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A SHORT

HISTORICAL COLLECTION

TOUCHING

THE SUCCESSION OF THE CROWN.

Folio, containing two pages.

WHETHER the history of the succession of the crown will

allow so good and clear an hereditary right, jure humano, the reader will best judge, by the short historical collection, touching the succession, hereto subjoined.

In the heptarchy, there was no fixed hereditary right, one king tripping up the heels of another, as he had power, till one got all.

After no fixed hereditary right, for Athelstan, the great king, was a bastard, and so were several others; who, by their courage and policy, got the crown; so that a law was made, under the Saxon monarchy, De ordinatione regum, that directed the election of kings, prohibiting bastards to be elected.

Edward the Confessor was not king jure hæreditario.

William the First, called the Conqueror, had no right but from the people's election.

William Rufus was elected against the right of his elder brother. Henry the First came in by the same way.

King Stephen was elected a clero & populo, and confirmed by the Pope.

Henry the Second came in by consent, yet he had no hereditary right, for his mother was living.

Richard the First was charged before God and man, by the archbishop, upon his coronation, that he should not presume to take the crown, unless he resolved faithfully to observe the laws.

King John, his brother, because his elder brother's son was a foreigner, was elected a clero & populo, and being divorced from his wife, by his new queen, had Henry the Third.

Henry the Third was confirmed and settled in the kingdom, by the general election of the people; and, in his life-time, the nation was sworn to the succession of Edward the First, before he went to the Holy-Land.

Edward the First, being out of England, by the consent of lords and commons, was declared king.

Edward the Second, being misled, and relying too much upon his favourites, was deposed, and his son was declared king in his life-time.

Richard the Second, for his evil government, had the fate of the second Edward,

Henry the Fourth came in by election of the people, to whom succeeded Henry the Fifth, and Henry the Sixth, in whose time Richard Duke of York claimed the crown, and an act of parliament was made, that Henry the Sixth should enjoy the crown for his life, and the said duke after him; after which, King Henry raised an army, by assistance of the queen and prince, and, at Wakefield, in battle kills the duke, for which, in parliament, 1 Ed. 4. they were all by act of parliament attainted of treason; and one prin. cipal reason thereof was, for that, the duke being declared heir to the crown after Henry, by act of parliament, they had killed him.

Edward the Fourth enters the stage, and leaves Edward the Fifth to succeed, to whom succeeds Richard the Third, confirmed king by act of parliament, upon two reasons: First, that, by reason of a pre-contract of Edward the Fourth, Edward the Fifth, his eldest son, and all his other children, were bastards. Secondly, For that the son of the Duke of Clarence, second brother to Edward the Fourth, had no right, because the duke was attainted of treason, by a parliament of Edward the Fourth.

Henry the Seventh comes in, but had no title. First, because Edward the Fourth's daughter was then living. Secondly, his own mother, the Countess of Richmond, was then living.

After him Henry the Eighth wore the crown, who could have no title by the father. In his time, the succession of the crown was limited three several times, and the whole nation sworn to the ob.

servance.

Sir Thomas Moor declared, that the parliament had a power to bind the succession, and would subscribe thereto.

Edward the Sixth succeeded, but his mother was married to King Henry, while Catharine of Spain, his wife, was living.

Queen Mary was declared a bastard, and, by virtue of an act of parliament of Henry the Eighth, she succeeded; which act being repealed in the first of her reign, and the crown being limited otherwise by parliament, all the limitations of the crown in Henry the Eighth's reign were avoided; so that

Queen Elisabeth, who was declared a bastard, by act of par liament, in Henry the Eighth's time, and limited to succeed, in another act in his time, and that act repealed by Queen Mary, became queen in the force of her own act of parliament, which declared her lawful queen.

The crown was entailed in Richard the Second's time; again in the time of Henry the Fourth; again in the time of Henry the Sixth; again in the time of Edward the Fourth; again in the time of Richard the Third; again in the time of Henry the Seventh; thrice in the time of Henry the Eighth.

