for the Safety and Well-Government of his Subjects the abandoning tho for so short a time the Protection and Defence of the People committed to his Charge Whatever things are proper unto Supreme Majesty Scepters and Crowns Soveraignty the Purple Robe the Globe or Golden Ball and Holy Unction have as long appertained to the British Monarch as to any other Prince in Europe The Antiquity of anointing Kings in Britain has been already shewn out of Gildas and as for the other four they are by Leland a famous Antiquary ascribed unto King Arthur who began his Reign in the Year of our Lord 506. Which was as soon as they were ordinarily in use with the Roman Emperors The King of Great Britain is an absolute and unaccountable Monarch a Free Prince of Soveraign Power not holding his Kingdom in Vassallage nor receiving his Instalment or Investiture from another Nor does he acknowledge Superiority to any but to GOD alone He is not only the Supreme but sole Legislator within his Dominions The Power of making Laws whatever some Antimonarchists pretend to the contrary rests solely in him And altho the Gracious Condescension of our Kings has been such as to render the subordinate Concurrence of the Estates of each Realm a Condition requisite to the making of new or abrogating of old Laws within the respective Kingdoms yet are they not thereby admitted to any Share in the Soveraignty their Power being wholly derivative from the King who is Caput Principium Finis Parliamentorum the three Estates when assembled in Parliament being as much his Subjects as every particular Man of them is when the Meeting is dissolved All Bills passed by them are but so much dead matter till quickned by his Royal Fiat which alone gives Life and Form to all their Proceedings Nor is it ex debito Justitiae but of his Special Grace that he passes such Acts as are presented to him Thus Henry the IIId begins his Magna Charta with Know ye that WE of our meer and free Will have given these Liberties Thus we hear King Edward the Ist saying The King of his special Grace for Redress of the Grievances of His People sustained by his Wars and for the Amendment of their Estate and to the intent that they may be the more ready to do him Service the more willing to assist and aid him in time of need Grants 28. E. 1. c. 1. And altho of later times Laws are said to be made by Authority of Parliament yet if we look into our antient Statutes we shall find the meaning to be that The King Ordains the Lords advise and the Commons consent Those then are much mistaken who affirm the Parliament to be at the least as Essential a Part of the Government as the Prince Which if it were true whenever the Parliament is dissolved the Government would be so too But this with the Pernicious Maxim of Coordinacy or sharing the Soveraign Power between King Lords and Commons with other treasonable and Antimonarchical Doctrines daily dispersed amongst the People and with the utmost of his Art industriously asserted by the Author of a late seditious Book entituled Plato Redivivus together with his audacious Proposals aiming to take all the Flowers out of the Imperial Diadem of the British Monarch are most fitly to be answered in Westminster-Hall as tending no less to the subversion of our Government which being purely Monarchical may be without the two Houses whereas they cannot be without the King than those traitorous Designs for which Coleman and his Accomplices paid their forfeited Lives to the Justice of the Laws The King of Great Britain is Lord Paramount supreme Landlord of all the Lands within his Dominions all landed men being mediately or immediately his Tenants by some Tenure or other By the Laws and Ordinances of ancient Kings saith Sir Edward Cook in the first part of his Institutes and especially of King Alfred it appeareth that the first Kings of this Realm had all the Lands of England in Demesne and the great Manors and Royalties they reserved to themselves and of the Remnant they for the Defence of the Realm enfeoffed the Barons of the Realm with such Jurisdiction as the Court Baron now hath The King as it is evident by the Rolls of the Chancellery in Scotland which contain their eldest and fundamental Laws is Dominus omnium bonorum and Dominus directus totius Dominii the whole Subjects being but his Vassals and from him holding all their Lands as their Over-lord Thus none but the King hath Allodium and Directum Dominium the sole and independent Property in any Land Upon this Ground no doubt it was that Serjeant Heal in the three and fortieth year of Queen Elizabeth said in Parliament He marvelled the House stood either at the granting of a Subsidy or time of Payment when all we have is her Majesties and She may lawfully at her pleasure take it from us and that She had as much Right to all our Lands and Goods as to any Revenue of the Crown And he said he could prove it by Precedents in the time of Henry the IIId King John and King Stephen And upon the same Ground was it resolved by the Judges in the beginning of the Reign of King James when there was a purpose to have taken away Tenures by Act of Parliament That such a Statute had been void because the Tenures were for the Defence of the King and Kingdom And altho since that the Tenures which gave a Dependency upon the Crown and were the greatest Safety to the King and People have been taken away and thereby a great Blow given to Monarchy yet let those who have the Fee the Jus perpetuum and the Vtile Dominium