men please themselves with an opinion that though the people may not govern, yet they may partake and join with a king in the government, and so make a State mixed of popular and regal power, which they take to be the besttempered and equallest form of government. But the vanity of this fancy is too evident, it is a mere impossibility or contradiction; for if a king but once admit the people to be his companions, he leaves to be a king, and the State becomes a democracy; at least, he is but a titular and no real king, that hath not the sovereignty to himself; for the having of this alone, and nothing but this, makes a king to be a king. As for that show of popularity which is found in such kingdoms as have general assemblies for consultation about making public laws, it must be remembered that such meetings do not share or divide the sovereignty with the prince, but do only deliberate and advise their Supreme Head, who still reserves the absolute power in himself: for if in such assemblies the king, the nobility, and people have equal shares in the sovereignty, then the king hath but one voice, the nobility likewise one, and the people one, and then any two of these voices should have power to overrule the third; thus the nobility and commons together should have power to make a law to bind the king, which was never yet seen in any kingdom, but if it could, the State must needs be popular and not regal.

17. If it be unnatural for the multitude to choose their governors, or to govern or to partake in the government, what can be thought of that damnable conclusion which is made by too many, that the multitude may correct or depose their prince, if need be? Surely the unnaturalness and injustice of this position cannot sufficiently be expressed; for admit that a king make a contract or paction with his people, either originally in his ancestors, or personally at his coronation (for both these pactions some dream of but cannot offer any proof for either) yet by no law of any nation can a contract be thought broken, except that first a lawful trial be had by the ordinary judge of the breakers thereof, or else every man may be both party and judge in his own case, which is absurd once to be thought, for then it will lie in the hands of the headless multitude when they please to cast off the yoke of government (that God hath laid upon

them) to judge and punish him, by whom they should be judged and punished themselves. Aristotle can tell us what judges the multitude are in their own case, oi πλεῖστοι φαῦλοι κριταὶ περὶ τῶν οἰκείων: The judgment of the multitude in disposing of the sovereignty may be seen in the Roman history, where we may find many good emperors murdered by the people, and many bad elected by them. Nero, Heliogabalus, Otho, Vitellius, and such other monsters of nature, were the minions of the multitude, and set up by them. Pertinax, Alexander, Severus, Gordianus, Gallus, Emilianus, Quintilius, Aurelianus, Tacitus, Probus, and Numerianus, all of them good emperors in the judgment of all historians, yet murdered by the multitude.

18. Whereas many out of an imaginary fear pretend the power of the people to be necessary for the repressing of the insolences of tyrants; wherein they propound a remedy far worse than the disease. Neither is the disease indeed so frequent as they would have us think. Let us be judged by the history even of our own nation. We have enjoyed a succession of kings from the Conquest now for above 600 years (a time far longer than ever yet any popular Statecould continue), we reckon to the number of twenty-six of these princes since the Norman race, and yet not one of these is taxed by our historians for tyrannical government. It is true, two of these kings have been deposed by the people and barbarously murdered, but neither of them for tyranny: for, as a learned historian of our age saith, "Edward II. and Richard II. were not insupportable either in their nature or rule, and yet the people more upon wantonness than for any want, did take an unbridled course against them." Edward II., by many of our historians is reported to be of a good and virtuous nature, and not unlearned; they impute his defects rather to fortune than either to counsel or carriage of his affairs; the deposition of him was a violent fury, led by a wife both cruel and unchaste, and can with no better countenance of right be justified, than may his lamentable both indignities and death itself, Likewise the deposition of King Richard II. was a tempestuous rage, neither led or restrained by any rules of reason or of State. Examine his actions without a distempered judgment, and

...

you will not condemn him to be exceeding either insufficient or evil; weigh the imputations that were objected against him, and you shall find nothing either of any truth. or of great moment.” Hollingshed writeth, "That he was most unthankfully used by his subjects; for, although, through the frailty of his youth he demeaned himself more dissolutely than was agreeable to the royalty of his estate, yet in no king's days where the commons in greater wealth, the nobility more honoured, and the clergy less wronged, who, notwithstanding, in the evil-guided strength of their will, took head against him, to their own headlong destruction afterwards, partly during the reign of Henry, his next successor, whose greatest achievements were against his own people in executing those who conspired with him against King Richard. But more especially in succeeding times when, upon occasion of this disorder, more English blood was spent than was in all the foreign wars together which have been since the Conquest."

