll surely Credit since it comes from an Author a partial and popular Advocate for this power of Parliament And did not the Commons intermeddling with an other Spanish Match of Queen Mary's send their Memberships into the Country to mind their own Business and were presently Dissolv'd for meddling so much with their Soveraign's And this I hope will be as Authentick since it comes from an Author that has had the Thanks of the House But this Disposal of the Kings of his own Children and the Marrying them to what Princes he pleases has such an absolute Relation to the making Leagues and Allyances that the Laws which have declared the latter to be solely in the Soveraign are as Declaratory that the other is so too and this power of the Prince of making War and Peace Leagues and Allyances is so settled in him by the Laws of the Land that till they are subverted it can never be taken out In Henry the Fifth's Time a Prince under whose Courage and Conduct the Nation I think was as Flourishing at Home as it was formidable Abroad A Prince that kept a good Sway over his Subjects and wanted nothing to the making him a good Monarch but a better Title though his Expensive War in France cost his People a great deal of Money as well as Blood yet they were far from being animated into an Invading this part of Prerogative but declared as appears by the Law of his Time that to their King belonged only to make Leagues with Foreign Princes and so fully does this Fundamental Law of the Land place this power in the Prince that it absolutely excludes all the Pretences of the People for it tells us expressly that if all the Subjects of England should break a League made with a Foreign Prince if without the King's Consent it shall still hold and not be broken And must the Laws of our own as well as those of all Nations be subverted for the setting up a Supremacy of the People which both declare is absolutely in the King The Seventh Proposal about the Militia is the most Impudent because it has been the most confuted of any by Reason and baffled above all parts of the Prerogative Establisht by 〈◊〉 History tells us ever since Chronicle can Compute and that is for almost Fifteen Hundred Years that the Power of the Sword was ever in him that sway'd the Scepter and Statute tells us even the very First that was ever reckoned among Acts of Parliament That if the King lead or send his Subject to do him Service in his Wars that he shall be freed from such other Services as Castle-guard and the like so that you see that extorted Instrument the result of a REBELLION reserved this piece of Prerogative of the Soveraigns Sole Right That the Members of the two Houses should have the Management of the Militia was undertaken to be proved too by that Plague of the Press Pryn himself who proceeds upon his own false Principle and Premises which he beggs and then may well draw from them a Conclusion of an absolute Lye for he takes it for granted that by the Kingdoms Suffrages they made their King and them he could not as he says have this Military power without the Peoples consent but why may it not be with less Presumption supposed That a Parliament by special Act declared Traytors pitcht upon Him for their Pen-Man against the Prerogative and then it may be more easily concluded that Pryn was the most prejudic'd partial Person that ever put Pen to Paper for in spight of his Factious Heart he must be forc'd to confess that not only this very Charter of Liberties settled this Militia but that it was confirmed to the King almost in every Reign by Act of Parliament since the Time the very FIRST was made To the very Son and Successor of Henry that Great Confirmer of the great Grant they declare that to the King belongs to defend Force of Armour c. All that held by Knights Service the King could distrain them for the taking up Arms. By the Laws of the very next Reign And in his Son and Successors that Usurpt upon his Father's Right before it could be call'd his own they declare the manner of his Mustering and Arraying the Subject and this they did too to Henry the Fourth A Prince that had truly no other Title to the Swords of his Subjects than what he had gotten by the Conquest of his own yet so necessary was this inseparable power of the Prince thought then to be solely in him by the People that they Acknowledg'd it to be absolutely even in him that could hardly pretend to the Crown so
inseparable from the Right of Soveraignty did the Laws allow this unalterable part of the Prerogative that they have declared it Inherent even in such a sort of Soveraigns as seemed not very well qualified for an Execution of that Royal Power which the Judgment of their very Parliaments decreed to be entirely theirs They resolved it to be the Right of the Prince in the Reign of a Child They resolved it so when Subjected to the Government of a Woman The Commission of Array was revived again to King James in whose Time they resolved it such a Necessary Right of the Crown that they repealed for it the very repealing Statute of the Queen This their Oracle tells us and that in those parts of his Works which the Parliament that opposed this very power in their King themselves ordered to be Printed yet themselves could as impudently Assert against the Sense of the very Law they Published against the very Law that was reviv'd but in his very Father's Time that his Son and Successors tho necessitated for suppressing such Insurrections as themselves had raised could not Issue out such Commissions of Array tho the