the King had need be on his guard for he was in great danger of running the same risque with his Father when it was likewise inquired what interest amongst the People two great Peers had who have since the Plot been great Pillars of the Protestant Religion tho neither was ever reputed to have any were Ministers and Advisers in 1670 and 71. very good Friends to France and Popery Enemies to the Triple Alliance and to Holland c. It was also said That 300000 l. a year bestowed in Scotland and England among the Factious and Discontented would better serve the Interest of France than any Bargain they could drive with the Ministers Thus far that noble Pen hath discovered who are the French Pensioners and Reason speaks the same thing For if it be the Interest of France to divide England it is their Interest too to do it as cheap as they can and there is no doubt to be made of it but 10000 l. a year divided amongst the London Holders-forth and the Walling fordians on no other condition but that they should declaim stoutly against the King the Court the Ministers France and Popery things which no money could make them forbear speaking against would more effectually engage them to go on in that course than all the treasures of France would the King and Ministers to procure the Ruine of England and the settlement of Popery things which Nature and Education have taught them to abhor And by this means England as they might easily foresee would be so divided that if a Civil War did not follow yet at least there would be no fear of its being in a condition to look abroad and succour its Neighbours To these men is owing all that Contempt that hath fallen upon our English Parliaments both at home and beyond the Seas who by putting the House of Commons upon those things that would disgust the King and all the Gentry in the Nation have done as much as they could to make them first feared and then hated by almost one half of the Subjects and tends as directly to the ruine of that ancient and excellent Constitution as the disorders of the Tribunes of the People did to the ruine of the Liberty of the Romans But alas if we look into the Speech made at the opening of the Parliament we shall find no mention of any new Ally except the Spaniard whose Affairs at that time through the defects of their own Government and the Treachery of our Ministers were reduced to so desperate a state that he might well be a burthen to us but there was little to be hoped from a Friendship with him unless by the name of a League to recommend our Ministers to a New Parliament and cozen Country Gentlemen of their Money Before I can answer this I ought to Transcribe so much of his Majesties Speech as concerns this business which is as followeth My Lords and Gentlemen The several Prorogations I have made have been very advantageous to our Neighbours and very useful to me for I have employed that time in making and perfecting an Alliance with the Crown of Spain suitable to that which I had before with the States of the United Provinces and they also had with Spain consisting of mutual obligations of Succour and Defence I have all the reason in the world to believe that what was so much desired by former Parliaments must needs be very grateful to you now For tho some perhaps may wish these Measures had been taken sooner yet no man can with reason think it is now too late for they who desire to make these Alliances and they who desire to break them shew themselves of another opinion And as these are the best Measures that could be taken for the safety of England and repose of Christendom so they cannot fail to attain their End and to spread and improve themselves further if our Divisions at home do not render our Friendship less considerable abroad Now all the Gentlemans Craft lay in the word New there is no mention of any New Ally No but there is mention of an old one double Confederated both with Spain and England to the same purpose and these three States being thus United as his Majesty truly tells them would in a little time draw in more if our Divisions did not prevent it Our Divisions had that effect and made the King a true Prophet against his will and now all the blame is to be thrown upon the Ministers that is in reality upon the King Nay our Ministers poor unfortunate men must bear the reproach of Ruining not only England but Spain too by their Treachery but yet our kind Author doth not lay all that burthen upon their shoulders but confesseth that their ill Governing had a part in it but however it came to pass Spain was in so desperate a state then that it might be a burthen to England but no ways beneficial And yet before the end of this very Paragraph he is in a dreadful fear that Spain should joyn with his Majesties Successor and for the introduction of Popery make a War upon the People with all his Forces by Sea and Land At this rambling rate does our Gentleman talk It cannot be denied but that the Affairs of Spain were very ill managed at that time but then that was owing to the Minority of their King the Factions in their Court the Contests betwixt Don John and the Queen-Mother their Regent and their two Parties and it is not improbable the French King might have some few Pensioners in Spain as well as England but yet that once most potent Kingdom was not sunk to so low an Ebb of Fortune as to be only a burthen to its Allies tho it had need of them and ought by all the rules of Policy to have been so much the more carefully secured and supported by them especially by England And therefore our Country Gentlemen who were too wise to be cozened of their money by the crafty Ministers will I hope not lay it