before, as having found no help, but hindrance to his designs in the Parliaments he had formerly called. Howsoever, contrary to their expectation, by the help of his better-affected subjects of the nobility and gentry, he made a shift to raise a sufficient army to have reduced the Scots to their former obedience, if it had proceeded to battle. And with this army he marched himself into Scotland; where the Scotch army was also brought into the field against him, as if they meant to fight. But then the Scotch sent to the King for leave to treat by commissioners on both sides; and the King, willing to avoid the destruction of his own subjects, condescended to it. The issue was peace; and the King thereupon went to Edinburgh, and passed an Act of Parliament there to their satisfaction.
B. Did he not then confirm episcopacy?
A. No, but yielded to the abolishing of it: but by this means the English were crossed in their hope of a Parliament. But the said democraticals, formerly opposers of the King’s interest, ceased not to endeavour still to put the two nations into a war; to the end the King might buy the Parliament’s help at no less a price than sovereignty itself.
B. But what was the cause that the gentry and nobility of Scotland were so averse from the episcopacy? For I can hardly believe that their consciences were extraordinarily tender, nor that they were so very great divines, as to know what was the true Church-discipline established by our Saviour and his Apostles; nor yet so much in love with their ministers, as to be over-ruled by them in the government either ecclesiastical or civil. For in their lives they were just as other men are, pursuers of their own interests and preferments, wherein they were not more opposed by the bishops than by their Presbyterian ministers.
A. Truly I do not know; I cannot enter into other men’s thoughts, farther than I am led by the consideration of human nature in general. But upon this consideration I see first, that men of ancient wealth and nobility are not apt to brook, that poor scholars should (as they must, when