very preamble of the Act declares the very purpose of it was to prevent and preserve the Prince from such Rebellious Subjects And in truth the Rebels were Conscious of their Guilt and that it was which made them resolve not to know the Law But presently represented in a Declaration that this Commission was contrary to the Laws of the Land and the Libertie of the Subject tho the very express privilege the Statutable Right of all their Kings Royal Ancestors but would not those wicked Miscreants have made even the Crown an Usurpation in their King that just before declared that it was against the Laws and Liberties of the Kingdom that the Kings Subjects should be commanded to attend him at his Pleasure And ordered that if they should be drawn in a Posture of Defence for their Soveraign the Sheriffs of the County should raise Forces to suppress them and then how can the most prejudiced partial Person presume to tell us that this their Kings Commission was contrary to the Liberty of the Subjects when they set themselves in Contradiction to all the Laws of the Land in the very Declaration that denyed him his Array Their Eighth Proposition is for the Forts and Castles and that the Fortifying them be in the Parliaments power but even that too base Caitiffs your selves know to be by the very Letter of the Law in the Kings the very Charter of their own Liberties in this point confirms also the Soveraign's Right where it is provided that the King can dispence with the Services that are due for the keeping of his Castles when he sends those that ought to do them to serve in his Host By the very common Law and Custom of the Realm before there was alway such Services due to the King for the keeping of Castles And certainly they were lookt upon then to be in the Disposal of the Prince when the Subject was but a Tenant to serve him in his Fortifications And this Chapter of their very Charter I hope proves sufficiently not only that the King can command his Castles to be defended but send his Subjects any where for his Defence which the Declaration of the Commons did as Rebelliously deny But besides the taking of the Kings Castles Forts Ports or Shipping is resolved and ever was reputed Treason and were not the two Houses Traytors then by a Law before that of this King made them so by Statute when they ordered upon the London Petition and that of the Cinque-Ports that all his Majesty's Forts and Castles should be presently fortified that no Forces should be admitted into Hull without the Consent of Lords and Commons seized their Kings Shipping and made Warwick Vice-Admiral of the Fleet This was a sort of accumulated Treason whose every Individual Act was truly so as if they designed that the Statutes should not declare more things Treasonable than they could dare to commit My Lord Cooke tells us whom they cannot but believe that no Subject can build a Castle or so much as a House of strength imbattailed or any Fortress Defensible without the Soveraigns consent much less sure shall they seise those that are the Kings and Fortifie them for the People and tells us again the same in his Comment upon the very Charter of Liberties and will not that neither with our Licentious Libertines be allowed for Law Is not all the Military power both by Sea and Land declared the undoubted Right of His present Majesty and that by particular Act in his own Reign does not the very preamble of it seem to provide against this very Proposition of such a Parliament or a Plato when it tells us expresly that all Forts and places of Strength is and ever was by the Laws of England the Kings undoubted Right and of all his Royal Predecessors and that neither both or either Houses can or ought to pretend to the same and declares that all the late Principles and Practices that assumed the same were all Rebellious And could some of our Mutinous Members embrace such Propositions from the Press that presumed to tell them they had of late made two such Impertinent Acts in the House Acts invading the Subjects Property Acts betraying the Liberties of that very People they represent In short and that in his own Words Acts that empower the Prince to invade the Government with Force Acts to destroy and ruin the State hindering the Execution of the Laws and the preventing our Happiness and Settlement had they had but the least Reverence for their own Constitution and that Honorable Assembly wherein they sate sure there would have been some Ordered and Resolved for the sifting out such a Pen-man and sentencing such Papers to the Hangman and the Flames what can be the result of this to sober Sense or Common Reason that such Villanous Authors should appear in publick at such a Session of Parliament to Censure and Arraign the very Acts of their former Representatives but that they thought themselves secure from any Violent Prosecution from those that then were sitting and that it was not the Constitution it self of that most Honorable Assembly the Seditious Sycophants were so Zealous for but only the present Persons its Constituent Members they so much admired The last the Tenth of those pretty Proposals that deserves particular Animad version for several of them Symbolize with one another and so are by a general asserting of the Kings Supremacy sufficiently refuted is the Parliaments Right to the making Peers the prettiest Paradox that the Abundance of Sedition with the want of Sense could suggest I have heard the Laws declare the King to be the Fountain of Honor as well as Justice but the Commons I think as they are no Court of Judicature
