quod injuriam suam corrigat emendet cum superiorem non habeat nisi Deum satis erit ei ad paenam quod Dominum expectet ultorem None can correct the King in that he hath no Superior but God and that will be sufficient Punishment that he expect the Lord for his Avenger Indeed the Constitution both instructs Princes for what end we pitched upon this Species and Kind of Regal Government and directs them to rule for the Safety Interest and Prosperity of their Subjects but there is no Original Contract nor Stipulatory Agreement by which it is provided That if Princes do not as they should they do either forfeit their Sovereign Authority or that we may lawfully rebel against and dethrone them Nor do any Presidents or Examples of that kind as those of deposing Edward the Second and Richard the Second shew that it was lawful or a Thing that either the Constitution or subsequent Laws did authorise and countenance but they only declared what a provoked People will sometimes do though it be never so much against their Allegiance and Duty to their King and most highly offensive to God However vivendum est legibus non exemplis we are to live according to the Laws and not according to a few occasional ill Practices and Examples And via facti is not always via juris Nor will the Repetition of evil Things change the Nature of them and render them Justifiable For as Civilians say Multitudo criminum peccantium non parit crimini patrocinium What can be more inconsistent with the Legality of the Abdication than the King 's being vested by the Constitution with such Incidents to Government as lie in a direct Contradiction to our being allowed either a legal or moral Capacity of doing it namely That no act of Parliament can barr the King of his Regality and thereupon that the Allegiance and Fealty of his Subjects to him are indefeasable and that they can neither be lawfully withheld nor transferred from him That the Power and Right of Peace and War are wholy solely and unalienably in the King and that all the Subjects of England cannot make and denounce War Indicere bellum without him as Coke tells us in his 7 Rep. 25. Nor need we go farther for understanding the Nature of our Institution in this matter and for knowing what was involv'd and implied in it relative to the particular before us than to those many Statutes that are Declarative and Explanatory of the meaning of it As that 13 Car. 2. act 6. wherein it is enacted That the Sole Supreme Government Command and Disposition of the Militia and all Forces by Sea and Land c. is and by the Laws of England ever was the undoubted Right of the Kings and Queens of England And that both or either Houses of Parliament cannot nor ought not to pretend to the same nor can or lawfully may raise or levy any War offensive or defensive against his Majesty his Heirs and lawful Successors And that other Act 13 Car. 2. wherein it is ordained That whosoever shall hold that both Houses of Parliament or either House of Parliament have or hath a Legislative Power without the King shall incur the danger and penalty of a Premunire according to the Statute of the 16 Rich. 2. And that other of the same Year of Car. 2. Which made it Treason during his Life to compass imagine invent devise or intend to deprive and depose him from the Stile Honour or Kingly Name of the Imperial Crown of this Realm The President whereof we had 23 Eliz. namely That whosoever shall wish or desire the Death or Deprivation of the Queen that every such Offence shall be adjudged Felony To which I would only subjoyn that known Statute which makes it Treason to take up Arms against the King upon any Pretence whatsoever And to shew the Impudence that always attendeth Disloyalty notwithstanding all that these Parliaments have perpetrated they have suffered all these Laws to remain still unrepealed to remain Monuments of their Treasonable Guilt and to abide Warnings to all Kings that shall come after how little Safe they are under the Fence Covering and Protection of Laws when they have false and treacherous Men to deal with And that which heightens the Crime and enhaunceth the Guilt of those Parliaments is that they have usurped and exerted a Power inconsistent with and subversive of the Constitution in the abdicating and driving away a Prince who was the least chargeable with Miscarriages and Excesses in his Government of any that ever fat upon the Throne For as his greatest pretended Faults were rather Mistakes he was led into by others than Injuries he chose to do of himself so most of them proceeded from an excess of Love to his People and from an Ardour of making them happier than they were willing to be and not from Disaffection to them or a Design to render them miserable Nor did those flight Grievances of which his People so clamourously complained flow from his being a bad King but from the having bad and treacherous Friends about him For though no Prince did ever by Condescention Bounty and Confidence deserve to have had better Ministers and Friends yet with respect to too many about him few Princes ever less had them So that what Tacitus says of one may with a great deal of Truth be applied to his Majesty though not so much to his Dishonour as to the Infamy of those whom he employed and trusted namely That Amicos meruit magis quam habuit He was worthy of faithful Friends rather than had them I would not be thought to intend what I have said of all that had the Honour to be esteemed his Friends Ministers and Servants it being only designed to affect a few of them but they