to their charge too that the Affairs of Spain have ever since visibly declined and the French King hath taken near as much from his Neighbours during the Peace upon pretence of Dependencies by Process as he got in all the War by his Sword and potent Armies For this seems in great part at least not so much owing to the Treachery of our Ministers as to the Tenacity and thriftiness of these Country Gentlemen that were so shie of being cozened of their Money But upon the perusal of the League it appears by the 3 4 and 5. Articles that it was like to create us troubles enough for it engages us indefinitely to enter into all the quarrels of the Spaniards tho they hapned in the West Indies or the Philippine Islands or were drawn upon himself by his own injustice or causeless provocations Whether my Author have been any more faithful in his account of this League than
he was of the Kings Speech I cannot say because it is not in my power to examine those Articles But his mentioning our obligation to assist Spain in the West-Indies and Philippine Islands where it is impossible against the Duke of Brandenburg and the King of Portugal where it would be unjust and against his Protestant Subjects opprest by him as they were by his Grandfather Philip are such things would make a man suspect his sincerity a little and the rather because his Majesty tells us The League was suitable to that which he had before with the States of the Vnited Provinces and they also had with Spain consisting of mutual obligations of Succour and Defence Now the account my Author gives of it is in part so impossible and in the rest so improbable that no Mortal in his right Wits can believe that Spain should desire or England grant any such things And therefore if he had at all expected to have been believed he ought to have Transcribed those three Articles for a proof of what he had said And whereas he tells us it engages us indefinitely to enter into all the quarrels of the Spaniards That if true will bear a fair Construction and will no more oblige us to those things he mentions if they be not express'd nay I think I may say if they be in plain terms than it will to help the King of Spain to destroy our selves in case he should happen to have a quarrel with us hereafter For no League can bind any further than as it is just and possible But that which concerns us yet nearer saith my Author in this League is that this obligation of Assistance was mutual so that if a Disturbance should happen hereafter in England upon any attempt to change our Religion or our Government tho it was in the time of his Majesties Successors The most Catholick King is obliged by this League which we are still to believe was entered into for the security of the Protestant Religion and the good of the Nation to give aid to so pious a design and to make War upon their Majesties the People with all his Forces both by Land and Sea And therefore it was no wonder that the Ministers were not forward in shewing this League to the Parliament who would have soon observed all these inconveniences and have seen how little such a League could contribute to the preserving the General Peace or to the securing of Flanders since the French King may within one months time possess himself of it and we by our League are not obliged to send our Succours till three months after the Invasion so that they would upon the whole matter have been inclined to suspect that the main end of this League was only to serve for a handsom pretence to raise an Army in England and if the People here should grow discontented at it and any little disorders should ensue The Spaniard is thereby obliged to send over Forces to suppress them This is fraught with such rare new Politicks and he has taken such care to make Rebellion safe whether it happens in his Majesties time or in his Successors especially if it were in order to the preservation of our Religion and Government and wo be to the man that begins one on any other pretence that I thought sit to transcribe it intire But Sir whatever the Spaniard hath promised or the Ministers intended against the People must needs come to nothing for you know that his Affairs were lately through the defects of his own Government and the Treachery of our Ministers reduced to so desperate a state that he might well be a Burthen to us but there was little to be hoped for from a friendship with him and therefore as little in hast to be feared from his Forces too if he should be so Popishly inclined as to think it a Pious design to help the King to bring in Arbitrary Government by the handsom pretence of an Army raised for his assistance or that and Popery too in the time of his Majesties Successor to which this Gentleman knows no man better the People have no Maw tho the Ministers have a filthy inclination and therefore cunningly took care by their Treachery to reduce his Affairs whose help they chiefly relied on into that desperate condition we lately see them in Well but for all that he may recover some part of his ancient Power yes who doubts that to hurt us but not to help us And now no man can blame the Ministers that they were not forward in shewing this League to the Parliament who would doubtless have forthwith Addressed to the King against them and ushered it in with a Vote that they were all of them Promoters of Popery and Spanish Counsels and Enemies to the King and Kingdom By this League in seems the King was not obliged to send over any Succours till three months after an Invasion tho it is as plain as the Nose on a mans face that the French King may in one months time possess himself of Flanders He may however take longer