such States-men whose Politicks are best understood from the Measures they take and who seem many times Fools in the dark till they disclose themselves to be the greatest Villains When I saw him settled for Excluding the Crown 's Heir we soon saw the meaning of Presumptive which before seem'd in so great a Man a little nonsense But I can tell them of one-sense more it might have had That is the Duke was but his Presumptive Heir because he presumed he should Destroy him Some men of the Law would laugh at such Sophisters of the Faction And truly they even at themselves should they maintain the Youngest Son in Burrough English was no Heir Apparent who can be dispossest by latter Birth as well as a Brother or Collateral but it was the want of his Lordships Law that made him abound with so much Sophistry and so little Sense For my Lord Coke lets us know that a Collateral Heir is as much an Apparent one as the Eldest Son but only this says he is not within the Statute Tho as great a Judge and as good was not so Dogmatical in this point who as he had Reason so he left room too for doubt tho the Quaere in his first Edition has been very industriously omitted in the second I have been the longer upon this to let the Divine see that he may be much out in his Law and that tho he would have Excluded the late Collateral Heir from his Oath of Allegiance his preservation might have been brought in within the Statute of Treason and the Doctor if he pleas'd might be Hanged for him as well as Perjur'd 'T is pretty pleasant to me to Observe how men of these sort of principlescan prevaricate for the Promoting of their own Cause and the Divinest of them all run to the Devil with a Lye in their Mouth at the same time they in their Conscience believe the contrary to be true No Soul Living but will believe this Libeller when so near Ally'd to the Gentleman of the Law we so lately left would entertain assoon the Damnable Doctrin of a Muggletonian as dispense with the belief of a Divine Right since his Associate in their Hotch-potch of Scrible Hunt has rendered it altogether as Devilish yet what that Lawyer won't allow this Body of Divinity is forced at last to prove viz. That even the Roman Emperors Reigned with a Right Divine and that all their Empire was Hereditary and this he is seriously bound to maintain too as the only Basis and foundation for his Rebellious Book so that these prevaricating Jugglers with a turn of an hand can make the two several Extreams serve for the same purpose when it will make for their Cause they shall make those Crowns Hereditary whom all Authors and all the World acknowledge Elective let it but cross the Interest of the Faction the same pens shall prove you a most Elective Monarchy from one absolutely Hereditary The Roman Empire was certainly from Caesar their first to this Julian himself and even the very last of their Emperors uncertain in it's Succession sometimes a Right Heir would interpose or an adopted one but still either set up by the Souldiers or depended upon their permission And how it could otherwise well be no man can well imagin when their standing Armies were continually in the Field and a new Monarch commonly created with a Shout and Salutation of a Legion so uncertain was their Succession that they seldom had so much as Certainty for their Lives Look upon the List which I have leisurably examined and you 'll find from Caesar that was stab'd in the Senate to their Apostate Julian whom they would have a Christian assassinate in Persia I am sure half if not more were Murdered or destroy'd by some prevalent Faction or a mutinous Army and most of the Purples they wore were dy'd in their own Blood Julian's Caesars are just as well apply'd here to the Succession of our Prince of Wales as the Postscript has the Confirmation of the Prince of Wales to prove the Legislative of the House of Commons On the other side our own Monarchy for fifteen hundred years Hereditary and that to be proved from all Chronicle and History have the same sort of Pens and whom this Author vindicates too with his own endeavoured to make merely Elective I can't resolve this Spirit of Contradiction into any thing less than an absolute Conspiracy among themselves for the Vindicating rather Pagans and Infidels the Government of Rome or Constantinople before the Constitution of our Church or the Establisht Monarchy Upon the Publishing this pernicious piece and its falling into my hands I remember tho not much read in the History of the Church or the works of a Socrates or a Sozomen that I had casually lighted in one of them heretofore upon the passage of Jovian's this Apostat's immediate Successor being saluted Emperor where the pious Prince told them he would never Reign over Pagans upon which they Reply'd they were all Christians and as such had submitted and not opposed the Government of a Julian because their Lawful Emperor a President so directly contradictory to those he brings that it was a sufficient Prepossession to me against the profest Sincerity of the piece Paganism is as much obliged to this Apostate Church-man as the Christian Religion has receiv'd from him the greatest disservice he represents to us in several places his Pagan Emperor even with the Meekness of a Moses and with such a command of Spirit and Temperament of mind as if he would have him rather Worshipt as a Saint than Curst for a Persecutor he makes him to take Reviling patiently as if he 'd let us know he also could imitatehis