CONSIDERATIONS Touching the DISSOLVING OR TAKING AWAY The COURT of CHANCERY, AND The Courts of justice depending upon it, WITH A Vindication or Defence of the Law from what is unjustly charged upon it, AND An Answer to certain proposals made for the taking away, or alteration, of it.  Cicero pro Cluentio. 
Civitas sine Lege, ut corpus sine ment.  Leo Imp. in proaem. Constit. Novellarum. 
Sunt Leges tanquam Custodes vitae nostrae.  
London Printed by F. L. for Thomas Heath, and are to be sold at his Shop in Covent-Garden, 1653.   


The Contents.  
OF the Court of Chancery, Chap. 1.  
The great inconveniences which will happen by the dissolving of it to the whole frame and body of the Laws and justice of this nation, ch. 2.  
Besides other sad effects and consequences will be brought upon the people by it, ch. 3.  
That the Laws are not in themselves evil, but are only abused by the people, ch. 4.  
That to put down or overturn the Chancery, and so many Courts of justice which depend upon it, will be so much against the former customs and reasons of this or any other nation, as it is not to be presidented, ch. 5.  
That the very being of Parliaments is preserved by the Laws, and that so great a distemper and disturbance as will come by the taking away of the Laws, will by a necessity of justice, and better ordering of affairs, bring them, by a revolution of time, back again into their old channel, ch. 6.  
That the erecting of so many new Courts as are proposed, or cutting and translating the great Courts at Westminster, into so many little Courts and jurisdictions, will, besides the  inconveniences, not only be very prejudicial to the State, but to the people, ch. 7.  
And not only raise up again those old grievances which were formerly the cause of disusing, or restraining, the Sheriffs Turns, County Courts, Court Barons, and Hundred Courts, and suchlike petty jurisdictions, but far exceed them, ch. 8.  
That the annexing of a jurisdiction or power of equity to every or many of such new Courts, will much increase the people's grievances, and turn that little Law which shall be left, into a course of arbitrariness. ch. 9  
That in the right administration of justice, there is a necessity of Lawyers, and men of skill and experience, ch. 10.    

CONSIDERATIONS Touching The Dissolving, OR Taking away, the COURT of CHANCERY.  
THe Parliament that intends to bless and make the Nation happy, are to consider what may best advance it.  
In order to which, as they may claim the Prayers and obedience of those they represent; So on the other side, the People's great concernment, in what shall be acted or suffered by them, is entitled to a modest and well-ordered liberty of address, and advices, not only in the general, but in particular also, to the end that every part, how little soever, of the Body Politic, may be either heard, or rightly understood, before any alteration or Sentence shall go out against it; Especially when their Livelihood, Freehold, and Posterities, are to be the present and immediate Sufferers in it.  
For it could never be intended by the Laws, or Constitutions of this Nation, or is indeed imaginable, that the Parliament can (like a Deity) see thorough, and know all things at once, or beforehand, or judge of what can be objected or said in any particular case or concernment, without hearing parties or defences.  
The Justice and reason whereof may be exemplified from God himself, who being not only Omniscient, but Omnipotent, would not think it fit to condemn Adam, until he had heard what he could say for himself.  
Whence the Law of Nature, and Nations, the Civil, Canon, and Common Laws, and all the Parliaments of this People and Nation, have not only made it their Rule, but their Practice, to hear both parties, without which no Sentence or Judgement can be said to be just or valid, (though the parties that did it should intent it well, and give as just a Sentence as possibly they could) according to that generally received Maxim amongst all Nations, Qui judicaverit altera parte inaudita, aequum licet, statuerit, injustus est. Upon which consideration of Justice, and that most ancient and uninterrupted custom of it, and the reason of all Nations and Men of Reason,  
It is hoped, that the now Parliament (according to the ancient courses of Parliaments, and those sage and successful Customs of those Sons of Liberty the Romans; who, in the Rogation and promulgation of their Laws, did not only hear, but demand what the People, and those that were to experiment the sweet or sour of it, had to say against it) will give leave to those that have been bred up, laid out their Fortunes, and spent a great part of their lives in Chancery, and well understand it, to be heard, concerning the preservation of what shall be good, or the taking away of any thing that shall appear to be evil in it, before they shall proceed upon those Proposals, which have been made unto them for the dissolving of that Court; And for the better sanisfaction of that small part of the People, which tyre the Supreme Authority 
1  with their wild Proposals, to represent unto them what that Court is, which that kind of People would have the Parliament to put down.  
The great inconveniences which will happen by it, to the 
2  whole frame and body of the Laws, & justice of the Nation.  
Besides other sad effects and Consequences will be 
3  brought upon the People by it.  
That the Laws are not in themselves evil, but are only 
4  abused by the People.  
That to put down, or overturn the Chancery, and so 
5  many Courts of justice which depend upon it, will be so much against the former Customs and reasons of this, or any other Nation, as it is not to be presidented.  
That the very Being of Parlements is preserved by the 
6  Laws; And that so great a distemper and disturbance, as will come by the taking away of the Laws, will by a necessity of Justice, and better ordering of affairs, bring them by a revolution of Time, back again into their old Channel.  
That the erecting of so many new Courts as are proposed, 
7  or cutting the great Courts at Westminster, into so many little Courts and jurisdictions, will, besides the before mentioned inconveniences, not only be very prejudicial to the State, but to the people.  
And not only raise up again those old grievances, which 
8  were formerly the cause of disusing or restraining the Sheriffs-Turns, County-Courts, Court- Barons and Hundred-Courts, & such like petty jurisdictions, but far exceed them.  
That the annexing of a jurisdiction or power of equity 
9  to every or many of such new Courts will much increase the People's grievances, and turn that little Law, which shall be left, into a course of arbitrariness.  

CHAP. I. What that Court is, which they would have taken away.  
THe Court of Chancery (not to trouble the Reader with what is more largely declared by Crompton in his jurisdictions of Courts, Sir Henry Spelman in his Glossary, and Sir Edward Cook in the fourth part of his Institutes, and the known benefits, which redound and come unto very many of the People by it (for those that are restrained by it from their oppressions are not always well-pleased with it) is the conscience of the Supreme Authority, to qualify the severity of the Laws, when they happen to be so in some particular cases, without taking away those Laws, or breaking them, or opening a gap to Ten Thousand men's inconveniences, to give relief to some one particular man, which without those general remedies and applications of conscience, could not otherwise be avoided; And as to the Law or Latin part of it, and granting out of Writes Remedial, will appear to be a Court as ancient as the Reason or Civility of the Nation; from which all the other Courts at Westminster-Hall, County-Courts, Sheriffs-Turns, Court-Leets, and Baron, and all other Courts inferior, may truly be said to have their beginning; the Matrix, or Womb of all our Fundamental Laws, either before or since Magna Charta, which had its birth and being from it; A Court, where the Genius loci, and Salus populi, like Nature in the Womb of the Creation, resides, to give out its ordinary administrations of Justice for the good of the people, and is for that purpose as the Soul to the Body, in the direction and subsistence of it; And the head, to which all the Nerves and Sinews of it are joined; The repository (in the absence of Parliaments) of Justice in all cases where the helps of Parliaments were not necessary; The 
a St. German de fundament. Leg. Angliae, cap. 7.  Custom of the Nation; The Officina Justitiae, the place or workhouse of Justice; The original and Authority of all men's Assurances and Conveyances by Fines and Recoveries; The Preserver of their Rights and Estates in them; The primum mobile of all or most of our proceed at Law; The principal Secretary, Amanuensis, or Register of the Supreme Authority, and which bears Record unto it; The place, whither the Petitions in Parliament, that could not be dispatched, were usually referred; The Fountain and Channel, by which Justice, Reason, and Equity, was upon any of the people's necessities or complaints conveyed unto them, and the Magazine, store-house, and dispensatory of all Writts remedial, and in which all the people's rights, liberties, and properties are so concentred, and incorporate, as they must either die or live with it, and is, as saith the last Parliament, no longer ago than in April, 1641. by a long usage and prescription grown to be, as it were, Lex Terrae, 
b M. Hides Argument before the Lords in Parliament, by Order of the House of Commons.  the dissolution whereof, must of necessity produce very many mischiefs and inconveniences.   

CHAP. II. The mischiefs and inconveniencies which will happen to the whole Frame and Body of the Laws, and justice of the Nation, by the dissolution of it.  
FOr it will not only take away the equitable and English part of it, consisting of Bills, Answers, and Decrees (being a latter part of the business of it) to examine Frauds, Combinations, Trusts, Secret uses, and the like, and moderate, or take away the rigour of Laws, and rescue men out of the hands of such as would oppress them, by putting extremities upon them; but the old and most ancient part of it, consisting of writs of Habeas corpus, which no other Court can grant in a vacation; For that the Chancery was always to be open, to give remedies where it can to the people; The Sealing and Inrolling of Letters Patents and Pardons; Inrolling of Treaties and Leagues with Foreign Princes and States; Making or granting out Writs or Summons of Parliament, Edicts, Proclamations, Charters, Protections, safe Conducts, or for Elections of Knights of the Shire, Burgesses, Parliament men, and Coroners; Writs of moderata misericordia where any were too much amerced, and of a reasonable part of goods for Widows and Orphans; Patents for Sheriffs; Cercioraries to remove Records and false Judgements in inferior Courts; Writs of Audita querela and Scire Facias; inrolments of Deeds betwixt party and party concerning their lands, estates or purchases; Taking recognizances, and making out of extents upon Statutes and recognizances for payment of moneys, or securing of Contracts; Writs remedial or magisterial, Commissions of appeal, Oyer and Terminer, for the Peace, and many other things not here enumerated, tending either to the well-being or conservation of Justice; And in a word almost all the Justice of the Nation (Parliaments being properly pro arduis, and eminent occasions, not determinable by any other Court.)  
Make all the Decrees of Chancery and Injunctions granted against unconscionable acts or proceed at Common Law, when the said Court shall not have any being to protect or maintain them, to be contemned; and the parties put again to new vexations and troubles; increase and encourage desperate swear and perjuries, in the Intervals, betwixt the putting-down of the old Court and erecting of a new.  
Enervate, and put into a suspicion, all those very many judgements and decrees, which have been founded upon the proceed of it; as is demonstrable enough in the Acts of the Courts of Star-Chamber, Requests, and High Commission, Courts of Honour, and Marches of Wales, and the North, upon their dissolution.  
Take away the prescription and birthright of all the freeborn people of England to their Laws and customs; And by dissolving the Chancery, and so many Courts of Law and reasonable Customs as depend upon it, Leaves them only some Statute and penal Laws to support their Proprieties: For, as many of them as they can get again, must be by a new grant, which those that have had right of Common or Copyhold (being of a far less concernment,) and lost it, by pulling down an old Tenement and building up a new, or taking a Lease of their Copyhold estate, may guests how prejudicial it may be in greater matters.  
Obstruct, and put to a stand all assurances, contracts and bargains, which are every minute going and passing amongst the people.  
May disturb, and prejudice many men in their estates and properties, as well as Magistrates in their power and authority over them; And put them on to jeaiousies, Scruples, and questionings of the present authority, when they shall have none, of the Customs, of the old, which they took to be reasonable, left to go along with them, or persuade to an obedience to it; And may be but as the throwing down at once of an old Park pale, upon hopes that the Deer will be persuaded to tarry in, upon an expectation of a new.  
All the writs and Commissions made out and retornable in Chancery will be to seek for a validity, as to their execution or return.  
All the causes now depending, enough to take up (if they should lay aside the work of beginning and emergency of new causes) the unwearied skill, endeavours, and time of the present Lords Commissioners and Mr. of the Rolls, for seven years (who by former motions and proceed are well acquainted with the nature of many of them, and by that means may be more skilful in the way of determining of them, than any Committee, which can be chosen) will then be put to the decision of Strangers, or such as may be as long again in finishing of them.  
And if the heap of new causes should be undertaken by the same men at the same time, may make such a stop, as may swell up the discontents of the people, to a complaint, or breaking down the banks of any new erected Courts or Committees for it.  
The Court of Common-pleas betwixt party and party, which hath its originals and Commissions from it, will expire, for it cannot hold plea without it.  
All that our former Laws, appointed to be done in certain prescript ways and times, as the bringing of Formedons in discender or remainder; and all those several sorts of remedial writs, in the Natura Brevium, and register (being like so many several sorts of approved and experimented physics, and remedies prepared, boxed, and laid-up by a long observation and experience for the future, for the several diseases of men's estates, rights or liberties) will become useless.  
All the many necessary and wholesome powers, and business, which former Parliaments have by their many Acts and Laws entrusted to the Chancery, will be laid aside; and the people sent to look out new ways, or remedies, where they can find them, and takeup that which their forefathers refused as inconvenient, instead of that they formerly received so much benefit by.  
Magna Charia, and its 30 times confirmation, which 
17 E. 1, ca 7. 25 E. 1. Ca 1, 2, 3, & 4.  was delivered with Curses and Anathemas to the Infringers, and commanded to be read once a year in Churches, against which no law was to be made, upon the penalty of being void, was got, and continued, with so much blood of our Ancestors, and forbids the denial of justice to any should ask for it, gave the Trials per Pares, and that none should be imprisoned or disseised, but by original writs (then and ever since issuing out of Chancery) and due process of Law; And the care taken formerly that Nullus recedat a Cancellaria sine remedio, will be to no purpose when the Court is put down that should grant it.  
