in overlooking or secluding the rest be they of the Nobility or the common people nay though profiting by experience they should refuse to be governed any longer either by a King or a 〈◊〉 of Lords But in railing at that Supreme Council as you call it and at the Chair man thére you make your self very Ridiculous for that Council is not the Supreme Council as you dream it is but appointed by Authority of Parliament for a certain time only and consisting of â—orty Persons for the most part Members of Parliament any one of whom may be President if the rest Vote him into the Chair And there is nothing more common than for our Parliaments to appoint Committees of their own Members who when so appointed have Power to meet where they please and hold a kind of a little Parliament amongst themselves And the most weighty Affairs are often referred to them for Expedition and Secresie the care of the Navy the Army the Treasury in short all things whatsoever relating either to War or Peace Whether this be called a Council or any thing else the thing is ancient though the name may be new and it is such an Institution as no Government can be duly administred without it As for our putting the King to death and changing the Government forbear your bawling don't spit your Venom till going along with you through every Chapter I show whether you will or no by what Law by what Right and Justice all that was done But if you insist to know by what Right by what Law by that Law I tell you which God and Nature have enacted viz. that whatever things are for the Universal Good of the Whole State are for that reason lawful and just So wise Men of old used to answer such as you You find fault with us for Repealing Laws that had obtained for so many years but you do not tell as whether those Laws were good or bad nor if you did should we heed what you said for you buisy Puppy what have you to do with our Laws I wish our Magistrates had â—…ed more than they have both Laws and â—â—wyers if they had they would have consulted the Interest of the Christian Religion and that of the People better then they have done It frets you That Hob-goblins Sons of the Earth scarce Gentlemen at home scarce known to their own Countrymen should presume to do such things But you ought to have remembred what not only the Scriptures but Horace would have taught you viz. Valet ima summis Mutare insignem attenuat Deus Obscura promens c. The Power that did create can change the Scene Of things make mean of great and great of mean The brightest Glory can Eclipse with Night And place the most obscure in dazling Light But take this into the Bargain some of those who you say are scarce Gentlemen are not at all inferiour in birth to any of your party others whose Ancestors were not Noble have taken a course to attain to true Nobility by their own Industry and Vertue and are not inferior to men of the Noblest Descent and had rather be 〈◊〉 â—â—ns of the Earth provided to be their own Earth their own Native Country and â—ct like Men at home then being destitute of House or Land to relieve the necessities of Nature in a Foreign Country by selling of Smoke as thou dost an inconsiderable Fellow and a Jâ—ck-straw and who depâ—ndest upon the good will of thy Masters for a poor Stâ—pend for whom it were better to forgo thy travelling and return to thy own Kindred and Country-men if thou hadst not this one piece of Cunning to babble out some silly Prelections and Fooleries at so good a rate amongst Foreigners You find fault with our Magistrates for admitting such a Common-shore of all sorts of Sects Why should they not It belongs to the Church to cast them out of the Communion of the faithful not to the Magistrate to Banish them the Country provided they do not offend against the Civil Laws of the State Men at first united into Civil Societies that they might live safely and enjoy their Liberty without being wrong'd or opprest that they might live Religiously and according to the Doctrine of Christianity they united themselves into Churches Civil Societies have Laws and Churches have a Discipline peculiar to themselves and far differing from each other And this has been the occasion of so many Wars in Christendom to wit because the Civil Magistrate and the Church confounded their Jurisdictions And therefore we do not admit of the Popish Sect so as to tolerate Papists at all for we do not look upon that as a Religion but rather as an Hierarchical Tyranny under a â—loak of Religion cloath'd with the Spoils of the Civil Power which it has usurp'd to it self contrary to our Saviour's own Doctrine As for the Independents we never had any such amongst us as you describe they that we call Independents are only such as hold that no Classes or Synods have a Superiority over any particular Church and that therefore they ought all to be pluckt up by the roots as Branches or rather as the very Trunk of Hierarchy it self which is your own opinion too And from hence it was that the name of Independents prevailed amongst the Vulgar The rest of your Preface is taken up in endeavouring not only to stir up the hatred of all Kings and Monarchs against us but to perswade them to make a General War upon us Mithridates of old though in a different cause endeavoured to stir up all Princes to make War upon the Romans by laying to their charge almost just the same things that you do to ours viz. that the Romans aim'd at nothing but the Subversion of all Kingdoms that they had no regard to any thing whether Sacred or Civil that from their very first rise they never enjoy'd any thing but what they had acquir'd by force that they were Robbers and the greatest Enemies in the world to Monarchy Thus Mithridates exprest himself in a Letter to Arsaces King of the Parthians But how came you whose business it it is to make silly Speeches from your Desk to have the Confidence to imagine that by your persuasions to take up Arms and sounding an Alarm as it were you should be able so much as to influence a King amongst Boys at play especially with so shrill a Voice and unsavoury Breath that I believe if you were to have been the Trumpeter not so much as Homer's Mice would have waged War against the Frogs So little do we fear you Slug you any War or Danger from Foreign Princes through your silly Rhetorick who accuse us to them just as if you were at play That we toss Kings heads like Balls play at Bowls with Crowns and regard Scepters no more then if they were Fool 's Staves with heads on But you in the mean time you silly Logerhead deserve to have
