The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 06 (of 11) — Thomas Hobbes — John Shaqi
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 06 (of 11)
Thomas Hobbes · en
_B._ This was cruel proceeding. Do not the Kings of England use to sit
in the Lords' House when they please? And was not this bill in debate
then in the House of Lords? It is a strange thing that a man should be
lawfully in the company of men, where he must needs hear and see what
they say and do, and yet must not take notice of it so much as to the
same company; for though the King was not present at the debate itself,
yet it was lawful for any of the Lords to make him acquainted with it.
Any one of the House of Commons, though not present at a proposition or
debate in the House, nevertheless hearing of it from some of his
fellow-members, may certainly not only take notice of it, but also speak
to it in the House of Commons: but to make the King give up his friends
and counsellors to them, to be put to death, banishment, or
imprisonment, for their good-will to him, was such a tyranny over a
king, no king ever exercised over any subject but in cases of treason or
murder, and seldom then.
_A._ Presently hereupon began a kind of war between the pens of the
Parliament and those of the secretaries, and other able men that were
with the King. For upon the 15th of December they sent to the King a
paper called _A Remonstrance of the State of the Kingdom_, and with it a
petition; both which they caused to be published. In the remonstrance
they complained of certain mischievous designs of a malignant party,
then, before the beginning of the Parliament, grown ripe; and did set
forth what means had been used for the preventing of it by the wisdom of
the Parliament; what rubs they had found therein; what course was fit to
be taken for restoring and establishing the ancient honour, greatness,
and safety, of the Crown and nation.
And first, of these designs the promoters and actors were, they said,
Jesuited Papists:
Secondly, the bishops, and that part of the clergy that cherish
formality as a support of their own ecclesiastical tyranny and
usurpation:
Thirdly, counsellors and courtiers, that for private ends, they said,
had engaged themselves to further the interests of some foreign princes.
_B._ It may very well be, that some of the bishops, and also some of the
court, may have, in pursuit of their private interest, done something
indiscreetly, and perhaps wickedly. Therefore I pray you tell me in
particular what their crimes were: for methinks the King should not have
connived at anything against his own supreme authority.