The Wolf may eat the Lamb, when there shall be none to stretch out their hand to deliver the oppressed. All that was good in that Court, and beneficial for the people, (for certainly it being so ancient, and of so long a continuance, could not be so unhappy, as to have no good thing, nor proceeding in it) will be put under the same fate, as the bad, wherein it will be lost; unless by a new constitution, or a particular enumeration of them in a new establishment, (which will find store of difficulties) it shall happen to be revived, there being a great difference betwixt what a Court hath incorporated in it by a custom, and what it must get and have by a new authority for, and may tend to the greatest alteration in the administration of Justice that ever happened to a Nation, and produce many other sad effects and consequences will follow upon it.   

CHAP. III. Other sad effects and consequences will follow upon it.  
FOr above 2000 Families, whose livelihoods, labours, and fortunes, have been laid out in the labour, and attendance of this so high and necessary a Court, will, without some recompense or subsistence made or provided for them, be utterly undone, and exposed to Beggary; the rather, for that they are not like Husbandmen, or day- Labourers, that can fit themselves for common and servile labours. Above 20000 Families of Townsmen and Citizens, in or near London, (whose industry and maintenance depended much upon the residence, and study of the Laws at London, (besides the Professors of the Law, and those many families are maintained by it) will be either totally undone, or much impaired in their estates, and livelihood; Many Thousands of Watermen, the strength and subsistence of our Sea-affairs, and Thousands of Artificers, and other people who live by Trading and travelling to London, will be ruined; and that City, which by its Situation and Neighbourhood to the Sea, the riches, skill, and corresponcy of her Merchants, and a long fixed Trade and custom, is the fittest of all this body Politic, to make a heart of; And was wont to be the Centre of the Laws, and Courts of Justice, whither all the people flocked for Commerce, as well as Justice, will by the deprivation of them, be little better than as a City two parts in three destroyed; or burnt: And be so put into a continual lessening or decay, as the rents and profits of at least a dozen neighbouring Counties, whose provisions and commodities did, by their neighbourhood and trading thither, bear a higher price than in other remote places, will be diminished, as much as a half, or one part in three, in their Estates and manner of living, and disabled to pay, as they have done, public Taxes or Assessments, when they shall be called for: And not only those, but all the other Counties and Cities of England, as they shall nearer relate or communicate to those Counties, be made the worse for it; But the smallest Towns or Villages, or most remote parts of the Land, will quickly come to be woefully sensible of the distemper or decay of such a principal and vital part of the Nation; The ruin, or but disordering whereof, by the putting down of the Law and Courts thereof, may prove to be a cause of many more, and greater inconveniences, than if that great and general Manufacture or Trade of Clothing should be prohibited; then the altering or turning the course of all the Rivers, or known channels, or currents of waters, or the stopping or taking away the Highways, and known roads of the Nation, could bring upon the People.  
Whilst they that thus bespeak their own ruin, do not yet, perhaps, so fully take into their consideration, as they may hereafter, when it shall be too late, that the Chancery, and the Courts of Justice at Westminster, are as the Asylums or sanctuaries of all that are oppressed; the Protection of the people, and (next under God, and the Supreme Authority) the most certain rules of their liberties and properties. And that the liberties of the People do reside, and have their Being in the Laws and Courts of Justice, as the vital and animal spirits do in the blood; and that it is as impossible (as was not long ago observed by a learned Judge of this Nation) to 
Lord St. john.  destroy the form of the Law, and preserve the body, as it is to take away the form of a man, and to preserve his Being: For when the Law like the Body natural shall dissolve or die, the Justice of the Nation, which is as the Soul to that Body, must immediately take its flight and be gone.  
Those that would procute the Vinyard to be destroyed, because they themselves are shut out of it, do not consider, that there are more motions and business in Chancery dispatched in one day, than a Committee of the late Parliament did in a year, & more business in a year determined in that and the three other Courts of Westminster, by themselves and their ministerial Offices, than all the Committees of the late Parliament have dispatched in 12 years' last passed, or would have been able to do after their usual pace in twice as many more, and need not go far to be informed. What an obstruction and hindrance there must then be to the people of this Nation, when these Courts and Offices shall be taken away, and the People left to attend and Petition for some Months together, before they can so much as get a Petition read, and Tyre and Trouble all the Friends they have, for that they might formerly for a far lesser Fee, & in an ordinary course have obtained in half an hours space, as soon as it was asked for.  
Nor observe as they might; that the reason why the good intentions of many men in those many several Committees (which the necessities of war did cause the late Parliament to erect in this Nation) brought them so much into the hatred, discontents, curses, & Complaints of the People, was (amongst other their failings) their ignorance in the Laws of the Land, and of the old course of expounding, taking-in, and giving out of reason, their immethodical proceed, and seeking sometimes to make a reason out of half a reason, or that which was but a shadow or colour of it, which with their many scruples (which would not be made by more knowing men) their bidding the people so often to withdraw, and advising with themselves, or referring it to their own Counsel (which made many several hear of that, which other men would have dispatched presently) have been the cause of those outcries, pamphletings, and Petitions have from most Counties and places been against them, and that the horrid delays and small dispatch of those Committees (who, if there were nothing else in it, must needs in so many different opinions, arguings, and needless debates amongst themselves be a great deal more redious and undispatching, than a fewer number of able men in a Court) were much of the cause also of the people's heavy complaints against the late Parliament.  
And that the Chancery and Courts of Justice have not for many hundred years past (put all the Complaints which have been made against them together) had so many, and so universal Complaints made against them as have in the space of these last Ten years been made against the late Committees, of which those that have left their Hosanna to the Laws to cry Crucifige would be ill contented if all the Trades in London should be at once put down, for that there are greater abuses in them, Do not do as they would be done by, nor think what a drought and want of Justice there will be all over the Land, when the Springs thereof shall be stopped-up, and what an increase of wants and necessities there will be when the way of preferment, and provision for younger Children, shall in the ruin of this great Tribe, and part of the people, be taken away? And what a strange attempt it would be in Physic upon the body Natural, to go about to divert the daily and constant Course of the blood from the heart, and put it into a new way, or to make some other parts of the body to do the office of it.  
Nor do those Proposers (who would take away their Neighbours would to build an Altar to sacrifice their own imaginations upon,) consider, as they ought, what it is to remove the old Landmark, and enter upon the field of the Fatherless; nor how great a burden of sin will lie upon their Souls in the day of Terror and Account, for the unnecessary ruin of so many Thousand Families, as are now living, and a general disturbance and distemper of a whole Nation, and their posterity for the time to come, and all upon no greater a Score than their own presumption, and incapacities to judge of Laws, and meddle where they had no calling, either from God or Man, and when they stopped their ears like the Adder, and might have been advised, but would not: or how much greater or sadder a burden it will be to their consciences, if that which they shall now fancy to be good, should prove hereafter to be a continual curse and thraldom to a whole Nation, and a Succession of generations after them? That the taking away from the people their Courts of Justice, and reasonable Customs, will not only root out and overturn their properties, but cast it into an arbitrariness of will and power; from which the best intentions and integrity of those, that shall be in power at the present, will not be able to secure the people or their posterity; And that this so great an alteration (though carried on with never so good purposes) may meet with no better a success in the end, than that unadvised and loving attempt of old Pelias Daughters in the Poets, who by letting out of the old blood of their Father, to procure new, lost what they might have kept, and gained no more than an impossibility to keep him alive, whom they thought to have made young again.  
And that when they shall have done all they can, or have obtained what they would of the Parliament by such kind of proposals, it will be to as little satisfaction to the people, as to take away (if they could) the Sun out of the Firmament, and promise them another instead of it; or forbidden all known experimented Medicines and Courses in Physic, and tell them they shall have better.   

CHAP. IV That the Laws are not in themselves evil, but are only abused by the People.  
ALl which might be sufficient to call off those Tradesmen, who have no more acquaintance with the Law, than what they got in some Suits were rightfully adjudged against them, and some others, who are near Allied unto a busy ignorance, from troubling the Supreme Authority with their so eager pursuit, and persecution of those Laws, which in the beginning of the last Parliament they took to be the Walls and Bulwarks of Parliaments, and could protest, swear, covenant, take arms, expend and hazard their lives and estates for to maintain. Or to persuade them not to hunt the Lamb instead of the Fox, or their own happiness in stead of a grievance, nor to think their Time well spent in Crying-down the Fundamental Laws of England, without which they once thought they should be most miserable, if they were not hurried, or headlongly driven on by a strange fury of their own Fancies, or presumptions, or an expectation of setting-up themselves by the ruin and downfall of many Thousands, will be losers to every one, will be gainers by it, or were not Acted by some Jesuitical party, or influence, would disturb and destroy this Commonwealth.  
To prevent which, and to do what we can as long as there is any hope left, we shall entreat them by the Tears and Compassion of their already too much impoverished, torn, and languishing Mother England, and the love they ought to bear to their Brethren, and their own (if they will not be careful of other men's) posterities, to stand a little, and look about them, before they drown us and themselves in that Sea of misery and confusion, they are letting in upon us; and either to read our Laws, or be informed by those that understand them, and consider well beforehand, now they may help it, that which Truth and a sad experience may hereafter tell them, when they cannot find a remedy for it; That the Laws and Courts of Justice they world now over-turn, are those Laws and Courts, which by a long-experience, and universal reason, and consent of our Forefathers, have through many ages and generations, descended and come unto us, as a common Birthright and Inheritance, will (if rightly examined, and inspected) appear to be deduced from no worse original, or authority, than the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments themselves, and the reason and equity of many of those other Laws, which God himself in Mount Sinai commanded Moses to declare unto the people, That the Law of England is Ipsissima ratio, right reason itself.  
From which, and the right use and practice thereof, if they that shall make it their business to accuse our Laws and reasonable Customs, and Courses, of Courts of Justice shall but abstruct and take (out of all the causeless complaints are made against it, which ought to be done by those will judge aright of it) all that happeneth by the ignorance, or weakness of men, in making of their Contracts and Assurances one with another; The cavils, and strange subtleties, of those that would deceive, oppress, or take advantage by it; The making of Wills and Conveyances by ignorant persons, unfit placing of words in them, and want of coherence, or signification, (which do not seldom beget contradictions, or perplexities of the sense or meaning of the parties) their holding hard to advantages gotten; by a mistake of words or parties to create a right, or title, where there should be none; Wresting of Laws to their own purposes; Self-conceited, false or frivolous Suggestions, in their motions, or desires to the Courts; Reiteration and succession of pretences, and strange allegations, not at first discernible by the Lawyers or Judges themselves; Hasty, and wilful commencing of Suits upon small or no advice at all; Ravelling and perplexing of their own Causes, Eluding, or striving to overreach the Laws, or strain them beyond their intentions; Ignorance or wilfulness in managing of their Causes, and the frowardness or unquietness of their own spirits, in coursing one another, through all the Courts of Law at Westminster Hall, by several Trials, and Verdicts, bringing writs of Error upon them, out of the Common Pleas into the Upper Bench, thence to the Exchequer Chamber, to be heard by all the Judges of England; Thence to the Parliament, (though they pay great and several costs to their adversaries) discontinuing of writs of Error, or abatement of them, by the death, or instance of some of the parties, bringing their Bills, and Cross Bills in Chancery, getting Orders upon Orders, Decrees upon Decrees, Rehearings, Reviews, or Dismissions, Entitling the State afterwards to what they sued or vexed one another for; Appeals from the Country- Committees, to Haberdasher's Hall, from thence to the Committee of Indemnity, Thence to the Committee of Obstructions, from thence to the Committee of Petitions for grievances, And from thence to the Parliament again, and if they be rejected, or cannot be heard in one Parliament, Try another, and another, and as many as they can live to solicit; their multiplying of needless and frivolous Actions, obstinate, and wilful endeavours, in trying all they can to overpower, or worry their Adversaries, never acquiescing in the Judgement of their own Lawyers or of any Court, as long as any wit, or invention of any other Lawyer (who cannot always see through his Clients unjust pretences) can but show them the way to further vexations; The Necessity which lies upon Judges and Courts to keep Rules & Orders, which may not be broken to help particular Cases; Miscarriage of Causes by mispleading, & Incertainties in the Plaintiffs or Defendants own Actions or instructions; Their hiding or concealing truths, Their not agreeing or right Stating of matters of fact, misapplications of good Laws & remedies to ill purposes, deceit & delay of one another in references, weakness of Arbitrators, and Awards, deceit or ignorance of Solicitors (a race of people was not allowed or heard of in the Law about 100 years ago, (but where Noblemen had and retained them in their houses as menial servants) too many of which of late have been broken, and busy Tradesmen, or such as scarcely know the names of a book of law, or to spell, writ, or read. Their champerty maintenance and ambodextry (some knowing and honest Solicitors excepted) taking money before hand of their Clients, and never giving an Account for it, mistake or wilfulness of Juries, want of evidences, intricacy of causes, Errors or misinterpretation as mistake the of Judges, Ignorance, malice or self ends of those that speak ill of them, and the difficulties which sometimes do lie upon the wisest and most honest of men in discerning between truth and falsehood, and dividing betwixt them, and distinguish, as our Forefathers and the wisdom of former ages used to do, betwixt the right use, and the abuse of them, between particular mischiefs, and general inconveniences, betwixt the Inconveniences which some one Law may sometimes bring upon a few particular men, and the good it brings to one hundred thousand others at the same time, and allow but (that which was never yet denied to all the Laws of the world) an impossibility of foreseeing, preventing or remedying of all things which the wickedness of the hearts of men, or their devices may lay in their way, there will not be enough left to prove them to be corrupt in their foundations.  
