* Rush. vol. iii. p. 1295.
The parliament, that they might relieve the northern counties from so grievous a burden, agreed to remit pay to the Scottish as well as to the English army; and because subsidies would be levied too slowly for so urgent an occasion, money was borrowed from the citizens upon the security of particular members. Two subsidies, a very small sum,[*] were at first voted; and as the intention of this supply was to indemnify the members who by their private had supported public credit, this pretence was immediately laid hold of, and the money was ordered to be paid, not into the treasury, but to commissioners appointed by parliament; a practice which as it diminished the authority of the crown, was willingly embraced, and was afterwards continued by the commons with regard to every branch of revenue which they granted to the king. The invasion of the Scots had evidently been the cause of assembling the parliament: the presence of their army reduced the king to that total subjection in which he was now held: the commons, for this reason, openly professed their intention of retaining these invaders, till all their own enemies should be suppressed, and all their purposes effected. “We cannot yet spare the Scots,” said Strode plainly in the house, “the sons of Zeruiah are still too strong for us;”[**] an allusion to a passage of Scripture, according to the mode of that age. Eighty thousand pounds a month were requisite for the subsistence of the two armies; a sum much greater than the subject had ever been accustomed in any former period to pay to the public. And though several subsidies, together with a poll-tax, were from time to time voted to answer the charge, the commons still took care to be in debt, in order to render the continuance of the session the more necessary.
* It appears that a subsidy was now fallen to fifty thousand
pounds.
** Dugdale, p. 71.
The Scots being such useful allies to the malecontent party in England, no wonder they were courted with the most unlimited complaisance and the most important services. The king, having in his first speech called them rebels, observed that he had given great offence to the parliament; and he was immediately obliged to soften, and even retract the expression.
The Scottish commissioners, of whom the most considerable were the earl of Rothes and Lord Loudon, found every advantage in conducting their treaty; yet made no haste in bringing it to an issue. They were lodged in the city, and kept an intimate correspondence, as well with the magistrates who were extremely disaffected, as with the popular leaders in both houses. St. Antholine’s church was assigned them for their devotions; and their chaplains here began openly to practise the Presbyterian form of worship, which, except in foreign languages, had never hitherto been allowed any indulgence or toleration. So violent was the general propensity towards this new religion, that multitudes of all ranks crowded to the church. Those who were so happy as to find access early in the morning, kept their places the whole day, those who were excluded clung to the doors or windows, in hopes of catching at least some distant murmur or broken phrases of the holy rhetoric.[*] All the eloquence of parliament, now well refined from pedantry, animated with the spirit of liberty and employed in the most important interests, was not attended to with such insatiable avidity, as were these lectures, delivered with ridiculous cant and a provincial accent, full of barbarism and of ignorance.
The most effectual expedient for paying court to the zealous Scots, was to promote the Presbyterian discipline and worship throughout England; and to this innovation the popular leaders among the commons, as well as their more devoted partisans, were of themselves sufficiently inclined. The Puritanical party, whose progress, though secret, had hitherto been gradual in the kingdom, taking advantage of the present disorders, began openly to profess their tenets, and to make furious attacks on the established religion. The prevalence of that sect in the parliament discovered itself, from the beginning, by insensible but decisive symptoms. Marshall and Burgess, two Puritanical clergymen, were chosen to preach before them, and entertained them with discourses seven hours in length.[**] It being the custom of the house always to take the sacrament before they enter upon business, they ordered, as a necessary preliminary, that the communion table should be removed from the east end of St. Margaret’s into the middle of the area.[***] The name of the “spiritual lords” was commonly left out in acts of parliament; and the laws ran in the name of king, lords, and commons. The clerk of the upper house, in reading bills, turned his back on the bench of bishops; nor was his insolence ever taken notice of.
* Clarendon, vol. i. p. 189.
** Nalson, vol. i. p. 530, 533.
*** Nalson, voL i. p. 537
On a day appointed for a solemn fast and humiliation, all the orders of temporal peers, contrary to former practice, in going to church took place of the spiritual; and Lord Spencer remarked that the humiliation that day seemed confined alone to the prelates.
Every meeting of the commons produced some vehement harangue against the usurpations of the bishops, against the high commission, against the late convocation, against the new canons. So disgusted were all lovers of civil liberty at the doctrines promoted by the clergy, that these invectives were received without control; and no distinction at first appeared between such as desired only to repress the exorbitancies of the hierarchy, and such as pretended totally to annihilate episcopal jurisdiction. Encouraged by these favorable appearances, petitions against the church were framed in different parts of the kingdom. The epithet of the ignorant and vicious priesthood was commonly applied to all churchmen addicted to the established discipline and worship; though the episcopal clergy in England, during that age, seem to have been, as they are at present, sufficiently learned and exemplary. An address against episcopacy was presented by twelve clergymen to the committee of religion, and pretended to be signed by many hundreds of the Puritanical persuasion. But what made most noise was, the city petition for a total alteration of church government; a petition to which fifteen thousand subscriptions were annexed, and which was presented by Alderman Pennington, the city member.[*] It is remarkable that, among the many ecclesiastical abuses there complained of, an allowance given by the licensers of books to publish a translation of Ovid’s Art of Love, is not forgotten by these rustic censors.[**]
Notwithstanding the favorable disposition of the people, the leaders in the house resolved to proceed with caution. They introduced a bill for prohibiting all clergymen the exercise of any civil office. As a consequence, the bishops were to be deprived of their seats in the house of peers; a measure not unacceptable to the zealous friends of liberty, who observed with regret the devoted attachment of that order to the will of the monarch. But when this bill was presented to the peers, it was rejected by a great majority;[***] the first check which the commons had received in their popular career, and a prognostic of what they might afterwards expect from the upper house, whose inclinations and interests could never be totally separated from the throne.