74

A Second Collection of

is own Work, that to have an Approbation in his own Confcience of that he is
o do, or forbear, and whilst you are granting others Liberties, furely you will not
eny me this, it being not only a Liberty, but a Duty (and fuch a Duty as I can-
ot without finning forbear) to examine my own Heart, and Thoughts, and Judg-
ent, in every Work which I am to fet my Hand to, or to appear in or for.

I must confefs therefore, that though I do acknowledge all the other, yet I must
e a little confident in this, that what with the Circumftances that accompany
uman Actions, whether they be Circumstances of Time, or Perfons, whether Cir-
umstances that relate to the whole, or private, or particular Circumstances, that
ompass any Perfon that is to render an Account of his own Actions, I have
ruly thought, and do ftill think, that if I should (at the best) do any thing on
bis Account to answer your Expectation, it would be at the best doubtingly:
And certainly what is fo is not of Faith, whatsoever is not of Faith, is Sin to
im that doth it, whether it be with relation to the Subftance of the Allion, about
which the Confideration is converfant, or whether to Circumstances about it
which makes all think indifferent Actions good or evil to him that doth it. I ly
ng under this Confideration, think it my Duty, only I could have wished I had
done it fooner, for the fake of the House, who had laid fo infinite Obligations on
t, I wish I had done it fooner for your Sakes, for faving Time and Trouble;
and indeed, for the Committee's fake, for whom I must acknowledge publickly I
bave been unfeafonably troublesome, I say I could have wished I had given it fooner
but truly this is my Anfwer, that although I think the Government doth confift of
very excellent Parts in all, but in that one Thing the Title as to me, I should
not be an boneft Man, if I fhould not tell you, that I cannot accept of the Go-
vernment, nor undertake the Trouble or Charge of it, which I have a little more
experienced than every Man, what Troubles and Difficulties do befall Men under
fucb Trusts, and in fuch Undertakings. 1 fay, I am perfuaded to return this An-
wer to you, That I cannot undertake this Government with the Title of King, and
hat is mine, Answer to this great and weighty Business.

The

enforce

after th

of it, a Parlia

the Na

Laws,

them,

The ANTIQUITY, LEGALITY, RIGHT, USE, and ANCIENT USAGE of FINES, paid in CHANCERY upon the fuing out, or obtaining fome Sorts of Original Writs returnable into the Court of COMMON-PLEAS at Westminfter. By FABIAN PHILIPPS, Efq; one of the Filacers of the Court of Common-Pleas at Westminster. Printed 1663.

Longavi temporis ufus & confuetudinis non eft vilis Authoritas.
BRACTON, Lib. I. Cap. 3.

To the Honourable Sir HARBOTLE GRIMSTON, Bart.
Master of the Rolls.

SIR,

F the Holy Scriptures had not told us, that Rebellion was the Sin of Witchcraft, we have had Caufe enough to believe it; when in the evil Days of our last twenty Years unhappy Wars and Confufions, we have feen so very much of the Folly and Madness of that Soul, as well as Kingdom DestroyingSin, and perceived all that traded therein to have met with Circes, and the Fate of Ulyffes his Companions, and to have been almoft transformed into Swine, who muzling in the Earth, and looking for fome Filth agreeable to their brutish Appetite and Diet, can without any Remorfe or Pity of better Things, turn and overturn, fpoil and trample upon the fairest Flowers; and are at the beft no otherwise to be efteemed then as Men bewitched, or hugely mifled by their own Fancies, and arrived to a Degree beyond Fanaticks, and as near unto Madness as the most outragious Inhabitant of Bedlam: When as in the beginning of the long and unhappy Parliament in the Year 1641, it was their common Out-cry, that the Laws of England were their Birth-right, they fhould be most miferable if they did not enjoy them; could after that, without any just Cause, take Arms to defend and preferve them; and employ themfelves, their Wives and Children in a Proceffion or Pageant, to dig and make Out-works and Fortifications about the City of London, to fecure their Laws and Liberties, when in Effect they did but keep them out; and after that, engage themselves, and as many as they could enforce unto it by an illegal League and Covenant to maintain them, and yet after the King's Murther, by that rebellious Contrivance, and the Confequence of it, and a Declaration made and published by thofe that calling themselves a Parliament, that thofe Laws were moft fuitable to the Good and Conftitution of the Nation, could in the Hirecano of their pretended Reformation of the fame Laws, agitated and driven on by a Mechanick Party that did not understand them, endeavour all they could to fubvert and take away thofe very Laws, as