time if he please for any care was taken here to prevent it so that if his Majesty had taken a little too long a time to send in his Aids which all things considered few men will think he did yet they that should have backed him in it have taken a longer time and therefore ought not to complain The next thing saith my Author recommended to them was the further Examination of the Plot and every one who have observed what has passed for more than two years together cannot doubt but that this was sincerely desired by such as are most in credit with his Majesty And then surely the Parliament deserved not to be censured upon this account since the Examination of so many new Witnesses the Trial of the Lord Stafford the great preparations for the trial of the rest of the Lords and their diligent inquiry into the Horrid Irish Treasons shew that the Parliament wanted no diligence to pursue his Majesties good intentions in that affair Now Sir If they had but suspended the Bill for disinheriting the Duke of York and their Votes that followed upon the throwing it out in the Lords House and could but have held their hands from sending for their fellow-Subjects into Custody till they had dispatched this great Affair tried all the other Lords in the Tower it is thought by wiser men than I they might have had time enough to have gone through with this business but some body tells us the Plot was to be kept on foot else they would be defeated It was to be used like the Holy War always a doing never done withal till it made way for some other designs that would not go merrily without the noise of a Plot to drive them When his Majesty desired from the Parliament their Advice and assistance concerning the Preservation of Tangier the Commons did
to break alone with that Monarch which had tired out all Christendom with a tedious expensive War when they were united against him And therefore the best Expedient that could then have fallen into the Heads of the Commons had been to have shewn him and all the Confederates that we were resolved to have stood by our King with our Lives and Fortunes which would have heartned them on to a stout resistance in case of his further encroachments upon them and in likelihood have kept him in some aw whereas the course that was taken had a quite contrary effect and tended more a thousand times to the discouragement of the Confederates than the fruitless attempt he hints at made by the Earl of Danby who was then in the Tower for it So that I believe all Europe will bear me Witness that all the great things the French King hath since done were in a great measure owing to the disorders of our English Parliaments and their declared resolution of giving the King no Supplies upon reasonable terms which rendered the Alliance and Enmity of our King abroad inconsiderable Amongst the great things the French King hath done since the Peace my Author tells us this His Pensioners at our Court have grown insolent upon it and presumed that now He the French King may be at leisure to assist them the Pensioners in ruining England and the Protestant Religion together And they have shaken off all dread of Parliaments and have prevailed with his Majesty to use them with as little respect and to disperse them with as great contempt as if they had been a Conventicle and not the great Representative of the Nation whose Power and Wisdom only could save him and us in our present Exigencies Surely the man that talks thus contemptuously of his Majesty and all the Ministers durst have told us if he could who were these French Pentioners but it was not his design to point out the men but to cast out general Accusations against the King the Ministers and the whole Government thereby to incense the People and to make them ungovernable that so his Majesty might be the sooner necessitated to submit himself to that Power and Wisdom that could only save him and us but might also easily ruine both if things were once put into such a state as his Majesty were no longer Master of that Power As to the Accusation or rather Calumny that the English Ministers are Pensioners to the French King it will easily appear false to any man that doth but reflect on Colemans Letters in 1674 when the King was in a much better condition to oppose and ruine the French designs and enterprizes and the French King had all the Confederates United and in an Actual War with him and there was nothing to fear or hope for but in England yet he then refused three hundred thousand Pounds tho it was pretended it would have assured the Dissolution of that long Loyal Parliament which France feared more than threescore such as have followed it and when at last Coleman descended to 200000 l. and at one time begged shamefully but for 20000 l. He was denied it Monsieur Rouvigni the French Embassadour usually telling him That if he could be sure of succeeding in that design his Master would give a much larger Sum but that he was not in a condition to throw away money upon uncertainties Nor doth it appear that ever Coleman got one farthing at that time And after the discovery of the Plot and the dissolution of the long Loyal Parliament the general Peace having delivered the French King from all Apprehensions of good or hurt from England His Majesty having such ill success in the first short Westminster Parliament and the Divisions of England appearing more fully in the Election of the Second and the year that passed betwixt that and its sitting all which were as well known in Paris as in London it is not to be doubted but he very well understood that there was then less reason to maintain Pensioners in England than before So that we