there: for I remember when I began to read, and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lye in my mother's parlour (I know not by what accident, for she her self never in her life read any book but of devotion), but there was wont to lye Spencer's works. This I happen'd to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights, and giants, and monsters, and brave houses, which I found every where there (tho' my understanding had little to do with all this); and by degrees with the tinkling of the rhyme and dance of the numbers, so that I think I had read him all over before I was twelve years old. . . . With these affections of mind, and my heart wholly set upon letters, I went to the university; but was soon torn from thence by that violent publick storm which would suffer nothing to stand where it did, but rooted up every plant, even from the princely cedars to me the hyssop. Yet I had as good fortune as could have befallen me in such a tempest ; for I was cast by it into the family of one of the best persons, and into the court of one of the best princesses in the world. Now tho' I was here engag'd in ways most contrary to the original design of my life, that is, into much company and no small business, and into a daily sight of greatness both militant and triumphant (for that was the state then of the English and French courts), yet all this was so far from altering my opinion, that it only added the confirmation of reason to that which was before but natural inclination. I saw plainly all the paint of that kind of life, the nearer I came to it; and that beauty which I did not fall in love with when for aught I knew it was real, was not like to bewitch or entice me when I saw that it was adulterate. with several great persons whom I liked very well, but could not perceive that any part of their greatness was to be lik'd or desir'd, no more than I would be glad or content to be in a storm, tho' I saw many ships which rid safely and bravely in it. A storm would not agree with my stomach, if it did with my courage. Tho' I was in a croud of as good company as could be found any where, tho' I was in business of great and honourable trust, tho' I eat at the best table, and enjoy'd the best conveniences for present subsistance that ought to be desir'd by a man of my condition, in banishment and publick distresses; yet I could not abstain from renewing my old school-boy's wish in a copy of verses to the same effect.

Well then; I now do plainly see

I met

This busie world and I shall ne'er agree, &c.

And I never then propos'd to my self any other advantage from his majesty's happy restoration but the getting into some moderately convenient retreat in the country, which I thought in that case I might easily have compass'd as well as some others, who with no greater probabilities or pretences have arriv'd to extraordinary fortunes but I had before written a shrewd prophecy against my self, and I think Apollo inspir'd me in the truth though not in the elegance of it:

Thou neither great at court, nor in the war, Nor at th' Exchange shalt be, nor at the wrangling bar ; Content thy self with the small barren praise, Which neglected verse does raise, &c. However by the failing of the forces which I had expected, I did not quit the design which I had resolv'd on; I cast my self into it a corps perdu, without making capitulations or taking counsel of fortune. But God

laughs at a man who says to his soul, Take thy ease: I met presently not only with many little incumbrances and impediments, but with so much sickness (a new misfortune to me) as would have spoil'd the happiness of an emperor as well as mine: yet I do neither repent nor alter my course. Non ego perfidum dixi sacramentum [I have not falsely sworn]: nothing shall separate me from a mistress which I have lov'd so long and have now at last marry'd; though she neither has brought me a rich portion nor liv'd yet so quietly with me as I hop'd from her. Nec vos dulcissima mundi

Nomina, vos muse, libertas, otia, libri,
Hortique sylvæque anima remanente relinquam.
Nor by me e'er shall you,

You of all names the sweetest, and the best,
You muses, books, and liberty and rest;
You gardens, fields, and woods forsaken be,
As long as life it self forsakes not me.
But this is a very petty ejaculation. Because I have
concluded all the other chapters with a copy of verses, I

will maintain the humour to the last.

The Spring-tides of Public Affairs.

I have often observed, with all submission and resignation of spirit to the inscrutable mysteries of Eternal Providence, that when the fulness and maturity of time is come that produces the great confusions and changes in the world, it usually pleases God to make it appear by the manner of them, that they are not the effects of human force or policy, but of the divine justice and predestination; and though we see a man like that which we call Jack of the clock-house, striking as it were the hour of that fulness of time, yet our reason must needs be convinced that his hand is moved by some secret and, to us who stand without, invisible direction. And the stream of the current is then so violent that the strongest men in the world cannot draw up against it; and none are so weak but they may sail down with it. These are the spring-tides of public affairs which we see often happen, but seek in vain to discover any certain causes. And one man then, by maliciously opening all the sluices that he can come at, can never be the sole author of all this, though he may be as guilty as if really he were, by intending and imagining to be so; but it is God that breaks up the flood-gates of so general a deluge, and all the art then and industry of mankind is not sufficient to raise up dikes and ramparts against it.

