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body will deny that the choice of a fpeaker is in the houfe. Lord Coke grants that the choice of a fpeaker is a Congé d'elire-But the bishop is chofen, in effect, and named by the king; but the fpeaker is not. Let gentlemen how me any law or ufage to the contrary. If there be none, we have reason to think the king has no right, &c. and fomething is at the bottom that we know not of. A fpeaker has been chofen and laid afide; but never but in case of difability; as in Sir John Popham's cafe. Cheney was chofen here, and was excufed, and Sir John Dorwood was chofen in his place, and till he came up to the lords to be prefented, &c. the king did not know of any body that was chosen. We all know that anciently the first demand from the commons was, That the king would be pleased to confirm Magna Charta and Charta de Forefta.' I would know whether the king had a right to annul thofe laws; and that the people were not punished for breaking them? I fuppofe this to be our right (for all are not of equal moment) and all are bound to affert it, yet not to venture their necks upon it. This matter is not of that last importance as to venture the kingdom upon it. If the king denies one or two fpeakers, he may deny ten, till he have one to serve a turn: It is poffible, but not probable. The words of the writ that calls us hither are, confult de quibufdam arduis regni negotiis-and all that is to give money an empty exchequer, and a full house! Will the king lofe his money, do you think, by putting by forty fpeakers? I would

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not have that argument pass, that if we chufe not another speaker, we fhall be diffolved. When once a parliament is fo fond of their places, and fo fearful of a diffolution, that parliament did never do any good. Gentlemen did not expect fuch an anfwer from the king; but when I confider who was the counfellor of it, I wonder not at all at it. I move you to adjourn till to-morrow morning eight of the clock.

The debate was according adjourned by the clerk.

Wednesday, March 12.

[The adjourned debate resumed.]

Sir John Cloberry.] Moves, that the question may be put for chufing another speaker.

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Mr. Trenchard.] The king has no right to reject our speaker, but ancient ufage has been to the contrary. Confider the nature of the thing; if the cafe be doubtful, we ought to infift upon it. It is a great inconvenience to the house to have no fpeaker; and more for the king; and where it is fo, it ought to turn the fcales. We are told of dangers abroad and at home. But that is more to give warrant for us to give our rights away. Those persons who formerly have made misunderstandings betwixt the king and parliament, I fee, will continue it; as yet you cannot honourably admit of an expedient. At prefent, you have humbly addreffed the king, by way of reprefentation of your cafe; and the king has given you fuch an answer as was never yet given to any house of commons.

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You expofe the honour of the house to cenfure, if you give up your right upon fuch a flight anfwer. I would therefore addrefs the king for a farther answer.

Sir Hugh Cholmondeley.] As far as I can guess, this question is better left undetermined. If the king can refuse a speaker, he may refufe feveral. If the king has not liberty, &c. he cannot difplace, upon excufe of infirmity. We had better begin anew, and leave it as it was. It was moved, That the king might caufe nothing of this matter to be entered upon the lords journal. I propofe that way as most expedient.

Sir John Knight.] You have adjourned that very debate to this day, and your right of chufing the fpeaker is your proper debate, and you can go upon nothing else.

Sir Harbottle Grimftone. ] It has been our work four or five days to find out an expedient in this matter, and we cannot. The king has been fo advised, that we chufe any member but one ; which is as much as to fay, Chufe whom you will but twenty.' Except one, and except twenty. It was a faying of king James, That when he called a parliament, he let down his prerogative to his people; but when he diffolved a parliament, he took it up again; not for his pleasure, but for his power.' If one address will not do, I am for a fecond and a third to the king.

Sir John Hewley.] I would ferve my king and my country, but cannot be in a capacity to give up the cause for ever. Shall not we have our tongue to speak our own words? As for that precedent in lord Coke, &c. judges do not con

cern themselves in parliament, and that is the reason they look not into thofe cafes. But I believe, if lord Coke had been here at this debate, he would have changed his opinion. For continuance of this privilege for two hundred years is great authority. But it is faid, Ab initio non fuit fic.'—It is a voluntary act, and no pofitive law; a thing done only out of refpect to the king. It is faid,