Christ who reviled not again with such mollifying expressions in several places to the very reproaches of the meanest as if he would recommend the admiring of him for an Hero which makes me remember his dying Words I met with once in Ammianus Marcellinus so full of Magnanimity and all the highest Expressions of a Moral Vertue that of an Expiring Pagan he seem'd to me the most like a dying Christian But on the other side those Pious Souls those Glorious Martyrs fam'd for their Primitive Meekness and Moderation that in the midst of Tortures have accounted it worthy to suffer for the sake of their Saviour blest their Persecutors in Groans in imperfect sounds and unarticulated accents of Agony and Anguish that tir'd the Invention of their Tormentors as well as baffl'd their Tortures and with exalted Affection of Spirit Triumph'd in the midst of Flames These has he 〈◊〉 represented for the most Malicious Seditious and Rebellious Brood of Christians that ever breath'd under any Government altogether Pagan What good the Protestant Religion can receive from such a Representation of the Primitive Christians must be in pleading prescription to a warrantable Rebellion and what Obligation Christianity it self has
Judicatory of this Nation having Power to determine all appeals from the Magistrate and to question him for his Administration In the next place that Independant Brute that Assertor of his Free State as he calls it i. e. to be unconfin'd and live like Savages In Mr. Hobbs his Language The State of Nature or if you please in Mr. Harringtons The Balance of Beasts This inveterate Villain that vilifi'd our Monarchy tho that Heaven instituted it self after its own Theocracy that debused this Divine Institution even below their Human Invention and calls its Principles Brutish That Panegyrist of the Usurpation some of whose most Villanous Expressions I may hereafter revive for the Reproach of the last Age that suffer'd such a Miscreant to Murder Monarchy it self from the Press when they had Butcher'd it before on the Block and for the Information of this that think themselves so hardly dealt with when only their own Treason and Sedition is less severely handled That Opprobrium of Man as well as Subject That pursued the Sons of the Martyr'd Soveraign in such scandalous Satyr and bitter Invective such Satyr as themselves would think but rudeness if offer'd only to the very mark of Infamy their Perjur'd Evidence or their Pillor'd Oates such Invective as themselves would think Inhuman were it past upon Beasts or their own more Barbarous Regicides This most unnatural lump of Anarchy whom but to name is to digress into necessitated Horror and Detestation he publish'd too this very same position only in plainer Words and more expressive Treason viz. That the People were not only Judge of his Majesty but That it be made an unpardonable Crime to incur the guilt of TREASON against the MAJESTY of the PEOPLE and notwithstanding those gaudy things call'd MONARCHS the PEOPLE always made a shift to bring them to an Accountable Condition For this the Plato Redivivus or the Politick Plagiary founds all his Empire and Dominion in Property according to the Doctrine of the Ancients or Oliver's old Oceana only a new Babel built upon Rebellion For by this their own Maxim of Balance or Property the People must be the supream Judges of their King and so the only deciders of their own Case for tho the King may be said to have and surely has more of this Property than any single Subject yet they are satisfi'd he can never come to have more than all unless we could imagin he had in actual Demesne the Major part of every foot of the Land in his whole Dominions tho I think I have shown in some foregoing Section in what Sense even the Law will allow the Soveraign to have some sort of propriety over all So that this their Ancient Prudence or Empire in property will allow the Collective Body of Subjects to be the best Judges of their own Case nay necessitate them to be so tho not some certain Subjects But then tell me Seditious Dolts the disparity between these Maxims you so much admire for their Antiquity as if founded upon Eternal Truths and the Doctrine of a Brutus or a Pryn the very Words of our Modern Common-wealths-Men which almost all the World will allow to be great Lyes and what does Hunt's Harangue tend to but to maintain all the very same Position of this Peoples judicial Power Does he not for this tell us That no Civil Establishment but is controlable to the publick Weal That the Crown is the Peoples Right and in a word in the very words of that Monster in his Mercury I mention'd above A Miscreant that did not dare to see the Light till the Monarchy it self was involv'd in its darkest Cloud and in his lewd Language does this illuminated Lawyer open too even in this very Case viz. That Treason may very well be committed against the Majesty of the People and the same says The Counterpart of this excellent Lawyer Wil. Pryn in one of his Treasonable Treatises Pamphlets or wast Papers Here you see the Harmony and agreeableness between the several sorts of these Seditious Demagogues that is the Seducers of the People according to the very Literal Etymology of that very word they so much delight in and Mr. Sidney when he says there being no Judge between King and People that therefore the Case admitting no other they must needs be Judges of things happening between them and him is just no more than what you see all those I have cited before have all all to a syllable said