A few words to the King and both Houses of Parliament vvorthy their consideration in a weighty concern; to wit, the effect of the execution of the late act, made against meetings and conventicles, so called; through which very many of the innocent people of God have, and do deeply suffer. Milner, Richard, fl. 1675. 1675 Approx. 5 KB of XML-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-IV TIFF page image. Text Creation Partnership, Ann Arbor, MI ; Oxford (UK) : 2009-03 (EEBO-TCP Phase 1). A50875 Wing M2083 ESTC R221884 99833129 99833129 37604 This keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership. This Phase I text is available for reuse, according to the terms of Creative Commons 0 1.0 Universal . The text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. Early English books online. (EEBO-TCP ; phase 1, no. A50875) Transcribed from: (Early English Books Online ; image set 37604) Images scanned from microfilm: (Early English books, 1641-1700 ; 2191:11) A few words to the King and both Houses of Parliament vvorthy their consideration in a weighty concern; to wit, the effect of the execution of the late act, made against meetings and conventicles, so called; through which very many of the innocent people of God have, and do deeply suffer. Milner, Richard, fl. 1675. 1 sheet ([1] p.) s.n.], [London : Printed in the year, 1675. Signed at end: Rich. Milner. Place of publication from Wing. In response to the Conventicle Act. Reproduction of the original in the Friends' House Library, London. Created by converting TCP files to TEI P5 using tcp2tei.xsl, TEI @ Oxford. Re-processed by University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. Gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. EEBO-TCP is a partnership between the Universities of Michigan and Oxford and the publisher ProQuest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by ProQuest via their Early English Books Online (EEBO) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). The general aim of EEBO-TCP is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic English-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in EEBO. EEBO-TCP aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the Text Encoding Initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). The EEBO-TCP project was divided into two phases. The 25,363 texts created during Phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 January 2015. Anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. Users should be aware of the process of creating the TCP texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. Text selection was based on the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (NCBEL). If an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in NCBEL, then their works are eligible for inclusion. Selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. In general, first editions of a works in English were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably Latin and Welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. Image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. Quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in Oxford and Michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet QA standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. After proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. Any remaining illegibles were encoded as s. Understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of TCP data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. Users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a TCP editor. The texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the TEI in Libraries guidelines. Copies of the texts have been issued variously as SGML (TCP schema; ASCII text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable XML (TCP schema; characters represented either as UTF-8 Unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless XML (TEI P5, characters represented either as UTF-8 Unicode or TEI g elements). Keying and markup guidelines are available at the Text Creation Partnership web site . eng Conventicle Act 1664 -- Early works to 1800. Quakers -- Early works to 1800. Dissenters, Religious -- Law and legislation -- Early works to 1800. 2007-12 TCP Assigned for keying and markup 2008-01 SPi Global Keyed and coded from ProQuest page images 2008-03 Mona Logarbo Sampled and proofread 2008-03 Mona Logarbo Text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-09 pfs Batch review (QC) and XML conversion A few WORDS to the KING And both HOUSES of PARLIAMENT , VVorthy their Consideration in a weighty Concern ; to wit , the effect of the Execution of the late Act , made against Meetings and Conventicles , so called ; Through which very many of the Innocent People of God have , and do deeply suffer . AND this is very certain and observable ( as one deeply concerned in suffering by the aforesaid Act , my mind became exercised in a consideration of the effects thereof ) that it saddens the hearts of many , yea indeed the generality of all people , to see those they know to be honest Neighbours , and good Common-wealths people in their Countrey , to have their known truly gotten Goods and Estates driven away and spoyled , and that for nothing but the tenderness of their Consciences towards God , and for worshipping him in Spiri● and Truth ; it being so much contrary to the principle of Justice in all people , even those that have but morality and civility in any measure concludes is to be , and indeed cryes it out to be a sad thing ; that men and ●eople the● live peaceably and harmlesly amongst their Neighbours , and under the Government , should be so pilledged and rob●●● their Estates , even to the Impoverishing many , both Widdows and Fatherless ; that how can you think 〈◊〉 to be a wo●k for God , or any thing like him or his service ? or how can you think it to be a likely way to convince or bring people out of Errors or Heresie● , if you conclude us to be such ? or how can it be like to bring people from a false Church , if so , to a true ? Since it is so unagreeable to the Spirits of all civil people , and that especially to the equal principle of God in all . And also it is observable , that the execution of it , is very burthensome and troublesome to the executioners ; as we see by experience , the Constables and other Officers all up and down the Countrey cry out , what a trouble it is to them , to make such havack of their Neighbours Goods , so that as several of them say , they can neither eat nor sleep for trouble to drive their Neighbours Horses and Cattle by droves to the Markets and Fairs , there to stand with them , and be as gasing stocks to the people ; and then the people gather into Companies , and talk together and shake their heads , for very trouble to see such cruelty and barbarous work in so peaceable a Nation . And it is also observable , that many the Informers and putters on in this work are commonly of the most vilest , and wickedest , beggarly , profainest sort of all people , such as have either wasted their own Estates , or such as are slothful , Idle , Vagrant Fellows , that never had Estates , nor will not work ; but having this advantage given them , and that by Authority , seek and chuse rather to live upon the Ruines of other me●s Estates . Oh! will you consider , was ever the like advantage given to the very 〈◊〉 of a Nation ; to vaunt themselves as they do , not only over the serious , engenious improving part of the Nation ; but also over the Magistrates , if they do not readily execute the Wills of these Informers : such is their Impudence they being backed with Authority , as they perceive themselves to be by the late Act ; Oh! how can you think that a Government , or a true Church , or a Nation can any way be advanced by such unequal works and wretched in s ; truments , as have neither regard to God nor good Men , nor good Government , but to drive on their own wicked design , to mine honest mens Estates : and so , if the Diligent and Laborious People must be oppressed , that they cannot Improve , and the Idle and Slothful sort will not Improve , but wast and destroy the work of the Diligent , the World will become like a Wilderness . Written by one called a Quaker , who is a deep sufferer by the late Act against Meetings in the County of Chester , Rich. Milner . This 7th day of the 2d . Month called April , 1675 . I Stand Convicted at this present , by Geoffery Shakerley Governour of Chester-Castle , in the sum of Fourscore and six pound five shillings , for my self and my Wife , by vertue of the late Act against Meetings : Besides , I had taken from me Twelve Kine Three or four years since month Forty pound , for a Fine of Twenty pound , by vertue of the same Act. There being Ten or Twelve Widdows , and Fatherless Families , who have not left some them a skillet to boyl their children Milk in ; most of them have no Estates , but what they pay yearly for , R. M Printed in the year , 1675.