Lastly, there was an ever-increasing number of Separatists, or Independents. These rejected both the organization of the Church of England and that of the Presbyterians, and desired that each religious community should organize itself independently. The government had forbidden these Separatists to hold their little meetings, which they called conventicles, and about 1600 some of them fled to Holland. The community of them which established itself at Leyden dispatched the Mayflower, in 1620, with colonists—since known as the Pilgrim Fathers—to the New World across the sea.[341] It was these colonists who laid the foundations of a New England which has proved a worthy offspring of the mother country. The form of worship which they established in their new home is still known as Congregational.[342]
Charles summons Parliament once more, to aid him in fighting the Scotch Presbyterians, 1640.
186. In 1640 Charles found himself forced to resort to Parliament, for he was involved in a war with Scotland which he could not carry on without money. There the Presbyterian system had been pretty generally introduced by John Knox in Queen Mary's time, but the bishops had been permitted to maintain a precarious existence in the interest of the nobles who enjoyed their revenues. James I had always had a strong dislike for Presbyterianism. He once said, "A Scottish presbytery agreeth as well with the monarchy as God with the devil. Then Jack and Tom and Will and Dick shall meet and at their pleasure censure me and my council." He much preferred a few bishops appointed by himself to hundreds of presbyteries over whose sharp eyes and sharper tongues he could have little control. So bishops were reappointed in Scotland in the early years of his reign and got back some of their powers. The Presbyterians, however, were still in the majority, and they continued to regard the bishops as the tools of the king.
The National Covenant, 1638.
An attempt on the part of Charles to force the Scots to accept a modified form of the English Prayer Book led to the signing of the National Covenant in 1638. This pledged those who attached their names to it to reëstablish the purity and liberty of the Gospel, which, to most of the Covenanters, meant Presbyterianism. Charles thereupon undertook to coerce the Scots. Having no money, he bought on credit a large cargo of pepper, which had just arrived in the ships of the East India Company, and sold it cheap for ready cash. The soldiers, however, whom he got together showed little inclination to fight the Scots, with whom they were in tolerable agreement on religious matters. Charles was therefore at last obliged to summon a Parliament, which, owing to the length of time it remained in session, is known as the Long Parliament.
The measures of the Long Parliament against the king's tyranny.
The Long Parliament began by imprisoning Strafford, the king's most conspicuous minister, and Archbishop Laud in the Tower of London. The help that Strafford had given to the king in ruling without Parliament had mortally offended the House of Commons. They declared him guilty of treason, and he was executed in 1641, in spite of Charles' efforts to save him. Laud met the same fate four years later. Parliament also tried to strengthen its position by passing the Triennial Bill, which provided that it should meet at least once in three years, even if not summoned by the king. The courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, which had arbitrarily condemned a number of the king's opponents, were abolished, and ship money declared illegal.[343] In short, Charles' whole system of government was abrogated. The efforts of the queen to obtain money and soldiers from the pope, and a visit of Charles to Scotland, which Parliament suspected was for the purpose of forcing the Scots to lend him an army to use against themselves, led to the Grand Remonstrance. In this all of Charles' errors were enumerated and a demand was made that the king's ministers should thereafter be responsible to Parliament. This document Parliament ordered to be printed and circulated throughout the country.
Charles' attempts to arrest five members of the House of Commons.
Exasperated at the conduct of the Commons, Charles attempted to intimidate the opposition by undertaking the arrest of five of its most active leaders, whom he declared to be traitors. But when he entered the House of Commons and looked around for his enemies, he found that they had taken shelter in London, whose citizens later brought them back in triumph to Westminster.