Let his Majesty hear our complaints never so compassionately.
Let him purge away our grievances never so efficaciously.
Let him punish and dispel ill ministers never so exemplarily.
Let him make choice of good ones never so exactly.

If there be not a way settled to preserve and keep them good; the mischiefs and they will all grow again, like Sampson's locks, and pull down the house upon our heads: Believe it, Mr. Speaker, they will.

It hath been a maxim amongst the wisest legislators, that whosoever means to settle good laws, must proceed in them, with a sinister opinion of all mankind; and suppose, that whosoever is not wicked, it is for want only of the opportunity. It is that opportunity of being ill, Mr. Speaker, that we must take away, if ever we mean to be happy, which can never be done, but by the frequency of parliaments.

No state can wisely be confident of any publick ministers continuing good, longer than the rod is over him.

Let me appeal to all those that were present in this house at the agitation of the petition of right. And let them tell themselves truly, of whose promotion to the management of affairs do they think the generality would at that time have had better hopes than of Mr. Noy and Sir Thomas Wentworth, both having been at that time, and in that business, as I have heard, most keen and active patriots; and the latter of them, to the eternal aggravation of his infamous treachery to the commonwealth, be it spoken, the first mover, and insister to have this clause added to the petition of right, that, for the comfort and safety of his subjects, his Majesty would be pleased to declare his will and pleasure, that all ministers should serve him according to the laws and statutes of the realm.

And yet, Mr. Speaker, to whom now can all the inundations upon our liberties, under pretence of law, and the late shipwreck at once of all our property, be attributed more than to Noy; and those, and all other mischiefs, whereby this monarchy hath been brought almost to the brink of destruction, so much to any as that grand apostate to the commonwealth, the now Lieutenant of Ireland ?

The first, I hope, God hath forgiven in the other world; and the latter must not hope to be pardoned it in this, till he be dispatched to the other.

Let every man but consider those men as once they were.

The excellent law for the security of the subject, enacted immediately before their coming to employment, in the contriving whereof themselves were principal actors.

The goodness and virtue of the king they served, and yet the high and publick oppressions that in his time they have wrought: And surely there is no man but will conclude with me, that as the deficience of parliaments hath been the causa causarum of all the mischiefs and distempers of the present times: So the frequency of them is the sole ca tholick antidote that can preserve and secure the future from the like.

Mr. Speaker, let me yet draw my discourse a little nearer to his Majesty himself, and tell you, that the frequency of parliaments is

most essentially necessary to the power, the security, the glory of the king.

There are two ways, Mr. Speaker, of powerful rule, either by fear, or love; but one of happy and safe rule, that is, by love, that firmissimum Imperium quo obedientes gaudent.

To which Camillus advised the Romans. Let a prince consider what it is that moves a people principally to affection, and dearness, towards their sovereign, he shall see that there needs no other artifice in it, than to let them enjoy, unmolestedly, what belongs unto them of right: If that have been invaded and violated in any kind, whereby affections are alienated, the next consideration, for a wise prince that would be happy, is how to regain them, to which three things are equally

necessary.

Reinstating them in their former liberty.

Revenging them of the authors of those violations;

And, securing them from apprehensions of the like again.
The first, God be thanked, we are in a good way of.

The second, in a warm pursuit of.

But the third, as essential as all the rest, till we be certain of triennial parliaments, at the least, I profess I can have but cold hopes of.

I beseech you, then, gentlemen, since that security for the future is so necessary to that blessed union of affections, and this bill so necessary to that security; let us not be so wanting to ourselves, let us not be so wanting to our sovereign, as to forbear to offer unto him this powerful, this everlasting philter, to charm unto him the hearts of his people, whose virtue can never evaporate.

There is no man, Mr. Speaker, so secure of another's friendship, but will think frequent intercourse and access very requisite to the support, to the confirmation of it: Especially, if ill offices have been done between them; if the raising of jealousies hath been attempted.

There is no friend but would be impatient to be debarred from giving his friend succour and relief in his necessities.

