THE READERS SPEECH OF THE Middle-Temple. At the Entrance into his Reading, FEBR. 29. 1663./ 4. Upon the STATUTE of Magna Charta, CAP. 29. Bono servire principi optima libertas. LONDON, Printed for G. Bedell, and T. Collins, and are to be sold at their Shop, at the Middle-Temple-Gate in Fleetstreet. 1664. THE READERS SPEECH OF THE Middle-Temple. May it please your Mastership's and Gentlemen, SEnsible I am of my much unfitness for this Exercise. Arguments I have used, many, to their Mastership's, that they would please to secure their own, and your honour, by a more pregnant choice. What prevailed not with their Wisdoms to excuse, may it with your Candours to interpret mildly. First, My Memory is in disorder for want of use at the Bar, whence I was excluded Fourteen Years. Next, My Limbs are disjointed by the Gout, a distemper I contracted by the laziness of a long and close imprisonment. My Estate has been impaired by Sequestration, Decimation, and those other sufferings which deepliest oppressed Members, who withdrew to OXFORD. Scandaled also I have been, and so was Jesus Christ, and so are many more, both Great and Good, (because they are so) I have hopes as they to conquer it by Contempt; If not, by Moderation; yet that's my Crime. As for my Ambition to be Great, I assure you 'tis no less than my desert and hopes, and that's None at all. These Considerations, as they discouraged, so they inclined me now in Age, when the Clouds return after the Rain, and the strong men bow, to a retired life. BUT were it that Fate which has hitherto doomed me to a suffering condition, or a mistake in their Mastership's of some abilities in me, which I know not, to the work I must, and which is worse, by another's fayler, a full year before my course. Next to Obedience, That which disposed me most, was a due sense of the Debt which we all in course own to the Society. A Society at this day observed to be highly Civil, Generous and Gentile, Nobilium Filii; of which extraction, says Fortescue and Fern, persons ought to be, that have the honour to be here admitted; A lower breed being not proportionate to the air and ingenuity of this profession. A Society so prosperous upon account of Learning, that a mess of our chief Masters are worthily advanced for it to offices of honour, and we have in view a flourishing recruit to improve the splendour of this Exercise, and with it the Government. And so hopeful in the fair branches growing up, that I have confidence to aver, you will no way derogate from the Glory of your Predecessors, whose Arms and Trophies you cannot but behold, if you look up to Heaven. A debt so honourable, so just, though I engaged to others, I resolved to pay, though perhaps not in weight, yet in number: And what is light, I have hopes may be supplied by that weighty indulgence of their Mastership's, favourably to interpret my endeavours with respite to my sufferings, and surprise. And that Gentlemen, from you, and persons of your deep Reason, I demand, as a due to Justice, and I shall return you an acknowledgement as a due to Civility. Where Excuses, you'll say, are so near, Errors usually are not far, nor indeed are mine. Troth 'tis, I had advanced a Statute more useful in order to conveyancing, but time straightening me, I found it too laborious. Whereupon upon this Law I fixed, having somewhat pondered it in the late Troubles that disputed it, which soon wiping off the gloss and varnish of pretences, made it demonstrative, That it is not only Duty, but Interest to build high upon the old foundation. You have here a Stature, which proclaims Liberty to the English Subject; a liberty as far transcending that Imposture of a Free State, as the glory of the Sun, the Prodigy of a Comet. That Comet which our great Statesman prudently observed, to have influenced men's spirits into the late Confusions. Confusion avoidable incident to that Model, without Wars or Garrisons; Wars to keep up the great ones from falling down; Garrisons to keep down the lesser from rising up. Where no King is, there can be no Honour, no Degrees; and where all are equal, every man thinks himself as fit to rule as any, and will put for all. Therefore subsists it only, where there is a Head-City, to give name to it, to awe and tax the adjacent Country, as of old, Rome, Carthage, Athens; with us, Venice, Geneva, Ragusa, nay and the Swiss, and fatal