they

they had done the Lives of many, and the Eftates of most of thofe of the King's Party; who really and not hypocritically fought for them and their King, and adventured all they had in it; and in that furious, ignorant, and felf-feeking Humour of Reformation, could like nothing but what came out of their own groundless Imaginations: The Difcipline and Orders of the Church were looked upon as Antichriftian; the Laws were pretended to be Chargeable, Dilatory and Antichriftian; the equitable Senfe of Laws and Scripture of their own framing and picking out, were more (as they faid) to be esteemed, than the better or learned Interpretations of them: The inward Spirit and Intentions of Men were to be the Rule of all our Juftice and Actions: Old Cuftoms and Conftitutions. were to pass away, and be laid by, and the new Inventions and Notions acted (as they foolishly imagined) by a more Divine Light, were to take Place, and rule in the ftead of them. In order whereunto, the common People were taught in all their Difcourfes, to make that which before they had taken fo much Care of, to be as a By-word or Reproach; the Law itself muft be called a Cheat; and the Lawyers, whom the Heathen could ftile Sacerdotes Juftitia, and our Christian Fore-fathers, Laudabile genus hominum qui in Campo Juftitiæ tanquam Athlete militant, fo hated and threatened, (except at fuch Times as they had need of them) as it was fome Danger to wear a Gown; and one of their mighty Mechanick Commanders threatened to pull off their Gowns, and hang them up in Westminster-Hall among the Scotch Colours. The Judges were many times threatened to be pulled out of the Courts, and from their Tribunals; the Inns of Court, the Nurseries of the Law, defigned to be turned into Brew-boufes, Tenements or Garifons, and Places for quartering of their Rabbi Red-coat Soldiers. That which was in our Law-Books of French or Latin, must be tranflated, and the Writs, Procefs and Pleadings put into English; and they knew not right Reason, the Original and Foundation of all Laws, nor the Way or Method of it, would like no Law further than their vulgar and shallow Understandings could come up unto it: And where they might or could reach it, found it to be no Lofs unto themselves to pull down old Laws and Conftitutions, to the end they might be Gainers by the Invention of fetting up new. Every Thing but themselves were Grievances: The Moral and Judicial Laws of Mofes, were commended and defired to be introduced by fome, and those of Holland and Scotland by others, that Parliament not long before as much adored by a factious and rebellious Part of the People, as the Rebel Ifraelites did their Golden-Calf; when nothing but the Parliament was to be the Standard of their Religion and Confcience; now feemed unto them not to be well conftituted, or in equal Frame or Balance, but would be much better, if the Venetian Balloting-Box were caft in amongft them, the Military Officers and Commanders, many of whom could not read English, and worfe write it, bufying themselves in reading Livy and Plutarch, and other Heathen Authors tranflated into English; and not well obferving the many Mutinies, Seditions, dangerous and troublesome Alterations and Changes, which the People of Athens and Rome had fadly experimented and dearly paid for, and how thofe levelling Humours by Neceffity as well as Fate fell afterwards into the better State and Condition of Monarchy, thought nothing so good and profitable for the Good of the People and of themfelves

*Conftitut. Othoboni in Lindwood.

felves (more especially) then to advance and increase the Changes of Government, which was moft commonly caft into a Frame and Defign of their own Interefts. Every common Soldier thought himself as wife and as fit to frame a Commonwealth as Lycurgus or Solon; and pretended that their Business was not only to fight, but to be Legiflators and Superintendents of our Parliaments as well as Laws; they were to bind and limit them to (their filly as well as knavish) Contrivances. The Lands of the Crown, Church and Loyal Party, were to be a Part of their Land of Canaan: And they were to make what further Progrefs they could in the altering of Laws and Cuftoms, hitherto, and through many Ages, fo very much approved: Put down the old Offices and Employments, and erect new; and the Citizens and Men of Trade finding Fault with all but the multiplied Deceits and Knaveries of their own Trades; which, with the adulterating and enhauncing of all Manufactures and Commodities, have not only loft and spoiled our Trade in foreign Parts, but do by the Connivance of their Companies or Myfteries, and for want of a due Execution. of Laws, and Regulations of Falfhoods, yearly cozen and cheat the People at Home, as much as amounts to fome Millions of Sterling Money, or a great deal more than doubles our Taxes, and not understanding the right Reason, juft Ends and Intentions of our Laws, nor diftinguishing betwixt the right Ufe and Abufe of Laws, of the which only the cozening Part of the People are guilty, neither contented to have gained fo much as they had done by the Law and its Refidence at London, could not be fatisfied unless they could pull it all in Pieces, and make a Merchandize of it; and believed a Citizen in a Committee by the Study and Help of a Diurnal, being the Tinder to the greatest of all Rebellions, to be as grand a Statefman as the late Lord Burleigh, or as if he had been bound Apprentice to Solomon, and ferved out his Time in the compiling of his Proverbs: And their multiplying coftly Orders at Six Shillings and Eight Pence, cr Ten Shillings a Piece for a few Lines, to be as great a Bleffing and refreshing to the People, as the Land of Promife was to thofe that had endured a forty Years tedious Journey through the Wilderness; and when as too many of themfelves were, and are by their Tricks of Trade, the grand and fuperlative Grievances of the Kingdom, could at the fame time raife their falfe and groundless Clamours and Scandals against the King, the Church, and the Laws; becaufe he would not quit his Regalities, and fuffer a rebellious and prevailing Part of the People to enflave the Refidue; tho' our Religion and Laws did forbid it. In the midft of which Frenzies, whilft the Tradefmen did drive on the Soldiers, many of whom had been their run-a-gate, or caft-off Apprentices; and the Soldiers were driven on and encouraged by fome Lecturers, and Men of extempore Nonfenfe rather then Divinity; and the Devil leading them with his new Lights, and falfe Expofitions of Scripture, and a gaining ungodly Part of the People, were bufy in plundering and oppreffing the loyal, honeft, fmall and remaining Part of them, and ufed our excellent Laws and Customs as the Bactrians are faid to do by their Parents when they are fick or aged, and fet their Canes Sepulchrales, Dogs kept on purpose, to tear and devour them: It would have been a Wonder how any of the most refined Right Reafon or Conftitution of our Laws, could reft in quiet, when the Graves of fome of our British or Saxon Kings were in a most unchristian and barbarous manner opened and difturbed, VOL. III.

