d of mountaineers,
he had acted under the authority of the King's commission of array,
against which Davies had preached, and Morgan had inveighed, not only
with vehemence, but with falsehood. They had told the yeomen and
peasants, that "some lords about the court said, twenty pounds a year
was enough for any peasant to live upon, and, taking advantage of the
commission being in Latin, they translated it into what English they
pleased, persuading the freeholders, that at least two parts of their
estates would be taken from them; and the poorer sort, that one day's
labour in the week would be extorted as a tax to the King[1]." These
calumnies were not peculiar to Ribblesdale, but unhappily were diffused
over all the nation, in which a vast body of people were grown up, who,
like Morgan, had acquired wealth, and were ambitious of equal
consequence with the hereditary gentry and nobility, by whom they found
themselves despised for their ignorance and coarse manners, and
therefore endeavoured to supplant them. Such men were every-where fast
friends to the Parliament, and by their freer intercourse with the
common people, whose habits and ideas were originally their own, they
misrepresented the King's designs, and counteracted the measures of
those noble and brave patriots, who, notwithstanding their dislike of
some former measures, felt it was their duty now to rally round the
throne. "Nor can it be remembered without much horror, that this strange
wild-fire among the people was not so much and so furiously kindled by
the breath of the Parliament, as by that of their clergy, who both
administered fuel and blowed the coals. These men having crept into and
at last driven all learned and orthodox divines from the pulpits, had,
from the commencement of this 'memorable Parliament,' under the notion
of reformation and extirpation of popery, infused seditious inclinations
into the hearts of men against the present government of the church with
many libellous invectives against the state. But now they contained
themselves in no bounds, and as freely and without controul inveighed
against the person of the King, prophanely and blasphemously applying
whatever had been spoken by God himself or the Prophets, against the
most wicked and impious Kings, to incense and stir up the people against
their most gracious Sovereign. Besides licensed divines, preaching and
praying was at that time practiced by almost all men in the kingdom
except s