Mr. Speaker, permit me the comparison of great things with little : What friendship, what union, can there be so comfortable, so happy, as between a gracious sovereign and his people? And what greater misfortune can there be to both, than for them to be kept from intercourse, from the means ef clearing misunderstandings, from interchange of mutual benefits?

The people of England, Sir, cannot open their ears, their hearts, their mouths, nor their purses, to his Majesty, but in parliament.

We can neither hear him, nor complain, nor acknowledge, nor give, but there.

This bill, Sir, is the sole key that can open the way to a frequency of those reciprocal endearments, which must make and perpetuate the happiness of the king and kingdom.

Let no man object any derogation from the king's prerogative by it. We do but present the bill, it is to be made a law by him; his honour, his power, will be as conspicuous, in commanding at once that a parliament shall assemble every third year, is in commanding a parliament to be called this or that year: There is more of his Majesty in ordain

ing primary and universal causes, than in the actuating particularly of subordinate effects.

I doubt not but that glorious King Edward the Third, when he made those laws for the yearly calling of a parliament, did it with a right sense of his dignity and honour.

The truth is, Sir, the kings of England are never in their glory, in their splendor, in their majestick sovereignty, but in parliaments.

Where is the power of imposing taxes? where is the power of restoring from incapacities? Where is the legislative authority? marry, in the King, Mr. Speaker. But how? In the King, circled in, fortified and evirtuated by his parliament.

The King, out of parliament, hath a limited, a circumscribed jurisdiction: But, waited on by his parliament, no monarch of the east is so absolute in dispelling grievances.

Mr. Speaker, in chacing ill ministers, we do but dissipate clouds that may gather again; but, in voting this bill, we shall contribute, as much as in us lies, to the perpetuating our sun, our sovereign, in his vestical, in his noon-day lustre.

BRIEF DISCOURSE

CONCERNING THE

POWER OF THE PEERS AND COMMONS OF PARLIAMENT,

IN POINT OF JUDICATURE.

Written by a learned Antiquary, at the request of a Peer of this Realm.

Printed in the year 1640. Quarto, containing twelve pages.

SIR,

To give you as short an account of your desires, as I can, I must crave leave to lay before you, as a ground, the frame or first model of this state.

When, after the period of the Saxon time, Harold had lifted himself into the royal seat, the great men, to whom but lately he was no more than equal, either in fortune or power, disdaining this act of arrogancy, called in William, then Duke of Normandy, a prince more active than any in these western parts, and renowned for many victories he had fortunately atchieved against the French King, then the most potent monarch in Europe.

This duke led along with him, to this work of glory, many of the younger sons of the best families of Normandy, Picardy, and Flanders, who, as undertakers, accompanied the undertaking of this fortunate man.

The usurper slain, and the crown by war gained, to secure certain to his posterity what he had so suddenly gotten, he shared out his purchase, retaining in cach county a portion to support the dignity sovereign, which was stiled, Demenia Regni, now the Ancient Demesnes; and assigning to others his adventurers, such portions as suited to their quality and expence, retaining to himself dependency of their personal service, except such lands as, in free alms, were the portion of the church: These were stiled Barones Regis, the King's immediate freeholders, for the word Baro imported then no more.

As the King to these, so these to their followers, subdivided part of their shares into knights fees, and their tenants were called Barones, Comites, or the like; for we find, as in the King's writ, in their writs, Baronibus suis & Francois & Anglois, the sovereign gifts for the most part extending to whole counties or hundreds, an earl being lord of the one, and a baron of the inferior douations to lords of townships

or manors.

As thus the land, so was all course of judicature divided, even from the meanest to the highest portion; each several had his court of law, preserving still the manner of our ancestors the Saxons, who jura per pagos reddebant; and these are still termed Court-barons, or the Freeholders Court (twelve usually in number) who, with the Thane, or chief lord, were judges.

The hundred was next, where the Hundredus, or Aldermanus, lord of the hundred, with the chief lord of each township within their limits judged; God's people observed this form, in the publick, Centuriones & decem judicabant plebem omni tempore.

