Revenues to the fury
of their covetousness, ambition, and revenge, I beleeve they would
then have found no colourable necessity of raising an Army to fetch in
and punish Delinquents.

That I consented to the Bil of putting the Bishops out of the House
of Peers, was done with a firm perswasion of their contentedness to
suffer a present diminution in their Rights and Honour for my sake,
and the Commonweals, which I was confident they would readily yeeld
unto, rather then occasion (by the least obstruction on their part)
any dangers to Me, or to my Kingdom. That I cannot add my consent for
the totall extirpation of that Government (which I have often offered
to all fit regulations) hath so much further tie upon My Conscience,
as what I think Religious and Apostolicall, and so very sacred and
Divine, is not to be dispensed with, or destroyed, when what is onely
of civill Favour, and priviledge of Honour granted to men of that
Order, may with their consent who are concerned in it, be annulled.

This is the true state of those obstructions pretended to be in point
of Justice and Authority of Parliament; when I call God to witness,
I know none of such consequence as was worth speaking of a War, being
onely such as Justice, Reason and Religion had made in my own and
other mens Consciences.

Afterwards indeed a great shew of Delinquents was made, which were but
consequences necessarily following upon Mine, or others withdrawing
from, or defence against violence: but those could not be the first
occasion of raising an Army against Me. Wherein I was so far from
preventing them, (as they have declared often, that they might seem to
have the advantage and Justice of the defensive part, and load Me with
all the envie and injuries of first assaulting them) that (God knows)
I had not so much as any hopes of an Army in My thoughts. Had the
Tumults been honourably and effectually repressed by exemplary
justice, and the Liberty of the Houses so vindicated, that all Members
of either House might with Honour and Freedom, becoming such a Senate,
have come and discharged their Consciences, I had obtained all that I
designed by My withdrawing, and had much more willingly and speedily
returned, then I retired; this being My necessity driving, the other
my choice desiring.

But some men knew, I was like to bring the same Judgment and Constancy
which I carryed with Me, which would never fit their designes; and
so while they invited Me to co