A a

and

and their Duft and Bones caft into the Air and High-ways, and the Book of God itself suffered a kind of Martyrdome, in their fufpecting the Original, and covering the Senfe and Meaning thereof with ridiculous Notions, and ignorant Interpretations.

Or that a very innocent and legal Part of the King's Revenue, fo well employed in the Support and Adminiftration of Justice, fhould efcape a Difturbance: and therefore the Fines which were ufually, and through many past Centuries and Ages, paid in Chancery upon all Original Writs in perfonal Actions, wherein the Debt or Damages demanded exceeded Forty Pounds, muft have its Share in the Suffering under thofe grand and continued Perfecutions of Truth, Loyalty and Right Reafon, and be forbidden by an Act of a factious Part of the People, fuppofing themfelves to be the Commons of England, affembled in Parliament, and facrificed but to the pretended Liberties of the People, to the Intent to leave them as little as they could of their Liberties in greater Matters: which being with other of our good Laws, and Cultoms, worried and cryed down by the cauflefs Outcries and Clamours of thofe that better understood their own evil Purpofes and Defigns in it, than the original Inftitution, Benefit, and right Ufe of them, could not rife again, or be revived, until that happy Restoration of our King, Religion, Laws, and Liberties: nor then neither without the Cicatrices and Scars of the Wounds under which they formerly languifhed; and as the Imagination being once hurt is feldom ever after free from thofe melancholick Impreffions which it once harboured; fo did thofe of a Neceffity of reforming our Laws, or of fuppofed Evils or Grievances in them, beget an ill Opinion in the Minds of the People, where yet it sticks fo much, as fome well-meaning and good Men are not fo willing as they should be to abandon the cauflefs Sufpicions and Prejudices which they had entertained of them; and thofe Illufions, and inconfiderately received Impreffions, have as yet kept up in too many the Humour of endeavouring to overthrow thofe and many other of our good Laws and Conftitutions, which if Understanding or Knowledge may be the Judges or Touchstone of them, will appear to deferve a better Ufage,

The more than ordinary Mifapprehenfion whereof, by thofe that build upon no better a Foundation than the Ignorance of its legal, original and right Ùfe, hath fummoned my Duty to our Sovereign and his Laws to hinder, what I may, the unjuft Cenfures and Ill-Advifednefs of fome People, who are as ready to caft away their own Good, as those who to avoid a little Cold, which their Delicacy and a Surfeit upon Peace and Plenty cannot perfwade them to indure, can think it to be no fmall Part of Prudence to tear up and burn the Planks of the Ship, wherein they are failing at Sea, and far from the Shore, and run the inevitable Hazard of perifhing by the Fury of a cooler Element; and that I might fatisfy fuch as miflike the Payment of Fines in Chancery upon fome original Writs, and that it hath for many Ages paft been a moft legal and ufeful Part of the Crown-Revenue, without any the leaft of Grievance to the People, or our fo often reiterated Magna Charta, or any other our Laws or Liberties; and fhew them that the Usefulness and Legality of it is not taken away, or diminished, becaufe a Part of it is paid, or goeth to the Support of the Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper of the great Seal of England, for the Time being, in that great and as

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