may conclude from that time there hath come but little French Money over into England for Pensions to any Party England being thought in France so inconsiderable by reason of her Domestick Feuds Fears and incurable Jealousies that there is nothing to be feared or hoped from it whereas Pensions are to be imployed in Potent and United States I do not design by this to prove that no French Pensioners are now maintained in England but that they are few and gain but little by it and therefore it is ridiculous to conceive that all our Ministers of State are such and that they should be such fools as to conspire with France to ruine England for nothing or that which is next to it And it is as silly a supposition that the Privy Council and the rest of the Ministers of State who are not Pensioners should not discover those that are as soon as this discontented Gentleman There is a lewd and impossible conceit spread underhand about the Nation that the King himself is a Pensioner to France and all that is pretended to justifie it is only his being able to subsist so long without Parliamentary Supplies Now this I believe is not credited by any men of understanding but yet there are many such who for ill ends speak it in some companies and will shake their heads and shrug their shoulders and look gravely in other companies that they may seem to fear what they durst not speak Now if what I have said before be applied to this instance it will appear more ridiculous for that Pension that may tempt a hungry Courtier who is to raise a Family would be rejected with scorn if it were tendered to a meaner Prince than ours is And it is not to be thought that the French King who is observed to be as sparing of his Wealth as prodigal of his Souldiers would ever be at such an Expence as to maintain our Court and his own for fear the King should unite with a Parliament that would be an Enemy to France no all knowing men understand how little he cares for England if it were quiet at home but as now things stand he scorns it as beneath his Consideration Well but if neither the Ministers nor his Majesty are to be suspected who are I will tell you that in the words of a more knowing man than I dare pretend to be Those that roar most against French Councils and Measures Vnder-hand-bargains and Agreements between both the Kings know they belye their own Consciences and that the French have us in the last degree of Contempt This the Earl of Danby Printed in his own vindication perhaps not ignorant that some of their Ministers did in the year 1677 and 78. before the breaking forth of the Plot declare That Monsieur L. had greater interest and more Friends in England than the Duke of York that
is undeniable but then those reasons ought to be alledged and proved for the turning a man out of Service is certainly in many cases a great punishment tho not equal to hanging The People themselves are highly concerned in the great Ministers of State who are Servants to the Kingdom as well as to the King and the Commons whose business it is to present all Grievances as they are most likely to observe soonest the folly and treachery of those publick Servants the greatest of all Grievances so this representation ought to have no little weight with the Prince Here is the true reason as long as the Ministers look upon themselves as the Kings Servants they will adhere to the Crown but if they be taught once that they are Servants to the People too then because it is difficult to serve two Masters they will be more distracted and act more timorously especially if according to the modern distinction the Country-Party get the Ascendent of the Court-Party in a Parliament Queen Elizabeth told the Commons by the Lord Keeper that she misliked that such irreverence towards Privy-Counsellors who were not to be accounted as Common Knights and Burgesses of the House that are Counsellors but during the Parliament whereas the other are standing Counsellors and for their Wisdom and great Service are called to the Council of State They were not then thought to be such publick Servants as might be treated at any rate sent to the Tower or to carry up a Bill to the Lords against which they had given their Vote as if it were to triumph over them But Henry IV. a wise and a brave Prince in the Fifth year of his Reign turned out four of his Servants only because the Commons desired they might be removed But then this Prince had no Title and therefore was not in a capacity to dispute any thing with them and in this very Parliament too they gave him so extraordinary a Tax and so troublesom to the Subject that they would not suffer any Record of it to be left in the Treasury and he was obliged to grant them this extraordinary favour in recompence of it He had but newly in Battel conquered one Rebellion wherein Mortimers Title was at the bottom and was ingaged then in a War with France And he had reason to fear a general Defection of the Nation King Richard being reported to be alive And he was then in great want of Money so that for such a Prince so beset to grant any thing was far from a wonder but ought no more to be drawn into Example than that Tax they then gave him and least of all now when things are in a very different posture But then all these Ministers are censured for doing that which was approved by two of the three Estates The Resolve was this That all persons who advised his Majesty in his last Message to this House to insist upon an opinion against the Bill for Excluding the Duke of York have given pernicious Counsel to his Majesty and are promoters of Popery and Enemies to the King and Kingdom Now this Bill was before this thrown