Page:A History and Defence of Magna Charta.djvu/160

114 ſeal; this ſeal is the ſeal of all the original charters, as much as if it were affixed to every one of them.”---“Which wiſe deciſion of a young King was thought like Solomon’s judgment in finding out the true mother. For the St. Alban’s men had no way of anſwering their adverſaries objection, That all Privileges that wanted ſeals are Void, becauſe they could not abſolutely ſay there were no ſeals in the Saxon times, there being a charter of the confeſſor, granted to Weſtminſter abby with a ſeal to it.” But they might eaſily have bethought themſelves that he was more than half a Norman.

theſe being the undoubted rights of the kingdom, their antient laws, and liberties, and birthright, we have the leſs reaſon to be ſollicitous in what manner they ſhall at any time recover them: let them look to that, who violently or fraudulently keep them from them. For it would be a ridiculous thing in our law, for a man to have an eſtate in land, and he could not come at it. The law will give him a way. If the law gives the King royal mines, it gives him a power to dig in any man’s land where they are, that he may come at his own. And ſo if a nation have rights,