Could I distort my Soul and my little Sense so much as to wrest it for a while to play the Republican i. e. to be Senseless and Seditious sure common Prudence would prevail with me not to labor so much in such a Subject where the most sublimated Wits with their most exalted Sense can never say any thing that is really new any thing besides what has been as much baffl'd of old especially where the pains must be as unprofitable as the argument dangerous and well it may that sets up for a Common-Wealth under a Monarchy so well establish'd But since we have here seen all what such a series of time and such a number of Sedulous and indefatigable Authors have said upon this point they surely cannot but forgive us only for asserting this point of the Government which they with less Reason are so ready to oppose when our attempt if it merit nothing cannot be condemned from any Law only for desending its own Establishments and theirs for disturbing the publick Peace must be liable to be punish'd by the Laws of any Civil or Human Society But to take no advantage from our having the better end of the Argument consider the Case only in the absolute Abstract of pure and unprejudic'd Reason and Equity Mr. Sidney says 'T is a most absurd solly to say a Man might not in some places kill an Adulterous Wife or a disobedient Son or Servant because he would there be both party and Judge tho the Romans for that Reason would have kill'd him that ston'd his Son to Death I don't know what Civil Society allows of such a sort of Severity or what Barbarous one he had been bred in but I am satisfi'd that for that very Reason they being the Parties most offended have therefore sure the less Reason to animadvert on the Offence unless we could imagine them God Almighties too as well as Governors that had Injustice for their all their Attribute and nothing of Human Passion or Frailty from their suffering injury to transport or deceive them in their executive power beyond the Measures of its Administration The Sons of Brutus had sav'd once their ungrateful Rome from a Foreign Foe as well as the Father had delivered it from the Domestick Slavery as the Democraticks of those times termed too their Rebelling against their perpetual Tyrant their Caesar or their Prince yet so transported were the People with the unsuccessful Attempts of those unhappy
great and their strength so formidable that they sought Kings and were 〈◊〉 by Princes And now let them prove that this paternal Power of these Patriarchal Kings was no more than that of a Burgher in the Town of Amsterdam or that the Cities that were several of them then erected and where the sacred writ expresly says Kings and Princes Reign'd that those were nothing else but as perfect Republicks as Venice Geneva or the united Provinces in the Netherlands And cannot our Seditious Souls be convinc'd that this their Patriarchal Power was Monarchical unless we can prove every patriarch a Crown'd King should we oblige them to make out their Common-wealths of those days after the same manner their Modern ones are now Establish'd they would be put to find out in those primitive times some general revolt of a Rebellious people from their Lawful prince For that was the first Foundation of their 〈◊〉 Republick in the Low-Countries as Mr. Sidney himself will allow tho against common Sense and Reason he cannot let it be called a Rebellion And also is it not one thing to say a paternal Right was once Monarchical but must it make all Monarchs to Rule by a paternal Right conquest of the Sword grounded upon a good pretence of Right is what a great many Kings claim by a long series of Successive Monarchs makes the Title of a great many more as much unquestionable and yet I cannot see why Monarchy may not still be said to have been first founded in a paternal Right tho the claims to Soveraign power since in such several Kingdoms and Nations where it is now Establish'd are 〈◊〉 as several sorts too as there are Subjects that have submitted to be govern'd by it It is a pleasant sort of Diversion to see Mr. Hunt Harangue out half of his Treatise in an impertinent pains to prove the Father of every Family at present not to be the King of it we would have granted it him quietly and the postulate should have been his own in peace without raising upon his War of Words and the thundering charge that he gives this Opinion of puzzl'd senseless vain unlearned paradox For once every parent shall not be a Crown'd Head and every City but a Common-wealth of Kings for that is all they must contend against and then what 's the Contention but just about nothing but that parents have nothing in them that is Analogous to a Monarchical power that they have no Right to govern those very Children they have begot as this Gentleman with his mighty performances thinks he has perfectly prov'd that I think will be found at last to be the greater paradox if not a perfect Lye For first the very Decalogue declares the contrary And the command we have to Honour our Father and Mother implies an Authority that they have that requires Obedience by the Levitical the Laws of the Jews the Rebellious Son was to be ston'd to Death and if the very Bible can call it Rebellion Certainly it must suppose some power against which he could Rebel And what does Mr. Hunt who himself admits of this say to the refuting the very Objection that he raises why he says this was an unnatural severity permitted the offended parent that is an unnatural severity commanded by the very God of Nature For