were such as had frequentest and nearest Access to him and greatest Interest in and Influence upon his Councils whom he trusted too much to be well served by them and put himself too much in their Power to have them remain Faithful For that of Tacitus will always hold true Nec unquam satis fida potentia ubi nimia est In a word never did a People run head-long into Rebellion and War upon so few and small Faults in Government and so easy to have been borne with or obviated in modest and legal ways So that had the means which we fled unto for Relief been Lawful whereas they were Criminal and Treasonable in the highest degree yet it was the height of Folly and Madness to use them upon such flight Occasions where the Remedy hath been a Thousand times worse than ever the Disease could have been Common Prudence had we renounced Loyalty should have taught us That Force is never to be practised where Laws and humble Applications would have served and that violent means should not have been used where gentle would have done Non utendum Imperio says Tacitus and I will add
Existence of the present pretended Parliament upon other Reasons and Grounds than those of Illegalities in the manner of Election of Members and in their Actings when assembled we might also upon those Motives strangely shake the legal Being of it And to name but one which lately fell out since the Death of the late Princess in this Assembly which persevereth to call it self by that Name namely That when a Question was started by the Earl of Nottingham in the House of Lords whether since the Demise of Mary this was a Parliament or not How it was replied by the Earl of P. That it was not a Question fit to be mentioned and less fit to be debated Which besides it importing in it a debarring a Liberty of Speech without which a Parliament cannot be a legal Parliament because not a free Parliament It likewise imported in it That though this Parliament was in Law dissolved yet it must still sit and no Man be allowed to question the Lawfulness of its doing so because of Reasons of State And so the whole Constitution and all the Laws of England must be sacrificed to the Lunatick and Disloyal Bigottry of keeping King James out of his Dominions and from reascending his Throne For that is the whole Paraphrase of the Text of the Necessity of its continuing to sit in order to raise Money for carrying on a vigorous War against France But it being dissolved by the Death of the late Princess before any Bills had passed for the granting of Money it will argue great Sottishness as well as Tameness in the People of England if this Government be not disappointed in that end of their keeping it on foot For those Papers which are published under the Stile of Acts do oblige no Man in duty to pay nor can they authorise any Officer in case of Refusal to distrein They in St. Stephen's Chapel have no more legal Power to dispose of the Property of the Subjects than the Committee of Officers have who sit in the Guard-house by Whitehall And all those Acts of Assesments which they have emitted are but so many Denunciations of War against the People and proclaiming them obnoxious to arbitrary Executions upon their Estates real and personal Such who are so pusillanimous as to chuse to be robbed may submit to it but as no Warrants can legitimate the doing of it so all Men who have Courage to resist they have the Authority of all the Laws of England for the doing of it And as they have no Right of sitting as a legal Court so they cannot be said to take away Mens Goods by any better Name than that of a Company of Banditi nor do People use to be so silly as to part with any Thing to such but when they are too strong to be withstood And I think it was never yet known That Five hundred were powerful enough to rob and plunder above Five millions of Persons What a Noise a few Years ago did the Erection of a Court of Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes beget in the Nation and how strenuously was it improved for the driving the King from his Throne and Kingdom And do we now sit silent under a Company of Men erecting themselves into a Court of Legislation to vote away near the Moiety of every Man's Estate whether he be Laick or Ecclestastick Shall we who were so busy scandalously to Censure and traiterously to endeavour to redress the few and little Miscarriages of our ancient and legal Government suffer with a sottish Tameness those far more and vastly greater of an usurped unlawful and tyrannous one This hath not been the Practice of any People or Age till of ours and of us That of Tacitus being at all times heretofore an infallible Maxim namely That Novae aulae mala aeque gravia sed non aeque excusata a new Government doth not offend with that Connivance and Safety that an ancient might And it is now as much become our Interest to call home the King to relieve us as it is our Duty to restore him to his Right And as it was at no time unlawful to fly to force for rescuing our selves from the Power of an Usurper so it is now become necessary when meliorem in bello causam quam in pace habemus Our Condition will be better in a War than it is in Peace as Tacitus expresseth it And the Establishment of this Man into a King being done by an usurpation of Power which all the Laws of England precluded the Conventionists from that common Saying obtains That de facto factum potest de facto tolli What hath its Existence meerly by Fact may by Fact be lawfully overthrown And as we may be sure That the Prince of Orange who hath so abominably cheated and wronged us already cannot but detest and hate us for the future that of the same Author being unchangeably true viz. Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem laseris It is the Nature of Man to hate those whom he hath injured I will therefore bespeak my Country-men as Boadicea did the Ancient Brittains If they will not resolve cadere aut vincere either to perish or to vindicate their Liberties that then viverent servirent let them chuse to Live and be Slaves Only let me add for their Encouragement to assert their Laws and Rights That the Prince of Orange's Affairs in England do magis fama quam vi stare are upheld rather by that Opinion which Men conceived of him before they had an Opportunity to know him than by any Power Strength Interest or new Reputation he has to support himself or them Nay I will say That he is sunk into that Contempt as well as Impotency that all the Power he hath left is only to do hurt but that he hath neither Power nor Authority to do good or to hinder evil So that what Tacitus says of Otho is verified of William Othoni nondum auctoritas inerat ad prohibendum scelus jubere poterat That he may encourage and command Mischief but he is in no Capacity to discountenance and prevent it The very Mob whom by fictitious Lyes and Falshoods of a few Irish being every where burning Houses and cutting Throats he decoyed and enflamed into an insolent and brutal Rage against their Rightful King and who became the Ladder unto and the great Pillars of his Throne having now understood how they were cheated in that and in all Things else they have not only forsook but are justly enraged against him Nor are they only ready to do the same towards him that they did towards the King but they are fully prepared to treat him as the Rabble did Vitellius of whom Tacitus says Vulgus eadem pravitate insectabatur mortuum qua foveret viventem they are as forward to curse and tear him in Pieces as they were formerly to huzza and idolize him Yea even such as do most flatter him do it only in order to deceive and
Whether the Parliament be not in Law dissolved by the Death of the Princess of Orange And how the Subjects ought and are to behave themselves in relation to those Papers emitted since by the Stile and Title of Acts With a brief Account of the Government of England In a Letter to a Country Gentleman as an Answer to his second Question THough you have exceedingly mistook your Man in demanding my Opinion about a Case that lies so much out of my Province and Circle that it hath hardly come within the Boundaries of my Conversation either with Books or Men. Yet not being altogether a Stranger to the Nature of the Government and the Rules of the Constitution under which I live nor wholy unacquainted with the ancient and modern Transactions of my Country neither utterly ignorant of the Practices of Ages as they remain registred in Histories I will rather both venture my own Reputation and run the Risque of being censured for straying beyond the Limits of my proper Studies than not obey your Command in what you were pleased to require of me and thereby give you fresh and repeated Evidence both of the Authority you have over me and of the Deference I pay to your Merit as well as to your Quality And though I will not pretend to say the hundredth part of what might or ought to be said on this Subject yet by what I shall be able to lay before you in relation to it you will easily guess what might have been done or what yet may by a better and more proper hand Nor can I now without a Forfeiture of my Credit and a Departure from Truth refuse to give you my Thoughts in this Matter having in my Answer to your first Question stated and pledged my Honour and Faith that I would also reply to your second and having also told you that I had brought under the compass of my thoughts and in effect digested whatsoever was needful towards a clear though brief Resolution of it And I do lay claim to no such Privilege as the breaking of my Word but am willing to leave the Credit or Infamy of that to the Authors and Publishers of Hague Delarations Now I am so far from quarrelling at Parliaments or detracting from the Esteem they ought to be in or from the Respect that is commonly paid them that I preserve for them all the Honour and Veneration imaginable while they confine themselves to the Uses and Ends unto which they were primitively ordained and govern themselves by the Measures chalked out for them in the Constitution They are of that early Original and ancient Standing that for any Thing I know they are in some sense and degree though under difference variety and distinction of Names coeval with or very little subsequent and posterior to our Government Their Antiquity is such though not always under the same Appellation and by the same Stile nor with the same Allowances of Power and Authority that Caput inter nubila condunt their beginning is immemorial So I will not dispute and much less controul the Testimonies which we have in the Commentarios upon Littleton fol. 100. namely That before the Conquest and from thence downward till the end of Hen. 3. there had been no fewer than Two hundred and eighty Sessions of Parliament which doth much exceed the Number during the Reigns of Eighteen Sovereign Kings and Queens that have ruled over this Kingdom since But were their Institution as modern as some Men will have it and were they at first illegitimately obtained and wrenched from the Crown by Insurrections Tumults and Wars yet having once acquired an