diction of those criminals whom they were appointed
to guard. Some persons ran into the water, that they might participate
more nearly in those blessings which the prelates were distributing
on all around them. The bishops themselves, during this triumphant
suffering, augmented the general favor, by the most lowly, submissive
deportment; and they still exhorted the people to fear God, honor the
king, and maintain their loyalty; expressions more animating than the
most inflammatory speeches. And no sooner had they entered the precincts
of the Tower than they hurried to chapel, in order to return thanks
for those afflictions which heaven, in defence of its holy cause, had
thought them worthy to endure.

Their passage, when conducted to their trial, was, if possible, attended
by greater crowds of anxious spectators. All men saw the dangerous
crisis to which affairs were reduced, and were sensible, that the king
could not have put the issue on a cause more unfavorable for himself
than that in which he had so imprudently engaged. Twenty-nine temporal
peers (for the other prelates kept aloof) attended the prisoners to
Westminster Hall; and such crowds of gentry followed the procession,
that scarcely was any room left for the populace to enter. The lawyers
for the bishops were, Sir Robert Sawyer, Sir Francis Pemberton,
Pollexfen, Treby, and Sommers. No cause, even during the prosecution
of the Popish plot, was ever heard with so much zeal and attention. The
popular torrent, which of itself ran fierce and strong, was now further
irritated by the opposition of government.

The council for the bishops pleaded, that the law allowed subjects,
if they thought themselves aggrieved in any particular, to apply by
petition to the king, provided they kept within certain bounds, which
the same law prescribed to them, and which, in the present petition, the
prelates had strictly observed: that an active obedience in cases
which were contrary to conscience, was never pretended to be due
to government; and law was allowed to be the great measure of the
compliance and submission of subjects: that when any person found
commands to be imposed upon him which he could not obey, it was more
respectful in him to offer his reasons for refusal, than to remain in
a sullen and refractory silence: that it was no breach of duty in
subjects, even though not called upon, to discover their sense of public
measures, in which every one had so intimate a conc