all those their Laws were so many Divine precepts for the regulating his own Theocracy and the very Text tells us this exemplary punishment of Dissobedience to parents was shown that Israel might fear i.e. fear those parents in whom the Almighty's Law had lodged such a power and then if we consider it in the Abstract from any positive Law of God or Divine precept if we look upon it in a pure natural State as the result of Generation for all whatever the postscript impertinently suggests with his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and all the distracted noise that he makes with the procreation work being such an Act of Affection and mere impetus of Love I cannot see why by that darling work that delights Mr. Hunt so much the power of governing those very Children he has begot should be superseded The Gentleman among his many Melancholy moods had it seems some pleasant Fancies For in effect he tells us no more than this that Coition being an Act of Love to the Mother the Government over the Child that she bears him must by no means be call'd a power and if this be not indeed a puzzl'd senseless Opinion I submit to persons that abound with more sense and if it have the least shadow of a consequence I will forfeit all my Right to Reason might it not be as well infer'd too that every Father that chastises his froward Child is an absolute Tyrant because that sort of severity savors of Anger and fury but the Generation work obliged him never to exercise it because that was an Act of extream Love But besides that precept in the Decalogue Honouring our Parents is an Eternal Law of Nature engraven in our Hearts as well as it was in the two Tables of Stone and whereever there is a Natural Veneration there is at the same time an imply'd subjection for those we always reverence most to whom we are most Subjected I know there are inferior Objects upon which many times we place our affection and may in some sense be said to have for them an Esteem but that cannot be properly call'd Honour but is better exprest by the Name of Love and this is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Friends have for one another tho they are Equals or Parents to their Children tho Subject to their power but if we consider the word Honouring it self which in all the Versions of the Decalouge is still render'd so as if it would remember us of the subjection we owe to those we are commanded to Honour that very word it self implys Power in the Person that is to be Honoured for if we abstract our selves from any prepossessions and Engagements of Love we still find we still Honor those most that are also most in power thus our Nobility are respected by us as Honourable because they are in great places of Power and Trust And our King more Honoured by us agen because the very Fountain of Power it self And lastly what strikes us more into a Venerable Horror of the Majesty of Heaven but that awful attribute of his being Almighty so that uncorrupted Nature it self from the Rules of Common gratitude obliges us to Honour our Parents as well as the express precept of the Divine will and then by Consequence subjects us to those whom we are requir'd to respect so much and esteem for Nature as it never according to the Maxim of the Naturalists in Philosophy is said to do any thing foolishly or in vain so neither will it require any thing that is so from others to be done and therefore there is no Natural Law that obliges us to
surrender it to a single person from whom they thought they had it and so the Usurper had his design The next Plot was how they could play the Knaves to get that Power again which they thought they had parted with like Fools Cromwel was cunning enough to hold what he had gotten and never parted with it but with his Breath tho' the Levellers the Anabaptists and Fifth-Monarchy Men conspir'd for Insurrections and Lambert himself left little undone to supplant him But when his Son succeeded whose silliness only made him not sit so long a Usurper they soon found opportunity to set him aside As they had pleas'd Oliver with making him a Mock King so he to pleasure them had mock't them with an House of Lords And Richard's first Parliament being made up of most Commonwealthsmen fall foul upon that new Constitution which was indeed as filthy they take themselves without the Protector and that other House to be the Supream Power Lambert and Fleetwood that first upon the Principles of these Rebels and Republicans had promoted the Affairs of the Father fall now to Plotting upon the same grounds of LIBERTY which with Daemocraticks is to do what they list to depose his Son and 't is no wonder that those should fail in their Faith to a Rebel that had revolted from their Prince For this therefore they have freequent Meetings at Wallingford House and the Parliament seeming as uneasie under him as they and they as uneasie under the Parliament they send Desborough to get its dissolution to be signed by the Protector at the same time they make their Messenger to dissolve it by themselves Richard signs it and presently after is forc'd to his own Resignation and that to just no Body and all is brought to what all such Principles and Practises always tend to perfect Anarchy and Confusion The Protector here quarrels with the Parliament and the Army the Parliament with the Army and Protector the Army with the Protector and Parliament till at last they leave us neither Parliament Protector or Army When they had brought the Government to be just no where Richard