Establishment by Law confirmed by Custom and ratified by Charters and sworn unto by our Kings our Title to the having of Parliaments for the Ends and Uses whereunto they were appointed is not now precarious but in right belongeth unto us For unquestionably many Things were at first vested in the Crown which it having afterwards alienated and parted with either for the ease and safety of the Monarchy or for the good and advantage of the People it were unjust as well as unwise for any King to reassume them Whatsoever comes once to be Legally established by a plenary and lawful Power is not reversable at the Prince's Will nor doth it lie under his Authority to annul it at his Pleasure And therefore all who have written with any Judgment of Governments Laws and Politicks do unanimously tell us That amplitudo restrictio-potestatis Regum circa ea quae per se mala injusta non sunt pendet ex arbitrio hominum ex conventione vel pacto inter Reges Regnum that the extent and restriction of Royal Power in and about such Things as are not intrinsically evil and unjust do result and proceed from Agreements Stipulations and Compacts between Kings and those Communities over which they rule See Suarez de Legib. lib. 1. cap. 17. And indeed our Magna Charta and other Charters as likewise many of our Statutes are no other than enacted and declared Limitations and Restrictions of the Sovereign and Royal Power nor can our Kings lawfully depart from or exceed the Confinements and Boundaries of the English Monarchy which are therein stipulated fixed and settled The Books of the 24 Ed. 3 65. Stamford's Prerogative of the Crown fol. 10. and Coke's Institutes fol. 73. tell us That the first Kings of this Realm had all the Lands of it in their own hands and were the sole Proprietors of the whole Ground but it being now alienated and transferred from them either as Recompences for Services or as Gifts on the score of Friendship and Bounty or by way of Sale for a valuable equivalent in Money they that are become Possessors cannot be disseized of them without a Violation of Law Honour and Justice So that Parliaments howsoever and whensoever they came to be instituted they are now incorporated into the Constitution of England as Apelles Picture woven into Minerva's Shield and cannot cease to have an Ingrediency into the Government without a dissolution of the whole Frame of it Nor will it ever be the Interest of a King of England to lay aside Parliaments were it within the reach of his Power to do it and as a good and wise King will never attempt it so a tyrannous and arbitrary one will not be able to effect it were he never so inclinable provided they behave themselves so as not to forfeit their Credit in the Nation The only danger we can fall into of having Parliaments abolished is the Peoples growing weary of them and their being provoked to hate them and this they both may and will have cause for when Parliaments become not only useless but hurtful When instead of preserving the Gravity of a Legislative Assembly and maintaining the Character of the Representative Body of a great and wise People they turn more Mobbish than a Dover Court and more rude and tumultuous than
the confluence of People when they meet a Billingsgate Especially when in the Place of continuing to be the Guardians of our Rights they prove the Betrayers of them and for Pensions and Bribes sacrifice those to the ambitious and covetous Lusts of an Usurper whose Properties Liberties and Privileges they were chosen to maintain and defend And whensoever they degenerate into this the carrying and maintaining the Name of a Parliament will be so far from preserving unto them the Love Esteem and Reverence of their Country that it will inflame their Rage and quicken and heighten their Revenge For when Parliaments not only forget their own Quality and thereby tempt others to forget also but when they trangress and go beyond all the Limits unto which they are circumscribed and confined by the Constitution and especially when they come to persue Ends directly opposite to those they were at first Erected and Ordained for they will then provoke the People after their Patience is spent and their Pressures increased not only to despise but to disclaim them And when those Assemblies have under the Pretences of vindicating and asserting the Liberties of their Country proceeded to abdicate their King and to bring the Kingdom into an expensive and ruinous War and yet in the mean time have under that Vizard and Mask proved Instruments of bringing the Nation into Poverty and Slavery and of promoting the Tyranny of the Usurper they will thereby exasperate the People how much soever it may be against their future and true Interest not only to abandon the love and claim of Parliaments but to be even desirous to have them annulled and laid aside as judging aliter illorum flagitiis subveniri non posse that they cannot otherwise punish stop and give check unto their Crimes as I have borrowed the words of Tacitus to express it Nor can I better give the Character of the two Revolutional Parliaments and particularly of the Whig Members of them than in the Words of the same Author namely Ut Imperium evertant libertatem praeferunt si perverterint libertatem ipsam aggrediuntur that in order to depose and drive away the King they set up for and made a Shew of acting for Liberty but having compassed that they have assaulted and subverted Liberty it self So that all they protested to have undertook and executed against his Majesty for the Recovery and Security