Take away and lay at the doors of those that aught to bear it, the selling or mortgaging of lands Twice or Thrice over, the Counterfeiting and putting to the Seals and hands of parties and witnesses, forgeries, and taking out, and putting in of words into deeds or evidences, strange and unheard-of combinations, practices, Witchcrafts and Sorceries, putting of dead men's hands to Wills, moulding, hiring of false witnesses, and Suborning or packing or laying of juries' (which are the Actions of the parties themselves to compass and bring to pass their own wicked purposes, and not of the Lawyers.)  
Let it be but considered, that if there happen in an age some unreconcilable Suits, wherein some contentious spirits have for many years together, chased and vexed one another out of one Action into another, almost to their utter undoing, There have been in every year of those many years, many thousands of causes (as may be demonstrated to any that will call for a proof of it) dispatched & put to an end by the Courts of Law at Westninster, or in the Circuits, & that a multitude of People Actions and businesses more than formerly, in a Time of more Deceit, Falsehood, Perjuries, Secret and cunning combinations, and breaches of Trust, than ever were, may make an increase & multiplicity of Suits, and yet the Lawyers, who in an age have not a common Barretor amongst them, be as innocent as the Physicians, who are not accused for much practice in a time of Pestilence, or when there are store of Epidemical diseases, there will be no cause to say that the Law is endless.  
Let it be but considered, that the greater part of established Fees in the Courts of justice, are less than what the most common Artificers do take for their labour, and as for any which exceed that rate, are but that which was allowed one Hundred years ago, when the rate and price of  and Victuals was not one in three so much as it is now; that the Attorneys 3 s. 4 d. fee, and the Lawyer's 10 s. fee, would then have bought 3 times more than what may be now for it.  
That the Gentry have since raised their rents two parts in Three, the Farmers the price of their Corn and , and the Citizens their Commodities, and servants and workmen raised their wages, yet the Lawyers except some eminent and great practisers, who take but the Free will offering of those that give them the greater Fees, to take the greater care of their business, have but the same Fees were formerly taken by them.  
That the Lawyers who had no worse a name auntiently given to their profession by the most Civilised Nations of Europe, than Sacerdotes justttiae, the Ministers of Justice, and had so right an esteem in our former Parliaments, as by several Acts of Parliament made upon several and successive necessities of the People, in 2 Edward 3 cap. 2. 14. Edward 3 cap. 16. 34. Edward 3. cap. 1. and 20. Richard 2. cap. 10. It was specially provided, that none but men learned in the Law should be made Justices of Assize and Goal delivery, and that there should be in every County men learned in the Law made Justices of the peace; And in all their Actions either at home in their Counties, or at London in the Terms, are known to be men of Godliness, Sobriety, and learning, and compared with any other profession or part of the People, to have fewer men of vice or ignominy amongst them than any other profession. Let it be but considered that the Law (as it may be demonstrated, if an account were kept, as some Physicians do of their consultations and Cures, or as the People of the Bath do of some that are cured in every year) doth in every year recover and get in many Thousands of men debts redress their Injuries, preserve their rights, secure their estates, rescue and take some Innocent men's lives and estates out of the jaws of death or oppression, support the hand of Justice, and is as eyes and ears unto it, puts her Judgement in the right way when it was sometimes almost carried off, ormislead into a wrong, and hath kept us and our forefathers in a greater safety & certainty of it than Roman Legions could have done, and Ten greatet Armies than we now bear the charge of.  
That in the determination or adjudging of every Action or Suit in Law or Equity, one of the parties is discontented, and one of them most commonly faulty, or much mistaken in the grounds of that Contest (Actions of Debt or of other natures, where the Plaintiff will not give time, and the Defendant only stands out a Suit to gain it only excepted) and do all they can to lay the fault upon the Law, when it should be charged upon themselves.  
And that the difficulty in the case before Solomon betwixt the true Mother of the Child, and the false, could not be charged upon any defects of the Hebrew Laws, or the Professors thereof, but the wickedness and false pretences of her that had no right to it, and that every discontent and every Complaint is not just because the party thinks it to be so; There will be as little cause to say that the practice of the Law, as to the Law itself, or to the Lawyers, is a grievance, or that they are worse than Ten Thousand Devils, as that Tenterden Steeple is the cause of Goodwyne Sands: For most of the things complained of in the Law (if impartially and knowingly examined) will appear to be neither from the Law, or by the Law it Self, or of the Essence, Nature, or Intention of it, but merely proceeding from the people, and their own misuse or abuse of them, which being not evil in themselves, but commanding good things to be done, and forbidding evil, are no more to be charged with the faults which the people themselves Commit in abusing of them, than that great Luminary and comfort of Mankind the Sun, can be said to be the cause of darkness, or ill influences, because in his journey or execution of his Office he is sometimes o'ercharged with Fogs, ill vapours, or exhalations from the Earth, which he would disperse or carry away, or meets with so many Clouds, interpositions, and Shadows of the Earth, Conjunctions of Planets, or Malevolent Aspects; than the necessary arts of Physic and Chirurgery are to be blamed for the many Errors and mischiefs are done by Montebanks, or confident and credulous women that have no skill in them; than wine and women for the General abuses of them, or Religion and the Sacred Scriptures, because the world hath of late been troubled with so many Heresies and Schisms, proceeding from the misinterpretation of the one, and practice of the other, and may the better be understood and believed to be thus Innocent, when those that not long ago could run to Westminster, and cry for justice against the Earl of Strafford, but for at most an endeavour to subvert the Laws, and cried out they could have no Trading or subsistence, if his head were not taken off, cannot now give us a reason why those very Laws, and the Courts that administered them, should not now be as good as they were then.  
Or why the Old Chancery and Court hands, which being made out of Saxon letters or Characters before any Friars or Monks ever came into England, have through so many generations come down to us, and given such a legibility, duration, and continuance to all our records, as they may yet be plainly seen and read for 7 or 8 hundred years past, should be more inconvenient, Popish, & Antichristian, than the Secretary, & other Mongrel and Scribble dashed hands made out of the Roman and Italian, which will not as it gins to appear already last 7 years together.  
Or why the Lawyers may not use Abbreviations as well as the Doctors & Apothecaries, or why Abbreviations should be bad & not allowable in Court or Chancery hands or writing, as well as in the writings which Merchants have daily occasion to use, in the Dutch, French, or Scottish Laws or writings: Or why the Law should be bad because the Lawyers do use Terms of Art or short expressions tending much to the ease of themselves, and the Court and Judges that are to hear them are not denied to all other Arts and Sciences, but are to Bricklayers and Carpenters, to Farriers who have their Terms of their own making, as to cure the Mallender, Farses, Truncheons, Bards and Wanders in a horse, and to heal a wound in the Lampas, and to the Seamen or Mariners who are never found fault with for using the Terms of Starboard, and Larboard, Lee shore, Misne-Mast, shrouds, bear up, Weather-gage, run so many glasses, and the like strange words and notions are not to be understood by any but those that have served long at the profession, and learned their Sea Grammar. Wherefore it will be time to tell those that shall thus labour to take away from the Nation their well-being by such their fond proposals, That the war to which they contributed was not undertaken by the late Parliament to pull down the fundamental Laws, but to preserve them, and that if the Articles or Public Faith but once given by the Army to Enemies upon the surrender of Oxford and other Garrisons were so precious and sacred to the late Parliament and Army, as well as it is to this, as not in the least part to be violated, Those many great protestations of the late Parliament and Army in very many of their Declarations and Remonstrances (some whereof were ordered to be read in Churches) and their Public Faith so many times reiterated and given, may surely give a stop and denial to these Traders in Innovation, especially when it shall be considered, that those Public Faiths and promises, were not made or given to those that were Enemies and fought against them, as the other side did in a jealousy, and distrust that they did not intent (as they promised, to maintain those Laws, which they pretended to fight for; but to those that believing them did adventure and engage all they had, and went all the way along with them; and that if there were nothing else to be said for it, the Parliament in their great and continual care of the People and Commonwealth will not certainly suffer the Chancery and all the Courts of Justice which depend upon it to be taken away, would be so much against the former Customs and reason of this as well as other Nations, as it is not be precedented, but will be contrary.   

CHAP. V That to put down or take away the Chancery, and so many Courts of Justice which depend upon it, will be so much against the former Customs or reason of or any other Nation, as it is not to be precedented.  
TO what was done by the Athenians, who in all their Ostracismes, and popular unquietness, could preserve their Laws and Courts of Justice. Or the Romans, who in all their Change and Tumbling from one government to another, in their sending for new Laws to Athens, their complaints and dislike of Magistrates.  
Bloody proscriptions of the Sullan and Marian factions; Tribunitial powers, Dictatorships, and revolving back again into Monarchy, could keep close to the body of their Laws and Constitutions.  
To what our Saviour Christ did in his reformation, who when he brought the glad Tidings of the Gospel into the world, took away the rigour and Ceremonial part of 
Hist. Juris Civil. composit per Justinianum  the Law without destroying the moral. To the reformatiof the Civil Laws by Justinian the Emperor, who having appointed Ten of the most eminent and worthy of his Empire, (amongst which were Tribonianus and divers learned professors of the Laws,) to read over and peruse all the voluminous Laws in being, did compile and make out of them his Pandects, and that body of the Civil Law which hath for above one Thousand years since inhabited and been esteemed amongst the most Civilised Nations of Europe, as a great part of their 
Chronic. Jo. Eromton.  guide and reason;  
Contrary to what our old King Alured or Alfred did about 800 years since, who could in Parliament reform some of the Laws made by King Ethelbert above 200 years before, punish some Judges, and think ne ver the worse of the Laws, for some abuse of them.  
To what William the Comquerour did, who by granting 
Chronic. Leichfieldense, & in 2 Edw. Confessor, confirm. per Gulielm. Conquest.  the Saxons their old Laws (many of which are still amongst us) strengthened his Conquests, and gave quiet entertainment to as many of his own edicts, and Norman Customs, as were found to be reasonable.  
To that of his Son Henry the first, Who could amend some of his Fathers and predecessors Laws, without overturning all the rest.  
To that of Henry of second, Who removed and altered many things amiss in the execution of Laws, but left that which was good and useful in them.  
To what was done by Edward the first, Who finding all his Judges but Two, so corrupt as they deserved punishments, did not banish all the Laws with them.  
To what was done by Henry the eighth, Who in the regulation 
Reformationes legum Ecclesiastic. & in Epist. H. 8. & E. 6.  of the Ecclesiastical Laws, appointed by Act of Parliament in 35 Hen. 8. to be done by eight Clergymen, eight Canon, eight Civil, and eight Common Lawyers; And by his most virtuous Son Edward the sixth delegated to that learned & Godly Martyr Thomas Cramner Arch Bishop of Canterbury, Peter Martyr, & other Divines, 2 Doctors of the Civil and Canon Laws, and two Common Lawyers, did leave what was good to remain of it.  
Contrary to what the States of Holland and the United Provinces did, who in their embittered detest of the Spanish government, could find it as necessary as reasonable, to keep their Common Law, Burgundian and Batavian 
Cornel. Neostad. in Epist. lib. de Successione feudi Juris script. Hollandiae.  customs, the Fewdal Laws of the Lombard's, and as much of the Roman and Civil Laws, as did not contradict their own, & therefore in the laying of the foundation of their confederacy and government did in one of the Articles of their solemn league made at Virecht in Anno 1579. bind one another to the defence of their Laws and Statutes, a Majoribus accepta, and ordered the People 
In Foedere Ultralect Anno 1579 Art. 2. & 21.  to be sworn unto them. To the Wisdom and proceed of our forefathers in Parliaments, who (if some of them had been foolish, could not for the Major part in every Parliament been have destitute of wisdom; or if in one year, meeting, time, age, or generation, cannot with the reputation of wisdom to any that shall so judge of them, be thought to have been so to a continual succession) did only correct, altar, and add, as there were necessities or occasions, but left us our Laws and reasonable customs to preserve our estates and properties.  
Contrary to all the Petitions and pretences of Grievances, that ever were exhibited by any of the people before, or since the Conquest, to any King, Parliament, great Council, or Assembly, for above one thousand years.  
To what our Ancestors did in England, Who in the change of governments, and succession of Kings, from the Saxons to the Danes, from them to the Normans, thence to the Plantagenet line, from the right Heirs to the wrong, from the red rose to the white, from the white to the red and white united in Henry the seventh, from the Catholic religion to the Protestant, from that to the Catholic, and from that back again to the Protestant from the English line to the Scottish, did never find any cause to take away that Court, which they found by so long and successive experiments to be the conservator of Justice.  
Contrary to the National Covenant, which many have endeavoured to prove to be consistent with the Engagement; to what was done by the late Parliament in their reformation of religion, wherein, though the Bishops and Book of Common Prayer were put down and abolished (and that not at once) did not put down all the Doctrine of the Church, or all the Discipline, or parts of it, nor shut up the Church doors.  