out by the House of Lords and therefore there was no reason to Vote the Ministers Enemies to the King and Kingdom for doing that which was approved by two of the three Estates in Parliament But they ought not to have appealed to the People against their own Representatives Why not The unfortunate Reigns of Henry III. Edward II. Richard II. and Henry VI. ought to serve as Land-marks to warn succeeding Kings from preserring secret Councils to the wisdom of their Parliaments And so ought the Example of his Majesties Father to warn both his Majesty and the whole Nation how they suffer the Ministers of State to be trodden under foot by Factious men and the Prerogatives of the Crown to be swallowed up by pretended Priviledges of Parliament for all these things have once already made way for the Ruine of the Monarchy as that did for the enslaving of the People The next thing my Author falls upon is the business of the Revenue but here I cannot imagine what he would have he makes a long Harangue against Alienation of the Revenues of the Crown and about the reasonableness of Resumptions of those that had been alienated And tells us No Country did ever believe the Prince how absolute soever in other things had power to sell or give away the Revenue of the Kingdom and leave his Successor a Beggar That the haughty French Monarch as much power as he pretends to is not ashamed to own that he wanted power to make such Alienations and that Kings had that happy inability that they could do nothing contrary to the Laws of their Country This and much more my Author hath upon this occasion learnedly but very impertinently written about these two Votes believing his Reader could not distinguish betwixt an Alienation and an Anticipation But the best way to have this clearly understood is to insert the Votes of the Commons which are as followeth Resolved That whosoever shall hereafter lend or cause to be lent by way of Advance any money upon the Branches of the Kings Revenue arising by Customs Excise or Hearth-money shall be adjudged to hinder the sitting of Parliaments and shall be responsible for the same in Parliament Resolved That whosoever shall accept or buy any Tally of Anticipation upon any part of the Kings Revenue or whoseever shall pay such Tally hereafter to be struck shall be adjudged to hinder the sitting of Parliaments and shall be responsible therefore in Parliament Now what Advancing money upon the Revenues and accepting Tallys of Anticipation have to do with Alienation of it I cannot devise For certainly it is one thing to advance a Fine and take a Farm so much the cheaper for three four or seven years and another thing to purchase the same to a man and his Heirs for ever And it is one thing to receive an Order to take such a Sum of Money of the Tenant out of the next half years Rent and a quite other thing to purchase the Feesimple of an Estate which is an Alienation The Revenues of the Crown of England are in their own nature appropriated to Publick Service and therefore cannot without injustice be diverted or Anticipated May not an Anticipation be as well imployed upon the Publick Service as a growing Revenue when it is become due Does Anticipation signifie mispending or diverting from a Publick to a private use Is it impossible the Publick should at any time need a greater Sum of money than the Revenue will afford and may not a Prince in such a case Anticipate and afterward get it up again by his good Husbandry No for Either the Publick Revenue is sufficient to answer the necessary occasions of the Government and then there is no colour for Anticipations or else by some extraordinary Accident the King
upon their Liberty of Proposing and Debating Laws by his telling them before-hand what things they should meddle with and what things no reason they could offer should persuade him to consent unto In that very Parliament I have mentioned Mr. Peter Wentworth and Sir Henry Bromley delivered a Petition unto the Lord Keeper therein desiring the Lords of the Vpper House to be suppliants with them of the Lower House unto her Majesty for entailing the Succession to the Crown whereof a Bill was already drawn Her Majesty was highly displeased therewith after she knew it as a matter contrary to her former streight Commandment and charged the Council to call the Parties before them Sir Thomas Henage presently sent for them and after speech with them commanded them to forbear coming to the Parliament and not to go out from their Lodgings The next day being Sunday Mr. Peter Wentworth was sent prisoner to the Tower Sir Henry Bromley one Mr. Richard Stephens and Mr. Welch the other Knight for Worcestershire were sent to the Fleet. And Sir Walter Rauleigh tells us Wentworth died in the Tower tho this Motion was but supposed dangerous to the Queens Estate Yet here was no express Command against it but only a general Command which I have recited neither doth it appear that any disherison of any right Heir to the Crown was intended And in this very Parliament one Mr. Morris Attourney of the Court of Wards bringing in a Bill against the abuses of the Bishops as he pretended in Lawless Inquisitions injurious Subscriptions and binding Absolution he was the next day sent for to Court and committed unto Sir John Fortescues Keeping And upon both these the Queen sent this Message to the House by their Speaker It is in me and my power to call Parliaments and it is in my power to end and determine the same it is in my power to Assent or Dissent to any thing done in Parliament The Calling of this Parliament was only that the Majesty of God might be more religiously served and those that neglected this