have a care lest by following the mischievous Advice of Plato Redivivus and abusing the Grace and Bounty of the Prince by endeavoring to draw the Soveraignty to themselves they necessitate not their King for the Preservation of himself and People to have Recourse to his Prerogative which is a Preheminence in Cases of Necessity above and before the Law of Property or Inheritance For the Prevention whereof it is to be wished that either by an Act of Resumption of the ancient Demesns of the Crown which was a sacred Patrimony and by Law unalienable or by such other way as the Wisdom of the Nation shall think fit a Royal Support adaequate to the Charges of the Crown be made for the King to defend his Kingdom and protect his People so that he may not be reduced to the Infelicity of having a precarious Revenue out of the Peoples Purse and to be beholden to a Parliament for his Bread in time of Peace which is no good Condition for a Monarchy As the Legislative Power is solely in the King so he alone has the Soveraign Power in the Administration of Justice and Execution of the Law He is the Fountain of all Justice which by his Judges and
majorque premebat Te Furor extremum Zephyri Cornubia Limen Here lodgd of Old A Race of Titans impious and bold Their Bodies with raw Hides they clad allaid With Blood their Thirst of hollow Trees they made Their Cups their Beds were Mosse Bushes Dens Their Houses were their Chambers craggy Pens Their Hunger Prey Rape did their Lust supply The Sport of slaughtring men did please their Eye Force gat them Rule Fury them Courage gave Rage Arms a Battle Death a Grove a Grave These Monsters dwelt on Hills and did molest Each Quarter of the Land but most the West Thou Frighted Cornwall never having Rest The Druids officiated only in Groves of Oak planting for that purpose very many up and down the whole Island for they highly venerated this Tree and more especially the Missletoe growing thereon without a Branch whereof they performed no Sacrifice and which being found on a Tree was esteemed a sure Sign that the GOD whom they were then about to serve had made choise of it This was by them gathered with many Superstitious Ceremonies and great Devotion 1. They observed that at the time of gathering it the Moon was to be neither more nor less than six dayes old 2. Having prepared their Sacrifices under the Tree they brought thither two young Bullocks milk-white whose Horns were then and not before bound up 3. The Priest cloathed in white climbed the Tree and with a golden Bill cut down the Missletoe which was received below in a Souldiers white Cassock 4. They blessed the Gift mumbling over many Orisons The Missletoe thus gathered was reputed a Soveraign Antidote against Poyson and Barrenness Caesar at his coming into Britain Manners found it Inhabited by two sorts of People The more inland parts by such as esteemed themselves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or to have had their Original out of the very Soil they lived in quos natos in Insula ipsa memoria proditum dicunt as he has it The Maritime parts being possest by such as resorted thither from Gaul and Belgium for the sake either of Traffick or Conquest The want of observing this Distinction is the Cause of the seeming Contradictions that are found in such Writers as discourse of the Manners and Customs of the ancient Britains Those on the Sea-coasts were more civilized had Houses Orchards Gardens tilled and manured their Grounds and agreed very much in manners with the Gauls but the Inlanders for want of Converse and living in a perpetual State of War were more rude and barbarous symbolizing with the Germans from whom they are thought to have had their Original The Britains are generally represented by most Authors to be of a kind and gentle Disposition not having the Craft and Subtilty of other Nations but a fair-conditioned People of a plain and upright Dealing That they were valorous none can doubt who considers with what difficulty notwithstanding the many Divisions and Quarrels amongst their own petty Princes they were subjected to the Romans how serviceable they were to them afterwards in their Wars how vigorously tho then very few their Land having been dispeopled by the Romans they withstood the numerous Forces of the Saxons whom their own Invitation first gave footing amongst them and when over-powered by them they were forced to retire into the more Western Parts of this Island how stoutly they maintained their Liberties against the English Kings both of the Saxon and Norman Race and how by a voluntary Submission rather than Force they were brought under Subjection to the Crown of England Since which time they have been out-gone by none in Loyalty and Fidelity to their Prince The Inlanders had all things amongst them in common and would not admit of any Propriety insomuch that ten or twelve of them promiscuously made use of the same Women Brethren with Brethren and Parents with their own Children the Issue which was bred up by a common Stock being more particularly reputed his who had the first Enjoyment of the Mothers Virgin Embraces They inured themselves to all Hardship being able to undergo any Cold Hunger and Labor whatever so that they would stick themselves in Boggs up to their very Heads continuing there many dayes together without any Sustenance The Britains were generally very much addicted to Magick as are their Descendents the Welsh even to this very day Punishments It was the Custom