A Seasonable Warning and Caution against the Insinuations of Papists and Jacobites in favour of the Pretender: Being a Letter from an Englishman at the Court of HanoverDefoe, Daniel
Religion
A Seasonable Warning and Caution against the Insinuations of Papists and Jacobites in favour of the Pretender: Being a Letter from an Englishman at the Court of Hanover
Defoe, Daniel
James, Prince of Wales, 1688-1766 -- Early works to 1800
2. That in this distress, the whole nation applied themselves to the
Prince of Orange, whose right to the succession made him justly appear
as the proper person to assist and relieve this oppressed people;
which prince came over at our invitation, was blessed with success,
and all the favourers of popery and tyranny sunk at once; King James
fled with his queen, and that person whom he called his son, and whom
we now call justly the pretender.
3. Concerning the birth of this person, the nobility and gentry of
England who invited over the prince, as may be seen by the memorial
they presented to his highness, alleged, that there were violent
presumptions that he was not born of the queen's body, which, however,
they desired to leave to examination in a free parliament; which also
the said prince expressed in his declaration, and that he was willing
to leave the same to a free parliament.
4. That before a free parliament could be obtained, King James
withdrew himself, and carried away his pretended son into the hands of
the ancient enemies of this nation, and of our religion, the French,
there to be educated in the principles of popery and enmity to this
his native country.
By which action he not only declined to refer the legitimacy of his
said son to the examination of the parliament, as the Prince of Orange
had offered in his said declaration, but made such examination
altogether useless and impracticable, he himself (King James) not
owning it to be a legal parliament, and therefore not consenting to
stand by such examination.
By the said abdication, and carrying away his said pretended son into
the hands of the French to be educated in popery, &c., he gave the
parliament of England and Scotland abundant reason for ever to exclude
the said King James and his said pretended son from the government of
these realms, or from the succession to the same, and made it
absolutely necessary for them to do so, if they would secure the
protestant religion to themselves and their posterity; and this
without any regard to the doubt whether he was the lawful son of King
James or no, since it is inconsistent with the constitution of this
protestant nation to be governed by a popish prince.
So that there is now no more room to examine whether the said
pretender be the lawful son of King James, or whether he is, or will
turn to be a protestant, the examination of the legitimacy by
parliament which was offered by the Prince of Orange in his
declaration, having been declined by his father, and himself having
been delivered up into the hands of the sworn enemies both of our
religion, constitution, and nation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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