scholars at Oxford, after
the parliament became masters of that town, gave to the
house in which the zealots assembled the denomination of
Sernple Shop: the zealots, in their turn, insulted the
scholars and professors; and, intruding into the place of
lectures, declaimed against human learning, and challenged
the most knowing of them to prove that their calling was
from Christ. See Wood's Fasti Oxonienses, p. 740.

Had Charles been of a disposition to neglect all theological
controversy, he yet had been obliged, in good policy, to adhere to
episcopal jurisdiction; not only because it was favorable to monarchy,
but because all its adherents were passionately devoted to it; and to
abandon them, in what they regarded as so important an article, was
forever to relinquish their friendship and assistance. But Charles had
never attained such enlarged principles. He deemed bishops essential to
the very being of a Christian church; and he thought himself bound, by
more sacred ties than those of policy, or even of honor, to the support
of that order. His concessions, therefore, on this head, he judged
sufficient, when he agreed that an indulgence should be given to tender
consciences with regard to ceremonies; that the bishops should exercise
no act of jurisdiction or ordination without the consent and counsel of
such presbyters as should be chosen by the clergy of each diocese; that
they should reside constantly in their diocese, and be bound to
preach every Sunday; that pluralities be abolished; that abuses in
ecclesiastical courts be redressed; and that a hundred thousand pounds
be levied on the bishops' estates and the chapter lands, for payment of
debts contracted by the parliament.[*]

* Dugdale, p. 779, 780.

These concessions, though considerable gave no satisfaction to the
parliamentary commissioners; and, without abating any thing of their
rigor on this head, they proceeded to their demands with regard to the
militia.

The king's partisans had all along maintained, that the fears and
jealousies of the parliament, after the securities so early and easily
given to public liberty, were either feigned or groundless; and that no
human institution could be better poised and adjusted than was now the
government of England. By the abolition of the star chamber and court of
high commission, the prerogative, they said, has lost all that coercive
power by which it had formerly suppresse