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The Works of Sir Walter Ralegh, Kt: Miscellaneous works.
The Works of Sir Walter Ralegh Kt Miscellaneous works Author:Walter Raleigh Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE PREROGATIVE OF PARLIAMENTS ENGLAND. PROVED IN A DIALOGUE BETWEEN A COUNSELLOR OF STATE AND A JUSTICE OF PEACE. DEDICATED TO THE KING'S HOST EXCEL... more »LENT MAJESTY. THE KING. MOST GRACIOUS SOVEREIGN, -L HOSE that are suppressed and helpless are commonly silent, wishing that the common ill in all sort might be with their particular misfortunes, which disposition, as it is uncharitable in all men, so it would be in me more dog-like than man-like, to bite the stone that struck me; to wit, the borrowed authority of my sovereign misinformed, seeing their arms and hands that flung it are most of them already rotten. For I must confess it ever that they are debts, and not discontentments, that your majesty hath laid upon me; the debts and obligations of a friendless adversity, far more payable in all kinds than those of the prosperous : all which, nor the least of them, though I cannot discharge, I may yet endeavour it. And notwithstanding my restraint hath retrenched all ways, as well the ways of labour and will, as of all other employments, yet hath it left with me my cogitations, than which I have nothing else to offer on the altar of my love. Of these (most gracious sovereign) I have used some part in the following dispute between a counsellor of state and a justice of peace, the one dissuading, the other persuading, the calling of parliament. In all which, since the Norman Conquest, (at the least so many as histories have gathered,)I have in some things in the following dialogue presented your majesty with the contents and successes. Some things there are, and those of the greatest, which because they ought to be resolved on, I thought fit to range them in the front of the rest, to the end your majesty may be pleased to examine your own great and princely he...« less