own and their Countries Right of a detestable and â—â—rrid Imposture Your Country may be aâ—…amed you Rascall to have brought forth a little inconsiderable fellow of such profligate impudence But perhaps you have somewhat to tell us that may be for our good Go on we 'l hear you VVhat Laws say you can a Parliament Enact in which the Bishops are 〈◊〉 present Did you then ye madman expell the Order of Bishops out of the Church to introduce them into the State O wicked wretch who ought to be delivered over to Satan whom the Church ought to forbid her Communion as being a Hypocrite and an Atheist and no Civil Society of men to acknowledg as a member being a publick enemy and a Plague-sore to the common liberty of Mankind who where the Gospel fails you endeavour to prove out of Aristetle Halicarnassaeus and then from some Popish Authorities of the most corrupt ages that the King of England is the head of the Church of England to the end that you may as far as in you lies bring in the Bishops again his Intimates and Table-Companions grown so of late to rob and Tyrannize in the Church of God whom God himself hath deposed and degraded whose very Order you had heretofore asserted in Print that it ought to be rooted out of the world as destructive of and pernicious to the Christian Religion What Apostate did ever so shamefully and wickedly desert as this man has done I do not say his own which indeed never was any but the Christian Doctrine which he had formerly asserted The Bishops being put down who under the King and by his permission held Plea of Ecclesiastical Causes upon whom say you will that Jurisdiction devolve O Villain have some regard at least to your own Conscience Remember before it be too late if at least this admonition of mine come not too late remember that this mocking the Holy Spirit of God is an inexpiable crime and will not be left unpunisht Stop at last and set bounds to your fury lest the wrath of God lay hold upon you suddenly for endeavouring to deliver the flock of God his Anointed ones that are not to be touched to Enemies and cruel Tyrants to be crusht and trampled on again from whom himself by a high and stretched out arm had so lately delivered them and from whom you your self maintained that they ought to be delivered I know not whether for any good of theirs or in order to the hardning of your own heart and to further your own damnation If the Bishops have no right to Lord it over the Church certainly much less have Kings whatever the Laws of men may be to the contrary For they that know any thing of the Gospel know thus much that the Government of the Church is altogether Divine and Spiritual and no Civil Constitution Whereas you say That in Secular Affairs the Kings of England have always had the Sovereign Power Our Laws do abundantly declare that to be false Our Courts of Justice are erected and suppressed not by the King's Authority but that of the Parliament and yet in any of them the meanest Subject might go to Law with the Ring nor is it a rare thing for the Judges to give Judgment against him which if the King should endeavour to obstruct by any Prohibition Mandate or Letters the Judges were bound by Law and by their Oaths not to obey him but to reject such Inhibitions as null and void in Law the King could not imprison any man or seize his Estate as forfeited he could not punish any man not summoned to appear in Court where not the King but the ordinary Judges gave Sentence which they frequently did as I have said against the King Hence our Bractan lib. 3. cap. 9. The Regal Power says he is according to Law he has no power to do any wrong nor can the King do any thing but what the Law warrants Those Lawyers that you have consulted men that have lately fled their Countrey may tell you another tale and acquaint you with some Statutes not very Ancient neither but made in King Edward 4th's King Henry 6th's and King Edward 6th's days but they did not consider That what power soever those Statutes gave the King was conferred upon him by Authority of Parliament so that he was beholding to them for it and the same power that conferr'd it might at pleasure resume it How comes it to pass that so acute a disputant as you should suffer your self to be imposed upon to that degree as to make use of that very Argument to prove the King's Power to be Absolute and Supreme than which nothing proves more clearly That it is subordinate to that of the Parliament Our Records of the greatest Authority with us declare That our Kings owe all their Power not to any Right of Inheritance of Conquest or Succession but to the people So in the Parliament Rolls of King Hen. 4. numb 108. we read That the Kingly Office and Power was granted by the Commons to King Henry the 4th and before him to his Predecessor King Richard the 2d just as Kings use to grant Commissioners places and Lieutenantships to their Deputies by Edicts and Patents Thus the House of Commons ordered expresly to be entred upon record That they had granted to King Richard to use the same good Liberty that the Kings of England before him had used Which because that King abused to the subversion of the Laws and contrary to his Oath at his Coronation the same persons that granted him that power took it back again and deposed him The same men as appears by the same Record declared in open Parliament That having confidence in the Prudence and Moderation of King Henry the 4th they will and enact That he enjoy the same Royal Authority that his Ancestors enjoyed Which if it had been any other than in the nature of a Trust as this was either those Houses of Parliament were foolish and vain to give what was none of their own or those Kings that were willing to receive as from them what was already theirs were too injurious both to themselves and their Posterity neither of which is likely A third part of the Regal Power say you is conversant about the Mâ—litia this the Kings of England have used to order and govern without Fellow or Competitor This is as false as all the rest that you have taken upon the credit of Fugitives For in the first place both our own Histories and those of Foreigners that have been any whit exact in the relation of our Affairs declare That the making of Peace and War always did belong to the Parliament And the Laws of St. Edward which our Kings were bound to swear that they would maintain make this appear beyond all exception in the Chapter De Heretochus viz. That there were certain Officers appointed in every Province and County throughout the Kingdom that were called Heretochs in Latin
