nd State.

In this point I could not but approve their generous constancie
and cautiousness; further then this I did never allow any mans
refractoriness against the Priviledges and Orders of the Houses; to
whom I wished nothing more then Safetie, Fulness and Freedom.

But the truth is, some men and those not many, despairing in fair
and Parliamentary waies by free Deliberations and Votes to gain the
concurrence of the major part of Lords and Commons, betook themselves
(by the desperate activitie of factious Tumults) to sift and terrifie
away all those Members whom they saw to be of contrary minds to their
purposes.

How oft was the businesse of the Bishops enjoying their ancient
places, and undoubted Priviledges in the House of Peers, carried for
them by far the Major part of Lords? Yet after five repulses, contrary
to all Order and Custome, it was by Tumultuary instigations obtruded
again, and by a few carried, when most of the Peers were forced to
absent themselves.

In like manner as the Bill against Root and Branch, brought on by
tumultuary Clamours, and schismaticall Terrours, which could never
passe til both Houses were sufficiently thinned and over-awed.

To which partialitie, while in all Reason, Justice, and Religion, my
Conscience forbids me, by consenting, to make up their Votes to Acts
of Parliament, I must now be urged with an Armie, and constrained
either to hazard my Own, and my Kingdoms ruine, by my Defence, or
prostrate my Conscience to the blinde obedience of those men, whose
zealous superstition thinks, or pretends, they cannot do God and the
Church a greater service, then utterly to destroy that Primitive,
Apostolicall, and anciently Universall Government of the Church by
Bishops.

Which, if other mens judgments bind them to maintain, or forbids them
to consent to the abolishing of it, mine much more; who, besides
the grounds I have in my judgement, have also a most strict and
indispensable Oath upon my Conscience, to preserve that Order, and
the Rights of the Church; to which most Sacrilegious and abhorred
Perjurie, most un-beseeming a Christian King, should I ever, by
giving my consent, be betrayed, I should account it infinitely greater
miserie, then any hath, or can befall me; in as much as the least sin
hath more evill in it then the greatest affliction. Had I gratified
their Anti-Episcopall Faction at first in this point with my Consent,
and sacrificed the Ecclesiasticall Government and