Netherlands, who are united and secured by a confederacy of Garrisons, and those chief managed by no Gentry. Hence is it, that England is inconsistent with that fiction, as well regard of situation, being a large continent, not to be denominated or awable by one City, as of the brave and sprightly temper of the Gentry, not to be enslaved by Mechanics. Peruse our Chronicles, and there shall we read, that the English are Gens inclyta belli, audax & impatiens froeni; but in their highest tumults, not in the least disposed to alter Kingship; not then, when they bandied Crowns, as we do Tennis balls into Cross Hazard; no, not when the Smith Flammock, Wat the Tyler, or Jack Straw revealed it with their Clowns. Did you not mark? when our late Riders, like Sots in Drink, reeled from this to that, the unpliant Genius of the Nation (which will carry things in the long Run) enforced their giddy Heads to a stand, even where we stood at first; even there, where now we stand; And some that dared not stand it, to stand higher. Don't you believe, that it was the courage of this Party, the contrivance of that, or that compliance of a third! no it was the general Spirit, and Genius of the Nation, that brought home the King, and it had an influence dextrous, and powerful, and yet invisible. Was it not strange! While the factions quarrelled among themselves who shall have the Rule, the King must be called in to save them against themselves, and to take the Rule. He that was their fear, must become their Refuge; Peace with the King, brings peace among themselves; yea, and with all the world, and Parliaments, as at the first, Pacatumque regit patriis virtutibus orbem; Proh Dii! Not one drop of blood runs out in the whole transaction, but only in the clar stream of Justice, and that administered in such a stood of mercy, as designed rather to vindicate and purge Religion from that putrid stain of King-killing, than to inflict vengeance on the Workers of Iniquity. If then his Enemies have cause, much more have his Friends to cry GOD SAVE THE KING. I stir not this to reflect, for I abhor it; but to evidence, not only their disloyalty and lewd conscience, but their folly, that conspire a Change, capable of no other issue but their own destruction. And that not only in their estates and persons, but even in that liberty which they so much labour. For were it a scelus prosperum instead of Liberty, which from this Statute for four Centuries under Kingship we have prosperously enjoyed, nay improved; they advance only the lusts of some few, that get next in the Saddle, who were heretofore not un-ominously instilled Custodes libertatis; for they took so much liberty to themselves, that they left none to other. Liberty sage men covet, as well as factious; not that liberty for every man to do that which is right in his own eyes, as it was when there was no King in Israel; for that liberty, as it occasioned the Levite to quarter out his Concubine, & scatter it among the Tribes, to take revenge, so makes it every man a slave to him that has the longest sword. True liberty is that, where the Rules of Law square out a man his right; where the Law spurs on the good▪ and reins in the evil; where a man's Houses is his Castle, because the Law is his Guard, and so is it of his Goods, neither to be assailed without his own consent, in person, or by proxy. Of liberty in this sense, (where of the just and honest, as Cato says, are only capable) my Statute exalts to the English a proportion more triumphant, than the freest State; yea, than that goodly one, which was begot out of the mud, and brought forth the freedom of Excise; where free indeed they are, but it is in purse, who excise their very Potherbs before they eat them. Our liberty is built so high, that it cannot stand firm unless it be propped up by Lords Spiritual, Lords Temporal, and Commons; Consulere, and consentire, and a Sovereign, with a L● roy le veul to enforce; If those supporters fail, Suis & ipsa viribus ruit, this rich Fabric sinks with its own weight: For it so harmoniously intermixes the rights of Sovereignty with the liberty of the Subject, that the one balances the other, nay, the least jar in the one, makes a loud discord in the other. Lex facit ut ipse sit Rex, says Bracton well, and 'tis said as well, Imperii majestas est tutelae salus, The support of power and awe in Majesty, secures peace and