consequence, and they were forthwith without a trial punished as malefactors, by arbitrary fine and imprisonment.

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With the same contempt of established usages the Root and Branch men brought in again the Bill for taking away the Bishops' votes in Parliament, though it had been thrown out in the former part of the session; that objection they treated with contempt, affirming that the good of the kingdom absolutely depended upon this measure. And as the King at this time filled the vacant sees, though he had named in every instance men of great eminence, and absolutely without reproach, it was proposed in the Commons, that the King should be desired to make no new Bishops, till the controversy concerning the government of the Church should be ended. Failing in this, they demanded that the Bishops should have no voice upon the question of taking away their votes, as being parties; and as the Lords were not yet sufficiently intimidated to yield to this, their next motion was, that the Bishops whom they had impeached for making the Canons might be sequestered from the House, till they be brought to judgement. In all these proceedings they were supported by the legal members of the faction, who, “prostituting the dignity and learning of their profession to the cheap and vile affectation of popular applause," made use of their knowledge of the law to pervert it, and to subvert the constitution. Petitions against episcopacy were now fabricated by a puritanical junta in London, and poured in upon Parliament; . . . even the apprentices and the porters had their separate petitions prepared for them, and these precious addresses to the Legislature were backed by the rabble in whose name they were composed.

In opposition to these effusions of sectarian rancour and vulgar ignorance, counter petitions were presented from various parts of the country, signed by the greatest and most respectable part of the gentry, and a large majority of the freeholders, speaking the real sentiments of the better and greater part of the nation, and expressing fears which were but too fully justified by the event. They represented that Bishops' had been instituted in the time of the apostles; that they were the great lights of the Church in all the first general councils; that many of them had

1 Nalson, ii. p. 759.

sown the seeds of religion in their blood; that we owed to them the redemption of the Gospel from Romish corruption, many of that order having been glorious martyrs in this country for the truth, and many who were yet living its strenuous defenders against the common enemy of Rome; that their government had been long approved and established by the Common and Statute Laws of this kingdom; and that there was nothing in their doctrines dissonant from the rule of God, or the articles ratified by law. It had consisted with monarchy ever since the English monarchy was Christian; and when they were now called upon to try whether any other form of Church government can or will, they could not but express a great fear of what was intended, and what was likely to ensue. They apprehended an absolute innovation of Presbyterian government; "whereby," said the petitioners, "we who are now governed by the canon and civil laws, dispensed by twenty-six Ordinaries, easily responsible to Parliament for any deviation from the rule of the law, conceive we should be exposed to the mere arbitrary government of a numerous presbytery, who, together with their ruling elders, arise to near forty thousand Church Governors, and, with their adherents, must needs bear so great a sway in the Commonwealth, that, if future inconveniences shall be found in that government, we humbly offer to consideration, how these shall be reducible by Parliament, how consistent with monarchy, and how dangerously conducible to anarchy." They represented that the liberties of the Clergy had been indulged to them by Magna Charta, granted and confirmed by many Kings, and by about thirty Parliaments in express acts: the violation of that charter, by an intrenchment upon the rights of the lay subject, was justly accounted a great grievance; and if the rights and liberties of the Clergy were taken away, any one would have cause to fear that his own might be next in question.

Sir Thomas Aston, who presented one of these petitions, was reprimanded hy the House, and persons were brought before its bar to be censured for printing and dispersing it: but the seditious petitioners were favourably received, and thanked for their zeal and their good intentions. With the same open contempt of decency, the Commons made it one of their complaints in that memorable remonstrance of the King, which was the manifesto

of rebellion, that he had received petitions which they qualified as mutinous and malignant. The King replied with becoming resentment," Have so many petitions even against the form and constitution of the kingdom, and the laws established, been joyfully received?... Hath a multitude of mean, unknown, inconsiderable, contemptible persons about the city and suburbs of London, had the liberty to petition against the government of the Church, against the Book of Common Prayer, and been thanked for it? and shall it be called mutiny in the gravest and best citizens of London, in the gentlemen and commonalty of Kent, to frame petitions upon these grounds, and desire to be governed by the known laws of the land, not by orders or votes of either or both Houses? To stir up men to a care of maintaining the discipline of the Church, upholding and continuing the reverence and solemnity of God's service, and encouraging of learning, is mutiny! Let Heaven and earth, God and man, judge between us and these men!" 1

