again taken place. The Star
Chamber, which was already regarded as a court of doubtful legality,
had imposed harsh and arbitrary penalties which awakened loud murmurs.
The political opinions of one or two clergymen had caused general
agitation. A preacher named Roger Manwaring gave utterance to extreme
Royalist views. He defended forced loans, and contested the
unconditional right of Parliament to grant taxes. From some passages
of Scripture he deduced the absolute power of the sovereign, so that
properly speaking no contract at all could, in his opinion, be made
between king and people.[493] Parliament had called him to account for
this, and had punished him by fine and suspension; but the King
remitted the sentence. Another clergyman of kindred views, Montague,
whom we have already mentioned, had been advanced by the King to the
bishopric of Chichester, though, as deserves to be noticed, not
without encountering opposition. For at the elections the old forms
were still observed. Before the commissary of the Archbishop confirmed
the election, which had taken place at the King's commands, he invited
those present, if they knew anything in the life and conduct of the
bishop-elect which could hinder his confirmation, to declare it. What
had never been done on any other occasion was done then. An objection
against Montague was presented in writing on the ground that doctrines
occurred in his books which were irreconcilable with the existing
institutions of England. The matter was brought before a court of
justice, which, however, dismissed the objection as proceeding from a
man who did not belong to the diocese of Chichester. The royal
confirmation had then followed.[494] But must it not have been
irritating to Parliament that the very men were promoted about whom it
had complained? Its complaints seemed rather to serve as a
recommendation.

Besides this a Jesuit institution had been discovered in the immediate
neighbourhood of London, and had then not been prosecuted with all the
severity which Parliament thought requisite. People complained that
the number of Papists was increasing every day; that in the counties,
where before there had been none, they were now reckoned by thousands.
Mainly at the instigation of Sir John Eliot, the Lower House issued a
declaration, that it desired to hold the Articles of the English
Church in the sense in which they were understood by the writers,
whose authority was recognised in that