That a speaker has been rejected by the king, and that is an evidence of the king's power'.-But this is materially on our fide; exceptio probat regulam in non exceptis. Sir John Popham, who was rejected, was fick. This perfon, Mr. Seymour, not difabling himself by any excufe, and being a perfon fo near the king near the king as a counsellor, it is no breach of respect to the king to make another addrefs, &c. I look upon it as an undoubted privilege of the people, and it may prove fatal to give it up, when for two hundred years never any speaker was prefented to the king, but Popham, and he for the caufe of his difability, &c. When Serjeant Philips was chofen fpeaker, and placed in the chair, he iffued out his warrant for writs, and the great feal obeyed them, before he was confirmed by the king. The king fays, or generally by the lord chancellor, Go, and chufe your speaker;' not Go to your house, and chufe whom I nominate,' but Chufe your fpeaker: Shall this be taken away by a fide-wind? A facto ad jus non valet confequentia. The fpeaker is our fervant, and is he to obey his mafter, or no? Though the fpeaker be the greatest commoner of England, yet he is not the great

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they all pretend to, and what is very hard, will give it to nobody. For my part I could not forbear advifing them (for the public good) to give the title of Excellency to every body, which would include the receiving it from every body; but the very mention of fuch a dishonourable peace, was received with as much indiguation, as Mrs. Blackaire did the motion of a reference. And indeed, I began to think myself ill-natured, to offer to take from them, in a town where there are so few diverfions, fo entertaining an amufement. I know that my peaceable difpofition already gives me a very ill figure, and that 'tis publicly whifpered as a piece of impertinent pride in me, that I have hitherto been faucily civil to every body, as if I thought no body good enough to quarrel with. I fhould be obliged to change my behaviour, if I did not intend to purfue my journey in a few days." Letter vi.'"

Her next flop was at Vienna; their manner of visiting there, and their drefs at that time, which we fuppofe to be authentic, may be matter of curiofity.

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Though I have fo lately troubled you, my dear fifter, with a long letter, yet I will keep my promife in giving you an account of my first going to court. In order to that ceremony, I was fqueezed up in a gown, and adorned with a gorget and the other implements thereunto belonging, a drefs very inconvenient, but which certainly fhows the neck and fhape to great advantage. I cannot forbear giving you fome defcription of the fafhions here, which are more monstrous and contrary to all common fenfe and reafon, than 'tis

poffible for you to imagine. They build certain fabrics of gauze on their heads, about a yard high, confifting of three or four ftories fortified with numberless vards of heavy ribbon. The foundation of this ftructure is a thing they call a Bourlé, which is exactly of the fame fhape and kind, but about four times as big as thofe rolls our prudent milk maids make use of to fix their pails upon. This machine they cover with their own hair, which they mix with a great deal of falfe, it being a particular beauty to have their heads too large to go into a moderate tub. Their hair is prodigiously powdered to conceal the mixture, and fet out with three or four rows of bodkins, (wonderfully large, that ftick out two or three inches from their hair) made of diamonds, pearls, red, green, and yellow ftones, that it certainly requires as much art and experience to carry the load upright, as to dance upon May-day with the garland. Their whale bone petticoats outdo ours by feveral yards circumference, and cover fome acres of ground. You may eafily fuppofe how this extraordidary drefs fets off and improves the natural uglinefs, with which God Almighty has been pleafed to endow them, generally speaking. Even the lovely emprefs herself is obliged to comply, in fome degree, with thefe abfurd fashions, which they would not quit, for all the world. I had a private audience (according to ceremony) of half an 'our, and then all the other ladies were permitted to come and make their court. I was perfectly charmed with the emprefs; I cannot however tell you that her features are regular; her eyes are

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and upon hue and cry; this man (Danby) is as remarkable in the north, as fomebody (Clifford) was in the west.

upon man. I am as willing to heal as any man, but can you lay this afide with honour, having reprefented it already? He that made this queftion cannot want another to play with, and then you will be fent home maimed in your privileges, wounded in your body. This is like an Italian revenge, damning the foul firft, and then killing the body. The reprefentation you have delivered, is very moderately penned; and will

