MY Lords, These Gentlemen have represented unto your Lordships the sad object of justice perverted, liberty oppressed, of judgement turned into wormewood, the lawes which should be the barres of our gates[?], to protect us, keepe us, and all that is ours in[?] safety, made weake and impotent, to betray us into the hands of violence, instead of props to support us, become broken reeds to deceive us, and runne into our sides when we leane upon them, even so many snares to entrap and entangle us.

And all this by the perfidiousnesse of those, who are entrusted with our lawes, who call themselves the Guar­dians and the Interpreters of the Law, but by their ac­cursed glosses have confounded the Text, and made it [Page] speake another language, and another sence, then ever our Ancestors the Law-makers intended.

Our Ancestors made lawes to keepe themselves, their posterity after them in the possession of their estates; these Judges could make the Law it selfe rob us and de­spoileus of our estates. Were we invaded and persecuted at any time for pretended crimes, or rather because they were free from crime? and did we put our selves upon a legall defence, and shelter our selves under the buckler of the law, use those lawfull weapons, which Justice and Truth and the common right of the subject did put into our hands[?]; would this availe us? no, these Judges would make the Law wrest our weapons from us, disarme us, take away all our defence, expunge our answers, even binde us hand and foot, and so expose us naked & bound, to the mercilessenesse of our oppressors; were our per­sons forced and imprisoned by an act of power, would the law relieve us, when we appealed unto it? No, it would joyne hands with violence, and adde bitternesse to our sorrow; these Iudges would not heare us when we did cry, no importunity could get a Habeas Corpus; nay, our cryes would displease them, and they would beat us for crying, and overdoe the unjust Iudge in the Gospell, with whom yet importunity could prevaile?

My Lords, The Commons of England finding them­selves in this lamentable condition, by the wickednesse of these Iudges; it is no wonder that we complaine of them; it is no wonder, if the Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses assembled in Parliament, have sent up some of their mem­bers to stand upon Mount Ebal to curse these Iudges; to denounce a curse upon them who have removed our land­markes, have taken away the bound stones of the proprie­ty of [...]he subject, have left no Meum & Tuum, but he that [Page] had most might, had most right, and the law was sure to be of his side.

It hath beene the part of these Gentlemen who have spoken before me, to pray for justice upon those men, who would not doe justice to others. My Lords, I come upon an other errand, and yet for justice too, for there is justice upon Mount Gerezim, as well as upon Mount Ebal. It is as great a point of Iustice to give a blessing, a reward, where it is due, as punishment where punishment is due: For reward and punishment, Praemium & poena, be the two legges that Iustice walkes on, and reward is her right legge, the more noble and the more glorious supporter of that sacred and divine body, that which God himselfe the fountaine of justice doth more delight in.

Punishment is good, as Phisick in the consequence, re­ward as wholesome and nourishing food, in the essence; the one we do, because we must do it as necessary, the o­ther, because we love to do it as being pleasing and de­lightfull.

Your Lordships then, I doubt not, will as willingly joyne with the Commons, in doing good to a good Iudge, as in punishing of the bad.

My Lords, we honour them and reckon them Martyrs for the Common-wealth, who suffer any thing by de­sending the common right of the subject, when they will not part with their own goods contrary to law; when indeed their private interest goes along with it, or rather before it, and the publique concernement seemes to come but in a second place, such were those many, whom these [Page] Iudges have oppressed; yet these men we magnifie and judge worthy of praise and reward.

But what honour then is he worthy of, who meerely, for the publick, hath suffered himselfe to be divested and deprived of his particular, such a Iudge as would lose his place, rather then do that which his conscience told him was prejudiciall to the Common-wealth: is not he wor­thy of double honour?

And this did that worthy reverend Iudge, the Chiefe Iudge of England at that time, Sir Randol Crew, because he would not by subscribing countenance the loane in the first yeare of the King, contrary to his oath and con­science, he drew upon himselfe the displeasure of some great persons about his Majestie, who put on that project, which was afterwards condemned by the petition of right, in the Parliament of tertio as unjust and unlawfull, and by that meanes he lost his place of Chiefe Iustice of the Kings bench, and hath these fourteene yeares by keep­ing his innocency lost the profit of that office, which up­on a just calculation in so long a revolution of time, a­mounts to 26000 [...] or thereabouts.

He kept his innocency when others let theirs go, when himselfe and the Common-wealth were alike deserted, which raises his merit to a higher pitch; For to be ho­nest when every body else is honest, when honesty is in fashion, and is Trump, as I may say, is nothing so meri­torious; but to stand alone in the breach, to owne hone­sty when others dare not do it, cannot be sufficiently ap­plauded, nor sufficiently rewarded. And that did this good old man do: in a time of generall desertion he pre­served himselfe pure and untainted.

[Page]My Lords, the House of Commons are therefore sutors unto your Lordships, to joyne with them in the represen­tation of this good mans case unto his Majestie, and hum­bly to beseech his Majestie to be so good and gracious un­to him, as to give him such honour (the quality of this case considered) as may be a noble marke of soveraigne grace and favour, to remaine to him and his posterity, and may be in some measure a proportionable compensa­tion for the great losse he hath with so much patience and resolution sustained.