The Root and Branch men, meantime, continued to exasperate popular feeling against the Bishops, by prosecuting the charge concerning the canons, which they were for making treason; though the lawyers told them they might as well call it adultery. At length they brought in a bill to punish these and the other members of the convocation? by fines, Laud's being fixed at the enormous sum of twenty thousand pounds; the other prelates from ten thousand pounds to one, and the inferior members from two hundred to one thousand. It does not appear that these fines were exacted. The enemies of the Church were aiming at its utter subversion, and they so soon succeeded in plundering the loyal Clergy of their whole property, that they spared themselves the trouble of collecting a part. The Palace and the Houses of Parliament were now beset with mobs crying out, No Bishops! The names of those persons who ventured to defend them were placarded as disaffected members, and the Prelates themselves were assailed with such insults and outrages, that they absented themselves from Parliament in fear of their lives. Upon this, by advice of Williams, who had been made Archbishop of York, and having acted a base and flagitious part in aid of the faction, was rewarded with a double portion of 1 Walker, p. 10. 2 Rushworth, vol. iii. part i. p. 235.

popular abhorrence, they presented a protest to the House against all the acts, which might be done while they were deterred from doing their duties in it. Instant advantage was taken of this by the leaders of a party, who never lost any occasion that was offered them, and they committed all the Bishops who had signed it to the Tower, upon an accusation of High Treason; a charge so preposterous, that none but the most audacious and unjust of men would have preferred it. The Bill for depriving them of their seats in the House of Peers was now hurried through Parliament; and the Queen, influenced, it is believed, by her priests, who were acting under instructions from France, persuaded the King to pass it, contrary to his own judgement and conscience; an act in every respect unworthy and unwise, whereby he lost even more friends than he sacrificed.

Every concession which Charles made to faction and violence produced the uniform and sure effect of drawing upon him fresh demands, each more unreasonable than the last. The intent was to drive him to an appeal to arms, when they should have stripped him of all means for rendering that appeal formidable; but the loyalty of the great body of the nobility and gentlemen of England, who, with heroic fidelity, sacrificed their fortunes and lives in his service, rendered the contest longer and more doubtful than his enemies had expected. The faction, meantime, being masters of the capital, and acting as if the sole authority were legally vested in their hands, pursued their designs against the Church with all the unrelenting malice of inveterate and triumphant hatred. They had formed a committee for religion, which received like an Inquisition complaints from any person against scandalous ministers. To bow at the name of Jesus, or require communicants to receive the sacrament at the altar, was cause enough for scandal now; and any thing which opposed or offended the ruling faction was comprehended under the general name of malignity; a charge as fatal to the fortunes of those against whom it was brought, as that of heresy would have been to their lives in a Popish country. They convoked also an Assembly of Divines, to frame a new model of Church Government. A few of the loyal clergy were appointed, most of whom, in obedience to the King's command, refused to appear upon an illegal summons: a large proportion of seditious

preachers, who now openly professed their presbyterian principles; some honester men, though farther gone in the disease of the age, who, having emigrated to Holland rather than submit to the order of the Church, returned now to take advantage of its overthrow; and lastly, certain members of both Houses, and some commissioners from Scotland.

One of the Assembly's first public acts was to petition Parliament, that a general fast might be appointed. This was afterwards enjoined monthly, and the sermons which on these occasions were delivered before both Houses were published by authority. They were thus presented to a deluded people, with all the authority of a Parliament, which was exercising a more despotic power than any King of England had ever pretended to claim; and of the Gospel itself, which was now perverted to encourage plunder, persecution, and rebellion. "Curse ye Meroz, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof, because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty!" "Turn your ploughshares into swords to fight the Lord's battles!" "Cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood"-was the language of these incendiary preachers. "Vex the Midianites !2 Abolish the Amalekites! Leave not a rag that belongs to Popery! Away with it, head and tail, hip3 and thigh! Up with it from the bottom, root and branch! Down with Baal's altars; down with Baal's priests!" "It is better to see people lie wallowing in their blood, rather than embracing idolatry and superstition!" The effect of such language, upon a people already possessed with the darkest spirit of sectarian bigotry, was to produce a temper as ferocious as that of the crusaders, without any generous or exalted sentiment to ennoble it. There were those among them, who, according to their own avowal, "went to that execrable war, with such a controlling horror upon their spirits from these sermons, that they verily believed they should have been accursed from God for ever, if they had not acted their part in that dismal tragedy, and

Leech, quoted by Walker, p. 17. 2 Thomas Coleman's Sermon, August 30, 1643. 3 Coleman, quoted by Walker, p. 18. Salway, ditto, p. 18. Bond, ditto, p. 18. 4 Colonel Axtell, the regicide, said this to South, and particularly mentioned Calamy as one of the preachers to whose exhortations he alluded. South's Sermons, vol. í. p. 328. (Oxford edit.)