but their consciences were dearer than their subsistence,
and out they went; the reformers possessing them without shame or
scruple: where I leave these scruple-mongers, and make an account of
the then present affairs of London, to be the next employment of my
Reader's patience.

And in London all the Bishops' houses were turned to be prisons, and
they filled with Divines, that would not take the Covenant, or forbear
reading Common Prayer, or that were accused for some faults like
these. For it may be noted, that about this time the Parliament set
out a proclamation, to encourage all laymen that had occasion to
complain of their Ministers for being troublesome or scandalous, or
that conformed not to Orders of Parliament, to make their complaint to
a committee for that purpose; and the Minister, though a hundred
miles from London, should appear there, and give satisfaction, or be
sequestered;--and you may be sure no Parish could want a covetous, or
malicious, or cross-grained complaint;--by which means all prisons
in London, and in some other places, became the sad habitations of
conforming Divines.

And about this time the Bishop of Canterbury having been by an unknown
law condemned to die, and the execution suspended for some days, many
of the malicious citizens, fearing his pardon, shut up their shops,
professing not to open them till justice was executed. This malice and
madness is scarce credible; but I saw it.

[Sidenote: Mr. Thomas Brightman]

The Bishops had been voted out of the House of Parliament, and some
upon that occasion sent to the Tower; which made many Covenanters
rejoice, and believe Mr. Brightman[22]--who probably was a good and
well-meaning man--to be inspired in his "Comment on the Apocalypse,"
an abridgment of which was now printed, and called Mr. Brightman's
"Revelation of the Revelation." And though he was grossly mistaken
in other things, yet, because he had made the Churches of Geneva and
Scotland, which had no Bishops, to be Philadelphia in the Apocalypse,
the Angel that God loved; Rev. iii. 7-13, and the power of Prelacy to
be Antichrist, the evil Angel, which the House of Commons had now
so spewed up, as never to recover their dignity; therefore did those
Covenanters approve and applaud Mr. Brightman for discovering and
foretelling the Bishops' downfall; so that they both railed at them,
and rejoiced to buy good pennyworths of their land, which their
friends of the House of Commons did