Mr. Williams.] Your debates ought to be applied to your question. To debate, that it is the right of the houfe to chufe, and the king to refuse a speaker, I am forry to hear that know, when your reprefentation to the king has plainly afferted the thing. When that appears to be your general opinion, I take it to be a very strange thing now to debate the contrary. But fince you are gone out of the way, pray come in again and affert your right. Prerogative does and must confift, and the effence of it, as much in custom as any of our privileges. Now the business of the five days is to make a precedent in your houfe againft yourfelves as it were. Dr. Exton, who is in another orb of the law, would let your right fleep now, to refume* it another time. Now popery and foreign fears are upon us! I have ever obferved, that prerogative once gained was never got back again, and our privileges loft are never reftored. What will become of you when a popish fucceffor comes, when in king Charles II's time, the beft of princes, you gave up this privilege? When you have the oppreffion of a tyrant upon you, and all ill counfels upon you, what will become of you? Now you have none to struggle with, but ill counfellors and a good prince. I will lay this as heavy upon counsellors as any man can lay it

you

receive this manner of anfwering? When you have prefented an humble petition, what fort of an fwer do you receive? Do you not, by laying this afide, fet up a worfe precedent than you have had an anfwer? I have that in my mind which I cannot fo well exprefs, but gentlemen may eafily imagine. By good counfel, the king may heal all this, but it will never be in the power of the house of commons to retrieve it, if you give up your right.

Sir Thomas Exton was member and L.L.D.

VOL. VI.

The fecond humble reprefentation to his majefty:

Moft gracious fovereign,

• Whereas by the gracious anfwer your majefty was pleased to give to our firft meffage in council, whereby your majefty was pleafed to declare a refolution not to infringe our juft rights and privileges, we, your ma jefty's moft dutiful and loyal commons, were encouraged to make an humble reprefentation to your majefty upon the choice

for the univerfity of Cambridge,

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mother, a princefs of great virtue and goodness, but who piques herself too much on a violent devotion. She is perpetually performing extraordinary acts of pen nance, without having ever done any thing to deserve them. She has the fame number of maids of honour, whom the fuffers to go in colours; but she herself never quits her mourning; and fure no. thing can be more difmal than the mourning here, even for a brother. There is not the leaft bit of linen to be feen; all black crape inflead of it. The neck, ears, and fide of the face are covered with a plaited piece of the fame ftuff, and the face that peeps out in the midft of it, looks as if it were pillaried. The widows wear over and above, a crape forehead cloth, and in this folemn weed, go to all the public places of diverfion without fcruple.' Letter ix. Vienna is the place of Etiquette, and the letters which follow our extract give a lively and an agreeable account of it.

The laft letter of the first volume (dated from Adrianople,) is, perhaps, the most extraordinary in the whole collection. We cannot therefore refrain prefenting the › reader with it.

"I am now got into a new world, where every thing I fee, appears to me a change of fcene; and I write to your ladyfhip with fome content of mind, hoping, at leaft, that you will find the charm of novelty in my letters, and no longer reproach me, that I tell you nothing extraordinary. I won't - trouble you with a relation of our tedious journey; but I must not omit what I faw remarkable at Sophia, one of the most beautiful

towns in the Turkish empire, and famous for its hot baths, that are reforted to both for diverfion and health. I ftop'd here one day, on purpose to fee them; and defigning to go incognito, I hired a Turkish coach. These voitures are not at all like ours, but much more convenient for the country, the heat being fo great that glafles would be very troublefome. They are made a good deal in the manner of the Dutch ftage coaches, having wooden lattices painted and gilded; the infide being alfo painted with baskets and nofegays of flowers, intermixed commonly with little poetical motto's. They are covered all over with fcarlet cloth, lined with filk, and very often richly embroidered and fringed. This covering entirely hides the perfons in them, but may be thrown back at pleasure, and thus permit the ladies to peep through the lattices. They hold four people very conveniently, feated on cufhions, but not raised.

"

In one of these covered waggons, I went to the Bagnio about ten a clock. It was already full of women. It is built of stone, in the fhape of a dome, with no windows but in the roof, which gives light enough. There were five of these domes joined together, the outmoft being lefs than the reft, and ferving only as a hall, where the Pertres ftood at the door. Ladies of quality generally give this woman a crown or ten fhillings, and I did not forget that ceremony. The next room is a very large one, paved with marble, and all round it are two raised fofas of marble, one above another. There were four fountains of cold water in this room, falling first into marble

bafons,

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