nified. By statute 29 Geo. II. c.17. it is moreover enacted, that to serve under the French king, as a military officer, fhall be felony without benefit of clergy; and to enter into the Scotch brigade, in the Dutch fervice, without previously taking the oaths of allegiance and abjuration, shall be a forfeiture of 500l.

4. FELONY, by imbezzling the king's armour or warlike ftores, is fo declared to be by statute 31 Eliz. c.4. which enacts, that if any perfon having the charge or cuftody of the king's armour, ordnance, ammunition, or habiliments of war; or of any victual provided for victualling the king's foldiers or mariners; shall, either for gain, or to impede his majesty's service, imbezzle the fame to the value of twenty fhillings, fuch offence shall be felony. And the ftatute 22 Car. II. c. 5. takes away the benefit of clergy from this offence, fo far as it relates to naval ftores. Other inferior imbezzlements and mifdemefnors, that fall under this denomination, are punifhed by ftatute 1 Geo. I. c. 25. with fine and imprisonment.

I

5. DESERTION from the king's armies in time of war, whether by land or fea, in England or in parts beyond the feas, is by the standing laws of the land (exclufive of the annual acts of parliament to punifh mutiny and desertion) and particularly by statute 18 Hen. VI. c.19. and 5 Eliz. c. 5. made felony, but not without benefit of clergy. But by the ftatute 2 & 3 Edw. VI. c. 2. clergy is taken away from fuch deferters, and the offence is made triable by the juftices of every fhire. The fame ftatutes punish other inferior military offences with fines, imprisonment, and other penalties.

CHAPTER THE EIGHT H.

OF

PRAEM UNIRE.

A

THIRD fpecies of offence more immediately affecting the king and his government, though not subject to capital punishment, is that of praemunire: fo called from the words of the writ preparatory to the prosecution thereof; “praemunire" "facias A. B." forewarn A. B. that he appear before us to anfwer the contempt wherewith he ftands charged; which contempt is particularly recited in the preamble to the writ". It took it's original from the exorbitant power claimed and exercifed in England by the pope, which even in the days of blind zeal was too heavy for our ancestors to bear.

It may justly be observed, that religious principles, which (when genuine and pure) have an evident tendency to make their profeffors better citizens as well as better men, have (when perverted and erroneous) been usually fubverfive of civil government, and been made both the cloak and the inftrument of every pernicious defign that can be harboured in the heart of man. The unbounded authority that was exercised by the Druids in the weft, under the influence of pagan fuperftition, and the terrible ravages committed by the Saracens in the east, to propagate the religion of Mahomet, both witness to the truth of

a A barbarous word for praemonere.

Old Nat. Brev. 101. edit. 1534.

that

that antient univerfal obfervation; that, in all ages and in all countries, civil and ecclefiaftical tyranny are mutually productive of each other. And it is the glory of the church of England, as well as a strong prefumptive argument in favour of the purity of her faith, that the hath been (as her prelates on a trying occafion once expreffed it ) in her principles and practice ever most unquestionably loyal. The clergy of her persuasion, holy in their doctrines and unblemished in their lives and converfation, are also moderate in their ambition, and entertain just notions of the ties of society and the rights of civil government. As in matters of faith and morality they acknowlege no guide but the scriptures, fo, in matters of external polity and of private right, they derive all their title from the civil magistrate; they look up to the king as their head, to the parliament as their lawgiver, and pride themselves in nothing so justly, as in being true members of the church, emphatically by law established. Whereas the principles of those who differ from them, as well in one extreme as the other, are equally and totally destructive of those ties and obligations by which all fociety is kept together; equally encroaching on those rights, which reafon and the original contract of every free ftate in the univerfe have vested in the fovereign power; and equally aiming at a distinct independent fupremacy of their own, where spiritual men and spiritual causes are concerned. The dreadful effects of fuch a religious bigotry, when actuated by erroneous principles, even of the protestant kind, are fufficiently evident from the history of the anabaptists in Germany, the covenanters in Scotland, and that deluge of fectaries in England, who murdered their sovereign, overturned the church and monarchy, shook every pillar of law, justice, and private property, and most devoutly established a kingdom of the faints in their stead. But thefe horrid devastations, the effects of mere madness or of zeal that was nearly allied to it, though violent and tumultuous, were but of a short duration. Whereas the progress of the papal policy, long actuated by the steady counfels of fucceffive pontiffs, Addrefs to James II. 1687.