of the antient Britains that when any great man died his Relations made Enquiry if there were Suspicion amongst his Wives concerning his Death who if they were found guilty were punished with Fire and other Torments From whence Sir Edward Cook derives the Law of England at this day for burning those Women who kill their Husbands Thieves and Murderers were reserved by them to be offered in Sacrifice to the Gods and so were Captives taken in their Wars The greatest Punishment not capital amongst them was Excommunication which was issued out by the Druids not only against private but also against publick persons Those upon whom this Censure was inflicted were accounted impious and profane uncapable of any Honorable Office and excluded the Benefit of the Law none daring to approach them or converse in talk with them tho at a distance for fear of being infected by them The old Language of the Britains Language who have been above all other Nations curious to preserve it entire without any mixture was the same setting aside some small Variations that is spoken at this day not only by the Britains of England but also by those of Armorica in France Which altho it has in it many Phoenician and more Greek Words yet the Idiom of it as to the main appears to be Teutonick and the Words which they received either by Trading with the former Nations or the Invasion of the Gauls seem much to be modelled to that Dialect Besides this generall Language of the Country the Greek or at least a Dialect thereof was preserved entire amongst the Druids who not only therein concealed the Mysteries of their Religion which they committed not to Writing but delivered down by a Traditionary Conveyance to those only who admitted themselves of that Order and underwent the Severities of a long and tedious Discipline But their Records also were preserved in the Greek Tongue and Characters which unintelligible by the Vulgar none could have Recourse unto but Persons of Repute and Learning Nor were they permitted to take any thing away in Writing but by Memory only the Trust of keeping these things being reposed in some persons who for their singular Fidelity Integrity and Learning were chosen for that purpose Stature The antient Britains were of Stature taller than the Gauls whose Expression concerning them to Caesar was that other Nations seemed as Nothing in their Eyes their Hair not so yellow nor their Bodies so compact knit and firm having but bad Feet to support them but the other Lineaments of their Body were well made and their Features
another Wall of Stone twelve foot high and eight broad traversing the Island in a direct Line from East to West where Severus had walled before between certain Cities placed as Frontiers to keep off the Enemy and along the South Shore from whence Hostility was also feared they erected Towers at certain distances for safety of the Coast This done having instructed the Britains in the Art of War leaving them Patterns of their Arms and Weapons and exhorting them manfully to resist the Invaders of their Countrey they took their last Farewel never purposing to return The Romans being finally departed and their Resolution of not returning known the Scots and Picts more confidently than ever issuing out of their Holes seized upon all the North part of the Island even as far as the Wall which not fearing to be dispossest they as natural Inhabitants planted and manured Not content herewith they assaulted the Garrison on the Wall whence with their Hooks and Engines pulling down some they put the rest to flight themselves taking possession of the Frontier Cities and having with such ease broken into the Province pursued the Britains into the Inland Countreys bringing destruction still along with them The better to withstand the frequent Inroads of these cruel Enemies the Princes after the example of their Ancestors in the dayes of Julius Caesar resolved to choose a General Captain of the whole Nation and to establish the Kingdom in his Line For this high Dignity there were two considerable Competitors Aurelius Ambrosius descended of a noble Roman Family and as it is supposed Son of Constantin who in the dayes of Honorius pretended to the Roman Empire and Vortigern Prince of the Damnonii or as some write Consul of the Gevissei Inhabitants of the South-Western parts about Cornwal or South-Wales Which Principality it seems he had governed well enough to be esteemed not unworthy to be preferred above his formerly Fellow-Princes Ambrosius therefore with his Brother Vter Pendragon retiring into lesser Britain in Gaul quitted both his Pretence and Country to Vortigern who the Choice thus falling on him was in the Year 438 anointed King For that in those ancient times of British Government the solemn Ceremony of anointing their Kings was in use in this Island is clear from the Testimony of Gildas Vortigern thus advanced to the Throne governed a while his Principality with Moderation In the eighth year of his Reign the Picts who after their miraculous Discomfiture by St. Germanus had for the most part kept within their own Territories now breaking in afresh miserably wasted all those Provinces of Britain which had formerly been subject to the Romans and this Invasion they continued the year following with such violence that after much Bloodshed and horrible Devastation of the Countrey the Britains having no other Refuge wrote to Aetius then President of Gallia this short but lamentable Epistle recorded by