safety to the people. The unsteady vulgar are not to be entrusted with their own security, without a check; 'Tis for their advantage to be rid with a straight bridle, so that bridle be the Law; If the reins of Sovereignty and the Law be let lose, like headstrong Colts, they ll run cross-ways till they bog themselves, or fall; or if they get free, the next that comes impounds or backs them. If the Logic of this were discreetly pressed, it might stead the King of England in this Knowing Age, perhaps no less, than the Divinity we hear of the rights of the Kings of Israel. I have a home proof, but it is a sad one, when our late good King in his pious hopes of a closure, let go his radical and inherent power to dissolve the Parliament; thereby unwarily advancing two powers co-orinate, as two Gods in Heaven, whose cross wills must needs inflame the Earth. Which breach in that weighty fundamental, let lose the Government, and let in a deluge of misery upon us his Subjects, as well as upon His Crown. Without which Sarcasm in policy, our Laws are so regular, that a Civil War could not swell up to that length, or height, nor could this Statute, and with it, Liberty be so ore-flown, as it was, (we know the time) when the enforcing it by some learned ones that now sit high on the Bench, enforced them to lie low in the Tower. But now that we have a Sovereign, who knows and builds his Government upon his and our true interest, the Law, and which he has pleased so far to honour, as to give this Exercise His Royal presence, I am emboldened to awaken this Statute, which has so long slept, and therein to evidence his Majesty's indulgence, and our happiness, by way of explanation. In order whereunto, give me leave a little to ramble into History, and perhaps the length of the Journey will be recompensed by the goodness of the way. Some reach the Pedigree of this Stature from the old Britan's, others from a mixture with the Saxons; I take the Original like that of Nilus, dark and uncertain, or rather as a flowing in of several streams into one grand Channel. The Heptarchye being reduced under one Government, by that flout Prince Edbert, the West Saxon (be it recorded to the glory of our West) and our St. King Edward in time succeeding to the whole, He, with the Advice of his wife Men, caused one Volume, Ex immensa legum congery, as Hoveden has it, out of all their Laws to be compiled, Optima quaeque elegit, says Gemitencis, which seemed most equal and indifferent, Quos vocari voluit communem legem; And those he enjoined to be observed through the whole as his own Law. King Edward dying chaste, though married, and Edgar his Heir an Outlaw, William of Normandy makes Title to the Crown, as Cousin to the Confessor, and disposed by his will, and that appointment ratified by the Oath of the Nobility. And to keep fair with the Clergy, he proffers to refer his Right to the Arbitration of the Pope, whose Decrees in those days were Oracles. Harold slights the Arbitration; and so at Rome from the Pope, he obtains a sentence for his Title as more pregnant than that of Harold, who, Sine Ecclesiastica Authoritate, says Hoveden, and against his Oath given to Duke William, had usurped the Crown. This dispute determines at one Battle, but it was a bloody one, there being a carnage of Sixty thousand men, as the Monks report it; And the Duke, Potentiam ex vulgi adulatione quaerens, simulque magnifica pollicitus, disclaims Conquest, and taking his Oath to continue the good Laws of his Cousin the Confessor, with free applause, Rex declaratur, is accepted King; as Mr. Selden notes upon Edmerus. And that the people might the better observe their duty, and the King his Oath, he caused Twelve of the most discreet men in every Shire to be sworn, that without swerving either ad dextram, or sinistram; that is, nec Prerogativae blandientes, nec Privilegia dilatantes, they should lay open sanctitatem, the integrity of their Laws; nothing adding, nothing concealing; Nil prevaricando mittentes; so writes Hoveden. And Aldred the Archbishop that Crowned him, and the Bishop of London, by the King's Command, wrote that which the Jurats had delivered, and these, and says Ingulphus his Secretary, made Abbot of Crowland, He proclaims to be Authentic, and for ever to be inviolabiliter observed. The Sum of this he composed, as Sir Edw. Cook conjectures in the Preface to his 