Contrary to the many Declarations vows and Imprecations of the late Parliament. The many Declarations and Remonstrances of the Army. The Course held in the late Conquests of Scotland and Ireland, who by enjoying their Laws and Courts of Justice have yielded an easier submission to it. The Act of the late Parliament in erection of this Commonwealth, which declared and promised to the people that they would not alter, nor take away the fundamental Laws. The People's purpose of their engagement upon it. The Act or order of Parliament for the regulation of the Laws. The regulators Systeme, and the Nature of a reformation or regulation. The late Act for taking away Fines in Chancery, and many of the Petitions that of late have been against the Laws, which desired a regulation, but not a total taking of them away.   

CHAP. VI That the very Being of Parliaments is preserved by the Laws, and that so great a distemper and disturbance as will come upon the people by putting down of the Laws, will by a necessity of Justice, and of the better ordering of Affairs, bring them back again by a revolution of time into their old Channel.  
WHich for so much of them as have their Principles from the Laws of Nature and right reason, and the consent of them, or are founded and deduced from them, are so interwoven and radicated in the very Being of Parliaments, so inseparable from it, and so reciprocate to it, as that high Court of Parliament, which is not by themselves intended to be any standing or ordinary Court or Rule of Justice, cannot when it shall sit upon emergencies or matters of greater consequence, be without it, no more than the people can in the Intervals or absence of it, for that the Law of Nature, which God imprinted and put into the Hearts of all Mankind, and that Law of reason, which bindeth Creatures reasonable in this world, and with which by Reason they most plainly perceive themselves to be bound, and so much of our Laws, which out of the Law either of God, or Nature, or Reason, our Forefathers probably gathered and conceived to be expedient (which the learned Hooker putting all together calleth the second 
Hooker 1 lib. Ecclesiastical Policy  Law eternal) are so in some sort immutable, as they cannot be taken away, or repealed by any Act of Parliament whatsoever, but will return and grow up again with the nature and reason of Mankind; for Laws of men, not contrary to the Law of God, nor to the Law of reason, are to be observed in the Law of the Soul and 
Doctor and Student 4 Chap.  he that despiseth them resisteth God, and that which plain and necessary reason bindeth men unto, will upon some inconvenience or necessity, at one time or other, get itself in again, and obtain an allowance or ratification of human Laws for it.  
Which should advise a great inspection, and examination, into the nature, cause, and effect of all our Laws, before a sentence of condemnation pass against them, that so it may be clearly known, what, and how much of them have their Being from the Law of God or Nature, right reason, or convenience, and a value accordingly put upon them, that the Gold may not be cast away for the dross, nor the Saint for his infirmity; That we may not be sent to seek after in the rubbish for that we might have kept, or laid by, or not seem to have pullen down all the house, when some little part of it would have served the turn, or to be such ill Husbands, as to cast away the materials might have served for the new building, and is better or more substantial than any can be gotten instead of it, of which opinion were all our former Parliaments, who hitherto in their correcting and altering of Laws, could never be brought to forsake any thing might be good, or fit to 
Sir Francis Bacon. Judge Hutton in his argument against the ship money, and Lord Hobart in his Reports.  remain of them, and all our Forefathers, who in their greatest esteem and reverence of Parliaments, did believe that an Act of Parliament itself, enacting any thing against Common right, and right reason, would be void, and of none effect; to what end then should these men solicit a Parliament, to take away the matter of its own form and subsistence, and its Being or coexistence with the Laws, or to take away that which is to be a rule of justice to the people, when they cannot themselves intent it, or to lay by those Laws which the wisdom of their Predecessors thought they had done the people good service when they did procure them to be enacted, and those reasonable customs which the people were wont to swear their Kings to observe, when the late Parliament took it to be a good way for the preservation of the Laws and Liberties of the people, that Sheriffs and Justices should be sworn to the 
Remonstrance 15 December 1641. and 26 of May 1642.  due execution of the petition of right (m) Styled themselves the Conservatory of Laws, took Arms for the maintenance thereof, & appealed to the people touching that imputation (which they said was then laid upon them) that they which represented all the Commons of England, and had so great a share in it, should endeavour to take away the Laws, and run so great a hazard to make themselves Slaves.  
Wherefore, if the Parliament (to please these unquiet and proposing spirits, and let them see what is to ask Stones instead of Bread, or Serpents instead of Fishes) should give them the misery which they demand of them, and contribute (which cannot be easily imagined) so much to their unruly desires, as to let them fling off their old Laws, like an unuseful, or too long a worn garment; It will be no hard matter without the help of Lily, and his College of Astrologers, to foresee (what, besides the many mischiefs and inconveniences before recited, must be endured and gone through in the interim) and foretell what will become of it; for suppose it to be done, and that we see the old man put into his Cradle again, or Adam into his Apron of fig-leaves, the event will come up as close as a Conclusion to good Premises, that such young Committees or new model Courts will in time creep into the method and manner of the old; all that was reason in one case or cause will be made use of, and made a precedent in another: The wiser and most able men will be followed, plead and allegations will be by the Committee or Judges themselves ordered to be with Certainties or Method; The Court or Committee will more willingly hear those that can save them a labour, by speaking more short and pertinently, than the parties themselves, and the parties themselves will rather desire men of skill, and such as know the usage and orders of the Courts and Committees, to speak for them, than to adventure to do it themselves, when their interest may beget a passion and disturbance, and hinder them from the right managing and ordering of their own business, abuses and misdoings of those that attend those Courts or Committees will from time to time require new orders and officers to prevent them. For in this, manner, in all probability, and without doubt, those most venerable and useful Courts at Westminster came by degrees and small beginnings, through the Course and care of so many ages to the perfection is now to be seen in them, cannot be denied by those that shall without the Spectacles of ignorance or partiality, but equally and judiciously look upon them.  
But if any shall doubt of this necessity of the Laws falling again into their own Channel, after a Series or long course of inconveniences to the people, and some ages spent in bewailing the loss of their former happiness; Let them see but what hath been done but in three or four years' space in the Committee of Sequestrations at Haberdasher's Hall, who from a Committee of seven Commissioners, with a Clerk or Register to attend them, can now use the benefit of a Bar to admit Lawyers and such as know the use of their Committee to plead before them, order some things to be done by the Clarks and officers in an ordinary Course, and other things not to order, and have the use of an Examiner, Remembrancer, and Assistant, Counsel of the Court, can refer causes, have an Auditor, an Attorney, or Solicitor General, mark, sign, and seal, their orders or warrants whereby they may not be counterfeited, order men to take Copies of their own Petitions, and leave the originals, to file affidavits and reports, and that none shall be heard without bringing the last order, or a Copy thereof under the Registers hands; Turn the way of Petitions as is now lately done into a way of Motions, have under- Clarks in several distributions of employment, Doorkeepers, Messengers or Sergeants, to commit and imprison men for not obeying their orders; order and allow of Fees to be taken by their Officers, appoint certain days and times for several sorts of business, and have their vacations or intermissions, in which Committee or Court now a breeding, although every man hath a liberty of pleading or speaking in his own cause, yet because he that was never there before, may hurt, or mischief, or perplex his own business, or go a longer way about, for want of the knowledge of the ways or courses there holden, or what is fit to be asked, or is usually, or ordinarily granted, most men that have to do with them, are so unwilling to be without the help of Lawyers, or those that can instruct them, as they make use of Solicitors, and those that are not Lawyers, to move and plead for them, insomuch as little Mr. Kirk formerly a Clerk of the Committee of the imdempnity, and Captain Smith formerly a Tradesman, do constantly appear and plead at that Bar in their black Caps, with great bundles of Breviars and papers, as if they were grave professors and Sergeants at Law; So as it may be ringhtly enough concluded, that until there shall be (which God forbidden) a prohibition against all reason, the Laws which are but right reason, cannot be totally taken away, or if they shall receive a change from the old right way of reason, to a new and round about way of it, there will be a necessity of making use of them again for the people, and the reason that hath heretofore guided them, can no more be kept from the same paths they have troad in all this while, or some other made very near, or like unto them, than they will be from all manner of reasoning, or use of their natural Logic, though the art of Logic should be forbidden to be used, or the use of medicines, though that most necessary art and profession of Physic be banished out of this Commonwealth, for which, they that shall thus propose the casting away of the old Laws, and Rules of reason, will at the best get no more thanks of the Major part of the people, than a Physician shall have of his patient, for putting him out of a competency of health, into an absolute sickness, and leave him after many years troublesome course of Physic, and diet, to find his way (if he can) again into his former condition.  
But lest these that thus trouble themselves to bring trouble upon a whole Nation, as well as themselves, should so over- esteem that which they intent to put in the room of our good old Laws, and Customs, as to think no loss or ruin so great, but may be recompensed by what they offer instead of it; It will not be amiss to examine by the rule of right reason, and what hath happened formerly, and what is like to come by such proposals (if they should be granted) and how far those kind of new ways may amount to a happiness of the Nation.   

CHAP. VII. That the erecting of so many new Courts, as are proposed, or the cutting and translating the great Courts at Westminster into so many little Jurisdictions, will (besides the  Inconveniences) not only be very prejudicial to the State, but to the people.  
THe cantoning or cutting of the Courts at Westminster Hall into so many County Courts, or parts (as some have proposed) will if there should be but a standing Court in every County, (except London and Middlesex) make almost as many great Courts in England and Wales (besides those carcases of Courts, which some are content to leave at Westminster to determine Appeals, and other necessaries to that contrivement) as there will be Counties, the yearly allowance or Salary of whose Judges, if they should have but two hundred pound per Annum for every Judge, according to the number of Five in every County Court of Fifty, will amount to 50000 l. per Annum more charges than the Commonwealth is at already for Judge's Salaries.  
And when they shall be thus paid and furnished out, will (if Lawyers shall be so much excluded from being Judges as hath been proposed) be as to Four in every Five of them, mere Strangers to the Laws of the Land, or know so little of them, as not to be relied upon for their Judgements: For we cannot suppose that the eleven Judges in the Courts at Westminster Hall are intended to be any of them, or can be at one and the same time at Westminster, and in these new County Courts, or serve, or be enough to make one, in every of these Fifty County Courts, as some would contrive it, to sit with these new County Judges, who having (as is to be feared) not read much of men, or books, will have no ground or capacity for knowledge to grow in, nor any thing of parts or learning to build up an ability withal, but be wilful, or obstinate in their ways or opinions for want of better understanding, or domineering, because they shall not be able to know when they do well or ill. And if they should be honest (which perhaps will not always happen) their want of knowledge of the Laws, and the rules they should go by; their not knowing how to understand what shall be said to them, nor what answers to give; their inability to expound the Law by other Laws, or make a right construction of the words or meaning of Deeds or Parties, or to distinguish and divide betwixt truth and falsehood, right and wrong, reason and pretences of it, colour or reality, or how to find the difference betwixt the Cases or Evidences that shall be urged by the one side or the other, or to state the matter of Fact, or to sever the point or material part from the circumstances, will make them as fruitful in their oppression as in their errors, and mistakes, apt to be led or misled by their fellow Judges that shall be Lawyers, or (which will be worse) to be like wax taking the impression of every man's Seal that shall be last clapped upon them; be directed by a Wife, or Clerk, or some other simple or knavish favourite, that shall broke and trade in every cause that shall come before them, and be sure to abuse it.  
Trouble and delay the people with needless scruples and niceties, by making Queries or doubts of that, which to others would be common and easy, and stumbling at every word that comes not up to their apprehensions, give advantage to knaves, and put men to seek indirect Courses or ways to balance the Judges, because they dare not trust them to do that which they ought to do; hurt rather, than help such as shall be innocent and oppressed, or are not allowed. Counsel to plead for them, make them be ready to allow of all the reasons given by the Plaintiffs Counsel, and as ready to approve of that which the Counsel for the Defendant shall urge against it, and for want of knowledge to guide them in their Judgements, to be incertain, and instable, making an order one day at the instigation of the Plaintiff, and another the next day quite contrary to it at the request of the Defendant, be like Feathers blown with every wind of Doctrine, and like Bowls run only according to the Bias shall be put upon them; one will like the Mole in the Fable, think himself the most clear sighted of all his fellows, another help to misled himself, and others by endeavouring to make men believe that which he speaks is from Christ Jesus, when he never spoke with him, or knows how to expound his written word; another will have a fancy of the Spirit or think himself guifted, when he himself would not trust the most guifted Tradesman to settle a Daughter's jointure, or make his Conveyance, & when they shall have nothing of learning or Law to make use of but their own will & weak apprehensions, will make such kind of Justice as will be had from them more arbitrary than that of a Tyrant, whose will and purpose of governing without Laws when he knows them, cannot be so lasting and dangerous as the will of those men of ignorance, which shall be only guided by the necessity of an invincible ignorance, and may prove to be a greater oppression to the people, than it those that shall be thus made to be corrupt, or to do like unrighteous Judges had been knowingly wicked, for that the one sort doth commit numberless errors by not knowing them, and the other commits but a few, because they dare not adventure to do it often. Whereas the old constitutions and course of the Laws of England (as ill as the proposers think of them) knew how to serve the people better, by making choice of such men for Judges, as by Seven years' study in an Inns of Court, or College of Law had come to the degree of Barresters, And from thence after a great number of years' practice, and continuance of Study to be Readers of the Law to the Inns of Court, whereof they were, after that Sergeants at Law, and after that for their eminency of parts and honesty to be Judges, where by a continual Study, observation, and practice of the Law from their age of 16 or 17. until they came to be (as it most commonly happens before they come to be Judges) above Threescore years of age, they became to be great Masters of reason, and so fully experimented in the whole body of the Law, and Customs of the Nation, as by their knowledge therein, and of the Civil and Cannon Laws which border upon them, and so many Cases and experiments as had in all that time passed through the course of their Studies, and practice, as they were honourable in the gates of their people, and appeared completely able to contradict or rectify Hundreds of other Lawyers that moved or pleaded before them, and not only to advise the Supreme Authority, when they were called to it, concerning the making or executing of Laws, but to apply fit remedies to every man's action or grievance that came before them, and had all their life after no other Trade or profession to divert or call off their thoughts from a continual Study of the Law, and right administration of justice.  
