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Yes, I can tell them one other way to express their loyalty, which is, to obey the king, and to respect his brother, as the next lawful successor; their religion commands them both, and the government is secured in so doing. But why in intervals of parliament? How are they more obliged to honour the king's son out of parliament, than in it? And why this prosecution of love for the king's sake? Has he ordered more love to be shewn to one son, than to another? Indeed, his own quality is cause sufficient for all men to respect him, and I am of their number, who truly honour him, and who wish him better than this miserable sycophant; for I wish him, from his father's royal kindness, what justice can make him, which is a greater honour than the rabble can confer upon him.

But our author finds, that commendation is no more his talent, than flattery was that of Æsop's ass; and therefore falls immediately, from pawing with his fore-feet, and grinning upon one prince, to downright braying against another.

He says, I have not used "my patron duke much better; for I have put him under a most dismal and unfortunate character of a successor, excluded from the crown by act of state, for his religion; who fought his way to the crown, changed his religion, and died by the hand of a Roman assassinate.'

If it please his Royal Highness to be my patron, I have reason to be proud of it; because he never yet forsook any man, whom he has had the goodness to own for his. But how have I put him under an unfortunate character? the authors of the Reflections, and our John-a-Nokes, have not laid their noddles together about this accusation. For it is their business to prove the king of Navarre to have been a most successful, magnanimous, gentle, and grateful prince; in which character they have fol

lowed the stream of all historians. How then happens this jarring amongst friends, that the same man is put under such dismal circumstances on one side, and so fortunate on the other, by the writers of the same party? The answer is very plain; that they take the cause by several handles. They, who will not have the Duke resemble the king of Navarre, have magnified the character of that prince, to debase his Royal Highness; and therein done what they can to shew the disparity. Mr Hunt, who will have it to be the Duke's character, has blackened that king as much as he is able, to shew the likeness. Now this would be ridiculous pleading at a bar, by lawyers retained for the same cause; and both sides would call each other fools, because the jury betwixt them would be confounded, and perhaps the judges too.

But this it is to have a bad cause, which puts men of necessity upon knavery; and that knavery is commonly found out. Well, Mr Hunt has in another place confessed himself to be in passion, and that is the reason he is so grosly mistaken in opening of the cause. For, first, the king of Navarre was neither under dismal, nor unfortunate circumstances: before the end of that very sentence, our lawyer has confessed, that he fought his way to the crown; that is, he gloriously vanquished all his rebels, and happily possessed his inheritance many years after he had regained it. In the next place, he was never excluded from the crown by act of state. changed his religion indeed, but not until he had almost weathered the storm, recovered the best part of his estate, and gained some glorious victories in pitched battles; so that his changing cannot without injustice be attributed to his fear. Monsieur Chiverny, in his Memoirs of those times, plainly tells us, that he solemnly promised to his prede

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cessor Henry III. then dying, that he would become a Romanist; and Davila, though he says not this directly, yet denies it not. By whose hands Henry IV. died, is notoriously known; but it is invidiously urged, both by Mr Hunt and the Reflectors for we may, to our shame, remember, that a king of our own country was barbarously murdered by his subjects, who professed the same religion; though I believe, that neither Jaques Clement, nor Ravaillac, were better papists, than the independents and presbyterians were protestants; so that their argument only proves, that there are rogues of all religions: Iliacos intra muros peccatur, et extra. But Mr Hunt follows his blow again, that I have "offered a justification of an act of exclusion against a popish successor in a protestant kingdom, by remembering what was done against the king of Navarre, who was de facto excluded by an act of state." an act of state." My gentleman, I perceive, is very willing to call that an act of exclusion, and an act of state, which is only, in our langage, called a bill; for Henry III. could never be gained to pass it, though it was proposed by the three estates at Blois. The Reflectors are more modest; for they profess, (though I am afraid it is somewhat against the grain,) that a vote of the House of Commons is not an act; but the times are turned upon them, and they dare speak no other language. Mr Hunt, indeed, is a bold republican, and tells you the bottom of their meaning. Yet why should it make the "courage of his Royal Highness quail, to find himself under this representation,' which, by our author's favour, is neither dismal, nor disastrous? Henry IV. escaped this dreadful machine of the League; I say dreadful, for the three estates were at that time composed generally of Guisards, factious, hot-headed, rebellious interest

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ed men. The king in possession was but his brother-in-law, and at the time publicly his enemy; for the king of Navarre was then in arms against him; and yet the sense of common justice, and the good of his people so prevailed, that he withstood the project of the states, which he also knew was levelled at himself; for had the exclusion proceeded, he had been immediately laid by, and the lieutenancy of France conferred on Guise; after which the rebel would certainly have put up his title for the crown. In the case of his Royal Highness, only one of the three estates have offered at the exclusion, and have been constantly opposed by the other two, and by his majesty. Neither is it any way probable, that the like will ever be again attempted; for the fatal consequences, as well as the illegality of that design, are seen through already by the people; so that, instead of offering a justification of an act of exclusion, I have exposed a rebellious, impious, and fruitless contrivance tending to it. If we look on the parliament of Paris, when they were in their right wits, before they were intoxicated by the League, (at least wholly) we shall find them addressing to king Henry III. in another key, concerning the king of Navarre's succession, though he was at that time, as they called it, a relapsed heretic. And to this purpose I will quote a passage out of the journals of Henry III. so much magnified by my adversaries.

Towards the end of September, 1585, there was published at Paris a bull of excommunication against the king of Navarre, and the prince of Condé. The parliament of Paris made their remonstrance to the king upon it, which was both grave, and worthy of the place they held, and of the authority they have in this kingdom; saying for conclusion, that "their court had found the stile of this

bull so full of innovation, and so distant from the modesty of ancient Popes, that they could not understand in it the voice of an Apostle's successor; forasmuch, as they found not in their records, nor in the search of all antiquity, that the princes of France had ever been subject to the justice or jurisdiction of the Pope, and they could not take it into consideration, until first he made appear the right which he pretended in the translation of kingdoms, established and ordained by Almighty God, before the name of Pope was heard of in the world." It is plain by this, that the parliament of Paris acknowledged an inherent right of succession in the king of Navarre, though of a contrary religion to their own. And though, after the duke of Guise's murder at Blois, the city of Paris revolted from their obedience to their king, pretending, that he was fallen from the crown, by reason of that and other actions, with which they charged him; yet the sum of all their power to renounce him, and create the duke of Mayenne lieutenant-general, depended ultimately on the Pope's authority; which, as you see, but three years before, they had peremptorily denied.

The college of Sorbonne began the dance, by their determination, that the kingly right was forfeited; and, stripping him of all his dignities, they called him plain Henry de Valois: after this, says my author, "sixteen rascals (by which he means the council of that number) having administered the oath of government to the duke of Mayenne, to take in quality of lieutenant-general of the estate and crown of France, the same ridiculous dignity was confirmed to him by an imaginary parliament, the true parliament being detained prisoners, in divers of the city goals, and two new seals were ordered to be immediately made, with this inscription,-the

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