have been highly
reprehensible in any court or class of men; it deserved the severest
reprobation in that house, the members of which professed themselves the
champions of freedom, and were actually in arms against the sovereign, to
preserve, as they maintained, the laws, the rights, and the liberties of
the nation.

To quicken the tardy proceedings of the Peers, the enemies of the
archbishop had recourse to their usual expedients. Their emissaries
lamented the delay in the punishment of delinquents, and the want of
unanimity between the two houses. It was artfully suggested as a remedy,
that both the Lords and Commons ought to sit and vote together in one
assembly; and a petition, embodying these different subjects, was prepared
and circulated for signatures through the city. Such manoeuvres aroused the
spirit of the Peers. They threatened[c] to punish all disturbers

[Footnote 1: Journals, Oct. 31, Nov. 2, 11, 16. Laud's History, 432-440.
Rushworth, v. 780.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Nov. 11.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Nov. 13.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1644. Nov. 28.]

of the peace; they replied with dignity to an insulting message from the
Commons; and, regardless of the clamours of the populace, they spent
several days in comparing the proofs of the managers with the defence of
the archbishop. At last,[a] in a house of fourteen members, the majority
pronounced him guilty of certain acts, but called upon the judges to
determine the quality of the offence; who warily replied, that nothing of
which he had been convicted was treason by the statute law; what it might
be by the law of parliament, the house alone was the proper judge. In these
circumstances the Lords informed the Commons, that till their consciences
were satisfied, they should "scruple" to pass the bill of attainder.[1]

It was the eve of Christmas,[b] and to prove that the nation had thrown off
the yoke of superstition, the festival was converted, by ordinance of the
two houses, into a day of "fasting and public humiliation."[2] There was
much policy in the frequent repetition of these devotional observances.
The ministers having previously received instructions from the leading
patriots, adapted their prayers and sermons to the circumstances of the
time, and never failed to add a new stimulus to the fanaticism of their
hearers. On the present occasion[c] the crimes of the archbishop offered a
tempting theme to their eloquence; and the next morning the Commo