CHARLES I.

i6?

c« Let us be content -with what our fathers have char« left us : Let not our ambition carry us to be uv.

<( more learned than they were , in these killing?c and destructive arts. Great wisdom it will be< c in your lordships , and just providence, for« yourselves, for your posterities, for the whole■? £ kingdom, to cast from you, into the fire,

« these bloody and mysterious volumes of arbitrary* £ and constructive treasons , as the primitive< c christians did their books of curious arts, and“ betake yourselves to the plain letter of thet£ statute , which tells you where the crime is,

<c and points out to you the path by which youct may avoid it.

“ Let us not, to our own destruction, awakeC£ those sleeping lions, by rattling up a company<£ of old records, which have lain for so many* £ ages, by the wall , forgotten and neglected,

“ To all my afflictions, add not this, my lords,

the most severe of any ; that I , for my other“ sins, not for my treasons, be the means oft£ introducing a precedent, so pernicious to the“ laws and liberties of my native country.

C£ However these gentlemen at the bar say“ they speak for the commonwealth; and they“ believe so : Yet, under favor, it is I who,

“ in this particular, speak for the commonwealth.

C£ Precedents, like those which are endeavoured* £ to be established against me, must draw alongt£ such inconveniences and miseries , that, in a££ few years , the kingdom will be in the con-s' 1 dition expressed in a statute of Henry IV; and