A DISCOURSE CONCERNING THE SUCCESS OF Former Parliaments.  
By THOMAS MAY, Esquire.  
The second Edition.   Tudor rose and Scottish thistle 
LONDON, Printed by T. F. for Thomas Wakeley. 1644.   

 decorative heading including a Scottish thistle, French fleur-de-lis, and Tudor rose  
A DISCOURSE Concerning Former Parliaments.  
SIR:  
I Have, according to my small ability, and the shortness of time, fulfilled your command, in sending to you this brief and plain Discourse concerning the ancient opinions and esteem of English PARLIAMENTS (for that was all which you desired) without any reflection upon the proceed of this present Parliament: accept as a plain piece of common talk, which I would have delivered, had I been present with you: Such discourses need no dress of Rhetoric.  
THe constitution of our English Monarchy is by wise men esteemed one of the best in Europe, as well for the strength and honour of the Prince, as the security and freedom of the People; and the Basis, on which both are founded, is the conveniency of that great Council, the High Court of PARLIAMENT.  
Without which neither can the Prince enjoy that honour and felicity, which Philip de Commines, a foreigner, so much admires, where he delivers what advantages the Kings of ENGLAND have by that Representative Body of their people, by whose assistance in any action they can neither want means, or lose reputation. Nor on the other side, can the people have any possibility of pleading their own rights and liberties. For in the Intevim between Parliaments, the People are too scattered and confused a body, to appear in vindication of their proper interests; and by too long absence of such Assemblies they would lose all. For (as Junius observes) Populus authoritatem suam tacitè non utendo amittit; sic plerumque accidit ut quod omnes curare tenentur curet nemo, quod omnibus commissum est, nemo sibi commendatum putet: The People insensibly lose their power for want of using it: for so it happens, that what all should look after, no man does; what is committed to all, no man thinks his own charge.  
And in that Interim it happens, that those Optimates Regni (as he speaks) who under the Prince are entrusted with Government, meaning Counsellors, Judges, and other great Magistrates, either through fear, flattery, or private corruption, do often betray the people's rights to the Prince.  
The state of government standing thus; If distempered times happen to be (as our Chronicles have showed some) where by diffention between Prince and People, the Kingdom's ruin hath been endangered, it doth not so much prove that the English government is not the best, as that the best government may be abused. For in every Monarchy, how limited soever, the Prince his person is invested with so much Majesty; that it would seem a mockery in State, if there were no considerable power entrusted into his hands; yea, so much as that, if he be bad or weak; be may endanger the ruin of the Kingdom; so necessary is it for all humane ordinances, how wise soever, to leave somewhat to Chance, and to have always need of recourse to God, for his assisting or curing Providence.  
And though the Kingdom of England, by virtue of the government thereof, will be as hardly brought into a confusion, as any in Europe; yet ●●●●e is no warrant against the possibility of it.  
For it was ever heretofore seen, that our Parliaments were rather a strength and advantage to an honourable wise Prince, than a remedy against a bad or weak one; or, if we change the expression, they were rather an excellent diet to preserve a good reign in strength, than Physic to cure a bad one; and therefore have been as much loved by sound and healthy Princes, as loathed by them that were out of temper; the later having thought them a depression of their dignity: as the former have esteemed them an advantage to their strength. So that in such times only the true convenience of that great Council hath been perceived by England, and admired by foreign Authors: in the other times it was, that those witty complaints have been in fashion (as sir Robert Cotton speaks of a bad time) that Princes in Parliaments are less than they should be, and Subjects greater. But on the contrary, that they have been an advantage to Kings, the constant Series of our history will show. 1. By those great achievements which they have enabled our wise Kings to make, who were most constant in calling them, and consenting to them. 2. That no one Prince was ever yet happy without the use of them.  
It may therefore seem a Paradox, that any Prince should disaffect that which is so high an advantage to him, and a great wonder, that some Kings of England, not vicious in their dispositions, nor very shallow in their understandings, have so much kicked against Parliaments. And that such have been (before we show what reasons may be of it) see the characters of some Princes, whose success and fortunes are known to all that read the histories, as they are delivered by Polidore Virgil, who in his six●eenth book speaks thus of Henry the third: Fuit ingenio miti, animo magis nobili quàn magno, cultor religionis, adversus inopes liberalis. He was of a gentle nature, a mind rather noble than great, a lover of religion, and liberal to the poor.  