in his right wits can maintain such an Assertion The words immediately after make it as clear as the Sun that the Apostle speaks only of a lawful Power for he gives us in them a Definition of Magistrates and thereby explains to us who are the Persons thus authoriz'd and upon what account we are to yield Obedience lest we should be apt to mistake and ground extravagant Notions upon his Discourse The Magistrates says he are not a Terror to good Works but to evil Wilt thou then not be afraid of the Power Do that which is good and thou shalt have praise of the same For he is the Minister of God to thee for good He beareth not the Sword in vain for he is the Minister of God a Revenger to execute Wrath upon him that doth Evil. What honest Man would not willingly submit to such a Magistracy as is here described And that not only to avoid Wâ—ath and for fear of Punishment but for Conscience sake Without Magistrates and some Form or other of Civil Government no Commonwealth no Humane Society can subsist there were no-living in the World But whatever Power enables a Man or whatsoever Magistrate takes upon him to act contrary to what St. Paul makes the Duty of those that are in Authority neither is that Power nor that Magistrate ordain'd of God And consequently to such a Magistracy no Subjection is commanded nor is any due nor are the People forbidden to resist such Authority for in so doing they do not resist the Power nor the Magistracy as they are here excellently well described but they resist a Robber a Tyrant an Enemy who if he may notwithstanding in some sense be called a Magistrate upon this account only because he has Power in his hands which perhaps God may have invested him with for our punishment by the same reason the Devil may be called a Magistrate This is most certain that there can be but one true Definition of one and the same thing So that if St. Paul in this place define what a Magistrate is which he certainly does and that accurately well He cannot possibly define a Tyrant the most contrary thing imaginable in the same words Hence I infer that he commands us to submit to such Magistrates only as he himself defines and describes and not to Tyrants which are quite other things For this Cause you pay Tribute also He gives a Reason together with a Command Hence St. Chrysostome Why do we pay Tribute to Princes says he Do we not thereby reward them for the care they take of our Safety We should not have paid them any Tribute if we had not been convinc'd That it was good for us to live under a Government So that I must here repeat what I have said already That since Subjection is not absolutely enjoined but upon a particular Reason that reason must be the rule of our Subjection where that reason holds we are Rebels if we submit not where it holds not we are Cowards and Slaves if we do But say you the English are far from being Freemen for they are wicked and flagitious I will not reckon up here the Vices of the French tho they live under a Kingly Government neither will I excuse my own Countrey-men too far but this I may safely say Whatever Vices they have they have learnt them under a Kingly Government as the Israelites learnt a great deal of Wickedness in Egypt And as they when they were brought into the Wilderness and lived under the immediate Government of God himself could hardly reform just so 't is with us But there are good hopes of many amongst us that I may not here celebrate those men amongst us that are eminent for their Piety and Virtue and Love of the Truth of which sort I persuade my self we have as great a number as where you think there are most such But they have laid a heavy yoke upon the English Nation What if they have upon those of them that endeavoured to lay a heavy yoke upon all the rest Upon those that have deserved to be put under the hatches As for the rest I question not but they are very well content to be at the Expence of maintaining their own Liberty the Publick Treasury being exhausted by the Civil Wars Now he betakes himself to the Fabulous Rabbins again He asserts frequently that Kings are bound by no Laws and yet he proves That a cording to the sense of the Rabbins a King may be guilty of Treason by suffering an Invasion upon the Rights of his Crown So Kings are bound by Laws and they are not bound by them they may be Criminals and yet they may not be so This man contradicts himself so perpetually that Contradiction and he seem to be of kiâ— to one another You say that God himself put many Kingdoms under the yoke of Nebuchadnezzâ—r King of Babylon I confess he did so for a time Jer 27. 7 but do you make appear if you can that he put the English Nation into a condition of Slavery to Charles Stuart for a minute I confess he suffered them to be enslaved by him for some time but I never yet heard that himself appointed it so to be Or if you will have it so that God shall be said to put a Nation under Slavery when a Tyrant prevails why may he not as well be said to deliver them from his Tyranny when the People prevail and get the upper hand Shall his Tyranny be said to be of God and not our Liberty There is no evil in the City that the Lord hath not done Amos 3. So that Famine Pestilence Sedition War all of them are of God and is it therefore unlawful for a People afflicted with any of these Plagues to endeavour to get rid of them Certainly they would do their utmost tho they know them to be sent by God unless himself miraculously from Heaven should command the contrary And why may they not by the same reason rid themselves of a Tyrant if they are stonger than he Why should we suppose his weakness to be appointed by God for the ruin and destruction of the Commonwealth rather than the Power and Strength of all the People for the good of the State 〈◊〉 be it from all Commonwealths from all Societies of free-born men to maintain not only such pernicious but such stupid and senseless Principles Principles that subvert all Civil Society that to gratitie a few Tyrants level all Mankind with Brutes and by setting Princes out of the reach of humane Laws give them an equal power over both I pass by those foolish Dilemma's that you now make which that you might take occasion to propose you feign some or other to assert that that superlative power of Princes is derived from the people though for my own part I do not at all doubt but that all the power that any Magistrates have is so Hence Cicero in his Orat. pro Flacco Our wise