8th. Reperit. into some form of a Charter, closing it with this General, That all men duly keep the Laws of Good King Edward. Some Laws indeed of his own he added for the advantage of his Normans, which, says Gervase of Tilbury, were Effficacissimae ad pacem regni faciendam; though others say, They were somewhat too severe upon the Natives, the better to make room for a new Plantation. Dangelt an exaction not cleared from the Crown he Releases; The Jurisdiction Ecclesiastical and Civil, this King also severed; for before his Reign, the Bishop and the Earl, or their Deputites, sat jointly in the Counties, determining spiritual Causes in the Forenoon, and secular in the Afternoon, according to the pattern of the Jewish Sanhedrim, which was imitated by the Christians in times primitive; The Apostles and Elders which were no other than Lay-Magistrates, deciding all controversies among Christians, who voluntary submitted to their judgement; for this see the Glossary, 315. Lambert, 80. and Mr. Selden on Edmerus, 166. and History of Tyths, chap. 14. 'Tis only to be wished, that he had distinguished their Causes, as he divided their Courts; for that omission has occasioned those justlings of Jurisdiction which have since happened between the Ecclesiastical Courts, and the Courts and Common Law. But more violent was this Conflict, till by a Canon of the Counsel of Clarendon, it was decreed, That Regis justiciarius mittet in curiam sanctae Ecclesiae ad videndum quo modo res ibi tractatur; The ground of Prohibitions; Mat. Paris. An. 1164. This the Clergy endeavoured to qualify by Petition in Parliament, 5.1. Ed. 3. nu. 83. But thereto the King answered, that he could not departed with his right. 4. Just. 339. King William in this Act designed a more regular dispatch of Causes; and indeed as Pictaviensis says, he was a Prince of Courage, Spectaculum delectabile, simul & terribile: He was, says Matthew Paris, Subjectis humilis, but Rebellibus inexorabilis, and deserves a memory in our Chronicles more illustrious; for though his Normans at his new establishment importuned him to connive at some oppressions, yet the Law held out in title; And then, may we interpret the mistakes of a Prince, to be his necessity, or at least but as a step out of the way to avoid the Dirt; manifesting that he is but Man, and not more privileged from Infirmity, than his Subjects. Little of good fame (a revenge which bad Princes after their deaths cannot provide against) in Rufus his Son have we upon Record; for than says Paris, were their Malae consuetudines & exactiones injstae; And this appears by that great Charter of his succeeding Brother King Henry the First, who, says Hoveden, those evil customs penitus abrogavit, and restored to oppressed England, the Laws of good King Edward; with those emendations which his Father had added by the Counsel of his Barons; so Florentius, and Malmsbury. King Stephen by his Charter confirms the good Laws which King Henry his Uncle had before granted, with those of good King Edward, and enjoins, says Roger Bacon in his Book De impedimentis scientiae, That none of the Laws of Italy, the Imperial Laws should be retained; Henry the Second ratifies the same Charter; He grants what his Grandfather King Henry had granted, and remits what he had remitted. King John disputes it with his Nobles, but was prevailed with in the Seventeenth year of his Reign, to contract those former general Charters into one Grand one, and this says the Monk of St. Albon, Ex parte maxima, leges antiquas & regni consuetudines cortinebat, Paris 246. But King John being (as the Monks report him) of an unsteady spirit, recalls his Charter, when the Normans being engrafted into the English Nobility, and inheritable as they thought to the English freedom, contest it with their Prince, and pray in aid of Lewis the French Kings Son; by whose powers King John being worsted, he dies, being poisoned, as is supposed, in a Chalice. He left his Heir of the Age of Eleven years, whose innocence had contracted no malice, and in whom concentered not only the title of the Norman, but also of the Royal Saxon blood; for he was Grandson to Maud the Empress, Daughter and Heir of Henry the First, by Maud the Daughter of Malcolm King of Scots, and Margaret his Wife, Sister and Heir of Edgar Atheling, true Heir to the Confessor. The English, who naturally abhor wrong, and without