rs were not asked to appear again in Court; the
session of Parliament had begun, and the King was engaged with the
business of the Legislature. During this time they all lived together,
and their lodging was the resort of many of their Puritan brethren in
the city and neighbourhood. They had much 'guid exercise' in the Word
and in prayer. But the King and the Bishops having set spies on them who
reported the way in which they were spending their time, they were all
commanded to go into ward--each with a separate bishop. Andrew
Melville's gaoler-in-lawn was to be the Bishop of Winchester, and his
nephew's the Bishop of Durham; but the two made such a spirited protest
to the King, that his command was not meanwhile enforced.

On the last day of November--it was a Sabbath--Melville, with his nephew
and Wallace, was summoned to Whitehall to answer for certain Latin
verses which had come into the King's hand. These were the lampoon which
Melville had made on the Michaelmas service in the Royal Chapel, and he
at once acknowledged the authorship. Interrupted in his apology by the
Primate, Bancroft, who presided in the absence of the King, and who
denounced his offence as treason, he turned upon him the torrent of his
invective. 'My lords,' exclaimed he, 'Andrew Melville was never a
traitor. But, my lords, there was one Richard Bancroft (let him be
sought for) who, during the life of the late Queen, wrote a treatise
against his Majesty's title to the Crown of England; and _here_'
(pulling the _corpus delicti_ from his pocket) 'is the book which was
answered by my brother, John Davidson.' While Bancroft was stunned and
silenced by the impetuosity of the attack, Melville went on to charge
him with the chief responsibility for the Romish ritual that had been
introduced into the English Church, and for the silencing of the Puritan
ministers; and then taking him by the white sleeves of his rochet, he
shook them 'in his maner frielie and roundlie, and called them Romish
rags and the mark of the Beast.' The Primate was the reputed author of a
book attacking Presbytery, and entitled _The English Scottizing for
Genevan Discipline_. Melville denounced him as having proved himself in
that work 'the Capital Enemy of all the Reformed Churches of Europe,
whom he would oppose to the effusion of the last drop of blood in his
body, and whom it was a constant grief to him to see at the head of the
King's Council in England.' He next turned his in