claration denounced
the proceeding as "a popish and Jesuitical practice to allure them by the
specious pretence of peace to disavow their own authority, and resign
themselves, their religion, laws, and liberties, to the power of idolatry,
superstition, and slavery."[1] In opposition, the houses at Oxford declared
that the Scots had broken the act of pacification, that all English
subjects who aided them should be deemed traitors and enemies of the state,
and that the lords and commons

[Footnote 1: Journals, vi. 451, 459. The reader will notice in the king's
letter an allusion to religious toleration ("with due consideration to
the ease of tender consciences"), the first which had yet been made by
authority, and which a few years before would have scandalized the members
of the church of England as much as it did now the Presbyterians and Scots.
But policy had taught that which reason could not. It was now thrown out
as a bait to the Independents, whose apprehensions of persecution were
aggravated by the intolerance of their Scottish allies, and who were on
that account suspected of having already made some secret overtures to the
court. "Bristol, under his hand, gives them a full assurance of so full a
liberty of their conscience as they could wish, inveighing withal against
the Scots' cruel invasion, and the tyranny of our presbytery, equal to the
Spanish inquisition."--Baillie, i. 428.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. March 9.]

remaining at Westminster, who had given their consent to the coming in of
the Scots, or the raising of forces under the earl of Essex, or the making
and using of a new great seal, had committed high treason, and ought to
be proceeded against as traitors to the king and kingdom.[1] Thus again
vanished the prospect of peace; and both parties, with additional
exasperation of mind, and keener desires of revenge, resolved once more to
stake their hope of safety on the uncertain fortune of war.

But the leaders at Westminster found it necessary to silence the murmurs of
many among their own adherents, whose anxiety for the restoration of peace
led them to attribute interested motives to the advocates of war. On the
first appearance of a rupture, a committee of safety had been appointed,
consisting of five lords and ten commoners, whose office it was to perform
the duties of the executive authority, subject to the approbation and
authority of the houses; now that the Scots had agreed to join in the war,