with their forces at the siege of York.  By the “new model” it was proposed that the army should consist of one thousand dragoons, six thousand six hundred cavalry in six, and fourteen thousand four hundred infantry in twelve regiments, under Sir Thomas Fairfax as the first, and Major-General Skippon as the second, in command.  The Lords hesitated;[a] but after several conferences and debates they returned it with a few amendments to the Commons, and it was published by sound of drum in London and Westminster.[1]

This victory was followed by another.  Many of the peers still clung to the notion that it was intended to abolish their privileges, and therefore resolved not to sink without a struggle.  They insisted that the new army should take the covenant, and subscribe the directory for public worship; they refused their approbation to more than one half of the officers named by Sir Thomas Fairfax; and they objected to the additional powers offered by the Commons to that general.  On these subjects the divisions in the house were nearly equal, and whenever the opposite party obtained the majority, it was by the aid of a single proxy, or of the clamours of the mob.  At length a declaration was made by the Commons, that “they held themselves obliged to preserve the peerage with the rights and privileges belonging to the House of Peers equally as their own, and would really perform the same."[b] Relieved from their fears, the Lords yielded to a power which they knew not how to control; the different bills were passed, and among them a new self-denying ordinance, by which every member of either house was discharged from all[c]

[Footnote 1:  Journals, Jan. 9, 13, 25, 27; Feb. 11, 15; of Lords, 159, 175, 169, 193, 195, 204.  Clarendon, ii. 569.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1645.  Feb. 15.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1645.  March 25.] [Sidenote c:  A.D. 1645.  April 3.]

civil and military offices, conferred by authority of parliament after the expiration of forty days.[1]

Hitherto I have endeavoured to preserve unbroken the chain of military and political events:  it is now time to call the attention of the reader to the ecclesiastical occurrences of the two last years.

I. As religion was acknowledged to be the first of duties, to put down popery and idolatry, and to purge the church from superstition and corruption, had always been held out by the parliament as its grand and most important object.  It was this which, in the estimation of many of the combatants, gave the chief interest to the quarrel; this which made it, according to the language of the time, “a wrestle between Christ and antichrist,” 1.  Every good Protestant had been educated in the deepest horror of popery; there was a magic in the very word which awakened the prejudices and inflamed the passions of men; and the reader must have observed with what art and perseverance the patriot leaders employed it to confirm the attachment,