Page:A History and Defence of Magna Charta.djvu/185

Rh years too late. For England has been ſo long formed to its own laws, and its laws to it, that we are all of a piece: and both in point of gratitude to our anceſtors who have ſpent their lives to tranſmit them to us, and out of love to poſterity to convey them a thing more valuable than their lives, we cannot think much at any time to venture our own. I am clearly of Sir ’s mind in the parliament quarto Caroli: “Nothing ſo endangers us with his majeſty, as that opinion that we are antimonarchically affected; whereas, ſuch is and ever has been our loyalty, if we were to chuſe a government, we ſhould chuſe this monarchy of England above all governments in the world.” Which we lately have actually done, when no body could claim it, for they could only claim under a forfeited title: and at a time when too much occaſion had been given to the whole nation to be out of conceit with Kings.

for the remaining part of the pope’s traſh, it is not worth anſwering. “That the barons reduced K. to thoſe ſtraits, that what they dared to aſk, he dared not to deny.” For they aſked him nothing but their own, which he ought not to have denied them, nor have put them