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James's time, things were pretty well. But in king Charles's time, there has been nothing but French-more and the cushion-dance, omnium gatherum, tolly, polly, hoite-come-toite.

THE KING.

1. It is hard to make an accommodation between the king and the parliament. If you and I fell out about money-you said I owed you twenty pounds, I said I owed you but ten pounds-it may be, a third party, allowing me twenty marks, might make us friends. But if I said I owed you twenty pounds in silver, and you said I owed you twenty pound of diamonds, which is a sum innumerable, it is impossible we should ever agree. This is the

case.

2. The king using the house of commons, as he did in Mr. Pymm and his company, that is, charging them with treason, because they charged my lord of Canterbury and Sir George Ratcliff; it was just with as much logic as the boy, that would have lain with his grandmother, used to his father: You lay with my mother, why should not I lie with yours?

3. There is not the same reason for the king's accusing men of treason, and carrying

them away, as there is for the houses themselves, because they accuse one of themselves. For every one that is accused, is either a peer or a commoner, and he that is accused hath his consent going along with him; but if the king accuses, there is nothing of this in it.

4. The king is equally abused now as before: then they flattered him and made him do ill things; now they would force him against his conscience. If a physician should tell me, every thing I had a mind to was good for me, though in truth it was poison, he abused me; and he abuses me as much, that would force me to take something whether I will or no.

5. The king, so long as he is our king, may do with his officers what he pleases; as the master of the house may turn away all his servants, and take whom he please.

6. The king's oath is not security enough for our property, for he swears to govern according to law. Now the judges they interpret the law, and what judges can be made to do we know.

7. The king and the parliament now falling out, are just as when there is foul play offered amongst gamesters: one snatches the other's stake, they seize what they can of one

another's. It is not to be asked whether it belongs not to the king to do this or that: before, when there was fair play, it did. But now they will do what is most convenient for their own safety. If two fall to scuffling, one tears the other's band, the other tears his; when they were friends they were quiet, and did no such thing; they let one another's bands alone.

8. The king calling his friends from the parliament, because he had use of them at Oxford, is as if a man should have use of a little piece of wood, and he runs down into the cellar, and takes the spigot; in the mean time all the beer runs about the house. When his friends are absent, the king will be lost.

KNIGHTS' SERVICE.

KNIGHTS' service, in earnest, means nothing; for the lords are bound to wait upon the king when he goes to war with a foreign enemy, with, it may be, one man and one horse; and he that doth not, is to be rated so much as shall seem good to the next parliament. And what will that be? So it is for a private man, that holds of a gentleman.

LAND.

1. WHEN men did let their land underfoot, the tenants would fight for their landlords, so that way they had their retribution; but now they will do nothing for them, may be the first, if but a constable bid them, that shall lay the landlord by the heels, and therefore it is vanity and folly not to take the full value.

2. Allodium is a law word contrary to feudum, and it signifies land that holds of nobody. We have no such land in England. It is a true proposition, all the land in England is held, either immediately, or mediately of the king.

LANGUAGE.

1. To a living tongue new words may be added, but not to a dead tongue, as Latin, Greek, Hebrew, &c.

2. Latimer is the corruption of Latiner, it signifies he that interprets Latin; and though he interpreted French, Spanish, or Italian, he was called the king's Latiner, that is, the king's interpreter.

3. If you look upon the language spoken in the Saxon time, and the language spoken

now, you will find the difference to be just as if a man had a cloak that he wore plain in queen Elizabeth's days, and since, here has put in a piece of red, and there a piece of blue, and here a piece of green, and there a piece of orange tawny. We borrow words from the French, Italian, Latin, as every pedantic man pleases.

4. We have more words than notions, halfa-dozen words for the same thing. Sometimes we put a new signification to an old word, as when we call a piece a gun. The word gun was in use in England for an engine to cast a thing from a man, long before there was any gunpowder found out.

5. Words must be fitted to a man's mouth; it was well said of the fellow that was to make a speech for my lord mayor, he desired to take measure of his lordship's mouth.

LAW.

1. A MAN may plead not guilty, and yet tell no lie; for by the law no man is bound to accuse himself: so that when I say, not guilty, the meaning is, as if I should say by way of paraphrase, I am not so guilty as to tell you; you will bring me to a trial, and have me

if

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