make it evident that you take a liberty to publish palpable down-right lies You begin with the Egyptians and indeed who does not see that you play the Gipsy your self throughout Amongst them say you there is no mention extant of any King that was ever slain by the People in a Popular Insurrection no War made upon any of their Kings by their Subjects no attempt made to depose any of them What think you then of Osiris who perhaps was the first King that the Egyptians ever had Was not he slain by his Brother Typhon and five and twenty other Conspirators And did not a great part of the Body of the People side with them and fight a Battel with Isis and Orus the late King's Wife and Son I pass by Sesostris whom his Brother had well-nigh put to Death and Chemmis and Cephrenes against whom the People were deservedly enraged and because they could not do it while they were alive they threatned to tear them in pieces after they were dead Do you think that a People that durst lay violent hands upon good Kings had any restraint upon them either by the Light of Nature or Religion from putting bad ones to Death Could they that threatened to pull the dead Bodies of their Princes out of their Graves when they ceased to do mischief tho by the Custom of their own Country the Corps of the meanest Person was sacred and inviolable abstain from inflicting Punishment upon them in their Life-time when they were acting all their Villanies if they had been able and that upon some Maxim of the Law of Nature I know you would not stick to answer me in the Affirmative how absurd soever it be but that you may not offer at it I 'll pull out your Tongue Know then that some Ages before Cephrene s time one Ammosis was King of Egypt and was as great a Tyrant as who has been the greatest him the People bore with This you are glad to hear this is what you would be at But hear what follows my honest tell-truth I shall speak out of Diodorus They bore with him for some while because he was too string for them But when Actisanes King of Ethiopia made War upon him they took that oppotunity to revolt so that being deforced he was easily subdued and Egypt became an Accession to the Kingdom of Ethiopia You see the â—…tians as soon as they could took up Arms against a Tyrant they joyned Forces with a Foreign saince to depose their own King and disinherit his Posterity they chosâ— to live under a moderate and good Prince as Actisanes was tho a Foreigner rather than under a Tyrant of their own The same People with a very unanimous Consent took up Arms against Apries another Tyrant who relied upon Foreign Aids that he had hired to assist him Under the Conduct of Amasis their General they Conquered and afterward Strangled him and placed Amasis in the Throne And observe this Circumstance in the History Amasis kept the 〈◊〉 aptive King a good while in the Palace and treated him well At last when the People comâ—â—…d that he nourished his own and their Enemy he put him into their hands who put him to Death in the manner I have mentioned There things are related by Heroditus and Diodorus Where are you now Do you think that any Tyrant would not chuse a Hatchet rather than an Halter Asâ—… say you when the Egyptians were brought 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the Persians they continued faithful to 〈◊〉 which is most false they never were faithful to 〈◊〉 For in the fourth year after Cambyses had 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thâ—m they rebelled Afterward when 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tamed them within a short time after 〈◊〉 râ—volted from his Son Artaxerxes and set up one 〈◊〉 to be their King After whose Death they rebell'd again and made one Tachus King and made War upon Artaxerxes Mnemon Neither were they better Subjects to their own Princes for they deposed Tachus and confer'd the Government upon his Son Nectanebus till at last Artaxerxes Ochus brought them the second time into Subjection to the Persian Empire When they were under the Macedonian Empire they declared by their Actions that Tyrants ought to be under some restraint They threw down the Statutes and Images of Ptolomaeus Physco and would have killed himself but that the Mercenary Army that he Commanded was too strong for them His Son Alexander was forced to leave his Country by the meer Violence of the People who were incensed against him for killing his Mother And the People of Alexandria dragged his Son Alexander out of the Palace whose Insolent Behaviour gave just Offence and killed him in the Theatre And the same People deposed Ptolomaeus Auletes for his many Crimes Now since it is impossible that any Learned Man should be ignorant of these things that are so generally known and since it is an inexcusable fault in Salmasius to be ignorant of them whose profession it is to teach them others and whose very asserting things of this Nature ought to carry in its self an Argument of Credibility it is certainly a very scandalous thing either that so Ignorant Unlearned a Blockhead should to the Scandal of all Learning profess himself and be accounted a Learned Man and obtain Salaries from Princes and States or that so impudent and notorious a Lyar should not be branded with some particular Mark of Infamy and for ever banished from the Society of learned and honest Men. Having searched among the Egyptians for Examples let us now consider the Ethiopians their Neighbours They adore their Kings whom they suppose God to have appointed over them almost as if they were a sort of gods themselves And yet whenever the Priests condemn any of them they kill themselves And on that manner says Diodorus they punish all their Criminals they put them not to death but send a Minister of Justice to command them to kill themselves In the next place you mention the Assyrians the Medes and the Persians who of all others were most observant of their Princes And you affirm contrary to all Historians that have wrote any thing concerning those Nations That the Regal Power there had an unbounded Liberty annexed to it of doing what the King listed In the first place the Prophet Daniel tells us how the Babylonians expelled Nebuchadnezzar out of human Society and made him graze with the Beasts when his pride grew to be insufferable The Laws of those Countries were not entituled the Laws of their Kings but the Laws of the Medes and Persians which Laws were irrevocable and the Kings themselves were bound by them Insomuch that Darius the Mede tho he earnestly desired to have delivered Daniel from the hands of the Princes yet could not effect it Those Nations say you thought it no sufficient pretence to reject a Prince because he abused the Right which was inherent in him as he was Sovereign But in the very writing of these words you are so stupid