From the Essay 'Of Agriculture.'

The three first men in the world were a gardener, a ploughman, and a grazier; and if any man object that the second of these was a murtherer, I desire he would consider that as soon as he was so, he quitted our profession and turned builder. It is for this reason, I suppose, that Ecclesiasticus forbids us to hate husbandry; because (says he) the Most High has created it. We were all born to this art, and taught by Nature to nourish our bodies by the same earth out of which they were made, and to which they must return and pay at last for their sustenance. Behold the original and primitive nobility of all those great persons, who are too proud now not only to till the ground, but almost to tread upon it. We may talk what we please of lillies and lions rampant, and spread eagles in fields d'or or d'argent; but if heraldry

were guided by reason, a plough in a field arable would be the most noble and ancient arms.

From the Essay Of Obscurity.'

What a brave privilege it is to be free from all contentions, from all envying or being envy'd, from receiving and from paying all kinds of ceremonies! It is, in my mind, a very delightful pastime for two good and agreeable friends to travel up and down together, in places where they are by no body known, nor know any body. It was the case of Æneas and his Achates, when they walk'd invisibly about the fields and streets of Carthage, Venus her self

'A vail of thicken'd air around them cast,

That none might know, or see them as they past.' VIRG. I Æn. The common story of Demosthenes's confession that he had taken great pleasure in hearing of a tanker-woman say as he pass'd, This is that Demosthenes, is wonderful ridiculous from so solid an orator. I my self have often met with that temptation to vanity (if it were any), but am so far from finding it any pleasure, that it only makes me run faster from the place, 'till I get, as it were, out of sight-shot. Democritus relates, and in such a manner as if he glory'd in the good fortune and commodity of it, that when he came to Athens no body there did so much as take notice of him; and Epicurus liv'd there very well, that is, lay hid many years in his gardens, so famous since that time, with his friend Metrodorus: after whose death, making in one of his letters a kind commemoration of the happiness which they two had enjoy'd together, he adds at last that he thought it no disparagement to those great felicities of their life, that in the midst of the most talk'd-of and talking country in the world, they had liv'd so long not only without fame, but almost without being heard of. And yet within a very few years afterward there were no two names of men more known or more generally celebrated. If we engage into a large acquaintance and various familiarities, we set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time: we expose our life to a quotidian ague of frigid impertinences, which would make a wise man tremble to think of. Now, as for being known much by sight, and pointed at, I cannot comprehend the honour that lyes in that: whatsoever it be, every mountebank has it more than the best doctor, and the hangman more than the lord chief-justice of a city. Every creature has it both of nature and art, if it be any ways extraordinary. It was as often said, This is that Bucephalus, or, This is that Incitatus, when they were led prancing through the streets, as, This is that Alexander, or, This is that Domitian; and truly for the latter, I take Incitatus to have been a much more honourable beast than his master, and more deserving the consulship than he the empire. I love and commend a true good fame because it is the shadow of virtue, not that it doth any good to the body which it accompanies, but 'tis an efficacious shadow, and like that of St Peter cures the diseases of others. The best kind of glory, no doubt, is that which is reflected from honesty, such as was the glory of Cato and Aristides, but it was harmful to them both, and is seldom beneficial to any man whilst he live; what it is to him after his death I cannot say, because I love not philosophy merely notional and conjectural, and no man who has made the experiment has been so kind as to come back to inform us. Upon the whole matter, I account a person who has a moderate mind and fortune,

and lives in the conversation of two or three agreeable friends, with little commerce in the world besides, who is esteem'd well enough by his few neighbours that know him, and is truly irreproachable by any body, and so after a healthful quiet life, before the great inconveniences of old age, goes more silently out of it than he came in (for I would not have him so much as cry in the exit). This innocent deceiver of the world, as Horace calls him, this muta persona, I take to have been more happy in his part than the greatest actors that fill the stage with show and noise, nay even than Augustus himself, who ask'd with his last breath whether he had not play'd his farce very well.

The story of Demosthenes and the 'tankard-woman' (aquam ferentis mulierculæ) is told in Cicero's Tusculanæ Quæstiones, v. 36.

Procrastination.

