sioner had even sufficient
influence to obtain an act, annulling at once all laws which had passed
since the year 1633; on pretext of the violence which, during that time,
had been employed against the king and his father, in order to procure
their assent to these statutes. This was a very large, if not an
unexampled concession; and, together with many dangerous limitations,
overthrew some useful barriers which had been erected to the
constitution. But the tide was now running strongly towards monarchy;
and the Scottish nation plainly discovered, that their past resistance
had proceeded more from the turbulence of their aristocracy, and the
bigotry of their ecclesiastics, than from any fixed passion towards
civil liberty. The lords of articles were restored, with some other
branches of prerogative; and royal authority fortified with more
plausible claims and pretences, was, in its full extent, reestablished
in that kingdom.

The prelacy likewise, by the abrogating of every statute enacted
in favor of Presbytery, was thereby tacitly restored; and the king
deliberated what use he should make of this concession. Lauderdale,
who at bottom was a passionate zealot against Episcopacy, endeavored
to persuade him, that the Scots, if gratified in this favorite point
of ecclesiastical government, would, in every other demand, be entirely
compliant with the king. Charles, though he had not so much attachment
to prelacy as had influenced his father and grandfather, had suffered
such indignities from the Scottish Presbyterians, that he ever
after bore them a hearty aversion. He said to Lauderdale, that
Presbyterianism, he thought, was not a religion for a gentleman; and he
could not consent to its further continuance in Scotland. Middleton too
and his other ministers persuaded him, that the nation in general was so
disgusted with the violence and tyranny of the ecclesiastics, that
any alteration of church government would be universally grateful. And
Clarendon, as well as Ormond, dreading that the Presbyterian sect, if
legally established in Scotland, would acquire authority in England and
Ireland, seconded the application of these ministers. The resolution was
therefore taken to restore prelacy; a measure afterwards attended with
many and great inconveniencies: but whether in this resolution Charles
chose not the lesser evil, it is very difficult to determine. Sharp, who
had been commissioned by the Presbyterians in Scotland to mana