of our National and Legal Freedom was only that by enriching themselves they might bring the Kingdom into Indigency Dishonour and Bondage Nor are all their Votes Resolutions and Acts capable of any other Construction or of having another Inscription over them than that quanto majore libertatis imagine tegebantur tanto eruptura ad incensius servitium the more they flattered us with the Expectations and Hopes of Liberty the more they were intended at least lay in a Subserviency to hasten and augment our Servitude and Thraldom Yet as to all the heinous Miscarriages I have now mentioned I look no otherwise upon them than a Disease and Plague that Parliaments are liable to degenerate into under an Usurper and that under a lawful and legal King they will again recover their sound healthful and athletick Temper And that as they will not cease to be a necessary and useful part of our Constitution so they will always be held worthy of the love and esteem of the People and both held and confided in as the Trustees for their Liberties and the Guardians of their Privileges and Rights Yea many Persons in both those Assemblies which I have reflected upon have offended more through the Example of him they advanced over them than through the efficacy of their own ill Principles and have acted rather under the malignant Influence of the Prince of Orange with whom instead of being punishable to do ill it is meritorious than from their own Inclinations and Choice So that their Faults may be called rather the Vices of the Age than of Men and more the Effects of an unjust Government than of personal Corruption and Pravity And they may be said to have done them rather that they might be in the Fashion than that they approved and liked them For as honest just and honourable Things are only then in most esteem when they are most practised so dishonest and unjust are not thought very disgraceful when they are the Modes of the Court. For it is unlikely but that M. Hungerford might think it a slight and venial Offence to take Twenty Guineas of the Chamber of London as he was Chair-man of the Committee of the Orphans Bill when the Prince of Orange and his Broker Benting are said to have received very large Bribes of the East India Company for their Charter which the House of Commons expected should have been given gratis And undoubtedly the worst Things practised by some have been hitherto winked and connived at by others not out of enmity to their Country but in hatred to the Usurper that by the Mischiefs accompanying Rebellion those Subjects that have only been so weak and foolish as to suffer themselves to be misled may be the better cured of their Disloyalty And that by what they feel and suffer under an unnatural Intruder into his Uncle and Father in Law 's Throne they may be the sooner and more effectually converted to their Rightful Sovereign And as for those who have practised those Crimes from Inclination and corrupt Temper they serve to shew what a miserable Government this is where either a few little profligate Wretches or such of higher Rank as are the most vitious and depraved in their Country come to make a Figure as if they were a needful part of the State And to fill those Seats Places and Posts which used under good Reigns and during the Sovereignty of Rightful Princes to be both the Badges and Rewards of Vertue and Desert Nor ought we to despair but a time will come when the Nation will so far recover its Wits as well as its Loyalty as to make the Punishment of those Miscreants and Assassinates of their Country a terrour to all others from offending hereafter in the like kind But though Parliaments have either originally from the first Frame of our Government or by acquisition from Royal Grants obtained that Room Place and Share in our Constitution as gives them a great honourable and necessary Figure in the English Government and whereof no King can deprive them while he acteth legally and according to the tenor of our Laws yet they are so far from having an universal unlimitted and arbitrarious Power that besides those Restrictions and Limitations which they are under by our Statute and Common Laws whereof hereafter they do also stand confined and regulated by the Nature and Quality of the very Constitution as to all the great Ends and principal Exercises of Parliamentary Power For though Government taken in the whole complex of it cannot safely subsist and much less provide against
have ventured upon Matters which lay wholy out of their Cognizance and beyond all the Precincts of their Legal Rightful and Parliamentary Power The time was when a House of Commons did so well understand the Limits of their own Sphere and the Boundaries within which they were to move that when lawful Kings have asked and prayed their Advice in matters out of the Circle of their Province they have excused themselves from giving it and have declared that they were Things of so high a Nature and so peculiarly incident to the Royal Dignity that they neither could nor durst meddle with them And therefore when Richard II. asked the Opinion and Advice of the House of Commons about the way and manner of prosecuting the War he was engaged in against France they answered Nec doit nec soloit appertaine al eux mes al Roi They neither ought nor used to belong unto them but the King see the Parliament Roll 6 Ric 2. par 2. pag. 9. And when Edward III. had desired the same Thing of the Commons in reference likewise to his War with France and about the guarding of the Sea Coast the Commons make Answer