a strong bias, are just loyal, forthwith desert the Foreigner, and adhere to the Royal Issue; The French Prince affrighted at the fervour of that generous spirit, submits to terms, and departs the Land. King Henry the Third, the Infant, is Crowned, and in the Ninth year of his Reign, being the Twentieth of his Age, upon payment of a Fifteen of all men's moveables, Cap. 37. in full Parliament, he gives and grants this Magna Charta, whereof my Statute is a Chapter. Afterwards pretending Infancy, he declares this Charter Null, which revives the Baron's War, and issues streams of English blood. Yet here give me leave to note what the French Comines gives for a Maxim, That no Subject ever drew Sword against his Prince, but though his design prevailed, he himself suffered in Life, Estate, or Conscience; And of this, giveth evidence, That Pardon for which the Lords Petition this King Henry in Kenelworth, the same Castle where they had imprisoned him; Dictum de Kenelworth. H. 3. Yet the result in the long run was the re-establishment of this Charter, in the Twenty fifth of his Reign, and in the presence of his Son the brave King Edw. 1. Mag. ch. 37. and with such direful Ceremonies as were then Authentic by way of cursing and execrations to the Infringers, as may astonish the Reader, if he peruses Matthew Paris, An. 1253. And reflects as well on such as violate the King's Prerogative, as Intrenchers upon the Subjects liberty. By some as ignorant as censorious, our Laws are scandaled as introduced by Conquest; whereas in truth this Charter is purely declaratory of the old Saxon as aforesaid; so concludes St German. Fol. 12. And in those captious points of Tenors, Wardships, and Purveyance, I can demonstrate footsteps thereof before King William, though possibly by him and his Issue improved with the honour of Kinghthood, and Knight's service. But were the quarrel at all a grievance, we have now a Prince, who derives his Pedigree not only from the Norman, but more ancient and direct, from the Royal Saxon Line, as well by Queen Margaret, Sister and Heir of Edgar in the Scotch Descent, as from Maud her Daughter Queen to King Henry the First in the English. And for those pretended Norman innovations of Tenors, Wardships, and Purveyance, he has been pleased to unhatch these Royalties from his Crown upon the Petition of the Parliament, which is a Court de Tesgrand honour & justice de que nul doit imaginer chose dishonourable, as we are taught, in Plo. 388. In whose wisdoms it becomes people to acquiesce, as their own choice and Representatives, or to renounce all Rule, but their own. Yet may it with all submission be averred, Those Royalties might possibly have been so refined to the Saxon Model, as would have given an ornament and lustre to the Crown, yet no pressure to the Subject. But be this Statute de novo, or declaratory, were it at first a Charter only, or an Act, the matter is now without dispute, since the same King, and after him his Son King Edward, a warlike Prince, and our Justinian, 25. Ed. 1. in his full age and glory enacted it to be allowed as Common Law, for so are the words; nay, that it should be read twice a year in all Cathedrals, ch. 2. as the place where by the pope's interest they were then most obstructed: And his Royal Successors now Thirty and three times have confirmed it by Acts of Parliament; Nay, we have an Act that declares all Acts void, that are against it: But leges posteriores priores abrogant. So that, what at the first erecting might be a Charter, is become a Statute, and so St. German terms it, and so the Act of 5. Ed. 3. Cap. 8. And in plead, what more usual, than to lay it Contra formam Statuti, in an Action brought upon this Law? A Statute than it is, and therefore not less proper for a Reading, than that of Treasons, 25. Ed. 3. which was but declaratory of the old Law. The old Statutes, says Ch. Justice Cook, Preface to the 8th. Rep. are the Text of the Common Law; the Records and Reports are but Commentaries thereupon. And if so, than this Law, and this Chapter chief, which is the Jewel in the Ring, is the foundation of the whole, the rest but structures built upon it. This the base, those the descant. And now Gentleman, let us consider what sort of liberty is it, that a liber homo, a man of Reason can design, which is not secured him by this Statute! 