took

took deeper root, and was at length in fome places with difficulty, in others never yet, extirpated. For this we might call to witness the black intrigues of the Jefuits, fo lately triumphant over Christendom, but now univerfally abandoned by even the Roman catholic powers: but the fubject of our present chapter rather leads us to confider the vast strides, which were formerly made in this kingdom by the popish clergy; how nearly they arrived to effecting their grand defign; fome few of the means they made use of for establishing their plan; and how almost all of them have been defeated or converted to better purposes, by the vigour of our free conftitution, and the wifdom of fucceffive parliaments.

THE antient British church, by whomfoever planted, was a stranger to the bishop of Rome, and all his pretended authority. But, the pagan Saxon invaders having driven the profeffors of christianity to the remoteft corners of our island, their own converfion was afterwards effected by Augustin the monk, and other miffionaries from the court of Rome. This naturally introduced fome few of the papal corruptions in point of faith and doctrine; but we read of no civil authority claimed by the pope in these kingdoms, till the aera of the Norman conqueft: when the then reigning pontiff having favoured duke William in his projected invasion, by bleffing his host and confecrating his banners, he took that opportunity also of establishing his fpiritual encroachments; and was even permitted so to do by the policy of the conqueror, in order more effectually to humble the Saxon clergy and aggrandize his Norman Frelates: prelates, who, being bred abroad in the doctrine and practice of flavery, had contracted a reverence and regard for it, and took a pleasure in rivetting the chains of a free-born people.

THE most stable foundation of legal and rational government is a due fubordination of rank, and a gradual scale of authority; and tyranny also itself is most surely fupported by a regular increase of defpotifm, rifing from the flave to the fultan: with

this difference however, that the measure of obedience in the one is grounded on the principles of fociety, and is extended no farther than reason and neceffity will warrant; in the other it is limited only by abfolute will and pleasure, without permitting the inferior to examine the title upon which it is founded. More effectually therefore to enslave the confciences and minds of the people, the Romish clergy themselves paid the most implicit obedience to their own fuperiors or prelates; and they, in their turns, were as blindly devoted to the will of the fovereign pontiff, whose decisions they held to be infallible, and his authority co-extenfive with the chriftian world. Hence his legates a latere were introduced into every kingdom of Europe, his bulles and decretal epiftles became the rule both of faith and difcipline, his judgment was the final resort in all cafes of doubt or difficulty, his decrees were enforced by anathemas and spiritual cenfures, he dethroned even kings that were refractory, and denied to whole kingdoms (when undutiful) the exercise of christian ordinances, and the benefits of the gospel of God.

BUT, though the being spiritual head of the church was a thing of great found, and of greater authority, among men of confcience and piety, yet the court of Rome was fully apprized that (among the bulk of mankind) power cannot be maintained without property; and therefore it's attention began very early to be rivetted upon every method that promised pecuniary advantage. The doctrine of purgatory was introduced, and with it the purchase of maffes to redeem the fouls of the deceased. New-fangled offences were created, and indulgences were fold to the wealthy, for liberty to fin without danger. The canon law took cognizance of crimes, injoined penance pro falute animae, and commuted that penance for money. Non-refidence and pluralities among the clergy, and marriages among the laity related within the feventh degree, were strictly prohibited by canon; but difpenfations were feldom denied to those who could afford to buy them. In fhort, all the wealth of christendom VOL. IV.

was