I Had rather act than speak in the weighty busi­nesses of the Kingdome which have been so excel­lently handled by those four Gentlemen that spake last, and therefore I shall be short.

When I do look upon the body of this goodly flourishing Kingdome in matter of Religion and of out Lawes, for like Hippocrates twins they live and die together, I say, when I behold both these in the state and plight as they have been presented unto us, Flere magis libet quàm dicere. But this is our comfort, Master Speaker, that we are here met together for the welfare and happinesse of Prince and People, and who knowes whether this may not be the ap­pointed time wherein God will restore our Religion as at the first, and our Lawes as at the beginning.

The honour consists in the weal of his people: this undoubted maxime his Majesty hath made good by his late gracious Speech and Promise to us to re­dresse all our grievances, the enemies of peace and plenty.

To make a People rich they must have Ease and Justice: ease in their consciences from the bane of superstition, from the intolerable burthen of Inno­vation in Religion, and from the racks and tortures of strange new fangled Oathes. They must be eased in their persons, being liberi homines, and not villains, from all illegall arrests and imprisonments against Magna charta, being our greatest Libertie. They must be eased in their Lands from Forrests, where never any Deer-fees; from depopulation, where [Page 2] never any Farme was decayed; and from Inclosure, where never any hedges were set; They must be eased in their goods from exactions and exspoliations of Pursuiants, and Apparitors, of Projectors and Mo­nopolists, Humanarum calamitatum mercatores, as an antient Writer finely cals them: and if the first have all these easements, yet if they have not justice, they cannot subsist; Justice is to the civill body as food to the naturall: if the streames of justice be by un­righteousnesse turned into Gall or Wormewood, or by cruelty like the Egyptian waters turned into blood, those which drinke of these brooks must needs die and perish. The Law saith that all Justice is in the King, who is stiled in our book, Fons justitie, and he commits it to the Judges for the execution, wherein he trusts them with two of the choicest flowers which belong to the Crowne, the admini­stration of Justice, and the exposition of Lawes, that he would not trust them without an oath required of them by the stature of 18. Edw. 3. which is so strickt and severe, that it made a judge whom I know, though honest and stout, to quake and tremble at the very mention of it.

The effect of the oath is that they shall do equall Lawes and execution of rights to all the Kings Sub­jects as well poor as rich, without regard to any per­son, that they shall not deny to do common right to any man, by the Kings letters, or for any other cause, and in case such letters do come that they pro­ceed to do the Law notwithstanding such letters, as they will answer it to the King in their bodies, lands, and goods.