King has taken 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Oath the Archbishop stepping to 〈◊〉 side of the Stage erected for that purpose asks the people four several times in these words Do you consent to have this man to be your King Just as if he spoke to them in the Roman Stile Vultis Jubetis hunc Regnare Is it your pleasure do you appoint this man to Reign Which would be needless if the Kingdom were by the Law hereditary But with Kings Usurpation passes very frequently for Law and Right You go about to ground Charles's Right to the Crown who was so often conquered himself upon the Right of Conquest William surnamed the Conqueror â—orsooth subdued us But they who are not strangers to our History know full well that the Strength of the English Nation was not so broken in that one Fight at Hastings but that they might easily have renewed the War But they chose rather to accept of a King than to be under a Conqueror and a Tyrant They swear therefore to William to be his Liege-men and he swears to them at the Altar to carry to them as a good King ought to do in all respects When he broke his word and the English betook themselves again to their Arms being diffident of his strength he renewed his Oath upon the Holy Evangelists to observe the Ancient Laws of England And therefore if after that he miserably oppressed the English as you say he did he did it not by Right of Conquest but by Right of Perjury Besides it is certain that many ages ago the Conquerors and Conquered coalesced into one and the same people So that that Right of Conquest if any such ever were must needs have been antiquated long ago His own words at his death which I give you out of a French Manuscript written at Cane put all out of doubt I appoint no man says he to inherit the Kingdom of England By which words both his pretended Right of Conquest and the Hereditary Right were disclaim'd at his death and buried together with him I see now that you have gotten a place at Court as I foretold you would you are made the King's Chief Treasurer and Steward of his Court-Craft And what follows you seem to write ex Officio as by virtue of your Office Magnificent Sir If any preceding Kings being thereunto compelled by Factions of Great Men or Seditions amongst the Common People have receded in some measure from their Right that cannot prejudice the Successor but that he is at liberty to resume it You say well if therefore at any time our Ancestors have through neglect lost any thing that was their Right why should that prejudice us their Posterity If they would promise for themselves to become Slaves they could make no such promise for us who shall always retain the same Right of delivering our selves out of Slavery that they had of enslaving themselves to any whomsoever You wonder how it comes to pass that a King of Great Britain must now-adays be looked upon as one of the Magistrates of the Kingdom only whereas in all other Kingly Governments in Christendom Kings are invested with a Free and Absolute Authority For the Scots I remit you to Buchanan For France your own Native Countrey to which you seem to be a stranger to Hottoman's Franco Gallia and Girardus a French Historian for the rest to other Authors of whom none that I know of were Independents Out of whom you might have learned a quite other lesson concerning the Right of Kings than what you teach Not being able to prove that a Tyrannical Power belongs to the Kings of England by Right of Conquest you try now to do it by Right of Perjury Kings profess themselves to Reign By the Grace of God What if they had professed themselves to be gods I believe if they had you might easily have been brought to become one of their Priests So the Archbishops of Canterbury pretended to Archbishop it by Divine Providence Are you such a fool as to deny the Pope's being a King in the Church that you may make the King greater than a Pope in the State But in the Statutes of the Realm the King is called our Lord. You are become of a sudden a wonderful Nomenclator of our Statutes But you know not that many are called Lords and Masters who are not really so You know not how unreasonable a thing it is to judge of Truth and Right by Titles of Honour not to say of Flattery Make the same Inference if you will from the Parliament's being called the King's Parliament for it is called the King's Bridle too or a Bridle to the King and therefore the King is no more Lord or Master of his Parliament than a Horse is of his Bridle But why not the King's Parliament since the King summons them I 'le tell you why because the Consuls used to indict a Meeting of the Senate yet were they not Lords over that Council When the King therefore summons or calls together a Parliament he does it by vertue and in discharge of that Office which he has received from the people that he may advise with them about the weighty affairs of the Kingdom not his own particular Affairs Or when at any time the Parliament debated of the King 's own Affairs if any could properly be called his own they were always the last things they did and it was in their choice when to debate of them and whether at all or no and depended not upon the King's Pleasure And they whom it concerns to know this know very well That Parliaments anciently whether summoned or not might by Law meet twice a Year But the Laws are called too The King's Laws These are flattering ascriptions a King of England can of himself make no Law For he was not constituted to make Laws but to see those Laws kept which the People made And you your self here confess That Parliaments Meet to make Laws Wherefore the Law is also called the Law of the Land and the Peoples Law Whence King Ethelstane in the Preface to his Laws speaking to all the People I have granted you every thing says he by your own Law And in the form of the Oath which the Kings of England used to take before they were made Kings The People stipulate with them thus Will you grant those Just Laws which the People shall chuse The King Answers I will And you are infinitely mistaken in saying That When there is no Parliament sitting the King Governs the whole state of the Kingdom to all intents and purposes by a Regal Power For he can determine nothing of any moment with respect to either Peace or War nor can he put any stop to the Proceedings of the Courts of Justice And the Judges therefore Swear That they will do nothing Judicially but according to Law tho the King by Word or Mâ—…te or Letters under his own Seal should command the contrary Hence it is that the King is often
