Lincoln's Inn.
The following extract is at the service of BALLIOLENSIS:
"In the seventh year of King James I., Dr. Cowel's _Interpreter_ was
censured by the two Houses, as asserting several points to the
overthrow and destruction of Parliaments and of the fundamental laws
and government of the kingdom. And one of the articles charged upon him
to this purpose by the Commons, in their complaint to the Lords, was,
as Mr. Petyt says, out of the _Journal_, this that follows:
"'4thly. The Doctor draws his arguments from the imperial laws of the
Roman Emperors, an argument which may be urged with as great reason,
and with as great authority, for the reduction of the state and the
clergy of England to the polity and laws in the time of those Emperors;
as also to make the laws and customs of Rome and Constantinople to be
binding and obligatory in the cities of London and York.'
"The issue of which complaint was, that the author, for these his
outlandish politics, was taken into custody, and his book condemned to
the flames: nor could the dedication of it to his then grace of
Canterbury save it."--Atterbury's _Rights, Powers, and Privileges of
Convocation_, p. 7. of Preface.