t treaty with the Scots for the invasion of the realm. All that
Hamilton needed to bring the new Scotch Parliament to an active support
of the king was his assent to a stipulation for the re-establishment of
Presbytery in England. This Charles at last brought himself to give in
the spring of 1648, and the Scots at once ordered an army to be levied
for his support. In England the whole of the conservative party, with
many of the most conspicuous members of the Long Parliament at its head,
was drifting in its horror of the religious and political changes which
seemed impending towards the king; and at the close of May the news from
Scotland gave the signal for fitful insurrections in almost every
quarter. London was only held down by main force, old officers of the
Parliament unfurled the royal flag in South Wales, and surprised
Pembroke. The seizure of Berwick and Carlisle opened a way for the
Scotch invasion. Kent, Essex, and Hertford broke out in revolt. The
fleet in the Downs sent their captains on shore, hoisted the king's
pennon, and blockaded the Thames.

[Sidenote: The Houses and the Army.]

"The hour is come," cried Cromwell, "for the Parliament to save the
kingdom and to govern alone." But the Parliament showed no will to
"govern alone." It looked on the rising and the intervention of the
Scots as means of freeing it from the control under which it had been
writhing since the expulsion of the eleven. It took advantage of the
crisis to profess its adherence to Monarchy, to reopen the negotiations
it had broken off with the king, and to deal the fiercest blow at
religious freedom which it had ever received. The Presbyterians flocked
back to their seats; and an "Ordinance for the Suppression of
Blasphemies and Heresies," which Vane and Cromwell had long held at bay,
was passed by triumphant majorities. Any man--ran this terrible
statute--denying the doctrine of the Trinity or of the Divinity of
Christ, or that the books of Scripture are "the Word of God," or the
resurrection of the body, or a future day of judgement, and refusing on
trial to abjure his heresy, "shall suffer the pain of death." Any man
declaring (amidst a long list of other errors) "that man by nature hath
free will to turn to God," that there is a Purgatory, that images are
lawful, that infant baptism is unlawful; any one denying the obligation
of observing the Lord's day, or asserting "that the Church government by
Presbytery is antichristian or