1. Desires he to have his person free? Nullus capiatur vel imprison●tur. 2 Desires he peace in the possession of his Land? Nullus disseisetur de libero tenemento. 3. Would he not have his Franchises encroached? Nullus disseisetur de libertatibus. 4. Favours he the old Customs which he has been bred in? Nullus disseisetur de liberis consuetudinibus. 5. Desires he to live in the protection of the Law? Nullus utlag●tur. 6. Delights he in his old equaintance, and Country it? Nullus exul●tur. 7. Would be not be oppressed by his potent neighbour? Nullus aliquo modo destruatur. 8. Would be not be condemned before he be heard, nor chas ised before he be legally condemned? Nec super eum ibimus, nec super eum mittimus. 9 Would he not be judged at will, nor tried but by his Neighbourhood, and the Law? why none of these, or other grievance can surprise him. Nisi per judicium parium vel per legem terrae. 10. Lastly, Would he have right done him, and that without delay, sine prece, sine precio. Nulli vendemus, nulli negabimus, aut deferemus justitiam vel rectum. Lo here we have a Law for property in our Goods, for title to our Lands, for liberty to our persons, for safety to our lives; In general, as my Lord Dyer notes, fol. 104. here's a remedy for every wrong that is, and a prevention for every wrong that may be: for no man shall suffer till he be condemned; none condemned, but by a legal trial; and none tried, but is to be admitted to his just defence. If a Subject of England be not liber, who then is free? How is it, our interest as well as duty to support the Royal Government, which shaken, leaves us free to naught but the lusts of men? How are their contrivances to be abhorred, who design, under a specious fallacy, to erect their own greatness and revenge, on the hazard of our lives and souls! What I have enforced in relation to Kingship, I suppose is coherent, and not strained or impertinent to this occasion, and indeed no more than I (give me leave to say not unseasonably) published before the King's return, which may acquit me of flattery or design. There remains only one scruple, which may stick with some that are prepossessed, and that is, An acknowledgement that our Laws are excellent, but they have been often violated, and are apt to be obstructed in the execution. For answer, know, that while we are here, because men, we are subject to infirmity; nor is it possible to reap the more general fruit of the best established policy, unless by compact we subject ourselves to some possible inconveniences. Accidents and the artifices of men, are so various and incertain, that no Government is, was, or ever can be so exact, (no, not that Utopian device, which Mr. Wren so well asserted) as can secure against all casual emergents and mischiefs. Governments therefore are best weighed by comparisons; and comparing the royal frame, with that of our late Model, which is the beloved of our Statists, 'tis easily demonstrated, that Subjects are much more incident to oppression under that than this. In the Royal frame, the House of Commons are in a sort the Tribunes of the Subjects liberty, and it has often interposed humbly, yet with success. Now shall that House (we know when it was) become our Tyrants? To whom shall we appeal in case of grievance? 'Tis a change but fatal to the sheep, when the Dog that guards them becomes the Wolf; when such (as in Kingship) are entrusted only to consent that the Purse be opened, shall (as then) put in their hands to dispose and pay, and themselves only to account unto themselves. 'Tis a wound in the very heart of Liberty, and the less curable, in that it is driven by a knot of hands, a quarry of Sovereign's supporting one another like stones in an Arch; every of whose dependants acts the Prince, and fortifies a successive violation. Whereas a Prince is but one, circumscribed by a known Law, and apt instruments are not lightly raised, the terror of a House of Commons being too exemplary; however though Rex the King dies not, and his Sovereignty cannot be divided from himself, yet his person is mortal, and his posterity not so active, or more indulgent, makes amends. Upon this account it is, that ever since the Conquest at the long run, no innovation had ever happened, but prerogative has been pruned (and perhaps too hastily) in the branch thereof, which let in the opportunity. Search our Statutes, and so you will find it. I might instance the