here more than five were present,
besides the family) was fined five shillings for the first offence, ten
for the second; the preacher, twenty pounds for the first offence,
forty for the second. The person in whose house the conventicle met, was
amerced a like sum with the preacher. One clause is remarkable; that if
any dispute should arise the judges should always explain the doubt in
the sense least favorable to conventicles, it being the intention of
parliament entirely to suppress them. Such was the zeal of the commons,
that they violated the plainest and most established maxims of civil
policy, which require that in all criminal prosecutions favor should
always be given to the prisoner.

The affair of Skinner still remained a ground of quarrel between the two
houses; but the king prevailed with the peers to accept of the expedient
proposed by the commons, that a general razure should be made of all the
transactions with regard to that disputed question.

Some attempts were made by the king to effect a union between England
and Scotland; though they were too feeble to remove all the difficulties
which obstructed that useful and important undertaking. Commissioners
were appointed to meet, in order to regulate the conditions: but the
design, chiefly by the intrigues of Lauderdale, soon after came to
nothing.

The king about this time began frequently to attend the debates of the
house of peers. He said, that they amused him, and that he found them no
less entertaining than a play. But deeper designs were suspected. As he
seemed to interest himself extremely in the cause of Lord Roos, who
had obtained a divorce from his wife on the accusation of adultery, and
applied to parliament for leave to marry again, people imagined that
Charles intended to make a precedent of the case, and that some other
pretence would be found for getting rid of the queen. Many proposals to
this purpose, it is said, were made him by Buckingham; but the king, how
little scrupulous soever in some respects, was incapable of any action
harsh or barbarous; and he always rejected every scheme of this nature.
A suspicion, however, of such intentions, it was observed, had at this
time begotten a coldness between the two royal brothers.

We now come to a period when the king's counsels, which had hitherto
in the main been good, though negligent and fluctuating, became, during
some time, remarkably bad, or even criminal; and breeding incurable
jealo