e king,
such person shall incur all the penalties of a praemunire.

[Footnote b: 4 Jan. 1648.]

III. WE are next to examine the laws and customs relating to
parliament, thus united together and considered as one aggregate body.

THE power and jurisdiction of parliament, says sir Edward Coke[c], is
so transcendent and absolute, that it cannot be confined, either for
causes or persons, within any bounds. And of this high court he adds,
it may be truly said "_si antiquitatem spectes, est vetustissima; si
dignitatem, est honoratissima; si juridictionem, est capacissima_." It
hath sovereign and uncontrolable authority in making, confirming,
enlarging, restraining, abrogating, repealing, reviving, and
expounding of laws, concerning matters of all possible denominations,
ecclesiastical, or temporal, civil, military, maritime, or criminal:
this being the place where that absolute despotic power, which must in
all governments reside somewhere, is entrusted by the constitution of
these kingdoms. All mischiefs and grievances, operations and remedies,
that transcend the ordinary course of the laws, are within the reach
of this extraordinary tribunal. It can regulate or new model the
succession to the crown; as was done in the reign of Henry VIII and
William III. It can alter the established religion of the land; as was
done in a variety of instances, in the reigns of king Henry VIII and
his three children. It can change and create afresh even the
constitution of the kingdom and of parliaments themselves; as was done
by the act of union, and the several statutes for triennial and
septennial elections. It can, in short, do every thing that is not
naturally impossible; and therefore some have not scrupled to call
it's power, by a figure rather too bold, the omnipotence of
parliament. True it is, that what they do, no authority upon earth can
undo. So that it is a matter most essential to the liberties of this
kingdom, that such members be delegated to this important trust, as
are most eminent for their probity, their fortitude, and their
knowlege; for it was a known apothegm of the great lord treasurer
Burleigh, "that England could never be ruined but by a parliament:"
and, as sir Matthew Hale observes[d], this being the highest and
greatest court, over which none other can have jurisdiction in the
kingdom, if by any means a misgovernment should any way fall upon it,
the subjects of this kingdom are left without all manner of remed