were ready for a much bolder stroke. On the 27th of that redoubtable month of May, and just after Strafford's head had fallen at the block, an extraordinary incident electrified the House of Commons, revealing the sharpness of the crisis and the inflammable condition of many minds. At the right hand corner of the Speaker's chair in St. Stephen's Chapel, a little step-ladder led up to a gallery where Sir Arthur Haselrig, the advanced Presbyterian Republican used, among others, to sit. He was observed to be in close conference with Sir Edward Dering over a paper which passed between them. Among other ominous petitions, there had just been presented a very large one from Lincolnshire, praying for the abolition of Archbishops, Bishops, and their dependencies, when suddenly Sir Edward Dering rose in the little gallery, and said, in an easy, off-hand way :

"Mr. Speaker, The gentleman that spake last, taking notice of the multitude of complaints and complainants against the present government of the Church, doth somewhat seem to wonder that we have no more pursuit ready against the persons offending. . . . Sir, I am now the instrument to present unto you a very short but a very sharp Bill, such as these times and their sad necessities have brought forth. It speaks a free language and makes a bold request. It is a purging Bill. I give it you as I take physic-not for delight, but for a cure. . . . This Bill is entitled, An Act for the utter abolishing and taking away of all Archbishops, Bishops, their Chancellors and Commissaries, Deans and Chapters, Archdeacons, Prebendaries, Chanters, Canons, and all other their under officers."

Probably, though so drastic a measure was not according to Sir Edward Dering's own private convictions, he was not unwilling to employ it as a weapon to ensure that the other Bill should pass the Lords, and so obtain an urgently needful amount of Church reform; and, possibly on the same principle, the majority at once accepted it, in spite of others looking surprised. The second reading passed by so many as 139 to 108, Holles and Pym particularly insisting "That Bishops had wellnigh ruined all religion"; and finally, as D'Ewes says, under 11 June, in his Diary :

"We fell upon the great debate of the Bill of Episcopacy. Robert Harley, as I gathered, Mr. Pym, Mr. Hampden, and others, with Mr. Stephen

Marshall, parson, of Finchingfield, and some others, had met yesternight and appointed that this Bill should be proceeded withal this morning. And the said Sir Robert Harley moved it first in the House: for Mr. Hampden, out of his serpentine subtlety, did still put others to move those businesses that he contrived."

Thus Pym and Hampden had come to adopt the Presbyterian views that were finding expression in the great pamphlets of Smectymnuus and Milton, and which were already so formidable a force in London and among the staid and steady middle classes. The long debate ended by the House agreeing to the preamble of the Bill, in spite of all Mr. Edward Hyde's continuous opposition:

"Whereas the government of the Church of England by Archbishops, Bishops, their Chancellors and Commissaries, Deans, Archdeacons, and other ecclesiastical officers hath been found by long experience to be a great impediment to the perfect reformation and growth of religion and very prejudicial to the civil State and Government of this kingdom."

And a few days later (June 15) it voted :—

"That Deans and Chapters, Archdeacons, Prebendaries, Canons, etc., should be utterly abolished and taken away out of the Church."

Such an assault, so successfully carried, against the bulwarks of Episcopacy, produced a great and serious scare through the country, and called forth counter-petitions and other vigorous High-Church efforts, so that something of a reaction set in during the autumn recess of Parliament, and this was aided by the King's apparently genial demeanour after the Scottish army had been induced to return home; and Charles recovered a little of his popularity, after having paid his hypocritically cunning yet conciliatory visit to Scotland that same autumn.2

1 Rushworth, iii. i. 283. This was the first token of Presbyterian triumph; and the date (June, 1641) should be noted, as it was this early action in the House of Commons that gave impulse to the Scottish hope for ecclesiastical uniformity long before any Solemn League and Covenant had come on the field at all. And although a remarkable attempt at compromise, which was now made for Church reform, did not succeed, yet the infusion of certain strong Presbyterian elements, such as that each Bishop should have a congregation of his own to minister to, and should do nothing without a body of Presbyters associated with him, indicated how the tide was now running.

2 It must be particularly remembered, that, by what he thought a fine stroke of policy, Charles, in visiting Scotland on this occasion to discover how his whole ecclesiastical action had been so effectually overturned, endeavoured to gain time

But when the unhappy monarch showed his bitter resentment against the "GRAND REMONSTRANCE" which the House of Commons had resolved on presenting to him in November; and especially after that fatal 4 January, 1642, on which he made his visit to the House in person to seize the five members; and after the Bishops had committed their mad and unconstitutional blunder, for which they were sent to the Tower on 30 January; there was neither difficulty nor further delay on the part of the exasperated Peers, any more than of the Commons, in hurrying through the Bill, which had hung fire for some time, to remove the Bishops from their seats in the Lords. And when the King was known to have passed the measure, it was amid great excitement and the popular cry of "No Bishops," with the ringing of bells and bonfires all over London.1

and lull suspicion by assenting to an Act of the Scotch Parliament which declared that "the government of the Church by Bishops was repugnant to the Word of God; that the prelates were enemies to the true Protestant religion; that their order was to be suppressed, and their lands given to the Crown."

1 "The passing of that Bill exceedingly weakened the King's party, not only as it perpetually swept away so considerable a number out of the House of Peers which were constantly devoted to him, but as it made impression on others whose minds were in suspense and shaken as when the foundations are dissolved."-Clarendon's Rebellion, p. 172.

It will be remembered (as Sir Simonds D'Ewes reminded the House of Commons) that the Bishops had sat only for a century as the sole representatives of the spiritualty, the greater part of the spiritual peers having already gone when the abbots were cast out of the House of Lords on the abolition of the monasteries.

The Rise of the Presbyterians in the Reformed

Church of England (Continued).

PERIOD OF THE PRESBYTERIAN ASCENDENCY, 1643-1649.

I. PARLIAMENT CALLS THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY, AND WITH IT SWEARS TO THE COVENANT, 1642–1643.

II. TRANSACTIONS OF THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY.

III.-PRESBYTERIAN LONDON, 1643-1649.

IV. THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT IN LANCASHIRE,

1646-1660.

V.-PRESBYTERIANISM IN OTHER COUNTIES.

VI.-ENGLISH PRESBYTERIANS AND THE ORIGIN OF PRESBYTERIANISM IN AMERICA.