excellency of this Government, from the solemn and profound order that we have in framing new, in revoking or altering old Laws, which like Gold, must be seven times refined before they are in force. In that other fiction, how hastily upon every new light did they make Laws, even as boys do Squibs and Crackers, and as lasting; without a balance, or other body, maturely to debate and ripen! Which Laws, being absolute and without control, may be presumed to bias towards their private interests, though not by an exemption of the Purse, for that were too scandalous, yet by the invention or erecting of a new Office, or employment, which sufficiently rep its the payment. I might also instance in their severe and arbitrary imprisonments, and those without hearing or appeal; and often inflicted at the will or their inferior dependants in the Country, which (though I have too often felt) yet as to what was so enforced by those persons that were owned as the Supreme Authority, (admitting it legal) I cannot rationally condemn: for no Kingdom or State can stand long unshaken, unless there be in the supreme Magistrate and Council, a radical and inhaerent right, by power not altogether regular, to obviate plottings and surprise. Otherwise, while it stays the formalities of Law, the conspiracy may grow lawless, too strong to be prevented by it: And though some that are innocent, may suffer upon an undue suspicion, yet melius pereat unus quam unitas, better is it that one innocently suffer a private and temporay mischief, than that we run the hazard of a public inconvenience. With this, that it subjects the disquition to the forms of Law, when it may be safe and open, and with this, that it parts not this authority from the Sovereign and his Council; and so see we it now executed, and not unprosperously warranted by the Law of Nature, self-preservation, to which Lex terrae cannot be contrary. Whereas in those other days every dependant acted his passion, with this power, and the trial we had was by a new red Court, where the culled person were in a sort, Parties, Judge, and Juries, but no challenge, no pares, and I may swear they had none. Justitia firmat solium; which King James well understood, when he published, That for a King of England to discountenance the Common Law, was to desert his Crown; all persons are presumed to endeavour that which is for their advantage; Certainly then the Prince is ill advised, who ruins the Law, which is his chief support; If for no other cause, yet for this, we have no cause to fear. However, better were it to time out a temporary evil, as we do showers in harvest, than engage in that public hazard, which attends an undue remedy. The Arms of Subjects (even as best for them) should be preces & lachrymae, and those at the end will prevail, when it is grown to be the Genius of the people; But, Si non fecerit, sufficit ●i ad poenam, says Bracton, quod Dominum habet ultorem. He that has faith, will stay God's time for payment; he that has none, may take his own time, and possibly be paid himself. Every word in this Statute has its weight, and I might aptly dissect it into as many parts as words; For method I shall propose ten particulars, and each of them an adequate subject for a reading. Within this Statute. 1. Who is the Liber homo intended. 2. What shall be an Imprisonment. 3. What is a Disseisin of Franktenement. 4. What is a Disseisin of Liberties. 5. What is a Disseisin of free Customs. 6. What is an Utlagury, exile or destruction. 7. What shall be said to be a passing or sitting upon a man. 8. What shall be called a legal judgement of Peers. 9 What it is that is called the Law of the Land. 10. What shall be said to be a selling, denying, or deferring of Justice. Upon these divisions I shall proceed, as far as the time allotted me will permit; however, I shall contrive to give you somewhat of my conceptions upon every part; and herein I shall beg your patience and attention, and possibly may make you some amends, by being brief and plain. ERRATA. Pag 3 line 17. read ●n. Ibid line 24. for Hazard, read Hazards▪ Pag. 4. line 21. for oh h …, read others. Ibid line ●…. for Lords Spiritual, Lords Tempo●ral, … d, read a House of Lords, and a House of. FINIS. ADVERTISEMENT. More of this Subject may be read, in a Discourse published by the Reader, before the Kings Return, and Printed by us, G. B. and T. C.