leaders, however, came with political arguments to the aid of their champion.  They assured[a] the king that his restoration to the royal authority, or his perpetual exclusion from the throne, depended on his present choice.  Let him take the covenant, and concur in the establishment of the Directory, and the Scottish nation to a man, the English, with the sole exception of the Independents, would declare in his favour.  His conformity in that point alone could induce them to mitigate the severity of their other demands, to replace him on the throne of his ancestors, and to compel the opposite faction to submit.  Should he refuse, he must attribute the consequences to himself.  He had received sufficient warning:  they had taken the covenant, and must discharge their duty to God and their country.

It was believed then, it has often been repeated since, that the king’s refusal originated in the wilfulness and obstinacy of his temper; and that his repeated appeals to his conscience were mere pretexts to disguise his design of replunging the nation into the horrors from which it had so recently emerged.  But this supposition is completely refuted by the whole tenour of his secret correspondence with his queen and her council in France.  He appears to have divided his objections into two classes, political and religious. 1.  It was, he alleged, an age in which mankind were governed from the pulpit:  whence it became an object

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1646.  July 13.]

of the first importance to a sovereign to determine to whose care that powerful engine should be intrusted.  The principles of Presbyterianism were anti-monarchical; its ministers openly advocated the lawfulness of rebellion; and, if they were made the sole dispensers of public instruction, he and his successors might be kings in name, but would be slaves in effect.  The wisest of those who had swayed the sceptre since the days of Solomon had given his sanction to the maxim “no bishop no king;” and his own history furnished a melancholy confirmation of the sagacity of his father. 2.  The origin of episcopacy was a theological question, which he had made it his business to study.  He was convinced that the institution was derived from Christ, and that he could not in conscience commute it for another form of church government devised by man.  He had found episcopacy in the church at his accession; he had sworn to maintain it in all its rights; and he was bound to leave it in existence at his death.  Once, indeed, to please the two houses, he had betrayed his conscience by assenting to the death of Strafford:  the punishment of that transgression still lay heavy on his head; but should he, to please them again, betray it once more, he would prove himself a most incorrigible sinner, and deserve the curse both of God and man.[1]

The king had reached Newark in May:  it was the end of July before the propositions of peace were submitted[a] to his consideration.  The same in substance with those of the preceding year, they had yet been aggravated by new restraints, and a more numerous