Service might be compelled by some sharper means to a more due Obedience and a more true service of God than there hath been hitherto used And further that the safety of her Majesties Person and of this Realm might be by all means provided for against our great Enemies the Pope and the King of Spain Her Majesties most excellent pleasure being then delivered unto us by the Lord Keeper it was not meant we should meddle with Matters of State or in Causes Ecclesiastical for so her Majesty termed them she wondered that any would be of so high Commandment to attempt I use her own words a thing contrary to that which she had so expresly forbidden wherefore with this she was highly displeased And in all her Reign after durst no man attempt to meddle with either of these things Now I have taken the pains to transcribe all this out of the transactions of her Reign rather than of any other because she was never accused of affecting Arbitrary Government or Popery but was beloved of all her Subjects whilst she lived and her Memory is and ever will be had in honour by all English men and she ought to be a pattern for all her Successors And now let us hear our modest Vindicator But every man must be moved to hear it charged upon them as an unpardonable disobedience that they did not obsequiously sub mit to that irregular command of not touching on the business of the Succession Shall two or three unknown Minions take upon them like the Lords of the Articles of Scotland to prescribe unto an English Parliament what things they shall treat of Do they intend to have Parliaments inter instrumenta servitutis as the Romans had Kings in our Country This would quickly be if what was then attempted had succeeded and should be so pursued hereafter that Parliaments should be directed what they are to meddle with and threatned if they do any other thing For the loss of Liberty of freedom of Debate in Parliament will soon and certainly be followed by a general loss of Liberty This is the right temper and Spirit of a good Common-wealth man thus did your Fathers talk in the days of his Majesties Father till Priviledge of Parliament had eat up all the Prerogatives of the Crown and the Liberties of the Subjects and delivered us over to slavery poverty and confusion so that the Tyrannical Arbitrary bloudy Government of Oliver Cromwel was thought a blessing to the Nation in comparison of these Parliamentary Instruments of slavery and their Legions which I hope this Generation will so well remember as never to set it up or suffer it to be set up more in my days My Author having told us in the next place That the King ought to divest himself of all private inclinations and force his own affections to yield unto the Publick Concernments and therefore his Parliaments ought to inform him impartially of that which tends to the good of those they represent without regard of personal passions and might worthily be blamed if they did not believe that he would forgo them all for the safety of his People Concludes That therefore if in it self it was lawful to propose a Bill for Excluding the Duke of York from the Crown the doing it after such an unwarrantable signification of his pleasure would not make it otherwise To which I reply that Parliaments as Subjects are more bound to comply with the natural and reasonable Affections and Passions of their Princes than Princes are in the same Circumstances with those of their Subjects And that in this case his Majesties own Personal safety and interest was wrapt up in that of his Brother for if he might be Excluded another might be Deposed on the same pretence as Coleman said truly enough And tho it should be granted that Parliaments ought to inform Princes yet it is certain they ought not to force them they had informed the King in the two former Parliaments what they thought of this Affair and his Majesty had rejected their Advice and in the beginning of this Parliament at Oxford had told them That what he had formerly and so often declared touching the Succession he could not depart from And after all this for them to enter again upon it in the very first place looked like an intended force And then tho the thing were lawful in it self it may be thought unreasonable thus to pursue it and Queen Elizabeth would have made them have felt the Effects of her resentment for presuming to be of so high Commandment if she had been in his Majesties place In the next place we are told his Majesties unusual stiffness upon this occasion begins to be suspected not to proceed from fondness to his Brother much less from any thoughts of danger to the English Monarchy by such a Law but from the influence of some few
not so nice but it might have been â—een determined by a meaner Critick than our Author who hath shewn his great skill in the French Tongue in his learned Remarques on the Phrase it is a matter extremely sensible to us And in the Latine upon the word Republick or Commonwealth If he had not from hence sought an occasion to call his Majesties Fidelity in question which tho it may become a Republican is very indecent in a good Subject When we see the real fruits of these utmost endeavours to extirpate Popery out of Parliament when we see the Duke of York no longer first Minister or rather Protector of these Kingdoms and his Creatures no longer to have the whole direction of Affairs when we see that love to our Religion and Laws is no longer a Crime at Court no longer a fore-runner of being disgraced and removed from all Offices and Imployments in their Power That is when the Duke of York is ruined and not only his Popish but his Church of England Creatures who have shewn