In his eighteenth Book thus of Edward the second; Fuit illi natura bona, ingenium mite, quem primò juvenili errore actum in leviora vitia incidentem, tandem in graviora malorum consuetudines & consilia traxerunt. Non deerant illi animi vires, si repudiatis malis suasoribus illas justè exercuisset. He was of a good nature and mild disposition, who first by the errors and rashness of youth falling into small faults, was afterwards drawre into greater, by the society and counsels of wicked men. There was not wanting in him a strength of mind, if avoiding evil counsel, he could have made a just use of it.  
And in his twentieth Book thus of Richard the second; Fuit in illo spiritus non vilis, quem consociorum improbitas, & insulsitas extinxit. He was of a spirit not low or base, but such as was quite destroyed by the wickedness and folly of unhappy Consociates.  
A reason of this accident may be, that their souls, though not vicious, have not been so large, nor their affections so public, as their great calling hath required; but being too much mancipated to private fancies and unhappy Favourites, and long flattered in those affections under the specious name of firmness in friendship, (not being told that the adequate object of a Prince his love should be the whole people, and that they who receive public honour, should return a general love and care) they have too much neglected the Kingdom, and grow at last afraid to look their faces in so true a glass as a Parliament, and flying the remedy, increase the disease, till it come to that unhappy height, that rather than acknowledge any unjust action, they strive for an unjust power to give it countenance, and so by a long consequence become hardly reconcilable to a Parliamentary way.  
Such Princes (though it may seem strange) have been a greater affliction to this Kingdom; than those who have been most wicked, and more inenrable for these reasons. 1. They have not been so conscious to themselves of great crimes; and therefore are not so apt to be sensible of what they have been accidentally made to do against their people by evil counsel, whose poison themselves did not perfectly understand. And therefore they are more prone to suspect the people, as unkind to them, than themselves as faulty, and so the more hardly drawn to repent their actions, or meet hearty with a Parliament. 2. The second reason is from the People, who naturally, look with honour upon the Prince, and when ●●ey find none or few personal vices in him (no●●onsidering that the true virtues of Princes, h●●e a larger extent than those of private men) will more hardly be brought to think, though themselves feel, and suffer for it, that he is faulty; and therefore sometimes (which would hardly be believed if experience had not showed it) the People have been so tash as that to maintain for the King an unjust Prerogative, which themselves understand not, they have to their own ruin, and the Kings too (as it hath after proved) deserted that great Council whom themselves have chosen, and by whom only they could be preserved in their just rights; until too late, for the King's happiness and their own, they have seen and repent their great folly.  
Such a desertion was too sadly seen at the end of that Parliament of EDWARD the second, where the two Spencers were banished, and the tragical effects that followed, when the King found so great a party both of Clergy and Laity, as enabled him to call home again his banished Favourites, and proved fatal to so many Parliamentary Lords, as the like execution of Nobility had never before been seen in ENGLAND: ever whose graves the People afterwards wept when it was too late, and proceeded further in their revenge, than became the duty and allegiance of Subjects.  
It is therefore a great misfortune to England, and almost a certain calamity, when the distempers of government have been let grow so long, as that for their cure they must need a long Parliament. For there are no ways, how just, how moderate soever they be, which that great Council can take (if they go far enough to make the cure) but will provoke, either by the means, or the length of them, the Prince his impatience, or the People's inconstancy.  
For the first; the Delinquents must needs be many and great, and those employed, and perchance highly favoured by him, besides the reflection which is made upon his judgement by their sufferings, and that will be one reason of his impatience.  
Another is, that many Prerogatives which were not indeed inherent in the Crown, but so thought by the Prince, and by him and his bad Council long abused, to the prejucice of the People, with some seeming advantage to him (though well weighed they brought none) are then after a long sufferance called in question.  
For the people are used to entrust kind Princes with many of their own rights and privileges, and never call for them again till they have been extremely abused. But at such a time to make all clear after so long a reckoning (and those long reckon in State being commonly fatal; for Parliaments have seldom been discontinued, but by such Princes whose governments in the Interim have been very illegal) th●● usually question so much, as that the Prince thinks himself hardly dealt withal, such a Prince as we spoke of, who not bad in himself, but long misled by wicked counsel, was not enough sensible of the injuries he had done.  
