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His MAJESTIE's Declaration to all His loving Subjects of the Causes which moved Him to dissolve His Fourth Parliament.
THE King's most Excellent Majesty well knoweth that the Calling, Adjourning, Proroguing and Dissolving of Parliaments, are undoubted Prerogatives inse∣parably annexed to His Imperial Crown, of which He is not bound to render any ac∣count but to God alone, no more than of His other Regal actions.
Nevertheless His Majesty, whose Piety and Goodness have made Him ever so order and govern all things, that the clearness and Candor of His Royal heart may appear to all His Subjects, especially in those great and publick matters of State that have relation to the weal and safety of His People, and the Honour of His Royal Person and Government, hath thought fit, for avoiding and preventing all sinister constructions and misinter pretations, which the Malice of some persons ill-affected to His Crown and Soveraignty hath or may practise to infuse into the minds an ears of His good and faithful Subjects, to set down by way of Declaration the true Causes as well of His Assembling, as of His Dissolving the late Parliament.
IT is not unknown to most of His Majestie's loving Subjects, what discouragements He hath formerly had by the undutiful and seditious carriage of divers of the lower House in preceding Assemblies of Parliament, enough to have made Him averse to those ancient and accustomed ways of calling His People together, when in stead of dutiful expressions towards His Person and Government, they vented their own Malice and disaffections to the State, and by their subtle and malignant courses endeavoured nothing more than to bring into contempt and disorder all Government and Magistracy.
Yet His Majesty well considering that but few were guilty of that seditious and un∣dutiful behaviour, and hoping that time and experience had made His loving Subjects sensible of the distemper the whole Kingdom was in danger to be put into by the ill∣govern'd actions of those men, and His Majesty being ever desirous to tread in the steps of His most noble Progenitors, was pleased to issue forth His Writs under the great Seal of England, for a Parliament to be holden on the thirteenth day of April last.
At which day His Majesty by the Lord Keeper of His great Seal was graciously pleased to let both Houses of Parliament know, how desirous He was that all His people would unite their hearts and affections in the execution of those Counsels that might tend to the Honour of His Majesty, the Safety of His Kingdoms, and the good and preservation of all His people; and withal how confident He was that they would not be failing in their duties and affections to Him and to the publick.
He laid open to them the manifest and apparent mischiefs threatned to this and all His other Kingdoms by the mutinous and rebellious behaviour of divers of the Scotish nation, who had by their examples drawn many of His Subjects there into a course of disloyalty and disobedience, not fit for His Majesty in Honour, Safety, or Wisdom to endure.
How, to strengthen themselves in their disloyal courses, they had addrest themselves to forein States, and treated with them to deliver themselves up to their protection and defence, as was made apparent under the proper hands of the prime Ring-leaders of that Rebellious Faction.
These courses of theirs, tending so much to the ruine and overthrow of this fa∣mous Monarchy, united by the descent of the Crown of England upon His Ma∣jesty and his Father of blessed Memory, His Majesty (in His great Wisdom, and in discharge of the trust reposed in Him by God, and by the Fundamental Laws of both Kingdoms, for the protection and government of them) resolved to suppress, and thereby to vindicate that Sovereign power entrusted to Him. He had by the last Sum∣mers trial found that his Grace and Goodness was abused, and that, contrary to his expectation and their faithful promises, they had, since his being at Berwick and the Pacification there made, pursued their former rebellious designs; and therefore it was necessary now for his Majesty by power to reduce them to the just and modest condi∣tion of their Obedience and subjection, which whenever they should be brought unto, or seeing their own Errors should put themselves into a way of Humility and Obedience becoming them, his Majesty should need no other Mediatours for