But if it shall be said, that all that Catalogue of evils will be prevented by a careful choice, or election of such as shall be made Judges, out of the best, or most knowing of the people, that will but, little amend the matter, when the Lawyers, all but such as shall be chosen to make one of the five in every County (who as to the Administration of Justice are the best and most knowing of the people) shall be laid aside, and forbidden to be chosen, for there must needs be a strange election, when blind men shall be employed to buy pictures, or the Boys in every parish to choose their School-mamasters. And if there could be any election without the guide or direction of a party or faction, it will not be uneasy to guess, whether the Self conceited, well known, little wisdom of the multitude doth most commonly carry them, or to believe that the knowledge of the Law, in one of every 5 of those County Judges, when 4 or the Major part of them shall be at liberty to be ignorant, will as little help the business, as Alexander the Coppersmith, and Demetrius the Silver Smith did Paul in the preaching of the Gospel, or if it should happen that one of every five of those Judges of the County Courts being a Lawyer (though it may by, they may be such as have have only the name or Title of it, or for want of practice have lost, or are to seek what they have read of it) should be so much relied upon for their judgements, as to be able to guide and govern the rest which are no Lawyers, To what end should the Commonwealth be at the charge of such cyphers, or those cyphers should only sit to receive or take such Figures, as the Suitors or people shall add unto them? The Lawyer- Judges, if they chance to be as wise as Ulysses, will be but set to blow with such kind of Cattle as he did; and therefore it was not unwisely said to King james by the Conde de Gondomar that grand Spanish politician, who when he had demanded of him, what was the reason he had put the Lord Chancellor Bacon, who was so eminent a wise man out of his place, and left in the Chancery Sir julius Caesar, who by his ignorance committed many more errors, and the King had answered him, that the Parliament advised & importuned him to put him out, because he was a knave (though in truth it was only some of his corrupt servants had abused him) replied, that they had a Proverb or saying in Spain, that it was better to have a Thief in a Vinyard, than an Ass, for that the one took but what he stole without spoiling the Vinyard, but the other trod down and spoiled all before him.  
Which may come to be sadly enough experimented in our own cases, when the liberties and properties of the people shall be lost, and made uncertain by those that should take a care of them; when those that shall be as the Watchmen of Israel, and neither slumber nor sleep, shall have neither eyes to see, nor ears to hear, neither understand their Office, or know how to execute it, wherein it is not the well meaning of those that shall undertake so weighty a business, will be able to protect them from the great sin of presumption, which they shall incur by taking a charge upon them they could not perform, nor secure the people from the damage and losses they shall sustain by them, when time and authority shall beget in them a power, and that power like a Loadstone, draw in and allure factions and parties, and those factions and parties busy themselves in misleading their good intentions, out of the narrow and seldom trodden path of Righteousness, into the great road of partiality and oppression.  
From whom if there should be no appeals, or seeking further for Justice, it would not only be contrary to what was counselled by Jethro, ordained by God himself, and practised by Moses in bringing the most difficult causes, or those that could not be determined in the smaller Courts, to the Judgement of higher Courts, or the Supreme authority, but to all other Laws and governments of the world whatsoever, and make every one of those new little Courts to be too much independent.  
Or if there should be an allowance of appeals, make as many, if there should be but a hundred in a year, from every one of those new County Courts (which is like to be the least at the lowest computation) for if there were no real grievances, many will as they did, and do still use to do in the the Civil Law, Appeal to win time, or shelter themselves from the extremity of an adversary) as may amount to 5000 in every year, and every of those appeals bring to the people so many second hear, and a double expense of time and money, from which also, if there should be any Law made to obstruct or hinder them, by some mulct or sum of money, ordered to be paid or deposited upon the bringing of every appeal, so as few shall have the mind or ability to go through with it, that will but raise the discontent and cry of the people higher, when they shall find themselves sent on an errand, to receive Law or Justice from those that understand it not, and for want of understanding in their Judges, be cast either into a greater controversy, or an appeal to complain of a grievance, and when they think they should have better Justice, must not have it, because they cannot be at the price or hazard is put upon it: Or if the Judges should be fined, as some would have it, for their errors (though by the Law as long ago as King Edgar, a 
In ll Edgari cap. 1 & in Guliel. 1 cap. 15  Judge was not to be fined, if he would make oath, that he did as well as he could, or that he did it only by error or mistake, and not of Malice, or by corruption) they that have any wit or estate, will rather quit their places to such as have neither of them, then take upon them, or continue such a place of continual hazard and unquiet, and then the matter will be fairly mended, and besides, there will be no small difficulty at any time to assign or fasten the errors upon the Judges, who it may be for want of skill were misled by the Plaintiffs or Defendants themselves, or had not the matter or fact clearly stated before them, and then there will be no reason to lay the fault upon the Judges, when they did as well as they could, and they might have chosen wiser.  
Such new County Courts will beget in every Province several Laws and Jurisdictions or power (for as long as there shall be inequality of riches or places (which ever was and ever aught to be) there will be powers, and authorities over-awing one another) one power will grow greater than another, and perhaps too powerful for the other parts of the Government, and commit all manner of injustice and oppression.  
The Justice of the Nation, which next to the Military and protection part of it, is and aught to be the greatest care of the Supreme power, and is so much the more Superior to the other, as it is the end of it, and not only helps to put the Sword again into the Scabbard, when it is drawn, but very much conduces to keep it from coming out again, and is in the ordinary execution thereof at this time trusted out into less than twelve hands in the ordinary Courts of Law at Westminster, will by these proposals upon very small security be trusted and put into the hands of Two Hundred and Fifty men more, who will want that wisdom as well as estates, which the other have to make them responsal; whereby the Supreme power of the Nation, may by its being too much divided and diffused into such lesser bodies, come to want that strength and entireness it hath formerly had and enjoyed in the several succession of Kings for almost One Thousand years together, by keeping their residence in the chief City or part of the Nation, As David and the Kings of Juda did at Jerusalem, and as all other Kings and Estates do in other Nations, with their chief Courts of Justice about them, where the pulse, contents and discontents of the People, from all parts of the body Politicque may be felt, whither all their Complaints or principal business might Circulate and come, and pass to and fro, like the blood from all parts of the Body, to the Heart, and from thence back again to all parts of the Body, and whither the Common sense did from time to time bring in its Intelligence to the great Counsel which was holden in the Brayn for preservation of the Heart as well as every part of the body.  
They that heretofore could with one expense and charges prosecute a suit at Law at Westminster, and at the same time attend the Parliament, or their Committees, the Council of State, the Exchequer or Committee of revenue, and the motions and designs of their adversaries, who it may be had bills in Chancery, or actions in some other Court of Westminster depending against them at the same time, and do many other businesses whilst they remained there, meet and confer with Friends, or Foreiners, or people of all parts of the Nation, could make bargains, and dispose of Children, and have the help or assistance in their Suits at Law of the ablest & most eminent Lawyers in their several Inns of Court or Stations, must now perhaps go to the Shire Town as a Plaintiff or Defendant at Law, and to London for his other business, & be content with such Lawyer's only in his own Country as are there resident, when it may be there are none eminent, or very able, to be had there, or be enforced to procure such as are to come at great rates, one hundred or Two hundred miles at a time, from the places where they inhabit, and that Country and many a more distressed Client want them in the mean time.  
Such a multitude of Courts will throw many men, especially such as have great dealing and multitude of business with men of many Counties, into so many journeys and perplexities, as they shall never be at leisure from attending one Court or other, whereas now one man that hath occasion to prosecute Actions of debt against one Hundred Debtors living in 20 Counties, dispersed over the whole Nation, doth his business without Travelling or sending any further than to London, Streightens and gives men no time to provide their evidence or Witnesses, and puts the Lawyers as well as their Clients by so much attendance at so many several Courts into a continual attendance or Travelling from one Shire to another, and will not a little distract men's affairs, to have an Action at one and the same time to be tried or called upon at London, Cornwall, Barwick, and Pembroke Shire, where they should be personally at every one of them, and can be but at one, and must be in a continual unquietness and trouble, when all the year shall be as a continual Term, or time of controversy, and when they shall be enforced to neglect their affairs of Husbandry and Harvest, to travel and tyre themselves through all the lines of the Circumference, when they might have a shorter way to and from the Centre, which by the intermission of Terms and Vacations, and the known and convenient times of Assizes, when the Terms were ended, was by the Laws now in being sufficiently prevented.  
But these are not like to be all the inconveniences neither, for if the Courts of Westminster shall besides the Two and Fifty County Courts to be taken out of them be cut into lesser pieces, by giving cognisance of pleas, of Actions, of Trespass, Battery, and the like, and of Actions of debt under 40 shillings as some would have it, there will then be as many smaller Courts as will make us up above 2600 Courts, the Judges whereof will look to be paid as well as the Judges of the other Courts for the neglect of their own business, to take care of other men's, and if they should have but 50 l. per annum a piece for standing salaries, will make a yearly charge to the State, of above Sixty Five Thousand pounds per annum, or if they shall be prohibited their taking of Fees, will grow careless and nnwilling to be troubled, pretend to be sick or absent when they are not, or half hear causes, or like some of the Midlesex, or Suburban Justices take a great deal more in Fees and Incomes than that would come to, and do as little for it as they use to do in matters of Breach of this Peace or petty Brawls, which is to bind them over to the Sessions, and take their Fees for it, and for those causes which they shall adventure to determine beget in a year more appeals than there shall be Justices of the peace, which in a year but after the rate of 2600 petty Courts or more, but 40 Times appealed from, every one of them, will yield to the people above One Hundred Thousand appeals, which may cost them no small money & time to maintain, and bring to a hearing, and by such double and triple agitations, discovery of Titles, and evidence, and half hearing of their causes, make their contentions grow as endless as their Charges.   

CHAP. VIII. That it will not only raise up again those old grievances, which were formerly the cause of disusing, or restraining the Sheriffs Turns, County Courts, Court Barons, and Hundred Courts, and such like petty Jurisdictions, but far exceed them.  
BUt surely they that thus err for want of knowledge, and do too much build upon their own ignorance, would, if they knew the reasons that accompany our Laws, not be so forward to go back again into those evils which our Ancestors and the care of former Parliaments did bring us out of, nor take that to be a new and better way, is but a going back again into them, and a reviving of old grievances.  
We shall therefore show them, what they were, & let them see they are very like unto that they are now: so willing to establish amongst us. The Courts called Hundreds, Wapentakes, & the County Courts, had their original by consent of most Authors from K. Alfred, who 
n Polidor in Guliel. Conq. Spelman Gloss. in verb. Justitia  would not trust them with Capital or Chief matters Criminal, but reserved them ad Majores Justitiarios. And though he gave them power to determine lesser matters, yet did he as well as King Ina his predecessor, and those Saxon and Danish Kings, Edward the elder, Athelstane, Ethelbert, Edgar, Canutus, and Edward the Confessor which succeeded him, give leave to any to appeal, pro defectu justitiae, or when right could not be obtained.  
But that being in a time when the smallness of Commerce, paucity, poverty, and inculture of people, little acquaintance with Navigation, or Foreign Customs, continual wars one with another, in a Heptarchy, or multiplicity of Kings, and Invasions of the Danes, could not allow them much business at Law, and if they had where withal to have been contentious, were so bound up by certain strict Laws, fit only for a people were newly escaped out of Paganism, and lived in a Country more like a desert or Wilderness, than as now it is, as they could not if they would have many Suits at Law to trouble the lesser or greater Courts withal, for in every Tithing 
o In ll. E. Confess. cap. 20.  or Friborgh, every man answered so for one another, as they were bound to bring offenders to Justice, every 
p In ll. Edgari c. 6 & in legibus Ethelredi cap. 1.  man did put in securities to do right to one another, the Lord for 
q In ll. H. 1. c. 23 et 41. in ll. Canuti c. 25 & 28. & in ll. Ethelst. cap. 10.  his Tenants, and the Master for his Servants; 
r In legibus Edw. Reg. cap. 1.  no man bought any thing without a pledge or voucher, or exchanged goods but before a Magistrate, or the Minister, or Lord of the Manor, he that 
s In ll. Aluredi c. 33. & in ll. Ethelstani cap. 8.  received a Stranger, answered for any thing 
t In ll. E. Reg & in ll. Canuti cap. 64.  he had done in the place from whence he came; no man under a penalty harboured a Fugitive, or kept him from Justice, he that was misdoubted 
u In ll. Inae. In ll. Edgari c. 2 & l. Canuti li. 16.  or accused, was in many things to purge himself, by his own oath, or of so many of his neighbours, & if any had (w) complained before they had demanded right in those lesser Courts, were fined and punished.  