most solemn Oath And by so doing he not only extinguish'd his Right of Conquest if he ever had any over us but subjected himself to be judged according to the Tenor of this very Law And his Son Henry swore to the observance of King Edward's Laws and of this amongst the rest and upon these only terms it was that he was chosen King whilst his Elder Brother Robert was alive The same Oath was taken by all succeeding Kings before they were Crowned Hence our Ancient and Famous Lawyer Bracton in his first Book Chap. 8. There is no King in the case says he where Will rules 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Law does not take place And in his Third Book Chap. 9. A King is a King so long as he Rules well he becomes a Tyrant when he oppresses the People committed to his Charge And in the same Chapter The King ought to use the Power of Law and Right as God's Minister and Vice-gerent the Power of wrong is the Devils and not Gods when the King turns aside to do Injustice he is the Minister of the Devil The very same words almost another Ancient Lawyer has who was the Author of the Book called Fleta both of them remembred that truly Royal Law of King Edward that Fundamental Maxim in our Law which I have formerly mentioned by which nothing is to be accounted a Law that is contrary to the Laws of God or of Reason no more than a Tyrant can be said to be a King or a Minister of the Devil a Minister of God Since therefore the Law is chiefly right Reason if we are bound to obey a King and a Minister of God by the very same Reason and the very same Law we ought to resist a Tyrant and a Minister of the Devil And because Controversies arise oftner about Names than Things the same Authors tell us that a King of England tho he have not lost the Name of a King yet is as liable to be judged and ought so to be as any of the Common People Bracton Book 1. Chap. 8. Fleta Book 1. Chap. 17. No Man ought to be greater than the King in the Administration of Justice but he himself ought to be as little as the least in receiving Justice si peccat if he offend Others read it si petat Since our Kings therefore are liable to be judged whether by the Name of Tyrants or of Kings it must not be difficult to assign their Legal Judges Nor will it be amiss to consult the same Authors upon that point Bracton Book 1. Chap. 16. Fleta Book 1. Chap. 17. The King has his Superiors in the Government The Law by which he is made King and his Court to wit the Earls and the Barons Comites Earls are as much as to say Companions and he that has a Companion has a Master and therefore if the King will be without a Bridle that is not govern by Law they ought to bridle him That the Commons are comprehended in the word Barons has been shown already nay and in the Books of our Ancient Laws they are frequently said to have been called Peers of Parliament and especially in the Modus tenendi c. There shall be chosen says that Book out of all the Peers of the Realm Five and twenty Persons of whom five shall be Knight five Citizens and five Burgâ—ssâ—s and two Knights of a County have a greater Vote in granting and rejecting than the greatest Earl in England And it is but reasonable they should for they Vote for a whole County c. the Earls for themselves only And who can but perceive that those Patent Earls whom you call Earls made by Writ since we have now none that hold their Earldoms by Tenure are very unfit Persons to try the King who conferr'd their Honours upon them Since therefore by our Law as appears by that old Book call'd The Mirror the King has his Peers who in Parliament have Cognizance of wrongs done by the King to any of his People and since it is notoriously known that the meanest Man in the Kingdom may even in inferior Courts have the benefit of the Law against the King himself in Case of any Injury or Wrong sustained how much more Consonant to Justice how much more necessary is it that in case the King oppress all his People there should be such as have Authority not only to restrain him and keep him within Bounds but to Judge and Punish him For that Government must needs be very ill and most ridiculously constituted in which remedy is provided in case of little Injuries done by the Prince to private Persons and no Remedy no Redress for greater no care taken for the safety of the whole no Provision made to the contrary but that the King may without any Law ruin all his Subjects when at the same time he cannot by Law so much as hurt any one of them And since I have shown that it is neither good manners nor expedient that the Lords should be the Kings Judges it follows that the Power of Judicature in that case does wholly and by very good Right belong to the Commons who are both Peers of the Realm and Barons and have the Power and Authority of all the People committed to them For since as we find it expresly in our written Law which I have already cited the Commons together with the King make a good Parliament without either Lords or Bishops because before either Lords or Bishops had a being Kings held Parliaments with their Commons only by the very same reason the Commons apart must have the Sovereign Power without the King and a Power of Judging the King himself because before there ever was a King they in the Name of the whole Body of the Nation held Councils and Parliaments had the Power of Judicature made Laws and made the Kings themselves not to Lord it over the People but to Administer their publick Affairs Whom if the King instead of so doing shall endeavour to injure and oppress our Law pronounces him from time forward not so much as to retain the Name of a King to be no such thing as a King and if he be no King what need we trouble our selves to find out Peers for him For being then by all good Men adjudged to be a Tyrant there are none but who are Peers good enough for him and proper enough to pronounce Sentence of Death upon him judicially These things being so I think I have sufficiently proved what I undertook by many Authorities and written Laws to wit that since the Commons have Authority by very good Right to try the King and since they have actually tried him and put him to Death for the mischief he had done both in Church and State and without all hope of amendment they have done nothing therein but what was just and regular for the Interest of the State in discharging of their Trust becoming their Dignity and according to the Laws of
