illing to preserve the ancient harmony of the constitution,
he had ever intended to comply as far as he easily could, with the
ancient forms of administration; but when these forms appeared to him,
by the inveterate obstinacy of the commons, to have no other tendency
than to disturb that harmony, and to introduce a new constitution, he
concluded that, in this violent situation, what was subordinate must
necessarily yield to what was principal, and the privileges of the
people, for a time, give place to royal prerogative. From the rank of
a monarch, to be degraded into a slave of his insolent, ungrateful
subjects, seemed of all indignities the greatest; and nothing, in his
judgment, could exceed the humiliation attending such a state, but the
meanness of tamely submitting to it, without making some efforts to
preserve the authority transmitted to him by his predecessors.

Though these were the king's reflections and resolutions before the
parliament assembled, he did not immediately break with them upon their
delay in voting him this supply. He thought that he could better justify
any strong measure which he might afterwards be obliged to take, if he
allowed them to carry to the utmost extremities their attacks upon his
government and prerogative.[*] He contented himself, for the present,
with soliciting the house by messages and speeches. But the commons,
instead of hearkening to his solicitations proceeded to carry their
scrutiny into his management of religion,[**] which was the only
grievance to which, in their opinion, they had not as yet, by their
petition of right, applied a sufficient remedy.

* Rushworth, vol. i. p. 642.

** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 651. Whitlocke, p. 12.

It was not possible that this century, so fertile in religious sects
and disputes, could escape the controversy concerning fatalism and free
will, which, being strongly interwoven both with philosophy and theology
had, in all ages, thrown every school and every church into such
inextricable doubt and perplexity. The first reformers in England, as
in other European countries, had embraced the most rigid tenets of
predestination and absolute decrees, and had composed upon that, system
all the articles of their religious creed. But these principles having
met with opposition from Arminius and his sectaries, the controversy
was soon brought into this island and began here to diffuse itself. The
Arminians, finding more encouragement from