And, upon the marriage of Queen Mary to Philip of Spain, both the crowns of England and Spain were entailed; whereby it was provided, that, of the several children to be begotten upon the queen, one was to have the crown of England, another Spain, another the Low-Countries; the articles of marriage, to this purpose, were confirmed by act of parliament, and the Pope's bull.

So that it was agreed, by the states of both kingdoms, and the Low-Countries; and, therefore, probably, the universal opinion of the great men of that age, that kings and sovereign princes, with the consent of their states, had a power to alter and bind the succession of the crown.

THE GREAT BASTARD,*

PROTECTOR OF THE LITTLE ONE.

DONE OUT OF THE FRENCH.

And for which, a Proclamation, with a Reward of 5000 Louis'dors, to discover the Author, was published.

Printed at Cologne, 1689. Quarto, containing thirty pages.

WE find in holy writ, that, in the Jewish law, it was expresly

provided by the supreme legislator, That a bastard should not enter into the congregation of the Lord, even to the tenth genera tion but it seems the unhappy kingdom of France allows the bastard himself, not only to enter into the congregation, but to settle himself upon the throne, and to bear it higher than all the preceding kings before him, which had a better right to do it, as being the offspring of kings, and not the sons of the people, the proper term the Roman law gives to bastards. We have heard of the Salick law, in force in that kingdom, for a great many ages, by which the crown of France cannot fall from the sword to the distaff; but, 'till the blessed days of our august monarch, we never had the happiness to be acquainted with a law or custom, by which that was in the power of a Queen of France, to provide us an heir to the crown, without the concurrence of her husband, and to impose upon us, for our king, a brat of another man's making. All the reign of our invinci ble monarch has been a constant series of wonders; but, amongst them all, this is none of the least, That he, who was, in the opinion of all the world, the son of a private gentleman, from his birth to the end of the Prince of Conde's wars, has had the good fortune to be, ever since, no less than the son of Lewis the Thirteenth. After this, let no body call in question the commonly supposed fable of the transmutation of Iphis from a woman to a man, since to be tran slated from a bastard, to a son lawfully begotten, is equally as dif. ficult.

Among a great many other quarrels I have with the English nation, this is one, That they are a people too nice in believing miracles; and their haughtiness is such, as they scorn, forsooth, to

This is the 65th number in the catalogue of pamphlets in the Harleian Library VOL. IX.

T

believe impossibilities: for albeit they, and all the rest of the world about them, are firmly persuaded, that the little bauble Prince of Wales was never of Queen Mary's bearing, much less of King James's begetting; yet, if these infidels had been as well-mannerly credulous, as we in France have been, of the wonderful transmuta. tion of our Lewis le Grand, they needed not have made all this noise about the little impostor infant, but might have comforted themselves in the hopes, that he, who was a spurious Prince of Wales to-day, might some years hence, by a new French way of transubstantiation, become a lawfully begotten King of England. But the mischief of all is, these stiff-necked hereticks, ever since they fell off from the communion of the holy church, make bold to_call -in question all our miracles; and such a one, as this would be, I am afraid they would stick at, amongst others.

Good God! how happy had it been for France, yea, for a great part of the world, that the French had been as great infidels, upon the point of miracles, as the heretick English; and that our Lewis the Fourteenth had been hurled out of France, when but Dauphin of Viennois, as the little mock Prince of Wales has been out of England, when scarce well handled into the light? What dismal tragedies has our French impostor caused in Christendom? How many cities laid in ashes, countries ruined, families extinguished, and mil lions of lives sacrificed to the vanity and ambition of a bastard?