I am glad that you approve and applaud my design of withdrawing myself from all tumult and business of the world, and consecrating the little rest of my time to those studies to which nature had so motherly inclin'd me, and from which fortune, like a step-mother, has so long detain'd me. But nevertheless (you say, which but is ærugo mera, a rust which spoils the good metal it grows upon. But you say) you would advise me not to precipitate that resolution, but to stay a while longer with patience and complaisance, 'till I had gotten such an estate as might afford me (according to the saying of that person whom you and I love very much, and would believe as soon as another man) cum dignitate otium. This were excellent advice to Joshua, who could bid the sun stay too. But there's no fooling with life, when it is once turn'd beyond forty. The seeking of a fortune then is but a desperate after-game, 'tis a hundred to one if a man fling two sixes and recover all; especially if his hand be no luckier than mine. There is some help for all the defects of fortune, for if a man cannot attain to the length of his wishes, he may have his remedy by cutting of them shorter. Epicurus writes a letter to Idomeneus (who was then a very powerful, wealthy, and, it seems, a bountiful person), to recommend to him, who had made so many men rich, one Pythocles, a friend of his, whom he desir'd might be made a rich man too; but I entreat you that you would not do it just the same way as you have done to many less deserving persons, but in the most gentlemanly manner of obliging him, which is not to add any thing to his estate, but to take something from his desires. The sum of this is, that for the uncertain hopes of some conveniences we ought not to defer the execution of a work that is necessary, especially when the use of those things which we would stay for may otherwise be supply'd, but the loss of time never recover'd: nay farther yet, tho' we were sure to obtain all that we had a mind to, tho' we were sure of getting never so much by continuing the game, yet when the light of life is so near going out, and ought to be so precious, le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle, the play is not worth the expence of the candle: after having been long tost in a tempest, if our masts be standing, and we have still sail and tackling enough to carry us to our port, it is no matter for the want of streamers and top-gallants; utere velis, totos pande sinus. A gentleman in our late civil wars, when his quarters were beaten up by the enemy, was taken prisoner and lost his life afterwards, only by staying to put on a band and adjust his periwig: he would escape like a person of quality or not at all, and dy'd the noble martyr of ceremony and gentility.

Vision of Oliver Cromwell-from the 'Discourse.'

I was interrupted by a strange and terrible apparition; for there appeared to me (arising out of the earth, as I conceived) the figure of a man taller than a giant, or indeed, than the shadow of any giant in the evening. His body was naked; but that nakedness adorned or rather deformed all over with several figures, after the manner of the Britons, painted upon it and I perceived that most of them were the representations of the late battles in our civil wars, and, if I be not much mistaken, it was the battle of Naseby that was drawn upon his breast. His eyes were like burning brass, and there were three crowns of the same metal (as I guessed), and that looked as red-hot too, upon his head. He held in his right-hand a sword that was yet bloody, and nevertheless the motto of it was, Pax quæritur bello ['We war for peace']; and in his left-hand a thick book, upon the back of which was written in letters of gold, 'Acts, ordinances, protestations, covenants, engagements, declarations, remonstrances,' &c. Though this sudden, unusual, and dreadful object might have quelled a greater courage than mine; yet so it pleased God (for there is nothing bolder than a man in a vision) that I was not at all daunted, but asked him resolutely and briefly, 'What art thou?' And he said, 'I am called the North-west Principality, His Highness the Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the dominions belonging thereunto; for I am that angel to whom the Almighty has committed the government of those three kingdoms, which thou seest from this place.' And I answered and said, 'If it be so, sir, it seems to me that for almost these twenty years past Your Highness has been absent from your charge: for not only if any angel, but if any wise and honest man had, since that time, been our governor, we should not have wandered thus long in these laborious and endless labyrinths of confusion; but either not have entered at all into them, or at least have returned back before we had absolutely lost our way but instead of Your Highness we have had since such a protector as was his predecessor Richard the Third to the king his nephew; for he presently slew the commonwealth, which he pretended to protect, and set up himself in the place of it: a little less guilty indeed in one respect, because the other slew the innocent, and this man did but murder a murderer. Such a protector we have had as we would have been glad to have changed for an enemy, and rather received a constant Turk than this every-month's apostate; such a protector as man is to his flocks, which he sheers, and sells, or devours himself; and I would fain know what the wolf, which he protects him from, could do more. Such a protector'- and, as I was proceeding, methought His Highness began to put on a displeased and threatening countenance (as men use to do when their dearest friends happen to be traduced in their company), which gave me the first rise of jealousy against him; for I did not believe that Cromwell, amongst all his foreign correspondences, had ever held any with angels. However, I was not hardened enough yet to venture a quarrel with him then and therefore, as I had spoken to the Protector himself in Whitehall, I desired him that His Highness would please to pardon me, if I had unwittingly spoken any thing to the disparagement of a person whose relations to His Highness I had not the honour to know.' At which he told me, that he had no other concernment for His late Highness, than as he took him to

