malignancy, they exercised vengeance against their private enemies.
To the obnoxious, and sometimes to the innocent, they sold their
protection. And instead of one star chamber, which had been abolished,
a great number were anew erected, fortified with better pretences, and
armed with more unlimited authority.[*]

* Clement Walker's History of Independency, p. 5. Hollis
gives the same representation as Walker, of the plundering,
oppressions, and tyranny of the parliament; only, instead of
laying the fault on both parties, as Walker does, he
ascribes it solely to the Independent faction. The
Presbyterians, indeed, being commonly denominated the
moderate party, would probably be more inoffensive. See
Rush. vol. vii. p. 598: and Parl. Hist. vol. xv. p. 230.

Could any thing have increased the indignation against that slavery into
which the nation, from the too eager pursuit of liberty, had fallen, it
must have been the reflection on the pretences by which the people
had so long been deluded. The sanctified hypocrites, who called their
oppressions the spoiling of the Egyptians, and their rigid severity the
dominion of the elect, interlarded all their iniquities with long and
fervent prayers, saved themselves from blushing by their pious grimaces,
and exercised, in the name of the Lord, all their cruelty on men.
An undisguised violence could be forgiven: but such a mockery of the
understanding, such an abuse of religion, were, with men of penetration,
objects of peculiar resentment.

The parliament, conscious of their decay in popularity, seeing a
formidable armed force advance upon them, were reduced to despair, and
found all their resources much inferior to the present necessity. London
still retained a strong attachment to Presbyterianism; and its militia,
which was numerous, and had acquired reputation in the wars, had, by
a late ordinance, been put into hands in whom the parliament could
entirely confide. This militia was now called out, and ordered to guard
the lines which had been drawn round the city, in order to secure it
against the king. A body of horse was ordered to be instantly levied.
Many officers, who had been cashiered by the new model of the army,
offered their service to the parliament. An army of five thousand men
lay in the north under the command of General Pointz, who was of the
Presbyterian faction; but these were too distant to be employed in so
urgent a ne