Eikon Basilike; the Portraiture of his Sacred Majesty in his Solitude and his Sufferings. The Eikonoclastes was written in answer to a tract entitled Eikon Basilike, containing a defence of the king, and supposed to be written by Charles himself. The passages I shall extract from this piece may be thought objectionable from the boldness of the sentiments; but as most people have pretty well made up their minds about the martyrdom of Charles I. the influence of any sentiments on the subject at present, would be insignificant. The passages, too, will serve to shew at once Milton's manner in controversy, and the ebullient state of feeling which prevailed at the period. Chap. 5. Upon the Bill for Triennial Parliaments, and for settling this, &c. The bill for triennial parliaments was doubtless a good bill, and the other for settling this was at that time very expedient; and, in the king's own words, no more than what the world " was fully confirmed he might, in justice, reason, honour, and conscience, grant them;" for to that end he affirms to have done it. But whereas he attributes the passing of them to his own act of grace and willingness, as his manner is, to make virtues of his necessities, and giving to himself all the praise, heaps ingratitude upon the parliament, a little memory will set the clean contrary before us-that for those beneficial acts we owe what we owe to the parliament, but to his granting them, neither praise nor thanks. The first bill granted much less than two former statutes yet in force by Edward the Third-that a parliament should be called every year, or oftener, if need were: nay, from a far ancienter law-book, called the Mirror, it is affirmed, in a late treatise called Rights of the Kingdom, that parliaments, by our old laws, ought twice a year to be at London. The second was so necessary, that nothing in the power of man more seenied to be the stay and support of all things from that steep ruin to which he had nigh brought them, than that act obtained. He had by his ill stewardship, and to say no worse, the needless raising of two armies, intended for a civil war, beggared both himself and the public; and besides had left us upon the score of his needy enemies for what it cost them in their own defence against him. To disengage him and the kingdom, great sums were to be borrowed, which would never have been lent, nor could ever be paid, had the king chanced to dissolve this parliament as heretofore. The errors also of his government had brought the kingdom to such extremes as were in capable of all recovery, without the absolute continuance of this parliament. It had been else in vain to go about the settling of so great distempers, if he, who first caused the malady, might, when he pleased, reject the remedy. Notwithstanding all which, that he granted both these acts unwillingly, and, as a mere passive instrument, was then visible even to most of those men who now will see nothing. At passing of the former act he himself concealed not his unwillingness; and testifying a great dislike of their actions, which they then proceeded in with great approbation of the whole kingdom, he told them with a masterly brow, that "by this act he had obliged them above what they had deserved," and gave a piece of justice to the commonwealth three times short of his predecessors, as if he had been giving some boon, or begged office, to a sort of his desertless grooms. That he passed the latter act against his will, no man in reason can hold it questionable: for if the February before he made so dainty, and were so loth to bestow a parliament once in three years upon the nation, because this had so opposed his courses, was it likely that, the May following, he should bestow willingly on this parliament an indissoluble sitting, when they had offended him much more by cutting short and impeaching of high treason his chief favourites? It was his fear, then, not his favour, which drew from him that act, lest the parliament, incensed by his conspiracies against them, about the same time discovered, should with the people have resented too heinously those his doings, if to the suspicion of their danger from him, he had also added the denial of this only means to secure themselves. * The bill preventing dissolution of this parliament, he calls "an unparalleled act, out of the extreme confidence that his subjects would not make ill use of it." But was it not a greater confidence of the people to put into one man's hand so great a power, till he abused it, as to summon and dissolve parliaments? He would be thanked for trusting them, and ought to thank them rather for trusting him: the trust issuing first from them, not from him. And that it was a mere trust, and not his prerogative, to call and dissolve parliaments at his pleasure; and that parliaments were not to be dissolved, till all petitions were heard, all grievances redressed, is not only the assertion of this parliament, but of our ancient law-books, which aver it to be an unwritten law of common right, so engraven in the hearts of our ancestors, and by them so constantly enjoyed and claimed, as that it needed not enrolling. And if the Scots in their declaration could charge the king with breach of their laws, for breaking up that parliament without their consent, while matters of greatest mo ment were depending; it were unreasonable to imagine, that the wisdom of England should be so wanting to itself, through all ages, as not to provide by some known law, written or unwritten, against the not calling, or the arbitrary dissolving of parliaments; or that they who ordained their summoning twice a year, or as oft as need required, did not tacitly enact also, that as necessity of affairs called them, so the same necessity should keep them undissolved till that were fully satisfied. Were it not for that, parliaments, and all the fruit and benefit we receive by having them, would turn soon to mere abusion. It appears, then, that if this bill of not dissolving were an unparalleled act, it was a known and common right, which our ancestors under other kings enjoyed as firmly as if it had been engraven in marble; and that the infringement of this king first brought it into a written act: who now boasts that as a great favour done us, which his own less fidelity than was in former kings, constrained us only of an old undoubted right, to make a new written act. But what needed written acts, whenas anciently it was esteemed part of his crown-oath not to dissolve parliaments till all grievances were considered. Whereupon the old modi of parliament calls it flat perjury, if he dissolve them before; as I find cited in a book mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, to which and other law tractats, I refer the more lawyerly |
