Page:A History and Defence of Magna Charta.djvu/284

ſtars quite through his book, and has made their perfection to centre in this, that they either are or ſoon may be, the beſt in the world; becauſe, in caſe they labour under any defect, that fault may be immediately amended by a wife ſenate: What if that wiſe ſenate be no where to be found, or is at no certainty? It is then impoſſible to render the chancellor’s Latin into Engliſh. For the ſpeedy perfection of the Engliſh laws, in which the prince and he are agreed is concito & citiſſime, may be rendered, either at the four year’s end, or the twelve year’s end, or at the world’s end. For ſo I am ſatisfied it was meant, after a ten year’s interval of parliaments, if the herb-woman at Edinburgh had not thrown her cricket-ſtool at the archbiſhop’s head. And ſo Dr. Heylin, I remember, does not ſo much acknowledge that ſecret as juſtify it. It is in his little book of obſervations upon Hammond l’Estrange’s hiſtory of the reign of K. Charles I. Says Hammond, Upon the diſſolution of that wiſe parliament in 1628 (to whom we owe the petition of right) all wiſe men concluded that there was an end of all parliaments. Yes, ſays Heylin, ſo they might well, the King having been troubled with their impertinences, and having an example in France before his eyes, where parliaments have been ſo much diſcontinu-

ed,