bedience to the army.[**]

By this unlimited patience, they purposed to temporize under their
present difficulties, and they hoped to find a more favorable
opportunity for recovering their authority and influence: but the
impatience of the city lost them all the advantage of their cautious
measures. A petition against the alteration of the militia was carried
to Westminster, attended by the apprentices and seditious multitude, who
besieged the door of the house of commons; and by their clamor, noise,
and violence, obliged them to reverse that vote which they had passed so
lately. When gratified in this pretension, they immediately dispersed,
and left the parliament at liberty.[***]

* Rush. vol. vii. p. 620.

** Rush. vol. vii. p. 629, 632.

*** Rush. vol. vii. p. 641, 643. Clarendon, vol. v. p. 61.
Whitlocke p. 269. Cl. Walker, p. 38

No sooner was intelligence of this tumult conveyed to Reading, than the
army was put in motion. The two houses being under restraint, they were
resolved, they said, to vindicate, against the seditious citizens, the
invaded privileges of parliament, and restore that assembly to its just
freedom of debate and counsel. In their way to London, they were drawn
up on Hounslow Heath; a formidable body, twenty thousand strong, and
determined, without regard to laws or liberty, to pursue whatever
measures their generals should dictate to them. Here the most favorable
event happened to quicken and encourage their advance. The speakers
of the two houses, Manchester and Lenthal, attended by eight peers and
about sixty commoners, having secretly retired from the city, presented
themselves with their maces, and all the ensigns of their dignity;
and complaining of the violence put upon them, applied to the army for
defence and protection. They were received with shouts and acclamations:
respect was paid to them, as to the parliament of England: and the
army, being provided with so plausible a pretence, which in all
public transactions is of great consequence, advanced to chastise the
rebellious city, and to reinstate the violated parliament.[*]

Neither Lenthal nor Manchester were esteemed Independents; and such a
step in them was unexpected. But they probably foresaw that the army
must in the end prevail; and they were willing to pay court in time to
that authority which began to predominate in the nation.

The parliament, forced from their temporizing measures, and obliged