be the greatest man that ever was of the English nation, if not (said he) of the whole world; which gives me a just title to the defence of his reputation, since I now account myself, as it were, a naturalized English angel, by having had so long the management of the affairs of that country. And pray, countryman (said he very kindly and very flatteringly), for I would not have you fall into the general error of the world, that detests and decries so extraordinary a virtue; what can be more extraordinary than that a person of mean birth, no fortune, no eminent qualities of body (which have sometimes) or of mind (which have often, raised men to the highest dignities), should have the courage to attempt, and the happiness to succeed in so improbable a design, as the destruction of one of the most ancient, and in all appearance most solidly founded monarchies upon earth? That he should have the power or boldness to put his prince and master to an open and infamous death: to banish that numerous and strongly allied family to do all this under the name and wages of a parliament; to trample upon them too as he pleased, and spurn them out of doors when he grew weary of them; to raise up a new and unheard-of monster out of their ashes; to stifle that in the very infancy, and set up himself above all things that ever were called sovereign in England; to oppress all his enemies by arms, and all his friends afterwards by artifice; to serve all parties patiently for a while, and to command them victoriously at last; to overrun each corner of the three nations, and overcome with equal facility both the riches of the south and the poverty of the north; to be feared and courted by all foreign princes, and adopted a brother to the gods of the earth; to call together parliaments with a word of his pen, and scatter them again with the breath of his mouth; to be humbly and daily petitioned to that he would please to be hired, at the rate of two millions a year, to be the master of those who had hired him before to be their servant: to have the estates and lives of three kingdoms as much at his disposal as was the little inheritance of his father, and to be as noble and liberal in the spending of them; and lastly (for there is no end of all the particulars of his glory), to bequeath all this with one word to his posterity; to die with peace at home, and triumph abroad; to be buried among kings, and with more than regal solemnity; and to leave a name behind him, not to be extinguished but with the whole world; which, as it is now too little for his praises, so might have been too for his conquests, if the short line of his human life could have been stretched out to the extent of his immortal designs?'

Even those who do not read Cowley now are familiar indirectly through Cowper-with

God the first garden made, and the first city Cain : which is no doubt the original of Cowper's

God made the country and man made the town.
Other pregnant lines from Cowley are-
Hope, fortune's cheating lottery!
Where for one prize an hundred blanks there be.
The world's a scene of changes, and to be
Constant in Nature were inconstancy.

Plenty as well as want can separate friends.

The first collection of Cowley's works (folio, 1668) contained the Discourses by way of Essays in Prose and Verse. Ten editions of Cowley's works appeared before 1721, another by Aikin in 1802, and one by Grosart in 1881 (2 vols.).

Lord Clarendon.

Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, was born 18th February 1608 at Dinton, near Salisbury, third son of a Wiltshire squire. Destined for the Church, he went up to Magdalen Hall in 1622; but the death of his elder brothers having left him the heir, he quitted Oxford for the Middle Temple in 1625. Though he rose in his profession, he loved letters better than law; for his friends he chose such brilliant spirits as Falkland, Ben Jonson, Selden, Hales, and Chillingworth, and, in his own words, was never so proud, or thought himself so good a man, as when he was the worst in the company.' He married twice-in 1629, Ann, daughter of Sir George Ayliffe, whose death six months afterwards 'shook all the frame of his resolutions;' next, in 1632, Frances, daughter of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, Master of Requests and of the Mint. She bore him four sons and two daughters; and with her, till her death in 1667, he 'lived very comfortably in the most uncomfortable times, and very joyfully in those times when matter of joy was administered.'