Yet though those Courts had their work so much done to their hands, the people were so little notwithstanding satisfied with their Justice, as we shall find William the Conqueror afterwards to have his Chief justice to at tend him for the determining of such causes as came to demand his Justice, his Son William Rusus the like, and by that time the Crown came to Henry the first, who was not also without his Chief Justice, the Laws began to take notice of the different Laws of Provinces, of a penuria judicum in 
w In ll. H. 1. c. 7.  some Hundreds, & of violences & disturbances, which made [a necessity of carrying some causes upon denying right to be done in those Courts to the County Courts, (all actions of breach of the peace, and pleas of Treasons, Murder, Coynings of moneys, and many more which are enumerated in his Law de Jure Regis, then belonging to the King.)  
King Stephen had his Chief Justices, and when King Henry the second comes to reign, the Kingdom was so full of exactions and oppressions, as he is much troubled how to find a man fit, and honest enough to make 
Chronic. Jo Bromton.  a Chief Justice of, though he had tried Abbots and Earls, Commanders and Soldiers, and Spiritual men as well as Secular, and therefore we find him upon the people's Complaints of their want of justice from several parts of the Kingdom in a Parliament at Nottingham in Anno Domini One Thousand One Hundred Seventy Six, (in imitation of what had been formerly done in France, 
x Spelman Glossar in verb. Justice. tinerant.  by Carolus Calvus in Anno Eight Hundred Fifty and Three) ordaining justices Itinerant or in Eyre according to their allotments of several Shires, but all Fines levied in the King's Court, Actions of debt, writs of Assize, Dower, advowson, and all or most pleas of consequence brought and held in the King's Courts (except such as were sometimes allowed by his Writs or 
lib. 11. c. 1.  Commission to be determined in the Sheriff's Court or the Hundred, or Courts Barons) for any might then 
lib. 12. c. 7.  remove an Action from the lesser Courts to the Kings, 
3 c. 3. et 5.  or have an Accedas ad Curiam, or prohibition, if we may believe Glanvil, 
y Glanvil lib. 10. c. 1.  who was his Chief Justice.  
In his Son Richard the first his time the power and privileges of Sheriffs did grow so great in their Counties and Courts, as some Bishops whose places in those times led them quite off from Secular employments, were enticed to take upon them the Offices of Sheriffs, but were questioned for it afterwards, and forbidden by the Pope to intermeddle any more in them. But about 9 H 3. the Complaints of the people did so follow the King and his Chief Justice, as it was enacted by Parliament that Common pleas should not follow the Court, but be holden in 
9 H. 3. c.  some place certain, in 52 H. 3. Complaints were made 
52 H. 3. cap. 11.  in Parliament, that great men, and divers others, refused to be justified by the King and his Court, as they ought and were wont to be, in the time of his progenitors, but took great revenges and distresses of their Neighbours, and others, until they had amends and Fines at their own pleasure; And would not suffer delivery of such distresses as they had taken of their own authority, distrained men to do Suit to their Courts, that 
Eodem Anno c. 9  were not bound by their Deeds or Enfeoffments, amerced men wrongfully for default of Common Summons, and compelled 
c. 17 & 22.  Freeholders to answer for their Freeholds without the Kings writ.  
In the reign of his Son E. 1. as appeareth by Britton who compiled a book of the Laws by the King's appointment, all men by a Public Cry and proclamation were to come with their plaints, causes, and actions before the Justices in Eyre, when they came into the Counties, and all other pleas to Cease, and all those who claimed any Franchyses were to show their Title to them, and special inquiries made of Sheriffs, Bailiffs, and Stewards, concerning the execution of their Offices, maintaining Quarrels, amercing men wrongfully, committing extortions, and holding pleas in debt or trespass above Forty Shillings, which did not belong to 
Britton c. 2. 20. 21.  them, 3 E. 1. cap. 15. Sheriffs and others did let out of prison such as were not repleviseable, and kept in prison such as were  
Beasts were distrained and carried into another County; Great men and their Bailiffs did attach and arrest others, passing through their Jurisdiction, and compelled them to answer upon Contracts covenants and Trespasses done out of their power and Jurisdiction, 13 E. 1. cap. 13. Sheriffs did in their Turns feign men to be indicted before them for felony, and Trespasses, and imprisoned them, and exacted money of them, when they were not lawfully indicted by Twelve Jurors, Lords of Courts, and others that kept Courts and Stewards, 
cap. 36.  intending to grieve their Inferiors, did procure others to enter Actions in their Courts, and to move matters against them, and to put in sureties and pledges, or to purchase writs, and compel men to follow their County Courts, Hundreds, Wapentakes, or other like Courts, until they had made Fine at their will, Sheriffs, Hundredors', and Bailiffs of liberties, did use to grieve such as were in subjection to them, putting in Assizes and Juries men diseased and decrepit, and such as dwelled in other Counties, to extort money from them, and Bailiffs intending to grieve their Inferiors to the end they might exact money of them, did send Strangers to take distresses, by reason that the parties so distrained, and not knowing such persons, would not suffer the distresses to be taken; 33 Ed. 1. Stewards and Bailiffs of great Lords did undertake to bear, or maintain quarrels which concerned other parties. 38 E. 3. Great 
cap. 3.  men came armed and with power to disturb the execution of Justice, 4 E. 3. cap. 11. Divers as well great men as other made Alliances, confederacies, and conspiracies, to maintain parties, pleas, and quarrels, whereby divers were wrongfully disinherited, ransomed, and destroyed. 14 Ed. 3. cap. 16. Inquests and Juries were taken in divers Counties where no Justice did come, to the great mischief of the Parties that did sue, as also of the good people that were impanelled, and Sheriffs did let their Hundred Courts at great rates, to the impoverishing and oppression of the People. 17 E. 3. The 
Rot. Parl. in 38.  Commons Petition that excessive Fines imposed on them by such as have Leets might be redressed, 20 Ed. 3. cap. 6. Bailiffs of Franchises, and their under-ministers did commit maintenance, and imbracery of Jurors, and took gifts, rewards, and other profits, which they did take to array panels, and to execute them, to the subversion of the Laws, and disturbance of Common right. 31. Ed. 3. cap. 15. Sheriffs held their Turns in time of Harvest, and hindered the people. 20 Rich. 2. cap. 10. Notorious Thiefs were delivered by favourable inquests procured to the great hindrance of the people; Lords, 
cap. 3.  and other great men did use to sit upon the Bench with justices of Assize. 17. Ed. 4. cap. 2. Courts of Pypowder were misused by Stewards, Vnder-Stewards, and Baylifls holding pleas for contracts made out of the Fairs. 1 Rich. 3. cap. 4. Divers inconveniences and perjuries did daily happen in divers Shires of England, by untrue verdicts before Sheriffs in their Turns, by persons of no behaviour, nor dreading God, nor the world's shame. cap. 6. Courts of Pypowder were misused by Stewards and Bailiffs upon feigned plaints to trouble men to whom they own evil will to make men lose their Fair, or to get favourable inquests, whereby many coming to the Fairs were grievously vexed for contracts made out of the Fair, The Lords lost their profits of their Fairs, and the People wanted those merchandises, would otherwise come to them. II. Hen. 7. cap. 15. Great extortion was used in divers Countries, by under-sheriffs, Shire-Clerks, and other Officers, holding and keeping County-Courts, and in the name of the Sheriffs, by entering Plaints without the Plaintiffs direction against Defendants, to the intent that if they appear not, they may be amerced; or entered Plaints in the name of such as were dead, and to that end did not at all attach or summon the Defendants, but caused the said amerciaments to be levied. 3 H. 8. cap. 12. Great extortions and oppressions were by Sheriffs, and their Ministers, by impanelling such as will be perjured. 26 Henry 8. cap. 4. Juries in Wales gave untrue verdicts, because upon indictments of Murder, and Felons, the Kindred and Friends to such offenders had access to them.  
27 H. 8. cap. 7. Divers oppressions, maintenance, imbraceries, riots, trespasses, etc. were in Chester and Wales, by reason that common justice was not administered there as in other places, by reason of a divers ministration of Justice. Divers authorities of justice appertaining to the King had 
cap. 24.  been granted away, to the great hindrance and delay of Justice. 
cap. 26.  By reason of diversity of Laws and usages in Wales and England, great discords, variance and sedition have risen betwixt the People.  
Which irregularities of Small Courts, so all along from time to time complained of in Parliament, were not only the cause of making those many Acts of Parliament in those several years to redress those grievances, but of the making of several other Acts of Parliament: As that in 13 E. 1. cap. 30. authorising Justices of Nisi prius, to go at certain times of the year into the Counties; that of 27 E. 1. cap. 3. and 4. to make those justices of Assize justices of Gaol delivery, and that inquests and recognizances taken before justices of either Bench should be taken in time of vacation before any of the justices before whom the plea is brought. That of 28 E. 1. cap. 10. that against Conspirators, false informers, procurers of inquests, and juries, remedy should be had, by a writ out of the Chancery, and that the Justices of both Benches and Justices assigned to take Assizes, should, when they come into the Country, upon every plaint made unto them, award inquests. Char of 12 E. 2. cap. 3. and 4. that inquests and Juries in pleas of Land that require great examination, should be taken in the Country before two Justices of the Bench, and that which they shall have done shall be reported in the Bench at a certain day there to be enrolled, and thereupon Judgement shall be given; And to provide that inquests and Juries should notwithstanding be taken in the Bench if they came. That of 2 E. 3. cap. 2. that Assizes, Attaints, and Certifications be taken before the Justices commonly assigned, which be good men and lawful, having knowledge of the Law, and none other. That of 14 E. 3. cap. 16. that nisi prius shall be granted, as well at the Suit of the Defendant as of the Plaintiff, and before a Justice of another Court, then where the Suit dependeth, and if it happen that none of the Justices of the one Bench or the other may go into the Country, then Nisi prius to be granted before the Chief Baron of the Exchequer if he be a man learned in the Law, and in case he cannot go, then before Justices assigned to take assizes in those parts; so as one of the said Justices assigned be Justice of the one Bench or the other, or the King's Sergeants sworn. That of 20 R. 2. cap. 10. that two learned men in the Law Justices of the peace shall be in Commission of Goal delivery. And of making the several Acts of Parliament, 28 E. 1. cap. 14. 9 E. 2. cap. 4. 4 E. 3. cap. 5. 9 E. 3. cap. 3. 14 E. 3. cap. 7. 28 E. 3. cap. 7. 1 R. 2. cap. 11. & 1 H. 4. cap. 4. That none should be Sheriffs and Bailiffs for above a year together, or but such as had sufficient to answer the Complaints of the people; that bailiwicks, and Hundreds should not be let to Farm at over great Rents; that Sheriff's Clerks should not practise as Attorneys during their office; the Act of Parliament in 28 E. 1. cap. 4. That the Chancellor, and the Justices of the King's Bench, should follow the King, that he might have at all times near unto him some that were Learned in the Laws, which might be able daily to order such matters as should come unto the Court at all Times when need should require; that of 28 E. 1. cap. 7. That the Constable of Dover should hold no pleas within the Castle gate, but such as did belong to the keeping of the Castle; that of 30 E. the first, to question by Quo Warranto all liberties to which there could not be a good Title shown, for that to the King belonged the care of execution of justice: And that of 9 E. 3. cap. 5. at the request of the Commons, that Justices of Assize, Goal delivery, Oyer and Terminer, should every year at Michaelmas send their records to the Exchequer.  
And did put the Kings of this Nation into such a continual watchfulness and care of the due administration of Justice to be done in the Counties and remote parts of this Nation, as the Justices of Assize never went their Circuits, but they either attended the King or his Chancellor to know what special matters were to be given in charge to the people, and did at their return upon any extraordinary thing that happened in their Circuits, give him, and his Council an account thereof; and yet notwithstanding all this their care, and the sending of Justices twice a year into every County, which did much awe, and keep in order those County Courts, Sheriffs Turns, and the Actions of Stewards in their Court Leets, and Court Barons, and that the wisdom of former times took all the care they could to have the hundred Courts, Courts Leet, and Courts Baron, County Courts, and Sheriffs Turns, to be executed by able and honest men, as we may see in the reign of King Henry the first, who would not allow, viles & inopes personas, to be Legum Judices, or Stultos aut Improbos, sed optimates qui non personam sed opera dijudicent. And that Bailiffs were long after 
in ll H. r. c. 9 & 29.  Charactered by Fleta to be moribus & legibus pro officio sufficientes, and the Stewards in legibus consuetudinibusque 
Fleta lib. 20. 60 & 65.  Provinciae, & officio Seneschalciae cognoscentes; and that those Franchises and little Courts were forfeitable by a misuser of them, all the care could be possiby taken to prevent it, nor the punishment or forfeiture which hung over them, could not so restrain or keep them in order, but that there were daily complaints made of them, and writs obtained from the King's Courts to remedy them, as writs of right patent, Ne  vexes supersedeas, writs of right, writs of Pone, prohibitions, writs of false judgement, de executione judicii, Recordares, accedas ad Curiam, Cerciorares & habeas Corpora, to remove causes, 
Register of writs.  writs to take one in Witherman, that would not suffer a man to be replevied, and writts of Error to County Courts. Insomuch as the people were in the sense of their own grievances which were never like to fail them in those inferior Courts, and those natural inclinations, and propensities, which are in all Mankind to the best things, and that which may soon accomplish their ends, so brought (especially when they found that the Stewards or Judges of those inferior Courts could not hold any proportion, or stand in the balance with the Judges at Westminster) by degrees to a contempt and waving of the County Courts, Court Barons, and Hundred Courts, as they became to be generally disused, or laid aside (the people seldom appearing at them, when they were summoned, and the Stewards as seldom keeping of them.)  
