reply to Cotton's book. Persons of no less consideration than the Scottish Commissioners, Samuel Rutherfurd 2 and Robert Baylie, came into the lists against him. Herle, the Prolocutor of the Assembly, lent his aid, and was answered by two divines of New England.* Other distinguished Englishmen took part in the controversy; 5 none entered into it with more bitterness on the Presbyterian side than William Prynne, the sufferer a few years before from the tyranny of Laud. William Apollonius, of Middelburg, in Zeeland, maintained the cause of the

1 "Vindiciae Clavium, or a Vindication of the Keyes of the Kingdom of Heaven into the Hands of the Right Owners, being some Animadversions upon a Tract of Mr. J. C., &c. By an Earnest Well-wisher to the Truth."

....

"The Due Right of Presbyteries, ... wherein is examined the Way of the Church of Christ in New England," &c. It is an answer, in a quarto volume of 800 pages, to Cotton's " Way of the Churches." It was particularly in reply to this that Thomas Hooker of Hartford wrote his " Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline, wherein the Way of the Congregational Churches of Christ in New England is warranted and cleared," &c., a volume of 490 pages, with a short Appendix by Mr. Goodwin. 66 Many books coming out of England [1645], some in defence of Anabaptism and other errors,.... others in maintenance of the Presbyterial government, agreed upon by the Assembly of Divines in England against the Congregational way, which was practised here," &c. "The several answers were these; Mr. Hooker in answer to Mr. Rutherfurd, the Scotch minister," &c. (Winthrop, II. 248.)

the Independency of Churches," &c., by Richard Mather of Dorchester, and William Tompson of Braintree. "A Reply to Mr. Rutherfurd, or a Defence of the Answer to Reverend Mr. Herle's Booke against the Independency of Churches," &c., by Richard Mather.

As Thomas Edwards, in his "Antapologia, or Full Answer to the Apologetical Narration," &c.; William Rathbun, in his "Brief Narration of some Church Courses held in Opinion and Practice in the Churches lately erected in New England,” &c.

6

Prynne would have the Parliament make some of their opponents " exemplary monuments of their impartial severity;" and "if the new seditious lights and firebrands will needs set up new churches, heresies, church governments, and vent their new errors or opinions," he would have them "do it only in New England, or other Newfoundlands, since Old England needs them not, unless it be to set her all on fire." (A Fresh Discovery of some Prodigious New Wandering Blazing Stars and Fire Brands, styling themselves New Lights, firing our Church and State into New Combustions, &c.,

3" A Dissuasive from the Errors of Epist. Ded., A. 2; comp. 51.) Prynne's the Time," &c. composing vein flowed very freely There are more than a dozen tracts of his in this controversy.

"A Modest and Brotherly Answer to Mr. Charles Herle his Book against

2

English Presbyterians in a learned Latin treatise,1 and was answered by John Norton, of Ipswich, in Massachusetts. Much of the discussion between parties in the Assembly was conducted in writing, and the papers were from time to time given to the public in print.3

The irreconcilable character of these differences was becoming apparent, when, after the second battle of Newbury, the royalist and patriot armies withdrew for somemonths from the field. From other causes which had now arisen, the rivalry between the two popular religious parties took more practical and vigorous forms.

Politics of

rians.

The King signified his disposition to treat. His affairs had by no means become desperate. The great disasters which had befallen him had not been uncompenIndependents sated, and the termination of the last campaign and Presbyte- had been honorable to his arms. But, in respect to regular supplies of money, he was at serious disadvantage when compared with the Parliament; and this, he now clearly perceived, would be a growing embarrassment, till negotiation or victory should restore him to his power. The Presbyterians were not indisposed to an accommodation with him. They meant that a condition of it should be the establishment of their own church order; but to this they were not without strong

together with the Answer of the Assembly of Divines to those Reasons of Dissent." The book is the same as that which, with the date of 1652, has for a title-page, "The Grand Debate concerning Presbytery and Independency," &c. The copy which I use (belonging to the American Antiquarian Society) has attached to it another volume, also published in 1648, consisting of "Papers given in to the Honorable Committee of Lords and Commons and Assembly of Divines by a SubCommittee of Divines of the Assembly and Dissenting Brethren."- Compare "Anatomy of Independency" (1644).

hope of obtaining his consent, and they had become jealous of the army, which they already apprehended to be freeing itself too much from their control, but which could not be disbanded while the King was at the head of a hostile array. The Independents, on the other hand, would have been satisfied with no peace which, in the place of the Episcopacy that had been overturned, would have set up a religious authority equally intolerant of them, if not equally odious to them.

