The weight of number and influence was in favour of the Presbyterians.  They possessed an overwhelming majority in the assembly, the senate, the city, and the army; the solemn league and covenant had enlisted the whole Scottish nation in their cause; and the zeal of the commissioners from the kirk, who had also seats in the assembly, gave a new stimulus to the efforts of their English brethren.  The Independents, on the contrary, were few, but their deficiency in point of number was supplied by the energy and talents of their leaders.  They never exceeded a dozen in the assembly; but these were veteran disputants, eager, fearless, and persevering, whose attachment to their favourite doctrines had been riveted by persecution and exile, and who had not escaped from the intolerance

[Footnote 1:  Baillie, i. 420, 431; ii. 15, 24, 37, 43, 61.]

of one church to submit tamely to the control of another.  In the House of Commons they could command the aid of several among the master spirits of the age,—­of Cromwell, Selden, St. John, Vane, and Whitelock; in the capital some of the most wealthy citizens professed themselves their disciples, and in the army their power rapidly increased by the daily accession of the most godly and fanatic of the soldiers.  The very nature of the contest between the king and the parliament was calculated to predispose the mind in favour of their principles.  It taught men to distrust the claims of authority, to exercise their own judgment on matters of the highest interest, and to spurn the fetters of intellectual as well as of political thraldom.  In a short time the Independents were joined by the Antinomians, Anabaptists, Millenarians, Erastians, and the members of many ephemeral sects, whose very names are now forgotten.  All had one common interest; freedom of conscience formed the chain which bound them together.[1]

In the assembly each party watched with jealousy, and opposed with warmth, the proceedings of the other.  On a few questions they proved unanimous.  The appointment of days of humiliation and prayer, the suppression of public and scandalous sins, the prohibition of copes and surplices, the removal of organs from the churches, and the mutilation or demolition of monuments deemed superstitious or idolatrous, were matters equally congenial to their feelings, and equally gratifying to their zeal or fanaticism.[2] But when they

[Footnote 1:  Baillie, 398, 408; ii. 3, 19, 43.  Whitelock, 169, 170.]

[Footnote 2:  Journals, 1643, July 5; 1644, Jan. 16, 29, May 9.  Journals of Lords, vi. 200, 507, 546.  Baillie, i. 421, 422, 471.  Rush. v. 358, 749.]