The second obstacle that such Parliaments may find is the People's inconstancy; and what age is not full of such examples which before we name, let us consider whether there be any reason for it? This perchance may be one, that the People naturally are lovers of novelty, affecting with greediness every change, and again loathing it when it ceases to be a novelty Long discontinued and reforming Parliaments seems to carry the face of a change of government, and those things may then happen which do in the shift of Princes, that some People may for a while flatter themselves with new and strange hopes, that prove frustrate; or else with quicker redresses of inconvenience, than the great concurrence of so many weighty businesses can possibly admit, how industrious soever that great Council be, distracted with so great a variety; and the people after some time spent, grow weary again of what before they had so long wished to see. Besides, the people are more and more poisoned daily by the discourses of the friends, kindred, and retainers to so many great Delinquents, as must needs be at such a Parliament: who, though they be no considerable party in respect of the whole Commonwealth, yet ply their particular interests with more eagerness than most do the public. They subtly persuade the people, that whatsoever the Parliament does against those great Delinquents is aimed against the King's honour, and that he is wounded thorough their sides. And this opinion is somewhat furthered, when the People see how many prerogatives of the Prince (as we said before) are after long enjoying called in question. So that by this means their inconstancy seems to be grounded upon loyalty to the King, and they (perchance with honest, but deceived hearts) grow weary of the great Council of the Land.  
Another reason may be, that the Prince himself averse from such a Parliament, for the reasons aforesaid, can find power enough to retard their proceed, and keep off the cure of State so long, till the People tired with expectation of it, have by degrees forgot the sharpness of those diseases, which before required it.  
By this means at last, accidentally a miracle hath been wrought after a long Parliament, which is, that the People have taken part with the great Delinquents against the Parliament; for no other reason, than because those Delinquents had done them more wrong than the Parliament could suddenly redress. And so the multitude of those great Delinquents crimes hath turned to their own advantage.  
But in such reforming Parliaments, upon whom so much business lies, not only the inconstancy of the People hath been seen in history, but the unstedfastness of the Representative Body itself, and the distractions of that Assembly, whilst they forsake each other under so great a burden, have let that burden fall dishonourably to the ground. The most unhappy instance in this case, was that Parliament of Richard the second begun at Westminster, and adjourned to Shrewsbury in the nineteenth year of his reign; a Parliament that discharged their trust the worst of any that I read of; where there was as much need of constancy and magnanimity as ever was, to redress those great distempers which were then grown upon the State; and as much mischief ensued by their default, both upon Prince and People, which might have been well prevented, and his happiness wrought together with their own (in the judgement of best Writers) if they had timely and constantly joined together in maintaining the true rights of Parliament, and resisting the illegal desires of their seduced King. But being fatally distracted, the major part of Lords and Bishops wrought upon by the King, and the House of Commons too far prevailed with by Bushy the Speaker, and his Instruments, they utterly deserted the Commonwealth, and looking only upon the King's present desire, assented to such things as made the Prerogative a thing boundless; that he himself (as the Story reports) was heard glorying to say, That there was no free and absolute Monarch in Europe but himself. Upon which, the same bad Council which had before brought him out of love with Parliaments, brought him to as great an abuse of that power which he had now gotten over a Parliament. And then followed the blank Charters, and other horrid extortions, besides the suffering of some Lords, whom the people most loved; and shortly after, by a sad consequence, his own ruin. Nor do we read that any of those Lords, who under colour of Loyalty and love (as they called it) to his person, had trodden down the power and privilege of a PARLIAMENT under his feet, had afterwards so much Loyalty to him, as to defend his Crown and Person against the force of an Usurper, who without any resistance or contradiction unjustly ascended the Royal Throne: the sad occasion of that miserable and cruel civil war, which in the following ages so long afflicted this Kingdom of ENGLAND. This was the worst example of any Parliament; but in other times, though bad too, they have proved better Physic than any other earthly ways or means could be; yet their greatest virtue and excellency is seen, when they have been used as a diet by honourable and just Princes, such as this Nation hath been often blest with; and such who have thought it no disparagement or depression of their dignity, to be ruled by the sway of that great Council, than a wise guider of a ship would think it to follow his Compass, or any Mathematician to be directed by his necessary rules and instruments.  
FINIS.