In 1640 he was returned for Wootton-Bassett to the Short Parliament, for Saltash to the Long; and up to the summer of 1641 he acted heartily with the popular party. Then he drew back. Enough, he deemed, had been done; a victorious oligarchy might prove more formidable than a humbled king; nor could he conceive a religion without bishops.' Charles's answer to the Grand Remonstrance was of Hyde's composing, as were most of the subsequent able manifestoes; and though in a midnight interview with the king he declined to take St John's post of Solicitor-General, thenceforward he and Falkland and Colepeper formed a veritable privy council. Unhappily they were not allowed to know everything; unfortunately for the king, their advice was not always followed; thus the attempted arrest of the five members had neither their privity nor their approval. Still Hyde headed the royalist opposition in the Commons, till in May 1642 he slipped away and followed Charles into Yorkshire. He witnessed Edgehill, in 1643 was knighted and made Chancellor of the Exchequer, in March 1645 attended the Prince of Wales to the west of England, and with him a twelvemonth later passed on to Scilly and Jersey. In Scilly, on 18th May 1646, he commenced his History; in Jersey he tarried two whole years. From November 1649 till March 1651 he was engaged in a fruitless embassy to Spain; next for nine years he filled the office of a 'Caleb Balderstone' in the needy, greedy, factious little court of Charles II., sometimes with neither clothes nor fire to preserve him from the sharpness of the season, and with not three sous in the world to buy a fagot.'

Charles had made him High Chancellor in 1658, and at the Restoration he was confirmed in that dignity, in November 1660 being created Baron Hyde, and in the following April Earl of Clarendon.

To this period belongs the strangest episode in all his Autobiography. In November 1659 his daughter Anne (1638-71), then lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Orange, had entered into a secret marriage-contract with the king's brother, James, Duke of York; and nine months later they were privately married at her father's house. On learning the news, if news indeed it was, he burst into a passion of the coarsest invective against her; yet people fancied that in Catherine of Braganza he purposely selected a barren bride for the king, that so his own daughter might some day come to the throne. Nor as chief Minister was he otherwise popular. A bigoted Churchman, a thorough Conservative, and always a lawyer, he would fain have restored things to the status quo ante bellum. He loved a Papist little better than a sectary, and accordingly would have nothing to do with Charles's toleration. He looked sourly on Charles's vices, yet stooped to impose Charles's mistress on Charles's queen. He could not satisfy the Cavaliers, who contrasted his opulence with their own broken fortunes; he did more than enough to irritate the Puritans. The sale of Dunkirk, the Dutch war, the very Plague and Great Fire, all heightened his unpopularity; and in 1667 he fell an easy unlamented victim to a court cabal. The great seal was taken from him; impeachment for high-treason followed; and quitting the kingdom at Charles's bidding, the old man settled at Montpellier. There and at Moulins he spent nearly six tranquil years; and afterwards from Rouen he sent a last piteous entreaty that Charles would permit him to 'die in his own country and among his own children.' His petition was disregarded, and at Rouen he died 9th December 1674. No monument marks his grave in Westminster Abbey.

Men's estimates of Clarendon have varied widely. Southey calls him 'the wisest, most upright of statesmen ;' the Scottish Whig historian, George Brodie, 'a miserable sycophant and canting hypocrite.' The truth lies somewhere between the two verdicts, but Southey's is much the truer of the two. The failings and merits of the statesman are mirrored in his great History of the Rebellion in England (3 vols. 1704-7), with its supplement and continuation, more faulty and less valuable, the History of the Civil War in Ireland (1721), and the Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon (3 vols. 1759). The publication of the History of the Rebellion in the reign of Queen Anne was an event of some importance in English politics as well as in English letters, since the glowing picture which it unfolded of the Cavalier cause and party is believed to have been one cause of the Tory and Jacobite reaction which brought Harley and St John into power. The original editors of the work were Bishop Smalridge, Dean Aldrich, and Bishop Atterbury, the last of whom successfully defended himself and his colleagues (1731) against Oldmixon's accusation that they had falsified the text. An apology more than a history, a vindication of

the author and of Charles I., the History is not, does not profess to be, impartial; it suppresses the truth where the truth seemed unfavourable; and it is grossly inaccurate-the result of a fallible memory. But, Mr Green notwithstanding, it does not 'by deliberate and malignant falsehood' pervert the whole action of Clarendon's adversaries; careless and ungenerous he might be, wilfully dishonest he was not. And though his style is prolix and redundant, though it 'suffocates us by the length of its periods,' his splendid stateliness, his narrative skill, his development of motives, and, above all, his marvellous skill in portraiture (shown best in the character of Falkland), have rendered the History an imperishable classic.