Twice hath this kingdom been miserably wasted with civil war, but neither of them occasioned by the tyranny of any prince. The cause of the Barons' wars is by good historians attributed to the stubbornness of the nobility, as the bloody variance of the houses of York and Lancaster, and the late rebellion, sprang from the wantonness of the people. These three unnatural wars have dishonoured our nation amongst strangers, so that in the censures of kingdoms the King of Spain is said to be the king of men, because of his subjects' willing obedience; the King of France king of asses, because of their infinite taxes and impositions; but the King of England is said to be the king of devils, because of his subjects' often insurrections against and depositions of their princes.

CHAPTER III.

Positive Laws do not Infringe the Natural and Fatherly Power of Kings.

I. HITHERTO I have endeavoured to show the natural institution of regal authority, and to free it from subjection to an arbitrary election of the people. It is necessary also to inquire whether human laws have a superiority over princes, because those that maintain the acquisition of royal jurisdiction from the people do subject the exercise of it to positive laws. But in this also they err; for as kingly power is by the law of God, so it hath no inferior law to limit it.

The father of a family governs by no other law than by his own will; not by the laws and wills of his sons or servants. There is no nation that allows children any action or remedy for being unjustly governed; and yet, for all this, every father is bound by the law of nature to do his best for the preservation of his family; but much more is a king always tied by the same law of nature to keep this general ground, that the safety of the kingdom be his chief law; he must remember that the profit of every man in particular, and of all together in general, is not always one and the same; and that the public is to be preferred before the private; and that the force of laws must not be so great as natural equity itself, which cannot fully be comprised in any laws whatsoever, but is to be left to the religious achievement of those who know how to manage the affairs of State, and wisely to balance the particular profit with the counterpoise of the public, according to the infinite variety of times, places, personsa proof unanswerable for the superiority of princes above laws is this, that there were kings long before there were any laws. For a long time the word of a king was the only law; and if practice (as saith Sir Walter Raleigh) declare the greatness of authority, even the best kings of Judah and Israel were not tied to any law; but they did whatsoever they pleased in the greatest matters.

2. The unlimited jurisdiction of kings is so amply described by Samuel, that it hath given occasion to some to imagine that it was but either a plot or trick of Samuel to keep the government himself and family by frighting the Israelites with the mischiefs in monarchy, or else a prophetical description only of the future ill-government of Saul.But the vanity of these conjectures are judiciously discovered in that majestical discourse of the true law of free monarchy, wherein it is evidently shown that the scope of Samuel was to teach the people a dutiful obedience to their king, even in those things which themselves did esteem mischievous and inconvenient; for, by telling them what a king would do, he indeed instructs them what a subject must suffer, yet not so that it is right for kings to do injury, but it is right for them to go unpunished by the people if they do it. So that in this point it is all one whether Samuel describe a king or a tyrant, for patient obedience is due to both; no remedy in the text against tyrants, but in crying and praying unto God in that day. But howsoever in a rigorous construction Samuel's description be applied to a tyrant, yet the words by a benign interpretation may agree with the manners of a just king, and the scope and coherence of the text doth best imply the more moderate or qualified sense of the words; for, as Sir W. Raleigh confesses, all those inconveniences and miseries which are reckoned by Samuel as belonging to kingly government were not intolerable, but such as have been borne, and are still borne, by free consent of subjects towards their princes. Nay, at this day, and in this land, many tenants, by their tenures and services, are tied to the same subjection even to subordinate and inferior lords: to serve the king in his wars and to till his ground is not only agreeable to the nature of subjects but much desired by them, according to their several births and conditions. The like may be said for the offices of women servants, confectioners, cooks, and bakers; for we cannot think that the king would use their labours without giving them wages, since the text itself mentions a liberal reward of his servants.

As for the taking of the tenth of their seed, of their vines, and of their sheep, it might be a necessary provision for their king's household, and so belong to the right of tribute;