[Footnote 3:  Capel was one of the most distinguished of the royal commanders, and had lately returned from beyond the sea with the permission of parliament.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1647.  October.]

at the same time soliciting the aid, and plotting the destruction of the army.[1]

But by this time a new party had risen, equally formidable to royalists, Presbyterians, and Independents.  Its founders were a few fanatics in the ranks, who enjoyed the reputation of superior godliness.  They pretended not to knowledge or abilities; they were but humble individuals, to whom God had given reason for their guide, and whose duty it was to act as that reason dictated.  Hence they called themselves Rationalists, a name which was soon exchanged for the more expressive appellation of Levellers.  In religion they rejected all coercive authority; men might establish a public worship at their pleasure, but, if it were compulsory, it became unlawful by forcing conscience, and leading to wilful sin:  in politics they taught that it was the duty of the people to vindicate their own rights and do justice to their own claims.  Hitherto the public good had been sacrificed to private interest; by the king, whose sole object was the recovery of arbitrary power; by the officers, who looked forward to commands, and titles, and emoluments; and by the parliament, which sought chiefly the permanence of its own authority.  It was now time for the oppressed to arise, to take the cause into their own hands, and to resolve “to part with their lives, before they would part with their freedom."[2] These doctrines

[Footnote 1:  Clarendon, iii. 70-72-75.  Ashburnham, ii. 94.  Of the disposition of the Scottish parliament, we have this account from Baillie:  “If the king be willing to ratify our covenant, we are all as one man to restore him to all his rights, or die by the way; if he continue resolute to reject our covenant, and only to give us some parts of the matter of it, many here will be for him, even on these terms; but divers of the best and wisest are irresolute, and wait till God give more light.”—­Baillie, ii. 260.]

[Footnote 2:  Clarendon Papers, ii.  App. xl.  Walker, History of Independents, 194.  Rushworth, vii. 845.  Hutchinson, 287.  Secretary Nicholas, after mentioning the Rationalists, adds, “There are a sect of women lately come from foreign parts, and lodged in Southwark, called Quakers, who swell, shiver, and shake; and when they come to themselves (for in all the time of their fits Mahomet’s holy ghost converses with them) they begin to preach what hath been delivered to them by the spirit”—­Clarendon Papers, ii. 383.]