For though it must be confessed that it may be possible thatsome few men may by such new County Courts save some labour, charges, or trouble, for once, or a a little while, as their particular cases or conveniences, neighbourhood, or conditions of adversaries may happen to be (for no doubt but there were some that did find good by the Courts of Star-Chamber, and High Commission, and the Courts of Honour and Marshal sea, and of the Marches of Wales and the North in every year of their many years or age's continuance, though they were afterwards taken away as grievances, yet those particular benefits which some few of the People shall receive by these new to be erected Courts, will or can as little assure them, or their own posterity from meeting at some other time with those many inconveniences, may happen unto them afterwards, as it will do Thousands more than themselves, and the whole body of the people, that shall be prejudiced by it in the general, for all that are or may be benefits to some particular men or places, have neither a possibility or capacity of being so in the general, and to all people of the Nation, or to those very individuals at all times, or upon all occasions, and therefore the making of a Law to forbid all usury, or taking profit for money lent, would not be profitable to the people in general, nor to those men that at once might perhaps save some money in the payment of their debts, when they shall be more troubled after upon their next occasions or want to borrow money than that amounted unto, nor would it be for a public or general good, that every Town or Village in the Nation should have a Market kept every week it, though it might be good for some solitary Towns, in a Forest or upon the Woalds to have it so, nor would the Country people that can be sometimes content to supply their present or lesser occasions by the Pedlars at their own doors, be well pleased that they should therefore be restrained from seeking better upon their greater disbusements or occasions, at the well-furnished Shops in the Cities, or that they should have a Monopoly of only selling to them the worse sort of commodities.  
Wherefore, let any men of Learning, reason, or impartiality judge, if all this would not do when the little Courts could not proceed in any Action above Forty Shillings, but that the people were so frequently enforced for want of Justice to remove their causes to the higher Courts, how many, very many Complaints and grievances there would have been if this way had been stopped or taken from them as is now desired.  
Or whether the people of England, did any wrong to themselves, in passing by those little Courts where the Steward was most commonly ignorant, and the Suitors which were the Judges a great deal more, and were sure enough to meet with ignorance, injustice, or oppression, and if the cause were like to go well with them, to have it removed, upon any pretences of their adversaries, to come to the Superior Courts, where they should be out of the danger of Appeals, and could not want Justice when they sought it, nor protection in the seeking of it.  
Or whether they did not better to seek for Justice at the Wellhead and Fountain of Justice, where they could not doubt of the skill and honesty of their Judges, and the assistance of able Lawyers to plead for them, or to have their Actions tried before some of the same Judges in their own Counties at the Assizes, and might be dispatched sooner, and with less trouble and charges to both parties, than they could at a Second or Third hand, by removing their Actions from the Hundred Court to the County Court, and from thence to Westminster.  
The Common use or allowance of which more approved and convenient way, if the reason of it had lain hid or concealed, had been enough to tell us and all after ages, the benefit and good which the people had by it, as well as that, of making bread with Wheat instead of acorns, or wearing  instead of going naked, when the ignorance of our older forefathers allowed them no better, or the people's leaving some Market Town to talk only of their Charter, whilst their own conveniences carries them to a better.  
For that must needs be out of all danger of error or inconvenience which hath had so long an experimented & constant allowance, when there was not heretofore any Petition in Parliament or to any the former Supreme Authorities against it, and when a general use or convenience, not for one but for many ages successively, hath brought it into a custom, and universal approbation.  
And should be now of a greater price, then to be exchanged for all those and more grievances, which heretofore filled our former Parliaments with Complaints against the County Courts, Sheriffs Turns, and Hundred Courts (for the Cries of the poor and indigent, and their many smothered oppressions could not always reach thither) will not only be raised up again and restored to the people with interest by these new establishments, but far exceed them, and be like so many Counsels of the Marches in every County.  
But they that have engaged their Fancies to put so great a disturbance upon the people & might in a repentance of it go quietly back again into their own Trades, do not tthink all this enough, unless some augmentation be laid to the people's grievances, by annexing of a power or Jurisdiction of equity, to every, or many of these little Courts, which may bring up a Brigade of Inconveniences as a reserve to the former.   

CHAP. IX. That the annexing of a Jurisdiction or power of equity, to every or many of those new little Courts, will much increase the People's grievances, and turn that little Lawwhich shall be left into a course of arhitrariness  
FOr the annexing of the equitable part of the jurisdiction of Chancery to the Courts or courses of Common Law, when they shall be again established, as some would have it in their proposals or regulation of the Law, will, by giving every judge at Law a power of equity, make a cause that would be begun and brought to hearing, and an end, in two Terms, continue Six or Seven, and by a long and tedious course of examining and cross examining of Witnesses, be ten times more chargeable to the people, and when there is not now one in every hundred causes at Law, that go after to Chancery, and might be fewer if there were more Conscience in men, and the Rules of the Court better observed, make every single cause a double one, and a Suit in Chancery as well as at Common-Law when it needs not, put the Judges at Law (who before were so tied up to their Oaths, and a prescript Rule of Law, as to weep over their own Sons and nearest relations, rather than to deviate, or Swerve from the Text or Rule of Law, into too great a liberty of exposition or arbitrariness: Or if the equity of every cause should be put to the Jurors, give us Twelve men of equity or Chancellors in every cause, will hardly be brought to understand it, but be so puzzled in the finding out of it, as it will hardly, or, if at all, very tediously be drawn from them, if the matter of equity shall be left to the Judges alone, there will be little need of the Jury, if the Jury alone, as little of the Judge, such an intermingling or uniting of the power of equity with the power of Law, can produce no better effect then to make every one to begin or make his Suit or action, would otherwise have been ended in a short course of Law, in a long examination of circumstances of equity or way of Chancery, and render the equitable or arbitrary part of those Courts so Superior, and predominant to the legal, as in a short time it will alter or take away the force and power of it: For the Judge will have a double power and Capacity to take which Hand he will, and to judge according to this or that Circumstance, which he shall like best; the Law will be then fast and lose at pleasure, and will not be as it is now Lex a Ligando, nor Lex a Legendo, but so incertain and inconstant, as to alter or dissolve itself into an equity of this or that circumstance, which can lay the fastest hold upon it, or the judge, and be so much at the exposition or command of the judges, who were wont to be commanded by the Laws, as every thing they would have must be turned into an equity.  
Which the wisdom of our Parliaments and Laws were so far from suffering, as they would not suffer the Chancery to meddle with matters of Law, and the people in former ages so jealous of it, as they petitioned in former Parliaments, that judgements should not be given in causes of Law, but by process at Law, and that they might not appear in Chancery upon Sub poenas, or writs of quibusdam certis de causis, when there was remedy at Law, and was the cause that the Chancery hath heretofore and to this time kept themselves to their constant course of allowing Demurrers, and discharging such causes as might be relieved at Law. For if it were formerly a grievance for the Chancery to determine matters at Law, The putting or mingling of matters of equity into Courts of Law, will be but one and the same thing, and as like to be a grievance as the other.  
Of which the late Parliament, in their argument against the Council of the Marches of the North in 1641, were so sensible, as they alleged it would be prejudicial to the people if the King should be permitted to canton out a part of his Kingdom to be tried by 
z Mr. Hides argument in April, 1641 before the Lords in Parliament by order of the House of Commons.  Commission (though it were according to the Rules of Law) or to erect new Courts of Chancery, and that the latitude and power of the judges of that Court of the Marches, in judging according to equity and discretion, was the Quicksand that swallowed up the people's property and liberty, and that the very administration of justice founded upon such illegal principles, was a grievance, and oppression to the people; and the House of Commons in the late Parliament (of which some of the now Members were then a part) were so far from altering their opinion in that particular, as in their grand remonstrance of the State of the Kingdom, the 
a Remonstrance 15 December 1641  15 of December, 1641 repeating what good they had done for the people, and what Courts they had taken away, they reckon that, and some other arbitrary Courts, and called them the forges of misery, and oppression.  
And yet this is not all the proposers would have, nor will their appetite of change be satisfied, or the confusion be completed, unless the Lawyers may be totally extirped, & the Inns of Court and Chancery, which used to breed them, be abolished, a doctrine any but the quondam Jack Cade and his men of rudeness, who would have all Learning and Letters suppressed, and the Score and the Tally to be the only Books of the Nation, would not only blush at, and be ashamed to own, but stand amazed, and dissolve themselves into a wonder, that any men should think (as some of these proposers have done) that the Lawyers or professors of reason should not be fit to intermeddle in the administration of Justice, as if reason, which God gave for a blessing and distinction to mankind, could be Antichristian or the mark of the Beast, or that all the praises of wisdom in the Scripture, were only to let men know, that those that had it were not fit to be employed.   

CHAP. X. That in the right administration of Justice there is a necessity of Lawyers, and men of skill and experience.  
FOr the Laws and Customs of all people, Christians and not Christians, Barbarians and not Barbarians, do allow and practise that most necessary and useful Maxim, Cuilibet in arte sua credendum, It is best to believe every one in his own art, or that wherein he is skilful. All our Laws and reasonable Customs do forbid the using of Trades, to which men have not been Apprentices for seven years 
2 & 3 P. & M. 8 Eliz. cap. 11. 1 jac. cap. 24.  together. And several Acts of Parliament would not so much as trust Watermen to row upon the river of Thames nor the inhabitants of several Shires to use the art of Clothing, nor so much as to make Caps or Pol Davis, unless they had been Apprentices to it.  
The Parliament in the third year of the reign of King 
3 H. 8. cap. 11. 1 Ma. cap. 9  Henry the eighth, and some other Acts of Parliament made since, provides that none but allowed and skilful Physicians, and Surgeons, should practise Physic, and Chirurgery, for that the practice thereof, by Artificers, and unlearned persons, was to the great displeasure of God, and grievance, hurt, damage, and destruction of the People.  
How then can these proposers, or Tradesmen, imagine it to be good for a Common wealth, to banish all the knowledge of the Laws, and the means of doing Justice out of it, and to take in all manner of ignorance in the place of them? or that the Lawyers or men of justice should be a burden to the Nation; when Paul took it to be no dishonour to have sat at the feet of Gamaliel, was more than ordinary careful of Zenas the Lawyer, 
Epist ad Tit. 3. v. 13.  and had never gone to Rome, not converted some in Nero's own household, if he had not been learned in the Laws, and Privileges of the Romans, as well as of the jews.  
When the Dutch in their united Commonwealth or Provinces dare not trust their smallest causes to their 
b Commentar. de Stat. confederate. Provinciar Belgic.  Commissarissen op de kleyne Saecken, without a Lawyer added to them, and for causes of greater consequence will not in all their Colleges or Courts of justice want an Assessor or Syndic, being a Professor of the Civil Law, to direct and guide them.  
When the Turks who for the most part of them are by the Tyranny and designs of their Emperors kept in an ignorance of all Learning and Letters, can have their Cadies in their lesser Courts, and their judges in the Divano, or greater, purposely educated, and brought up in that which might enable them unto it, and do not put their mad men in places of judicature, though they give much respect unto them, and take them to be inspired.  
And when these Proposers can at the same time for any thing which they have to do in their own affairs, labour to find out the most able and skilful men, and would think them not to be their Friends at all, or to be some of the Inhabitants of Gonzagua's newly discovered Country slipped down hither through the Moon which should instead of a Physician bring them when, they are sick a Carpenter, or a Plasterer when they are wounded for a Surgeon.  
For can any man think that the Law which was heretofore esteemed to be as hard and difficult a Science, as it is noble and worthy, can be practised or given out to the people, without any manner of knowledge or learning of it, would these Proposers desire an Act of Parliament, that no sick and wounded men should any more use the help of Physicians or Chirurgeons, but should go to the Justice of Peace for it? or that no Carpenter, Mason, or Bricklayer, should any more meddle in the building of Houses?  
May not the Civil part of the government or power come in a short time to be as much endangered or disordered, by such an ignorant management of Justice as these proposers would have it, as the Militia or Military part thereof would be, if all the old Legions or Regiments and tried Soldiers of the Army, should by a Law be disbanded and forbidden the art of war, and young boys newly come from School, be taken on, and listed in their places, and none to be Captains or Officers but such as should want their sight or be blind? Or how little difference will there be betwixtan ignorant administration of Laws, and the having of no Laws at all.  