having been Plotted upon to resign to just no Body some of the rebel Rump with Lenthal their Speaker Lambert their Officer take it up as Scavengers do a piece of Silver they find in the kennel or dropt in the street these by the Army are declared a Parliament because they resolv'd themselves to be so first and the People at present could not tell where to find out another the secluded Members offer'd to run in too but were Fools for their pains and repuls'd with as much violence for they might well have foreseen and imagin'd that those that threw them out before had their Swords in their hands still and to be sure were much rather for their room than their company and that they found when they set their Souldiers with their Swords drawn to keep them out and their most Legislative Arms soon suspended them from the medling in the making of Laws Thus re-instated and establisht into that Oligarchical Tyranny that first turn'd off all Monarchy and took off the King's Head and this re-establishment of the most desperate Rebels confirmed with the approbation of the Army one would have thought their very Master the Devil could never have undermin'd or made them again to miscarry But yet so it happen'd for these Principles of our Republicans having made all obedience meerly precarious and utterly defac'd the Doctrine of the Gospel to be subject for Conscience sake as well as repeal'd the Oaths of Allegiance that required them to be so by Law Why now they were left at liberty and truly did as licentiously practise the 〈◊〉 any frame themselves had establisht and that too before they had consider'd what to set up I won't insist for it here upon the Insurrection of the Cheshire men and the business of Booth which by my little light of reason and the not unlikely Remarks to be made from the least History I have read was really a design to supplant this restored Rump Headed by one of the most eminent of the secluded Members that probably in meer revenge resolved upon a Free Parliament that is because they had not the Freedom to sit with them that secluded them But that Plot which gave them the lift again now was that of Lambert himself that had lifted them into the Saddle where himself design'd they were not to sit long For Oliver having taught him the way to a Protectorate as well as 't is thought promised him in it a Succession was resolv'd to leave nothing unessay'd to settle himself in that power to which he once thought he should otherwise succeed and being Commission'd by these Masters he had made and sent to suppress this Presbyterian Insurrection which he did with success he found it too the most seasonable time to carry on his design and so carresses his Soldiers into a Seditious Tumultuous Petition for a General to be set over the Army out of the Soldiers themselves for these Swords-Men could not relish that the Gown the Speaker a Lenthal that then lookt like the Generalissimo should Lord it over Arms that is in English be above their Lambert The Men of Westminster made a shift to keep up so much Courage as to make this Remonstrance dangerous to the Commonwealth and Vote the Commissions of the Wallingford Men to be void But Lambert that had shuffl'd so well and pact his Cards with Oliver knew how to play them now as well for himself and therefore as Cromwel had turn'd them out of the House before he comes and keeps them from getting in insomuch that when Lenthal came to the Palace Yard he could see nothing but Lambert and his Soldiers set to keep them out and so the Rumpers retreat again are put out of possession of all Lambert left an absolute Generalissimo sets up his Committee of safety in which to be sure himself must sit as President In the next place they fell a Ploting to get themselves in that had been so often at in and out and for this they put up Petitions for a free Parliament from all Parts 〈◊〉 runs down to Portsmouth which Revolts and those that were sent to reduce it turn Renegadoes Lawson and his Fellows in the Navy declare against the Committee Fairfax favours the Rump and raises Forces and they fell secretly to the Listing of Soldiers in Cornwal and the Western Counties and 't was time then for this Council of Safety to look to save themselves but nothing frighted them more into the re-admission of the Rump but the unresistible march of the mighty Monk that Fabius of our Isle that like the Roman Cunctator restor'd us our King by his prudential delays for these Rumpers 〈◊〉 return'd again into the House were far enough from declaring for a free Parliament which they still cla mour'd for so much when they were shut out Nay
disputable Titles which will needs be the result of any alter'd Succession and what now do these Laws affirm to which Mr. H. must affix his discent of the Crown by his own words when he says 't is of a Civil Nature why the Civil and Imperial 't is true differ from our own in this that with them he is lookt upon an Heir that is left so by the Testator in his Will and by them a Testamentary Succession was more esteem'd then a Legitimate and Lawful one yet even that imply'd there was one that was Legitimate or born so and the Reason why they rely'd so much upon Testamentary Inheritances was I believe because those were confirm`d by the very Laws of their 12. Tab. which was their first and Fundimental and therefore as long as the Testamentary was valid they would by no means admit the Legitimate one But still even in those Testamentary donations I believe they for the most part 〈◊〉 most of their Patrimony to the