obtained with so much violence and injustice.
Combinations and conspiracies, they were sensible, were every where
forming around them; and Scotland, whence the king's cause had
received the first fatal disaster, seemed now to promise it support and
assistance.

Before the surrender of the king's person at Newcastle, and much more
since that event, the subjects of discontent had been daily multiplying
between the two kingdoms. The Independents, who began to prevail, took
all occasions of mortifying the Scots, whom the Presbyterians looked
on with the greatest affection and veneration. When the Scottish
commissioners, who, joined to a committee of English lords and commons,
had managed the war, were ready to depart, it was proposed in parliament
to give them thanks for their civilities and good offices. The
Independents insisted, that the words "good offices" should be struck
out; and thus the whole brotherly friendship and intimate alliance
with the Scots resolved itself into an acknowledgment of their being
well-bred gentlemen.

The advance of the army to London, the subjection of the parliament, the
seizing of the king at Holdenby, his confinement in Carisbroke Castle,
were so many blows sensibly felt by that nation, as threatening the
final overthrow of Presbytery, to which they were so passionately
devoted. The covenant was profanely called, in the house of commons
an almanac out of date;[*] and that impiety, though complained of, had
passed uncensured. Instead of being able to determine and establish
orthodoxy by the sword and by penal statutes, they saw the sectarian
army, who were absolute masters, claim an unbounded liberty of
conscience, which the Presbyterians regarded with the utmost abhorrence.
All the violences put on the king, they loudly blamed, as repugnant to
the covenant by which they stood engaged to defend his royal person.
And those very actions of which they themselves had been guilty, they
denominated treason and rebellion, when executed by an opposite party.

The earls of Loudon, Lauderdale, and Laneric, who were sent to London,
protested against the four bills, as containing too great a diminution
of the king's civil power, and providing no security for religion. They
complained that, notwithstanding this protestation, the bills were still
insisted on, contrary to the solemn league, and to the treaty between
the two nations. And when they accompanied the English commissioners
to the Isle of Wi