ll cases the divines named by the knights and burgesses for
their several counties were approved of by the House unanimously; but a
vote was taken on the eligibility of one of the divines named for
Yorkshire, and he was carried by a bare majority of one hundred three to
ninety-nine, and exceptions having been taken on the 25th to the two
appointed for Cumberland on the 20th, their appointment was cancelled
and others were substituted. On the same day on which the list of
divines was completed, a committee of twenty-seven members of the House,
including Hampden, Selden, and Lord Falkland, was appointed "to consider
of the readiest way to put in execution the resolutions of this House in
consulting with such divines as they have named." The result was that on
May 9th there was brought in a "bill for calling an assembly of godly
and learned divines to be consulted with by the Parliament, for the
settling of the government and liturgy of the Church, and for the
vindicating and clearing of the doctrine of the Church of England from
false aspersions and interpretations." On that day the bill was read
twice in the Commons and committed; and on the 19th it was read a third
time and passed. The Lords, having then taken the bill into
consideration, proposed (May 26, 1642) the addition of _fourteen_
divines of their own choice to those named by the Commons; and, the
Commons having agreed to this amendment, the bill passed both Houses,
June 1st, and waited only the King's assent. It was intended that the
assembly should meet the next month.

The King had other things to do at that moment than assent to a bill for
an assembly of divines. He was at York, gathering his forces for the
civil war; and by the time when it was expected the assembly should have
been at work the civil war had begun. Nevertheless, the Parliament
persevered in their design. Twice again, while the war was in its first
stage, bills were introduced to the same effect as that which had been
stopped. Bill the second for calling an assembly of divines was in
October, and bill the third in December, 1642. In these bills the two
houses kept to the one hundred sixteen divines agreed upon under the
first bill, with--as far as I have been able to trace the matter through
their journals--only one deletion, two substitutions, and three proposed
additions.

Still, by the stress of the war, the assembly was postponed. At last,
hopeless of a bill that should pass in the regu