Quils ne sont charge a councell doner al chose des quel ils n'ont pas cognoisance That they desired not to be charged to give their Advice in a matter whereof they can take no Cognizance see the Parliament Roll of the 13 Ed. 3. par 1. n. 2. The like Answers were made by the House of Commons the 23th of Edw. 3. and the 7th of Ric. 2. And whereas in all the Regal Writs for the calling of Parliaments they are required to meet and come together to give the King their Advice it is always with this express Limitation That he desires their Advise pro quibusdam arduis negotiis nos defensionem Regni nostri Angliae Ecclesiae Anglicanae concernentibus About some Affairs which concern the Defence of himself the Kingdom and the English Church But these Parliaments instead of coming together to Advice and Provide for the Defence or for the Restoration of their Rightful King they first abdicated him and have then impoverished the Nation by maintaining an expensive War to hinder his Return Instead of confining themselves to quaedam ardua Regni they have struck at the King's Person Crown and Dignity and have medled as boldly in changing the Polity of England as if they had been determining about some little Privilege of their own House or had been meerly concerned about the Ejecting or Imprisonment of one of their Members But though all of them have been less or more involved in these Crimes yet many became Accessary to them to prevent worse namely to obviate a civil War and to hinder a Republick upon the next voidance of the Throne And they have submitted both to defile and wound their Consciences that they might testify their Love and Zeal for the Monarchy and cover and conceal their Loyalty to the King Rather than put themselves out of Capacity of asserting and upholding the old English Regal Form of Government when it comes directly to be attacked and of doing the King service when an Opportunity offereth they have been contented to undergo a Stain upon their Honour as well as the having their Loyalty brought under an Eclipse For it comes to pass in these Epidemical and Raging Distempers of Kingdoms as it did in the great Plague of Athens of which Thucydides speaks whereof as most died so those who escaped with their Lives were all left deformed and maimed one losing an Eye and another a Limb but hardly one preserved from visible and disfiguring Defects But while those wilful Crimes in many and human Frailties in all have cut out much work to themselves for Repentance so they will only serve to furnish the injured and good King with a large Occasion and an ample Theater of displaying his Mercy and Grace Nor are there any so heinous Offenders against him whom he is not ambitions as well as ready to forgive if they will but make themselves so far capable of Pardon as to desire and accept it And to have any despair of his Grace provided they will repent and return to their Duty would both more grieve and offend him than all they have done in deposing him and driving him from his Kingdoms Nor doth he question but that most of those who have both refused to have him Reign over them and have been ready to abjure him will whensoever they are converted be not only the most zealous in Loyalty themselves but the forwardest to confirm others in their Fealty Neither will any thing be more pleasing and delightful to the King than to see those love much to whom much hath been forgiven But abstracting from the Disloyalty of that Assembly stiled at present a Parliament and its Nullity on that foot to be legally one and granting to those Gentlemen all their own Hypotheses how treasonable and rebellious soever they be yet I say that according to all those Laws which themselves own and profess to be both under the Obligation and Guidance of they ceased to be a Parliament and became dissolved in Law upon the Death of the late Princess of Orange For admitting the Prince and Princess to have been King and Queen and that they had a Rightful and Legal Authority to call a Parliament and that this Parliament was duly chosen lawfully assembled and fat vested with all the Power of acting in that Capacity that ever any Parliament did yet I do both repeat and affirm it That since the Death of the Princess of Orange they have been no Parliament and have no otherwise continued to possess their Seats and to act in the Quality and by the Stile they have done than by a most illegal and unpresidented Usurpation Of all the Parliaments that ever were none had that seeming Security to make their Sitting everlasting as that which met the Third of November 1640. It having been enacted in favour of the Continuance of that Parliament That it should not be prorogued adjourned nor dissolved but by and with their own Consent and by Act of Parliament And yet all the Lawyers are of Opinion that it became dissolved An. 1648 by the Death of King Charles the First whose Writs had raised it into Being and given Existence to it And accordingly the Parliament of the 13 Car. 2. took it for granted That it was undoubtedly dissolved and determined and thereupon declared and adjudged it to be fully dissolved and determined Cap. 1. Though there had never any Act passed for the dissolving of it and consequently in the Opinion of those who made that Statute 166â— it must have come to be dissolved by the Death of King Charles the First who called it and to advise with whom it assembled and met For as to Oliver's turning those Members forceably out of the House that could be no legal Dissolution if after the Death of Charles the