yet the power of money being in the parliament, they must both agree, or else keep the sword in the scabbard, which is the best place for it.

It is true that the king, by his tenures, may require the service in war, of those that hold, of him; but if they stay above forty days with him, unless he gives them pay, they will stay no longer.

And it is also true, as. hath been observed, that our law looks upon the king as the Jewish law did upon theirs; that, by his kingly office, he is to go in and out before the people, and to lead them in battle against their enemies; but by the laws of the Jews, their king could not undertake a war abroad without the consent of the great Sanhedrim.

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And by our law, as is declared by the statute 1 Edward III. and by divers subsequent statutes, the king can compel no man to go out of his country, but upon the sudden coming of strange enemies into the realm: and how many of our parliament rolls do record that the king advised with his parliament about his foreign wars, and could not undertake them without the advice and supplies of the parliament.

All the power of the militia is exercised either in offence or defence. Defence is either against the invasion of enemies from abroad, or against insurrections at home.

Against insurrections at home, the sheriff of every county hath the power of the militia in him; and if he be negligent to suppress them with the posse comitatus, he is finable for it.

Against invasions from abroad, every man will be forward to give his assistance; there will be little need to raise forces, when every man will be ready to defend himself, and to fight pro aris & focis.

As to offensive war against a foreign enemy, if the king will make it of himself he must of himself pay his army, which his own revenue will hardly afford; nor can he compel any of his subjects to serve him in those VOL I.

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wars: none can, by law, be pressed to serve in that war, but by act of parliament.

But not to waste more of your time, sir, I shall conclude that, in my humble opinion, the power of the militia is neither in the king alone, nor in the parliament, but, if any where in the eye of the law; it is in the king and parliament, both conferring together; and I think it best that it should be there still.

I cannot join in that advice to you, to settle the militia of ourselves without the king, but rather with those worthy gentlemen who have moved that we yet again should petition his majesty that the militia may be settled in such hands as both he and you shall agree upon, whom you may trust, and who, I hope, will be more careful to keep the sword sheathed than to draw it.

SIR BENJAMIN RUDYARD.

His Speech, recommending conciliatory Measures.

Mr. Speaker,

IN the way we are, we have gone as far as words can carry us. We have voted our own rights and the king's duty. No doubt there is a relative duty between king and subjects; obedience from a subject to a king, protection from a king to his people. The present unhappy distance between his majesty and the parliament makes the whole kingdom stand amazed, in a fearful expectation of dismal calamities to fall upon it. It deeply and conscionably concerns this house, to compose and settle these threatening ruining distractions.

Mr. Speaker, I am touched, I am pierced with an apprehension of the honor of the house, and success of this parliament. The best way to give a stop to these desperate imminent mischiefs, is to make a fair way for the king's return hither; it will likewise give

best satisfaction to the people, and will be our best justification.

Mr. Speaker, That we may the better consider the condition we are now in, let us set ourselves three years back. If any man then could have credibly told us, that within three years the queen shall be gone out of England into the Low Countries, for any cause whatsoever, the king shall remove from his parliament, from London to York, declaring himself not to be safe here, that there shall be a total rebellion in Ireland, such discords and distempers both in church and state here, as now we find! certainly we should have trembled at the thought of it: wherefore it is fit we should be sensible now we are in it. On the other side, if any man then could have credibly told us, that within three years ye shall have a parliament, it would have been good news; that ship money shall be taken away by an act of parliament, the reason and grounds of it so rooted out, as that neither it, nor any thing like it, can ever grow up again; that monopolies, the high commission court, the star chamber, the bishop's votes, shall be taken away; the council table regulated and restrained; the forests bounded and limited; that ye shall have a triennial parliament; nay more than that, a perpetual parliament, which none shall have power to dissolve without yourselves; we should have thought this a dream of happiness! Yet, now that we are in the real possession of it, we do not enjoy it, although his majesty hath promised and published he will make all this good to us. We stand chiefly upon further security; whereas the very having of these things is a convenient fair security, mutually securing one another. There is more security offered, even in this last answer of the king's, by removing the personal votes of popish lords, by the better education of papists' children, and by supplying the defects of the laws against recusant, besides what else may be enlarged and improved by a select committee of both houses named for that purpose; wherefore, sir, let us

beware we do not contend for such a hazardous unsafe security as may endanger the loss of what we have already let us not think we have nothing, because we have not all we desire; and though we had, yet we cannot make a mathematical security; all human caution is susceptible of corruption and failing. God's providence will not be bound; success must be his: he that observes the wind and rain, shall neither sow nor reap: if he do nothing till he can secure the weather, he will have but an ill harvest.

Mr. Speaker, It now behoves us to call up all the wisdom we have about us; for we are at the very brink of combustion and confusion. If blood begins once to touch blood, we shall presently fall into a certain misery, and must attend an uncertain success, God knows when, and God knows what. Every man here is bound in conscience to employ his uttermost endeavours to prevent the effusion of blood. Blood is a crying sin; it pollutes a land. Let us save our liberties, and our estates; but so as we may save our souls too. Now I have clearly delivered my own conscience, I leave every man freely to his.

MR. WALLER.

It would be hard to deny that the following speech is a good one, when we know that it saved the author's life. Indeed, nothing can be imagined better calculated to soothe the resentment of the house of commons, or flatter their pride, than the concluding part of his address. Not even one of his own amorous heroes could fawn and cringe, and swear and supplicate, and act a feigned submission, with more suppleness and dexterity, to avert the mortal displeasure of some proud and offended beauty, than Mr. Waller has here employed to appease the fury, and insinuate himself once more into the good graces of his political paramour, the house of commons. In this, however he succeeded no farther than to receive his life at her hands; which it seems he had forfeited by conspiring to deliver up the city to the king.

Mr. Waller's Speech, praying for a Mitigation of the Sentence passed upon him by the Parliament.

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Mr. Speaker,

ACKNOWLEDGE it a great mercy of God, and a great favour from you, that I am once more suffered to behold this honourable assembly.

I mean not to make use of it to say any thing in my own defence, by justification or denial of what I have done. I have already confessed enough to make me appear worthy, not only to be put out of this house, but out of the world too. All my humble request to you is, that if I seem to you as unworthy to live as I do to myself, I may have the honour to receive my death from your own hands, and not to be exposed to a trial by the council of war. Whatever you shall think me worthy to suffer in a parliamentary way, is not like to find stop any where else.

This, sir, I hope you will be pleased, for your own sakes, to grant me, who am already so miserable, that nothing can be added to my calamity, but to be made the occasion of creating a precedent to your own disadvantage besides the right I may have to this, consider, I beseech you, that the eyes of the world are upon you. You govern in chief; and if you shall expose your own members to the punishment of others, it will be thought that you either want power or leisure to chastise them yourselves; nor let any man despise the ill consequence of such a precedent as this would be, because he seeth not presently the inconveniences which may ensue. You have many armies on foot, and it is uncertain how long you may have occasion to use them. Soldiers and commanders (though I know well they of the parliament's army excel no less in modesty than they do in courage.) are generally of a nature ready to pretend to the utmost power of this kind which they conceive to be due to them, and may be too apt, upon any