Was it Jethroes good Counsel to Moses to choose able as well as honest Judges? and will any Trade's men, or Country men now serve the turn? or to what a small avail had it been for the Children of Israel for Moses to have been learned in the learning of the Egyptions, and to have been enabled by God himself in his taking the Laws from his own mouth, if ignorant and foolish Judges had been appointed under him? or to what end was Solomon's prayer to God for Wisdom, to go in and out before the people, if those to whom he should commit the care of Justice should not know how to execute it? or what would Paul the Apostle now say if he were to plead for his life before such judges as these Proposers would bestow upon us, or how should he then say as he did to Agrippa, I think myself happy, 
Acts 26. 2 & 3.  King Agrippa, Because I shall answer for myself this day before thee, especially because I know thee expert in all the Customs and questions which concern the Jews.  
These men therefore of Novelty or change may do well to consider that all things enjoy a happiness in their rest, and that a settled consistence must needs be more happy for States (so called of their Stabilities) than to adventure the hazard of so many changes, as the humours or designs of the people shall tender unto them, and to believe Plato, who was of opinion that Legum mutationes 
Plato de legibus  were perniciosae, that it was most dangerous to change Laws, and remember what in the Last Parliament was delivered by an eminent Member of their own for a most certain truth, That the Law 
c Mr. St. john in his argument concerning ship money in january 1640.  was the Temple or Sanctuary, whither the People were to run for shelter and refuge, and that part of Mr. Pyms Speech against the Earl of Sttafford published by order of the House of Commons in the late Parliament, and spoken by their own sense and direction, That the Law is that which puts a difference betwixt good and evil, betwixt just and unjust; If the Law be taken away, all things 
d Mr. Pyms argument against the Earl of Strafford.  will fall to confusion, every man will become a Law unto himself, which in the depraved condition of Humane nature must needs produce many great enormities, Lust will become a Law, and Envy will become a Law, Covetousness and Ambition will become Laws, and what dictates and dicisions such Laws will produce, may easily be discerned.  
That the Common Soldiers of the Army did so well 
(e) Remonstrance and Proposals of the Army p. 11.  understand it in the year 1647, as they made it their request in their second Apology to their General the Lord Fairfax, that (e) Justice and Judgement might be dealt to the meanest Subject of the Land, according to the old Law.  
That the said Sir Thomas Fairfax and the whole Army, did 
f Declaration of his Excellency Sir Thomas Fairfax and the Army 14 june 1647  afterwards remonstrate to the Parliament, that nothing was more dear and precious to them in their thoughts, (they having hitherto thought all their present enjoyments, whether of life, or livelihood, or nearest relations, a price but sufficient for so rich a blessing) that they, and all the Freeborn people of the Nation, might fit down in quiet under their Vines, and under the glorious administration of justice and Righteousness, and in full possession of those fundamental rights and liberties, without which they could have little hopes (as to humane considerations) to enjoy either any comforts of life, or so much as life itself.  
And were at that time so far from desiring the Laws to be taken away, as they desired of the Parliament that the right of freedom of the People to represent to the Parliament by way of humble Petition their grievances, (for such things as could not otherwise be remedied than by Parliament) might be cleared and vindicated, and that in such things for which men have remedy by law, they might he freely left to the benefit of it,  
And that in the Parliament Anno 1648 (Many of whose Members were then the Officers of the Army, that had subscribed that Remonstrante) were so well contented with it, as in a Declaration of the Parliament of England (g) expressing the grounds of their proceed, and of settling the present Government in the way of a Free State, they declared unto the People in these words, viz. that.  
They are 
h Declaration of the Parliament of England 17 March 1648. p. 24. &. 25  very sensible of the excellency and equality of the Laws of England, being duly executed; of their great antiquity even from before the time of the Norman slavery forced upon us; of the Liberty, and Property, and Peace of the Subject, so fully preserved by them; and (which falls out happily, and as an increase of God's mercy towards us) of the clear consistency of them with the present government of a Republic, upon some easy alterations of form only, leaving entire the substance; the name of King being used in them for form only, but no power of personal administration of judgement allowed to him in the smallest matter contended for.  
They know their own authority to be by the Law, to which the People have assented; and besides their particular interests, (which are not inconsiderable) they more intent the Common interest of those whom they serve, and clearly understand the same, not possible to be preserved without the Laws and government of the Nation; and that if those should be taken away, all industry must cease, all misery, blood, and confusion would follow, and greater calamities if possible, than sell upon us by the late King's misgovernment, would certainly involve all persons, under which they must inevitably perish: and that these arguments are sufficient to persuade all men to be well contented to submit their lives and fortunes to those just & long approved Rules of Law, with which they were already so fully acquainted, and not to believe, that the Parliament intends the abrogation of them.  
But we have read of a people that died with quails in their mouths, and of a generation of that people did expostulate with a Roman Magistrate for going about to hinder them in their Self-destruction, we shall therefore leave these Proposers to the busy employment of their own imaginations, and make our addresses to the Supreme authority, who being called together for the works of righteousness and justice, and bringing good intentions along with them, have a power to give a stop to that Fury, is now amongst a small part of the People, but enough to undo all the rest: Humbly beseeching them to rescue out of their hands, the Laws and Birthright of the people, and to reach out their hands to preserve that Law of Property, which God himself by Thundrings and Lightnings pronounced from Mount Sinai, and wrote 
i 8th. Commandment in the Decalogue  a second time with his own Finger.  
That the Judges and professors of the Law, and also all Persons interessed or concerned in any loss may happen by any alteration thereof, may be heard or advised withal in what particulars may be charged a●●●●●● the Laws in being, or thought fit for reformation, and to take into their consideration. That in the reformation in the Body natural, the Cure is never gone about by a total dissolution, nor any part of it intendedly cut off even in case of Gangrene, where there is any hope to keep life, or to cure without it.  
That the Petitions which have been against the Laws are not the voice or general outcry of the People in their several Counties, or made by the consent or approbation of the major or any considerable part of them, but are an Engine or Artifice of some people never made use of till these times of Troubles, to advance their designs and conveniences, and bring ruin to others, by petitioning in the names of a whole County or Province, of which many times not one in every thousand of the Inhabitants ever knew or heard any thing before of it. Too many of the Petitions concerning public affairs, having been of late and for some years passed made and framed by a few in the name of many, and many times not in the place or County from whence they seem to come, 20000 hands said to be subscribed, when there was not so many scores, & of those, many ignorant people's names or marks put to it, that were merely led or seduced unto it, eighty Schools Boys have at once subscribed their names to a Petition by the procurement of their School Master, some have had their names subscribed when they were never privy unto it, and others that could not write or read, have been drawn to suffer their names to go along with a Petition, was for other matters than they were informed of.  
And that if all the People of this Nation were but freely called together by Tribes and Wards, or Centuries to give their votes concerning our Laws, as the People of Rome (k) were, to peruse and approve the Laws of the Ten Tables brought from Athens, and to speak and give their voices as freely as they did then, there would be one thousand for or to every one that should appear against it, would not only consent to the continuance of the Laws and Court of justice we have in being, but be most earnest Petitioners for them.  
And would be pleased if upon a free & full hearing, as hath been lately granted in the matters of Tithes, any thing shall be found fit to be abrogated or taken away, they to consider,  
That in the Acts of Parliament of 27 Henry 8. cap. 28. & 31 Henry 8. cap. 13. Touching the dissolution of Abbeys, there is a saving of all Corodies profits & pensions, due to any other than the Donors, & their Heirs, & Abbots & Abbesses, etc. In the Act for establishing Laws & Ordinances in Wales. 34 & 35 Hen. 8. cap. 26. There is a saving for the King's Officers for their Offices and Fees. In the power given by Parliament to Queen Mary in the first year of her reign, to dissolve, altar, unite, or put into one, the Courts of first fruits, Wards, & Surveys, Augmentation, and Duchy of Lancaster; there is an express saving of all annuities, pensions, fees, stipends, or sums of money, which they might or ought lawfully to have, by any letters patents or grant of the said Court of Augmentation.  
And that if the Queen should annex any of the said Courts to the Exchequer, it should be with a saving to all persons of all Offices, of keepers of Chases, Parks, Houses, and the profits thereof, and all Rents, Annuities, Fees, etc. with a proviso, that that Act should not extinguish or take away from any person any Fees, or Sums of Money which they Lawfully had before the seventh of july than last passed: That in the dissolution of the Abhies by Hen. 8. provision was made, and pensions given for life to such as had places or employments in them, as to Readers, Curates, etc. and the like: and Corodies or provision of diet made into a yearly pension granted out of Abbeys and Priories saved to those that had right to them, many of which are to this day enjoyed by the purchasers of them.  
That in the Act of Parliament 3 Jacobi, cap. 16. For the bringing of the new river water to London, recompense and amends was to be made and given before hand to such as should be endamaged by it.  
That in the Act of Parliament 7 jacobi, cap 19 for the continuance & repair of a Wear upon the River of Exe, near the City of Excester, recompense is provided for any that shall be losers thereby, for that (as the words of the Act are) it standeth with the rule of Equity and justice, that those which should receive so great benefit by it, should yield competent and sufficient recompense to such as should sustain any loss or detriment thereby.  
That in the putting down of Episcopacy in Scotland in the late King reign, the Parliament of Scotland did think fit to allow to the Bishop's yearly pensions or maintenance during their lives, and suffered them to enjoy it.  
That in the last Parliament of England satisfaction was promised to the Officers and Clerks of the Court of Wards upon the dissolution thereof, and so much intended as the Lord Say, and Sir Penjamin Rudiard had some thousands of pounds paid or promised unto them, and a Committee was appointed to consider of the value of every Clerk's place, and their losses sustained by it. The Wives and Children of Ministers that were put out of their Benefices, and of Delinquents, were allowed a fifth part of their Husband's estate. And that in the Proposals or Petitions for taking away of Tithes, there is a desire or intention to give to them a maintenance equivalent by some other way. That in the Act of the Parliament 29 May, 1649. for the draining of the Lincoln Shire and Cambridge Shire Fens, the Commissioners have power to make satisfaction to such persons, whose Interest or Lands, shall be made worse in quality or condition, by the draining of them, proportionable to their loss and damage. That 
2 Reg. 23. 9  josias king of juda in his reformation, and turning to the Lord with all his Soul and with all his might, did breaking down the high places permit the Priests (though Causers of gross Idolatry) (and more peccant than any which do now belong to the Law) to eat of the unleavened bread among their Brethren. That by the rule of our Saviour Christ in the Gospel we are to do as we would be done unto. And that the promise in the first Act of this Parliament to be as careful of the People's property and liberty as of their own lives and estates, will not be performed without having rightly informed themselves before hand of what they would put down or alter, hearing those that are concerned, and giving them a just recompense, for what shall be thought fitting to be taken away.  
Which if for a general good may (for such part of the Law as shall be found fit to be abrogated or taken away) be done.  
With content to all People, and according to natural and common equity.  
By a Public and general Assessment, or some other way of certain satisfaction for it.  
That so there may be a mutual preservation of the people, no sighing of multitudes of poor, or broken in Spirit, nor complaining in our Streets.   
FINIS.   

By the Author's absence from the Press the Erratas following have escaped the Printer, which the Reader is entreated to amend, or supply.  
IN Page 9 line 12. add [which] in l. 33. deal [for] in p. 16. l. 7. r. [Jesuitical] in l. 33. r. [and] p. 17. l. 6. r. [abstract] in p. 19 l. 9 r. [or] for [as] in l. 10. r. [the mistake of the Judges] in p. 20. l. 1. r. [and] in p, 20. l. 25. deal [but] in l. 32. r. [now be had for it] in p. 25. l. 8. r. [may than] in p. 26. in l. 3. of the title of Ch. V r. [of this] in p. 26. l. 7. r. [Syllan] in l. 15. r. [Reformation of] in p. 28. l. 14. r. [have been] in p. 29. l. 1. r. [and from] in l. 10. r. [they did not] p. 31. l. 25. r, [or fit] in p. 32. l. 19 r. [it is] p. 33. l. 1. r. [new modelled] in p. 34. l. 5. deal [too] in l. 6. r. [Assistant] in the latter end of l. 32. deal [the] in p. 35. l. 4. r. [rightly] in l. 10. deal [and] and r. [can no more be kept from] in l. 11. deal [can no more be kept from] and in l. 12. add [and] in l. 12. deal [save] in l. 17. r. [should] in p. 36. deal [and] in p. 38. l. 23. add [that] in p. 39 l. 26. r. [Canon] in p. 40. l. 23. r. [will little help the business] l. 25. r. [and to oppose] l. 29. r. [be] in p. 41. l. 3. r. [or if] in l. 14. r. [had advised] in l. 25. r. [that should] in p. 47. l. 5. r. [the] in p. 49. l. 11. r. [security] in l. 33. r. [and] p. 50. l. 23. r. [were] in p. 51. l. 3. in the Margin, r. [9 H. 3. cap. 11.] in p. 54. l. 6. r. [27 H. 8. cap. 5.] in p. 55. l. 21. r. [Sergeant] p. 57 l. 14. r. [attachments upon] l. 18. r. [Withernam] in p. 62. l. 9 r. [to] in p. 74. l. 6. r. [Benjamin] in l. 24. r. [in] in p. 69. l. 23. deal [in] add [in Anno] in p. 46. l. 3. r. [one hundred and Thirty thousand] in p. 24. l. 16. r. [allowed] in l. 17 deal [too Bricklayers and Carpenters.]