Piety Sanctity and Constancy as he did and lest you should ascribe too much to that presence of mind which some common Malefactors have so great a measure of at their death many times despair and a hardned heart puts on as it were a Vizor of Courage and Stupidity of Quiet and Tranquility of mind Sometimes the worst of men desire to appear good undaunted innocent and now and then Religious not only in their life but at their death and in suffering death for their villanies use to act the last part of their hypocrisie and cheats with all the show imaginable and like bad Poets or Stage-players are very Ambitious of being clapp'd at the end of the Play Now you say you are come to enquire who they chiesly were that gave Sentence against the King Whereas it ought first to be enquired into how you a Foreigner and a French Vagabond came to have any thing to do to raise a question about our Affairs to which you are so much a stranger And what Reward induced you to it But we know enough of that and who satisfied your curiosity in these matters of ours even those Fugitives and Traytors to their Countrey that could easily hire such a vain Fellow as you to speak ill of us Then an account in writing of the state of our affairs was put into your hands by some hair-brain'd half-Protestant half-Papist Chaplain or other or by some sneaking Courtier and you were put to Translate it into Latin out of that you took these Narratives which if you please we 'll examine a little Not the hundred thousandth part of the people consented to this sentence of Condemnation What were the rest of the people then that suffered so great a thing to be transacted against their will Were they stocks and stones were they mere Trunks of men only or 〈◊〉 Images of Britans as Virgil describes to have been â—…ught in â—…ry Purpurea intexti tollunt aulea Britanni And Brittains interwove held up the Purple hangings For you describe no true Britains but Painted ones or rather Needle-wrought Men instead of them Since therefore it is a thing so incredible that a warlike Nation should be subdued by so few and those of the dregs of the People which is the first thing that occurs in your Narrative that appears in the very Nature of the thing it self to be most false The Bishops were turn'd out of the House of Lords by the Parliament it self The more deplorable is your Madness for are you not yet sensible that you Rave to complain of their being turn'd out of the Parliament whom you your self in a large Book endeavour to prove that they ought to be turn'd out of the Church One of the States of Parliament to wit the House of Lords consisting of Dukes Earls and Viscounts was removed And deservedly were they removed for they were not deputed to sit there by any Town or County but represented themselves only they had no Right over the People but as if they had been ordained for that very purpose used frequently to oppose their Rights and Liberties They were created by the King they were his Companions his Servants and as it were Shadows of him He being removed it was necessary they should be reduced to the same Level with the Body of the People from amongst whom they took their rise One part of the Parliament and that the worst of all ought not to have assum'd that Power of judging and condemning the King But I have told you already that the House of Commons was not only the chief part of our Parliament while we had Kings but was a perfect and entire Parliament of it self without the Temporal Lords much more without the Bishops But The whole House of Commons themselves were not admitted to have to do with the Tryal of the King To wit that part of them was not admitted that openly revolted to him in their Minds and Councels whom tho they stil'd him their King yet they had so often acted against as an Enemy The Parliament of England and the Deputies sent from the Parliament of Scotland on the 13th of January 1645. wrote to the King in Answer to a Letter of his by which he desired a deceitful Truce and that he might Treat with them at London that they could not admit him into that City till he had made Satisfaction to the State for the Civil War that he had raised in the three Kingdoms and for the Deaths of so many of his Subjects slain by his Order and till he had agreed to a true and firm Peace upon such Terms as the Parliaments of both Kingdoms had offered him so often already and should offer him again He on the other hand either refused to hear or by ambiguous Answers eluded their just and equal Proposals tho most humbly presented to him seven times over The Parliament at last after so many years patience lest the King should over-turn the State by his Wiles and Delays when in Prison which he could not subdue in the Field and lest the vanquish'd Enemy pleased with our Divisions should recover himself and triumph unexpectedly over his Conquerors vote that for the future they would have no regard to him that they would send him no more Proposals nor receive any from him After which vote there were found even some Members of Parliament who out of the hatred they bore that invincible Army whose Glory they envied and which they would have had disbanded and sent home with disgrace after they had deserved so well of their Nation and out of a servile Compliance with some Seditious Ministers finding their opportunity when many whom they knew to be otherwise minded than themselves having been sent by the House it self to suppress the Presbyterians who began already to be Turbulent were absent in the several Counties with a strange Levity not to say perfidiousness Vote that that inveterate Enemy of the State who had nothing of a King but the Name without giving any Satisfaction or Security should be brought back to London and restored to his Dignity and Government as if he had deserved well of the Nation by what he had done So that they preferr'd the King before their Religion their Liberty and that very celebrated Covenant of theirs What did they do in the mean time who were sound themselves and saw such pernicious Councils on foot Ought they therefore to have been wanting to the Nation and not provide for its safety because the Infection had spread it self even in their own House But who secluded those ill affected Members The English Army you say so that it was not an Army of Foreigners but of most Valiant and Faithful Honest Natives whose Officers for the most part were Members of Parliament and whom those good secluded Members would have secluded their Country and banished into Ireland while in the mean time the Scots whose Alliance begin to be doubtful had very considerable Forces in four of