Gildas To Aetius the third time Consul the Groans of the Britains The Barbarians drive us to the Sea the Sea beats us back upon the Barbarians Between these two we are exposed either to be slain with the Sword or drowned and to avoid both we find no Remedy But in vain were these Supplications the Romans who could scarce secure the heart of their Empire infested with the Huns and Vandals not being able to afford them any assistance Many therefore of the Britains seeing themselves thus rejected wearied with flying from place to place and spent with the terrible Famin which had long afflicted them yielded themselves Slaves to their Savage Enemies but others more resolute taught by their Miseries to seek aid from Heaven retired to inaccessible Mountains and Caves whence with Courage and Success they often assaulted these ravenous Spoilers recovering from them their Booty and driving them back to their own Quarters These hostil Invasions therefore a while ceasing the Britains set themselves to cultivate their Ground which with scarce credible Plenty abundantly recompenced their Labors No sooner were their Enemies departed and their pinching Hunger allaid but their Piety likewise vanished in the room whereof succeeded excessive Luxury accompanied with all sorts of Vices infecting not the Laity only but the Clergy also who ought to have been Guides to others And altho GOD sought to reclaim them by his Scourge of Pestilence by which such Multitudes perished that the Living were not sufficient to bury the Dead yet were they with this Severity nothing at all amended but like Solomons Fool tho scourged yet they felt it not GODs Patience therefore being spent towards a People which grew worse both by Prosperity and Adversity he so far infatuated their Counsels that they themselves invited from a remote Country Enemies far more savage and barbarous than either the Picts or Scots The Northern Spoilers whom fear of the Contagion had kept within their own Borders the Infection now beginning to cease readvanced into the Inland Countrey against whose Incursions the better to provide King Vortigern summoned a general Councel where by common Advice it was resolved that Ambassadors should be sent into Germany to hire the Saxons to their assistance an Army of which in the year 449 landing in Britain under the Conduct of Hengist and Horsa the Britains by their Help overcoming their Enemies who were come as far as Stamford in Lincolnshire gave them great Possesions in that part of the same County now called Lindsey where they built Thong-Castle King Vortigern falling in love with Rowena Daughter to Hengist divorced his Queen a vertuous Lady by whom he had three Sons named Vortimer Catigern and Pascentius to make his Bed vacant for this Pagan whom he bought of her Father with the Kingdom of Kent who soon after taking advantage at the Discontent of the Britains for this Act of their King pickt a Quarrel and making a League with the Picts laid wast the Countrey The Saxons Power increasing by the coming over of fresh Supplies the British Laity first and afterwards the Clergy represented their Danger to the King whom either not believing or not regarding their Complaints they in the sixteenth year of his Reign deserted and followed his Son Vortimer choosing him as some say for their General or as others for an Associate to his Father in the Kingdom under whose Conduct they had many Conflicts with the Saxons and that with various Success in one of which the Vant-guard being led by Aurelius Ambrosius newly come out of Little Britain to assist Prince Vortimer the main Body by Vortimer himself and the Rere by his Brother Catigern Catigern was slain and buried at Alestrew now called Aylesford in Kent where a Monument erected for him is at this day corruptly called Keith-Coty-House This Proceeding of the Britains tho the more excuseable in that they did not presume to depose their King which yet Parker in his Antiquities of the British Church not only affirms they did but like a true Calvinist commends them for so doing but only without or
Insinuations have continually labored to disquiet the Minds of the People with pretended Fears of Popery and ungrounded Jealousies of I know not what Arbitrary Power have so far of late prevailed that the Loyalty of many unthinking persons has been strangely staggered and their Spirits so exasperated that several of the English Commonalty have by the Artifices of these Seditious Boutefeus been brought to such a forgetfulness of the Duty which by all Divine and Humane Laws they ow unto their Prince that some Parliaments have of late seemed perfect States of War wherein a prevalent Faction in the House of Commons instead of readily affording their Assistance to their Soveraign for the strengthning and supporting of his Government against Forreign and Domestick Enemies have under Pretence of securing the Priviledges and Liberty of the People been tugging and contending to ravish away the Regal Prerogatives from the Crown and by importuning his Majesty contrary to his often-declared Resolutions of never consenting to so great an Injustice to alter the Succession of the Crown from its lineal and legal Descent to subvert this ancient and hereditary Monarchy by ruining its firmest Foundation But the Intrigues of the Faction having been laid open by his Majesties Gracious Declaration of the Reasons inducing him to dissolve the two last Parliaments and by the seasonable Publication of that Horrid Association