The Parliaments were to be kept antiently, we find in our old Author, twice in the year, that the Subject upon any occasion might have a ready Remedy and Redress for his Grievance. Afterwards, by several acts of parliament in the days of your predecessor Edward the third, they should have been once a year. Sir, what the Intermission of parliaments hath been in your time, it is very well known, and the sad consequences of it; and what in the interim instead of these Parliaments hath been by you by an high and arbitrary hand introduced upon the People, that likewise hath been too well known and felt. But when God by his Providence had so far brought it about, that you could no longer decline the calling of a Parliament, Sir, yet it will appear what your ends were against the antient and your native kingdom of Scotland: the Parliament of England not serving your ends against them, you were pleased to dissolve it. Another great necessity occasioned the calling of this parliament; and what your Designs, and Plots, and Endeavours all along have been, for the crushing and confounding of this Parliament, hath been very notorious to the whole kingdom. And truly, Sir, in that you did strike at all; that had been a sure way to have brought about That that this Charge lays upon you, your intention to subvert the Fundamental Laws of the Land; for the great bulwark of the Liberties of the People is the Parliament of England; and to subvert and root up that, which your aim hath been to do, certainly at one blow you had confounded the Liberties and the Property of England. Truly, Sir, it makes me to call to mind; I cannot forbear to express it; for, Sir, we must deal plainly with you, according to the merits of your cause; so is our Commission; it makes me to call to mind (these proceedings of yours) That that we read of a great Roman Emperor, by the way let us call him a great Roman tyrant, Caligula, that wished that the people of Rome had had but one neck, that at one blow he might cut it off. And your proceedings have been somewhat like to this; for the body of the people of England hath been (and where else) represented but in the Parliament; and could you but have confounded that, you had at one blow cut off the neck of England. But God hath reserved better things for us, and hath pleased for to confound your designs, and to break your forces, and to bring your person into custody, that you might be responsible to justice.