Distempers (indeed) were risen to so great a height for want of timely suppressing the vulgar insolencies, that the greatest guilt of those which were Voted and demanded as Delinquents, was this, That they would not suffer themselves to be over-awed by the Tumults, and their Patrons; nor compelled to abet by their suffrages, or presence; the designes of those men who agitated innovations and ruine both in Church and State.
In this point I could not but approve their generous constancie and cautiousness; further then this I did never allow any mans refractoriness against the Priviledges and Orders of the Houses; to whom I wished nothing more then Safetie, Fulness and Freedom.
But the truth is, some men and those not many, despairing in fair and Parliamentary waies by free Deliberations and Votes to gain the concurrence of the major part of Lords and Commons, betook themselves (by the desperate activitie of factious Tumults) to sift and terrifie away all those Members whom they saw to be of contrary minds to their purposes.
How oft was the businesse of the Bishops enjoying their ancient places, and undoubted Priviledges in the House of Peers, carried for them by far the Major part of Lords? Yet after five repulses, contrary to all Order and Custome, it was by Tumultuary instigations obtruded again, and by a few carried, when most of the Peers were forced to absent themselves.
In like manner as the Bill against Root and Branch, brought on by tumultuary Clamours, and schismaticall Terrours, which could never passe til both Houses were sufficiently thinned and over-awed.
To which partialitie, while in all Reason, Justice, and Religion, my Conscience forbids me, by consenting, to make up their Votes to Acts of Parliament, I must now be urged with an Armie, and constrained either to hazard my Own, and my Kingdoms ruine, by my Defence, or prostrate my Conscience to the blinde obedience of those men, whose zealous superstition thinks, or pretends, they cannot do God and the Church a greater service, then utterly to destroy that Primitive, Apostolicall, and anciently Universall Government of the Church by Bishops.
Which, if other mens judgments bind them to maintain, or forbids them to consent to the abolishing of it, mine much more; who, besides the grounds I have in my judgement, have also a most strict and indispensable Oath upon my Conscience, to preserve that Order, and the Rights of the Church; to which most Sacrilegious and abhorred Perjurie, most un-beseeming a Christian King, should I ever, by giving my consent, be betrayed, I should account it infinitely greater miserie, then any hath, or can befall me; in as much as the least sin hath more evill in it then the greatest affliction. Had I gratified their Anti-Episcopall Faction at first in this point with my Consent, and sacrificed the Ecclesiasticall Government and Revenues to the fury of their covetousness, ambition, and revenge, I beleeve they would then have found no colourable necessity of raising an Army to fetch in and punish Delinquents.
That I consented to the Bil of putting the Bishops out of the House of Peers, was done with a firm perswasion of their contentedness to suffer a present diminution in their Rights and Honour for my sake, and the Commonweals, which I was confident they would readily yeeld unto, rather then occasion (by the least obstruction on their part) any dangers to Me, or to my Kingdom. That I cannot add my consent for the totall extirpation of that Government (which I have often offered to all fit regulations) hath so much further tie upon My Conscience, as what I think Religious and Apostolicall, and so very sacred and Divine, is not to be dispensed with, or destroyed, when what is onely of civill Favour, and priviledge of Honour granted to men of that Order, may with their consent who are concerned in it, be annulled.
This is the true state of those obstructions pretended to be in point of Justice and Authority of Parliament; when I call God to witness, I know none of such consequence as was worth speaking of a War, being onely such as Justice, Reason and Religion had made in my own and other mens Consciences.