Reception of the Liturgy at Edinburgh in 1637. On the Sunday morning appointed for the work, the Chancellor of Scotland and others of the Council being present in the cathedral church, the dean began to read the Liturgy, which he had no sooner entered upon but a noise and clamour was raised throughout the church, that no voice could be heard distinctly, and then a shower of stones and sticks and cudgels were thrown at the dean's head. The bishop went up into the pulpit, and from thence put them in mind of the sacredness of the place, of their duty to God and the King; but he found no more reverence, nor was the clamour or disorder less than before. The Chancellor, from his seat, commanded the provost and magistrates of the city to descend from the gallery in which they sat, and by their authority to suppress the riot; which at last with great difficulty they did, by driving the rudest of those who made the disturbance out of the church, and shutting the doors, which gave the dean opportunity to proceed in the reading of the Liturgy, which was not at all intended or hearkened to by those who remained within the church; and if it had, they who were turned out continued their barbarous noise, brake the windows, and endeavoured to break down the doors; so that it was not possible for any to follow their devotions.

When all was done that at that time could be done there, and the Council and magistrates went out of the church to their houses, the rabble followed the bishops with all the opprobrious language they could invent, of bringing in superstition and Popery into the kingdom, and making the people slaves; and were not content to use their tongues, but employed their hands too in throwing dirt and stones at them, and treated the Bishop of Edinburgh (whom they looked upon as most active that way) so rudely that with great difficulty he got into a house after they had torn his habit, and was from thence removed to his own with great hazard of his life. As this was the reception it had in the cathedral, so it fared not better in the other churches in the city, but was entertained with the same hollowing and outcries, and threatening the men whose office it was to read it with the same bitter execrations against bishops and Popery.

Hitherto no person of condition or name appeared, or seemed to countenance this seditious confusion; it was the rabble, of which nobody was named, and, which is more strange, not one apprehended: and it seems the bishops thought it not of moment enough to desire

or require any help or protection from the Council; but, without conferring with them or applying themselves to them, they despatched away an express to the King with a full and particular information of all that had passed, and a desire that he would take that course he thought best for the carrying on his service.

Until this advertisement arrived from Scotland, there were very few in England who had heard of any disorders there, or of anything done there which might produce any. The King himself had been always so jealous of the privileges of that his native kingdom (as hath been touched before), and that it might not be dishonoured by a suspicion of having any dependence upon England, that he never suffered any thing relating to that to be debated or so much as communicated to his Privy Council in this (though many of that nation were, without distinction, Councillors of England), but handled all those affairs himself with two or three Scotchmen who always attended in the Court for the business of that kingdom, which was upon the matter still despatched by the sole advice and direction of the Marquis of Hambleton [Hamilton].

And the truth is, there was so little curiosity either in the Court or the country to know any thing of Scotland, or what was done there, that when the whole nation was solicitous to know what passed weekly in Germany and Poland and all other parts of Europe, no man ever inquired what was doing in Scotland, nor had that kingdom a place or mention in one page of any gazette, so little the world heard or thought of that people; and even after the advertisement of this preamble to rebellion, no mention was made of it at the Council-board, but such a despatch made into Scotland upon it as expressed the King's dislike and displeasure, and obliged the lords of the Council there to appear more vigorously in the vindication of his authority, and suppression of those tumults. But all was too little. That people, after they had once begun, pursued the business vigorously, and with all imaginable contempt of the government; and though in the hubbub of the first day there appeared nobody of name or reckoning, but the actors were really of the dregs of the people, yet they discovered by the countenance of that day that few men of rank were forward to engage themselves in the quarrel on the behalf of the bishops; whereupon more considerable persons every day appeared against them, and, as heretofore in the case of St Paul (Acts xiii. 50), the Jews stirred up the devout and honourable women, the women and ladies of the best quality declared themselves of the party, and with all the reproaches imaginable made war upon the bishops, as introducers of Popery and superstition, against which they avowed themselves to be irreconcilable enemies : and their husbands did not long defer the owning the same spirit; insomuch as within few days the bishops durst not appear in the streets nor in any courts or houses, but were in danger of their lives; and such of the lords as durst be in their company, or seemed to desire to rescue them from violence, had their coaches torn in pieces, and their persons assaulted, insomuch as they were glad to send for some of those great men who did indeed govern the rabble though they appeared not in it, who readily came and redeemed them out of their hands. So that by the time new orders came from England, there was scarce a bishop left in Edinburgh, and not a minister who durst read the Liturgy in any church.