he thought was to be imputed wholly to the Presbyterians now that he considers the same thing from first to last he thinks the Independents were the sole Actors of it But even now he told us The Presbyterians took up Arms against the King that by them he was beaten taken captive and put in prison Now he says this whole Doctrine of Rebellion is the Independents Principle O! the faithfulness of this man's Narrative How consistent he is with himself What need is there of a Counter narrative to this of his that cuts its own throat But if any man should question whether you are an honest man or a Knave let him read these following lines of yours It is time to explain whence and at what time this Sect of Enemies to Kingship first began VVhy truly these rare Puritans began in Queen Elizabeths time to crawl out of Hell and disturb not only the Church but the State likewise for they are no less plagues to the latter than to the former Now your very speech bewrays you to be a right Balaam for where you designed to spit out the most bitter poyson you could there unwittingly and against your will you have pronounc'd a blessing For it 's notoriously known all over England that if any endeavoured to follow the example of those Churches whether in France or Germany which they accounted best Reformed and to exercise the publick Worship of God in a more pure manner which our Bishops had almost universally corrupted with their Ceremonies and Superstitions or if any seemed either in point of Religion or Morality to be better than others such â—…sons were by the Favourers of Episcopacy termed â—…ans These are they whose Principles you say are so opposite to Kingship Nor are they the only persons most of the Reformed Religion that have not sucked in the rest of their principles yet seem to have approved of those that strike at Kingly Government So that â—hile you inveigh bitterly against the Independents and endeavour to separate them from Christ's flock with the same breath you praise them and those Principles which almost every where you affirm to be peculiar to the Independents here you confess they have been approved of by most of the Reformed Religion Nay you are arrived to that degree of impudence impiety and apostacy that though formerly you maintained that Bishops ought to be extirpated out of the Church Root and Branch as so many pests and limbs of Antichrist here you say the King ought to protect them for the saving of his Coronation-Oath You cannot show your self a more infamous Villain than you have done already but by abjuring the Protestant Reformed Religion to which you are a scandal Whereas you tax us with giving a Toleration of all Sects and Heresies you ought not to find fault with us for that since the Church bears with such a prosâ—igate wretch as you your self such a vain fellow such a lyar such a Mercenary Slanderer such an Apostate one who has the impudence to affirm That the best and most pious of Christians and even most of those who profess the Reformed Religion are crept out of Hell because they differ in opinion from you I had best pass by the Calumnies that fill up the rest of this Chapter and those prodigious tenents that you ascribe to the Independents to render them odious for neither do they at-all concern the cause you have in hand and they are such for the most part as deserve to be laugh'd at and despised rather than receive a serious Answer CHAP. XI YOu seem to begin this Eleventh Chapter Salmasius though with no modesty yet with some sense of your weakness and trifling in this Discourse For whereas you proposed to your self to enquire in this place by what authority sentence was given against the King You add immediately which no body expected from you that 't is in vain to make any such enquiry to wit because the quality of the persons that did it leaves hardly any room for such a question And therefore as you have been found guilty of a great deal of Impupence and Sauciness in the undertaking of this Cause so since you seem here conscious of your own impertinence I shall give you the shorter answer To your question then by what authority the House of Commons either condemn'd the King themselves or delegated that power to others I answer they did it by vertue of the Supreme authority on earth How they come to have the Supreme Power you may learn by what I have said already when I refuted your Impertinencies upon that Subject If you believed your self that you could ever say enough upon any Subject you would not be so tedious in repeating the same things so many times over And the House of Commons might delegate their Judicial Power by the same reason by which you say the King may delegate his who received all he had from the people Hence in that Solemn League and Covenant that you object to us the Parliaments of England and Scotland solemnly protest and engage to each other to punish the Traytors in such manner as the Supreme Judicial Authority in both Nations or such as should have a Delegate power from them should think fit Here you hear the Parliaments of both Nations protest with one voice that they may Delegate their Judicial Power which they call the Supreme so that you move a vain and frivolous Controversie about Delegating this power But say you there were added to those Judges that were made choice of out of the House of Commons some Officers of the Army and that never was known that Soldiers had any right to try a Subject for his life I 'le silence you in a very few words You may remember that we are not now discoursing of a Subject but of an Enemy whom if a General of an Army after he has taken him Prisoner resolves to dispatch would he be thought to proceed otherwise than according to custom and Martial Law if he himself with some of his Officers should sit upon him and try and cendemn him An enemy to a State made a Prisouer of War cannot be lookt upon to be so much as a Member much less a King in that State This is declar'd by that Sacred Law of St. Edward which denies that a bad King is a King at all or ought to be called so Whereas you say it was not the whole but a part of the House of Comâ—â—ons that try'd and condemned the King I give you this answer The number of them who gave their Votes for putting the King to death was far greater than is necessary according to the custom of our Parliaments to transact the greatest Affairs of the Kingdom in the absence of the rest who since they were absent through their own fault for to revolt to the common enemy in their hearts is the worst sort of absence their absence ought not to hinder the rest who continued faithful to the