1661.
SAVOY CONFERENCE.
Having described the Savoy Conference, and the contemporary meetings of Convocation, there remain to be noticed the proceedings of that higher assembly, with which both the others were coeval.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Solemn League and Covenant had been displaced a year, and the New Parliament now resolved to brand it with fresh indignities.[256] Accordingly it was, by the common hangman, burnt at Westminster, in Cheapside, and before the Exchange. The executioner "did his work perfectly well; for having kindled his fire, he tore the document into very many pieces, and first burned the preface; and then cast each parcel solemnly into the fire, lifting up his hands and eyes, not leaving the least shred, but burnt it root and branch."[257]
Similar spectacles were enacted elsewhere; and at Bury St. Edmunds, upon the anniversary of the Restoration—amidst floral decorations, and the adornment of houses with tapestry and pictures, after service at church, Hugh Peters was gibbeted in effigy, with the Solemn League grasped in his hand, and the Directory tucked under his arm. In Southampton, after the firing of culverins, and the marching of scarlet-robed Aldermen, there followed the burning of the Covenant, "in a stately frame, taken from the chancel of an Anabaptist Church."[258]
PROCEEDINGS OF PARLIAMENT.
As a further indication of the temper of the Commons at the moment, it may be stated, that the Speaker rebuked the Mayor of Northampton—summoned to the bar of the House for irreverent carriage in the church, and at the communion table—and that a Bill was read three times for preventing the mischiefs and dangers, which might arise from certain persons called Quakers, and others, "refusing to take lawful oaths."[259]