The county, or Generale Placitum, was the next; this was so to supply the defect, or remedy the corruption of the inferior,: Ubi Curie Dominorum probantur defecisse, pertinet ad Vicecomitem Provinciarum. The judges here were Comites, Vicecomites, & Barones Comitatus, qui liberas in hoc terras habeant.

The last and supreme, and proper to our question, was Generale Placitum apud London, universalis Synodus, in charters of the Conqueror; Capitalis Curia by Glanville; Magnum & Commune Concilium coram Rege & Magnatibus suis.

In the Rolls of Henry the Third it is not stative, but summoned by proclamation: Edicitur Generale Placitum apud London, saith the book of Abingdon; whither Episcopi, Duces principes, Satrapa Rectores, & Causidici ex omni parte confluxerunt ad istam Curiam, saith Glanville: Causes were referred, propter aliquam dubitationem, qua emergit in Comitatu, cum Comitatus nescit dijudicare. Thus did Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, transfer his suit against Leostine, from the county ad Generale Placitum; in the time of King Ethelred, Queen Edgine against Goda, from the county, appealed to King Etheldred at London. Congregatis principibus & sapientibus Angliæ, a suit between the Bishops of Winchester and Durham, in the time of St.

Edward: Coram Episcopis & Principibus Regni, in præsentia Regis ventilata & finita. In the tenth year of the Conqueror, Episcopi, Comites, & Barones Regni potestate adversis provinciis ad universalem Synodum pro causis audiendis & tractandis convocati, saith the book of Westminster. And this continued all along, in the succeeding kings reign, until towards the end of Henry the Third.

As this great court or council, consisting of the king and barons, ruled the great affairs of state, and controlled all inferior courts; so there were certain officers, whose transcendent power seemed to be set to bound in the execution of princes wills, as the steward, constable, and marshal, fixed upon families in fee for many ages. They, as tribunes of the people, or Ephori among the Athenians, grown, by manly courage, fearful to monarchy, fell at the feet and mercy of the King, when the daring Earl of Leicester was slain at Evesham.

This chance, and the dear experience Henry the Third himself had made at the parliament at Oxford, in the fortieth year of his reign, and the memory of the many streights his father was driven unto, especially at Runnymead near Stanes, brought this king wisely to begin what his successor fortunately finished, in lessening the strength and power of his great lords; and this was wrought by searching into the regality they had usurped over their peculiar sovereigns, whereby they were, as the book of St. Albans term them, Quot Domini tot Tyranni: And by the weakening that hand of power which they carried in the parliaments, by commanding the service of many knights, citizens, and burgesses to that great council.

Now began the frequent sending of writs to the commons; their assent was not only used in money, charge, and making laws, for, before, all ordinances passed by the King and peers, but their consent in judgments of all natures, whether civil or criminal: In proof whereof I will produce some few succeeding precedents out of record.

When Adamor, that proud prelate of Winchester, the King's half brother, had grieved the state by his daring power, he was exiled by joint sentence of the King, lords, and commons; and this appeareth expresly by the letter sent to Pope Alexander the Fourth, expostulating a revocation of him from banishment, because he was a church-man, and so not subject to any censure; in this the answer is, Si Dominus Rex & Regni majores hoc vellent, meaning his revocation, Communitas tamen ipsius ingressum in Angliam jam nullatenus sustineret. The peers subsign this answer with their names, and Petrus de Mountford, rice totius Communitatis, as speaker or proctor of the commons.

For by that style Sir John Tiptoft, prolocutor, affirmeth under his arms the deed of intail of the crown by King Henry the Fourth, in the eighth year of his reign, for all the commons.

The banishment of the two Spencers, in the fifteenth of Edward the Second, Prelati Comites & Barones & les autres Peeres de la terre & Communes de Roialme give consent and sentence to the revocation and reversement of the former sentence; the lords and commons accord, and so it is expressed in the roll.

VOL. IV.