removal of superstitious usages from the Book of Common
Prayer, the disuse of lessons from the apocryphal books of Scripture, a
more rigorous observance of Sundays, and the provision and training of
ministers who could preach to the people. Concessions on these points
would as yet have satisfied the bulk of the Puritans; and for a while
it seemed as if concession was purposed. The king not only received the
petition, but promised a conference of bishops and divines in which it
should be discussed. Ten months however were suffered to pass before the
pledge was redeemed; and a fierce protest from the University of Oxford
in the interval gave little promise of a peaceful settlement. The
university denounced the Puritan demands as preludes of a Presbyterian
system in which the clergy would "have power to bind their king in
chains and their prince in links of iron, that is (in their learning) to
censure him, to enjoin him penance, to excommunicate him, yea--in case
they see cause--to proceed against him as a tyrant."

[Sidenote: Hampton Court conference.]

The warning was hardly needed by James. The voice of Melville was still
in his ears when he summoned four Puritan ministers to meet the
Archbishop and eight of his suffragans at Hampton Court in January 1604.
From the first he showed no purpose of discussing the grievances alleged
in the petition. He revelled in the opportunity for a display of his
theological reading; but he viewed the Puritan demands in a purely
political light. He charged the petitioners with aiming at a Scottish
presbytery, "where Jack and Tom and Will and Dick shall meet, and at
their pleasure censure me and my Council and all their proceedings.
Stay," he went on with amusing vehemence, "stay, I pray you, for one
seven years before you demand that from me, and if you find me pursy and
fat and my windpipe stuffed, I will perhaps hearken to you, for let that
government be once up, and I am sure I shall be kept in health." No
words could have better shown the new king's unconsciousness that he had
passed into a land where parliaments were realities, and where the
"censure" of king and council was a national tradition. But neither his
theology nor his politics met with any protest from the prelates about
him. On the contrary, the bishops declared that the insults James
showered on their opponents were inspired by the Holy Ghost. The
Puritans however still ventured to question his infallibility, and the
k