The Hugonots of France, of all people in the world, have most reason to be ashamed of their conduct, with relation to this ungrate monster, in the time of his minority, and of the Prince of Conde's wars: and these people, who disown a thousand things in the Catholick religion, merely upon the account of their being, in their opinion, irreconcilable to reason, did strangely contradict, not only common fame, but even reason itself, in being brought to think, that it was possible that Lewis the Fourteenth should be the true son of Lewis the Thirteenth, after near half a jubilee of years past in marriage betwixt him and Anne of Austria, his queen, without the least hope of issue, with all the concurring signs of a natural impotency on his side. But these gentlemen have paid dear enough for their opinions, and have had sufficient time and occasion to read their past folly, in their present affliction, and to call to mind, with regret, their unaccountable madness, in assisting him to re-ascend the throne of France, whom almost the whole nation, the princes of the blood, and the parliament of Paris had combined together to tumble down, and had certainly done it, if the Hugonots had not turned the scale. These poor Hugonots have had so many sad occasions since to repent their fault, that I confess it is scarce generous to upbraid the miserable with the follies they cannot now amend, and which have brought upon them so many misfortunes. And yet I must beg leave to tell them, That as their zeal to Lewis the Fourteenth's unjust interest was the original cause, in my opinion, of heaven's thus afflicting them by his hands; so indeed it was the true motive that induced this ungrate to ruin them. For thus it was, that he and his jesuitick cabal reasoned amongst themselves. If the Hugonots in the late

Prince of Conde's wars, when the crown was at stake, were able to turn the balance, and to draw victory and success to the side they espoused, which at that time was ours: by the same parity of reason, if the same Hugonots shall at any time hereafter be induced to join against us, and to take our enemy's part, they will without all doubt turn the scale on the other side, and prove as dangerous enemies as formerly they were friends; and thence, by a diabolical way of reasoning, it was concluded that it was the true interest of the crown, that the Hugonots should be utterly destroyed.

By the way, I must, though contrary to my inclination, do a piece of justice to Lewis the Fourteenth, in vindicating him from a common aspersion cast upon him by the Hugonots, and it is this: Over and above the foulest ingratitude imaginable (in which charge I heartily agree with them) he is chargeable with, as to them they will needs load him to the boot, with no less than perjury and breach of faith, in not observing the famous edict of Nantz, which was granted to them by King Henry the Fourth, and declared by him to be, in all time coming, an irrevocable and fundamental constitution of the state; which edict, say they, Lewis the Fourteenth swore at his coronation inviolably to observe I confess this is a heavy charge; but, to speak no worse of the devil than he deserves, in my opinion our Lewis le Grand is not chargeable upon that score, as not being bound to the observance of that edict, even though having sworn it; if we shall consider, that, by the express words of the edict itself, King Henry obliges himself and his lawful successors only, that is, those who shall succeed to the crown of France in a lawful descent of royal blood. Now I think no man will say, that, by this clause of the edict, an extraneous person, such as our interloper Lewis the Fourteenth, is, can be included; and therefore, as having none of the royal blood of France in his veins, he cannot be justly charged with perjury or breach of faith, in not observing one edict, which was declared and meant to oblige only the lawful successors of King Henry the Fourth.

Here I cannot but relate a discourse I had once with one of the fathers of the Capuchin order, the very day after the revocation of the edict of Nantz, and which may serve to answer one objection naturally arising, from what I have said upon this head. All Paris was filled with the noise of this affair, and, in every corner, both Papist and Protestant were reasoning upon it: amongst the rest, the good Capuchin and I would needs turn both statesmen and casuists on the subject. We lost betwixt us all the arguments we could fall upon, to vindicate, if possible, the king's so apparently unjust action; and, in the end, we came to reason, how far the king was obliged to the observance of the edict of Nantz, upon account of his not being indeed the lawful successor of Henry the Fourth, the granter of it. But, said I, Father, though I should agree, that the king is not obliged by that edict at first, for the reason we have named, yet his posterior swearing to observe it, makes him as liable to the observance of it, as if he were really the true successor

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