Eldest as well as we see among our selves our Tenants in fee simple that have as absolute a disposition of it by Will or those that have recover'd against the tail by fine or the like still leave their Eldest their Heir tho Impower'd to give it to whom they please And then for our own Law the very Custom of the Realm by which we must be more immediately Govern'd that makes the Eldest Son the only Heir to his Ancestor or else the next of Kin to the Predecessor deceas'd and that is the Reason an old Aphorism obtain'd even with our own Antient Lawyers that expressly insinuates such an Hereditary Succession to be by Divine Institution when they tell us that 't is not mankind but the Almighty makes them Heirs I know that the saying more properly refers to the Order or appointment of the Divine Will that such an one shall be the First-Born because it makes him to come into the World first but if it can be prov'd from the Text as in many places it may and in some we have shown that God himself in express Terms made the younger Subject we may be so bold to say that he instituted too such a Subjection to be paid to the Eldest And now let us consider the paternal Right which our Republicans so much deride which Mr. Sidney in ridicule would force us to derive from the Eldest Son of Noah which Plato Redivivus would expose in the Empire of Reuben the Brief History calls a new Notion of the present Age and Mr. Hunt laughs at in the merry conceit of calling it the Court of King Adam and King Father 't is true the most Sacred and Divinest truth may be made Ridiculous only by laughing at it and the World has not wanted even such a Blasphemous Buffoon to burlesque the whole Bible but I shall shew them here as in the most proper place in what Sense those Fathers might be said to be Kings and that the Absurdities they suggest are sar from any Consequences of such a Supposition And why for Gods sake must we be put to prove only for Asserting that the first Man had a Monarchichal Dominion tho it were at first over Beasts why must we therefore make out too that he kept up his Majesty after the manner of our Kings And that Adam in his Garden of Eden in the first Year of the World had built him an House like a Solomon that was hardly finish'd in Fifteen That he that had but Fig-Leaves to cover him had laid the Foundations of his Court in costly Stone and erected a Pile whose Porches and Pillars were of pure Caedar and all the Building built up out of Caedar Beams they may as well expect we should make out this too 〈◊〉 bring all the Forrest of Lebanon to be laid out in a Palace of Paradice Is it not enough for us to maintain that the first Government in the World was Monarchial when we can prove all the Dominion and Power was imparted to a single Person and when God himself seem'd to make but that one Man to prevent even a possibility of a Competitor and a Division of the Soveraignty without being obliged to make the very Origen of Monarchy adaequate to the Improvement of it and that a Soveraign for almost seven thousand year agon had the same Pompous and Imperial sway that a series of time and a Revolution of Ages has settled in the King of Great-Britain Many things are clear from Analogy of Reason tho they cannot be demonstrated to Sense the naturalist and Chymical Operators may well conclude that the mineral Vermilion is made by some 〈◊〉 Subterraneous heat that 〈◊〉 the sumes of Mercury and Sulphur in which Mines 't is found from their being able to make the Cinnabar its Resemblance by an Artificial 〈◊〉 out of the Butter of Antimony in which is both Sulphur and Mercury tho themselves were never working under ground and in the Mines If we must be put upon such a piece of Impertinence as the Postscript would have it to find out this King Adam's Court too I 'll just take the Liberty to put them to just such another task They will have their instituted Common-wealth to Commence from the World's insancy even before that of Israel before that Moses as they say had divided their Land unto them by Lot and turned the several Tribes into so many Republicks And then let them tell me what sort of a Republick it was that the Patriarchs liv'd under and were ruled by where it was that Abraham and his Fellow Citizens consulted to make Laws for the Benefit of the Common-wealth of his Family so great that his train'd Servants 318 sought 4 Kings where it was that Lot and his Herds-men when they pitch'd their Tents in the Plain set up their Stadthouse and commenced Burgomasters if in those days there was any Government purely Democratical that is 〈◊〉 Licentious it must have been seen in the Cities and Towns of those times some Sodom or Gomorrah yet even there the Text tells us Bera was King of the one and Birsha of the other let them tell us where Isaac when he settled in the Valley of Gerar set up his Servants for Senators tho he was grown so great since they will have it so in the Common-wealth of his Houseshold that a mighty King of those times whom the Text expresly calls so Abimilech told him that he was much mightier than he and the Philistines envyed and 〈◊〉 him too for it Let them tell us how Jacob liv'd in the Republick of his Sons and Servants in Succoth tho such a numerous train that they could venture to invade the City of the Shechemites inhabited by the Subjects of Hamor the Hivite whom the Scripture calls the Prince of the Country and sure these Patriarchs were somewhat more than the ordinary Fathers of Families as Plato would make them when their Forces were so