An Apologie for the Royal Party; and A Panegyric to Charles the Second | Page 6

Deans and
Chapters
; taking away Kingly Government, and the House of Lords, breaking
the Crowns, selling the Jewells, Plate, Goods, Houses and Lands
belonging unto the Kings of this Nation, erecting extraordinary High
Courts of Justice, and therein Impeaching, Arraigning, condemning,
and Executing many pretended notorious Enemies, to the publick Peace;
when the Lawes in being, and the Ordinary Courts of Justice could not
reach them: By strange and unknown practises in this Nation, and not
at all Justifiable by any known Lawes and Statutes_, But by certain
diabolical principles of late distilled into some person of the Army, and
which he would entitle to the whole, who (abating some of their
Commanders, that have sucked the sweet of this Doctrine) had them
never so much as entred into their thoughts, nor could they be so
depraved, though they were Masters only of the Light of Nature to
direct them. For Common sence will tell them, that whoever are our
lawful Superiours, and invested with the supreame Authority, either by
their own vertue, or the peoples due Election, have then a just right to
challenge submission to their precepts, and that we acquiesce in their
determinations; since there is in nature no other expedient to preserve
us from everlasting confusion: But it is the height of all impertinency to
conceive, that those which are a part of themselves, and can in so great
a Body, have no other interests, should (without the manifest hand of
God were in it to infatuate all your proceedings) fall into such
exorbitant contradiction to their own good, as a child of four years old
would not be guilty of; and as this Pamphleter wildly suggests in pp. 6.
11. 27, &c. did they steer their course by the known laws of the Land,
and as obedient Subjects should do, who without the King and his

Peers, are but the Carkass of a Parliament, as destitute of the Soul
which should inform and give it being. And if so small a handful of
men as appeared in the Palace-Yard, without consent of a quarter of the
English Army, much lesse the tenthousand'th part of the Free-people
that are not clad in red, shall disturb and alter your Government when it
thinks fit to set aside a few imperious Officers, who plainly seek
themselves, and derive their Commissions from superiours to whom
they swear obedience; how can you ever hope, or live to see any
government established in these miserably abused Nations? Behold
then with how weak a party you are vanquish'd, even by those very
instruments you had so long flatter'd with the title of the Free-people;
imputing all the direful effects of your depraved principles to their
desires, when as I dare report my self to the ingenuity of the very
Souldiers themselves, if they, who have effected all these changes by
your wretched instigations, and blind pretences, imagine themselves the
People of this Nation, but are{1} a very small portion of them,
compared to the whole, and who are maintained by them to recover,
and protect the Civill Government, according to the Good old Lawes of
the Land; not such as they themselves shall invent from Day to Day, or
as the interests of some few persons may engage them.
But if the essential end of Rulers be the Common peace, and their
Lawes obliging as they become relative: Restore us then to those under
which we lived with so much sweetness and tranquility, as no age in
the World, no Government under Heaven could ever pretend the like.
And if the People (as you declare) are to be the Judges of it, summon
them together in a Free Parliament, according to its legal Constitution;
or make a universal Balott, and then let it appear, if Collonel Lambert
and half a dozen Officers, with all their seduced Partizans, make so
much as a single Cypher to the Summe Total. And this shall be enough
to answer those devious Principles set down in the porch of that
specious Edifice; which being erected upon the Sand, will (like the rest
that has been _daubed with untempered mortar_) sink also at the next
high wind that blowes upon it. But I am glad it is at last avowed, upon
what pretexts that late pretended Parliament have pleaded on the behalf
of themselves and party, their discharge from all the former
Protestations, Engagements, solemn Vowes, Covenants, with hands (as

you say) lift up to the most high God, as also their Oaths and
Allegiance, &c. because I shall not in this discourse be charged with
slandering of them, and that the whole World may detest the Actions of
such perfidious Infidels, with whom nothing sacred has remain'd
inviolable.
But there is yet a piece of Artifice behind, of