So it happened in this instance. People who had cheered on Pym and his compatriots a few months before, were now becoming thoroughly frightened. Semi-Puritans, and other good folks, who wished to see matters mended very quietly, thought changes were going a great deal too far; also self-interest aided the reaction. Bishops had been assailed, but bishops as yet had neither been dethroned in the cathedral nor dismissed from the Upper House. They were provoked without being deprived of power, irritated without being divested of influence. They still lived in palaces, and had the establishments of noblemen, and at the same time they retained the means of attaching to them such of the clergy as waited for preferment. Persons of the latter description naturally dreaded the impoverishment of the prelates, and deprecated taking away the rewards of learning and piety.
They did what they could to make Parliament odious. Many, too, were "daily poisoned by the discourses of the friends, kindred, and retainers to so many great delinquents, as must needs fear such a Parliament." This is stated by a candid contemporary, Thomas May, secretary to the Parliament, who dwells at large upon the reaction at this period, and points out its causes. Besides those now mentioned, he adds: "daily reports of ridiculous conventicles, and preachings made by tradesmen and illiterate people of the lowest rank, to the scandal and offence of many, which some in a merry way would put off, considering the precedent times, that these tradesmen did but take up that which prelates and the great doctors had let fall,—preaching the Gospel; that it was but a reciprocal invasion of each other's calling, that chandlers, salters, weavers, and such like, preached, when the archbishop himself, instead of preaching, was daily busied in projects about leather, salt, soap, and such commodities as belonged to those tradesmen."
Reaction.
He then proceeds: "but I remember within the compass of a year after, (when this civil war began to break out over all the kingdom, and men in all companies began to vent their opinions in an argumentative way, either opposing or defending the Parliament cause, and treatises were printed on both sides,) many gentlemen who forsook the Parliament were very bitter against it for the proceedings in religion, in countenancing, or not suppressing, the rudeness of people in churches—acting those things which seemed to be against the discipline of the English Church, and might introduce all kinds of sects and schisms. Neither did those of the Parliament side agree in opinions concerning that point; some said it was wisely done of the Parliament not to proceed against any such persons for fear of losing a considerable party; others thought and said, that by so doing, they would lose a far more considerable party of gentlemen than could be gained of the other sort. They also affirmed, that laws and liberties having been so much violated by the King, if the Parliament had not so far drawn religion also into their cause, it might have sped better; for the Parliament frequently at that time, in all their expressions, whensoever they charged the corrupt statesmen of injustice and tyranny, would put Popery, or a suspicion of it, into the first place against them."[222]
This reaction should be kept in mind, as it will serve to explain some things which followed.
CHAPTER VII.
Debates by the Commons.