1645.

The negotiation for a peace was held at Uxbridge, a town fifteen miles from London, on the road to Negotiation Oxford, where were the royal head-quarters. It at Uxbridge. lasted twenty days. The King was represented February. by sixteen Commissioners, the English Parliament by twelve, and the Scots by ten, "for the Estates of the Parliament, together with Mr. Alexander Henderson, upon the Propositions concerning religion."1

The various subjects of dispute arranged themselves under three heads; the religious establishment, the control of the militia, and the disposal of affairs in Ireland. The king was prevailed upon by his advisers to propose that the militia should be intrusted to twenty Commissioners, to be designated by agreement between him and the Parliament, or one half by each party;- the command to be restored to him at the end of three years. On the other side, no less was required than that the command for seven years should belong to officers named by the Parliament, and that at the end of that time it should be subject to legislative arrangement. As to Ireland, it was demanded that Parliament should have the exclusive management of the war, and that, after the reduction of that island, they should appoint the high officers for its government. To any such terms, it was manifestly impossible that the King should accede, until he was much further humbled; and it was therefore with 1 Parliamentary History, III. 322.

1

indifference that the Independents saw him required by the Parliamentary negotiators, not only to abjure his own Episcopal religion, but to agree to the recognition of Presbytery as the exclusive national establishment. The parties separated to make another appeal to force. They could scarcely have expected anything else, when they met. Desirable to the King as a pacification was, could he have had it on his own conditions, one of his motives for proposing it in the existing circumstances may reasonably be supposed to have been, to throw upon his opponents the odium of obstinate rebellion; a manœuvre which it was equally to be expected that they would traverse by accepting his overture, so as to convict him of the arrogance and hypocrisy of offering inadmissible terms.

Oliver St. John and Henry Vane were at Uxbridge, looking on; and they were not men to read without discernment the signs of the times. The Independents and their allies had had little doubt that the war was to proceed, and they had already been taking their measures accordingly. The numerical strength was even now proportionately much greater in the army than in the Assembly or the Parliament; and their wise men did not fail to perceive what a power the army was rising to be in the State, as well as that, even more than Parliament or Assembly, it was a power to be controlled and used by the intelligence and resolution of single minds. The time had given them advantages. The events of the recent campaign, the disastrous defeats dealt to the King by their friends Fairfax and Cromwell, compared with the weakness of the war against him wherever the adherents of the rival party

Essex, Waller, and Manchester - had commanded, and the alleged misconduct of the Scots at Marston-Moor, had placed them in a position to feel great confidence in themselves and in one another, and to expect to be regarded with much deference. It was through Cromwell's

influence that Lord Manchester, previously to the important movements about York, in which he acted a leading part, had been placed in command of the levies from the counties composing what was called the "Eastern Association." But Cromwell had been displeased with the inaction of his commander after the second battle of Newbury, and in his place in Parliament expressed his dissatisfaction in terms so vehement as to fall little short of a charge of treacherous disaffection to the

cause.

reorganiza

army.

The rising party urged upon Parliament the necessity of a new organization of the troops. They insisted that the war, as it had been hitherto conducted,-without zeal, without activity, without judgment, without plan,was cruelly harassing the country and affording no promise of a speedy issue. A day of fasting was kept, to implore Divine direction as to a method of Plan for the extrication from the existing embarrassments and tion of the fears. Some of the Independent ministers, in the City and elsewhere, used the occasion to trace the existing evils to such an ambition for self-aggrandizement on the part of eminent men, as caused them to retain high places at once in the civil and the military service, to the detriment of their efficiency in the field. Whether or not there had been concert between the Independents in the pulpit and the Independents in the House of Commons, the hint was taken up in Parliament. The day after the Fast, Sir Henry Vane, in his place, extolled the frankness of the preachers, ascribing it to an operation of the spirit of God. He earnestly recommended a course of self-abnegation; and, for his own part, proposed to resign at once the office which he held of Treasurer of the Navy. Cromwell followed in the same vein; and, while he cautioned the House not "to put trust in the arm of flesh," he assured them that, if members of Parliament should resign their military commands, there would not be the difficulty