eligion"; an adoption, in other words,
of the Presbyterian system by the Church of England. To such a change
Pym had been steadily opposed. He had even withstood Hampden when, after
the passing of the bill for the expulsion of bishops from the House of
Peers, Hampden had pressed for the abolition of episcopacy. But events
had moved so rapidly since the earlier debates on Church government
that some arrangement of this kind had become a necessity. The bishops
to a man, and the bulk of the clergy whose bent was purely episcopal,
had joined the royal cause, and were being expelled from their livings
as "delinquents." Some new system of Church government was imperatively
called for by the religious necessities of the country; and though Pym
and the leading statesmen were still in opinion moderate Episcopalians,
the growing force of Presbyterianism, and still more the absolute need
of Scottish aid and the needs of the war, forced them to seek such a
system in the adoption of the Scotch discipline.

[Sidenote: England swears to the Covenant.]

Scotland, for its part, saw that the triumph of the Parliament was
necessary for its own security. Whatever difficulties stood in the way
of Vane's wary and rapid negotiations were removed in fact by the policy
of the king. While the Parliament looked for aid to the North, Charles
had been seeking assistance from the Irish rebels. Wild tales of the
supposed massacre had left them the objects of a vengeful hate unknown
before in England, but with the king they were simply counters in his
game of kingcraft. Their rising had now grown into an organized
rebellion. In October 1642 an Assembly of the Confederate Catholics
gathered at Kilkenny. Eleven Catholic bishops, fourteen peers, and two
hundred and twenty-six commoners, of English and Irish blood alike,
formed this body, which assumed every prerogative of sovereignty,
communicated with foreign powers, and raised an army to vindicate Irish
independence. In spite of this Charles had throughout the year been
intriguing with the confederates through Lord Glamorgan; and though his
efforts to secure their direct aid were for some time fruitless he
succeeded in September in bringing about an armistice between their
forces and the army under the Earl of Ormond which had as yet held them
in check. The truce left this army at the king's disposal for service in
England; while it secured him as the price of this armistice a pledge
from the Catholic