a Copy whereof was produced at the late Proceedings against the Earl of Shaftsbury in whose Closet it was proved to have been found the Mists which these Religious Juglers for the better concealing their damnable Designs had cast before the Eyes of the People are so far dissipated that whenever his Majesty shall in his Princely Wisdom think fit to call another Parliament it may well be hoped that the People from whose Eyes the Scales which have so long blinded them begin now to drop off will choose themselves such Representatives as in their Testimonies of Loyalty and Submission to their Soveraign will eagerly strive to outgo the very best of their Predecessors such as will by their unanimous Acknowledgment of the unalterableness of the Succession as has been lately done in Scotland assert the Sacredness of the British Monarchy by their Care to put a Stop to the Debauchery of the Press whose prolifick Womb daily teeming with new Monsters fills every Corner of the Nation with Seditious Pamphlets will take away those continual Incentives to Rebellion by undeceiving the deluded Vulgar will free us from that Charm under which we have now almost these four years lain as it were bewitched and by readily complying with all his Majesties just and honorable Desires and Designes will enable him to vindicate his own and the Nations Honor against all external Oppositions or internal Rebellions And then it will not be easy to comprehend what great things his Majesty so Loyally assisted may attempt and effect especially if we shall but consider how the mighty Power of the King of England before the Conjunction of Scotland and total Subjection of Ireland both which were usually at enmity with him has been notoriously known to the World and sufficiently felt by our Neighbor-Nations The Island of Great Britain is by a present learned Writer to whose Collections I am not a little indebted not unfitly said to resemble a great Garrison-Town not only fenced with strong Works her Port-Towns and environed with a vast and deep Ditch the Sea but guarded with excellent Outworks the strongest and best built Ships of War in the World and so abundantly furnished within with Men and Horses with Victuals and Ammunition with Cloaths and Money that if all the Potentates of Europe should which GOD forbid conspire against it they could hardly distress it Insomuch that we may well be permitted to affirm that as her own Natural Commodities are sufficient to maintain her so nothing but her own unnatural Seditions is capable to destroy her Thus admirable is the Defensive Strength of the Monarch of Great Britain nor can his Offensive Puissance but be formidable to the World when it shall be considered that being Master of the Sea as if he be not wanting to himself or his Subjects to him he must be he may in some sort be said to be Master of every Countrey bordering thereupon and is at liberty where when and upon what Terms he pleaseth to begin or end a War for the carrying on of which he is well able whenever he shall think fit so to do to raise of Englishmen besides Auxiliaries of valiant Scots and Irish two hundred thousand Foot and fifty thousand Horse so many having been computed during the late Rebellion to have been in Arms on both sides and that without any considerable miss of them in any City Town or Village whose natural Agility of Body Patience Hardiness and Resolution is so great and their fear of Death so little that scarce any Nation of the World upon equal Terms and Number has ever been able to stand before them either at Sea or Land For the transporting of an Army his Majesty hath at command neer two hundred Ships of War and can hire as many or more stout English Merchant Ships not much inferior to Ships of War all which he can soon Man with the best Sea Souldiers if not the best Mariners in the World And for the maintaining so vast a Fleet sufficient Money may for a competent Time be raised by a Moderate Land-Tax and for a long time by an easy Excise to be laid only upon such Commodities as naturally tend to the occasioning of Pride Idleness Luxury Wantonness and the Corruption of good Mannâ—râ—s Person That the Persons of Monarchs have in all Ages of the World been esteemed sacred and as such received a more than ordinary Respect and Veneration from their Subjects is so manifest from the concurrent Practice of ancient and present Times that it cannot with any shew of Truth be contradicted The Patriarchs of the old World were not only Kings but Priests having in themselves all Fulness of Jurisdiction and taking no less Care for the instructing of those whom GOD had subjected to them in the manner of performing their Adorations to their Creator than in teaching them the Laws and Institutes of a Civil Life And tho the Almighty was pleased amongst his own peculiar People the Israelites after their Departure out of the Land of Aegypt to separate the Spiritual and Temporal Functions entailing the Priesthood upon Aaron and his Posterity into whose Office it was not lawful for their Kings themselves to intrude yet were they in all Civil matters subject to the Kings Authority who was as were also the Priests anointed with Oyl to intimate the Sacredness of his Person When the Kings and Princes of the World began to submit their Crowns and Scepters to the Cross of our Redeemer and instead of Persecutors to become Protectors of the Church this sacred Ceremony of Anointing was again restored and Monarchs thereby admonished