of state; and we shall be very cautious how we do so again.
We once subscribed a petition of the most harmless kind: we presented it
in the most respectful manner; and we found that we had committed a high
offence. We were saved from ruin only by the merciful protection of God.
And, sir, the ground then taken by your Majesty's Attorney and Solicitor
was that, out of Parliament, we were private men, and that it was
criminal presumption in private men to meddle with politics. They
attacked us so fiercely that for my part I gave myself over for lost."
"I thank you for that, my Lord of Canterbury," said the King; "I should
have hoped that you would not have thought yourself lost by falling
into my hands." Such a speech might have become the mouth of a merciful
sovereign, but it came with a bad grace from a prince who had burned
a woman alive for harbouring one of his flying enemies, from a
prince round whose knees his own nephew had clung in vain agonies of
supplication. The Archbishop was not to be so silenced. He resumed his
story, and recounted the insults which the creatures of the court had
offered to the Church of England, among which some ridicule thrown on
his own style occupied a conspicuous place. The King had nothing to say
but that there was no use in repeating old grievances, and that he had
hoped that these things had been quite forgotten. He, who never forgot
the smallest injury that he had suffered, could not understand how
others should remember for a few weeks the most deadly injuries that he
had inflicted.

At length the conversation came back to the point from which it had
wandered. The King insisted on having from the Bishops a paper declaring
their abhorrence of the Prince's enterprise. They, with many professions
of the most submissive loyalty, pertinaciously refused. The Prince,
they said, asserted that he had been invited by temporal as well as by
spiritual peers. The imputation was common. Why should not the purgation
be common also?"I see how it is," said the King. "Some of the temporal
peers have been with you, and have persuaded you to cross me in this
matter." The Bishops solemnly averred that it was not so. But it would,
they said, seem strange that, on a question involving grave political
and military considerations, the temporal peers should be entirely
passed over, and the prelates alone should be required to take a
prominent part. "But this," said James, "is my method. I am your King.
It