themselves such by Voting against the Bill of Exclusion be laid aside When our Religion which no man knows what it is and that part of the Laws which we skulk behind now to ruine all the rest and the King and Kingdom to boot shall not hinder our Preferment whatever we do or say When the word Loyal which is faithful to the Law shall be restored to its own meaning and no longer signifie one who is for subverting the Laws That is when men may safely pretend so much respect to the Laws that they may affront his Majesty who is the Fountain of all Laws and the Protector of them and us by them when the word Loyal shall have no other relation to his Majesty than the same word if in use there hath in Venice when spoken concerning their Duke When we see the Commissions filled with hearty Protestants that is with Whigs and Republicans and the Laws executed in good earnest against the Papists and the Dissenters passed by unpunished The Discoverers of the Plot countenanced or at least heard and suffered to give their Evidence except when they make bold with our selves and such a Colledge and Fitz-Harris and the Association-men in which cases they ought neither to be heard nor believed The Courts of Justice steady and not avowing a jurisdiction one day which they disown the next but just such as they were in the late times When we see no more Grand-Juries discharged lest they should hear Witnesses nor Witnesses hurried away lest they should inform Grand-Juries tho it were against his Majesty and when all Grand-Juries are of the Family of Ignoramus the Lawyer and will find according to their Conscience tho against both their Oath and their Evidence especially when a Precious man is in jeopardy to be hanged for something done or said against the King When we see no more instruments from Court labouring to raise jealousies of Associating Petitioning Protestants who have a Patent from heaven to retail all the fears and jealousies that ever shall from henceforward be put off in England Scotland and Ireland and in all other his Majesties Dominions and Countries whatsoever And to that purpose have erected several Mints for the Coining of them in London and the parts adjacent and do maintain several Presses and a great many Intelligencers to collect and disperse the same for the benefit of his Majesties discontented Subjects who receive much comfort by the worst and falsest of them and hope to have just such another harvest in the end as they reaped from the same Seed in and about the years 1640 41 42 and so on till 1660. When we see some regard had to Protestants abroad tho his Majesty should be by our defaults brought into such straits as hardly to be able to maintain the Government at home When we observe somewhat else to be meant by Governing according to Law than barely to put them in execution against Dissenters in whom our strength against the Government doth chiefly consist the Laws made against Papists In which number we desire the Church of England men that is all that stick to the Religion by Law Established may be included and then we shall promise our selves not only frequent Parliaments but everlasting ones and all the blessed effects of pursuing Parliamentary Councils the Extirpation of Popery and Prelacy the redress of Grievances the flourishing of Laws and the perfect restoring the Monarchy to the credit which it had in 1658 and 59. both at home and abroad There needs no time to open the Eyes of his Majesties good Subjects the Whigs and their hearts are ready prepared to meet him in Parliament in order to perfect all these good Settlements and Peace which are now wanting in Church and State But whilst there are so many little Emissaries imployed to sow and encrease divisions in the Nation as if the Ministers had a mind to make his Majesty head of a Faction and joyn himself to one Party in the Kingdom who has a just right of Governing all which Thuanus lib. 28. says was the notorious Folly and occasioned the destruction of his great-Grandmother Mary Queen of Scots whilst we see the same differences Promoted industriously by the Court which gave the Rise and Progress to the late troubles and which were once thought fit to be buried in an Act of Oblivion What is meant by the little Emissaries here I know not nor will I guess Nor did I ever observe the Ministers had a mind to make his Majesty the Head of a Faction which your Author much blames in Henry III. of France too when he suffered the Holy League the Prototype of the Association to be set afoot and propagated so far before he took notice of it that he was forced at last to attempt to make himself the Head of it which was properly a Faction combined by an Oath against the Right Heir to the Crown and a part of the Natural Subjects of France on pretence of Religion for the Exclusion of the first and destruction of the latter without and against the consent of the King which caused a Rebellion in France the destruction of the King a sooner Succession of Henry IV. the right Heir upon changing his Religion and if God had not prevented it had betrayed France into the hands of the Spaniards or Cantoned it into small Principalities Now this is properly to make a Prince the head of a Faction without consideration of the Rise of our late Troubles which sprung from such another League but to countenance a Loyal Party more than a Rebellious one is not so and whatever effect it had in the Reign of Queen Mary his Majesties Grandmother seems the only way now to save England and prevent the need of another Act of Oblivion and Indemnity for all those Crimes that were pardoned by his Majesty but never repented of by them that acted them Whilst