[Footnote 2:  According to Mr. Edward Arber the writers of these famous tracts were the Rev. John Penny and Job Throckmorton, Esq.  He calls these two writers “the most eminent prose satirists of the Elizabethan age.”  For a full account of these tracts and the controversy, see Mr. Arber’s “Introductory Sketch to the Martin Mar-prelate Controversy, 1588-1590” (1879, English Scholar’s Library).  The aim of the Mar-prelate writers is thus stated by the able author of that sketch:  “To ridicule and affront a proud hierarchy [the bishops] endowed with large legal means of doing mischief, and not wanting in will to exercise these powers to the full.  The spell of the unnatural civil power which had been enjoyed by the Papal prelates in this country remained with their Protestant successors until this Controversy broke it:  so that from this time onwards the bishops set about to forge a new spell, ’the Divine Right of their temporal position and power’, which hallucination was dissolved by the Long Parliament:  from which time a bishop has usually been considered no more than a man” (Preface, pp. 11-12). [T.S.]]

[Footnote 3:  Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon (1608-1674), the author of the “History of the Great Rebellion.” [T.S.]]

[Footnote 4:  The original edition has 1630. [T.S.]]

In a year or two after; we began to hear of a new party risen, and growing in the Parliament, as well as the army; under the name of Independent:  It spread, indeed somewhat more in the latter; but not equal with the Presbyterians, either in weight or number, till the very time[5] that the King was murdered.

[Footnote 5:  Faulkner prints:  “until some time before the King was murdered."[T.S.]]

When the King, who was then a prisoner in the Isle of Wight, had made his last concessions for a peace to the Commissioners of the Parliament, who attended him there; upon their return to London, they reported his Majesty’s answer to the House.  Whereupon, a number of moderate members, who, as Ludlow[6] says, had secured their own terms with his Majesty, managed with so much art, as to obtain a majority, in a thin house, for passing a vote, that the King’s concessions were a ground for future settlement.  But the great officers of the army, joining with the discontented members, came to a resolution, of excluding all those who had consented to that vote; which they executed in a military way.  Ireton told Fairfax the General,[7] a rigid Presbyterian, of this resolution; who thereupon issued his orders for drawing out the army the next morning, and placing guards in Westminster-hall, the Court of Requests, and the lobby; who, in obedience to the General, in conjunction with those members who opposed the vote, would let no member enter the House, except those of their own party.  Upon which, the question for bringing the King to justice, was immediately put and carried without opposition, that I can find.  Then, an order was made for his trial; the time and place appointed; the judges named; of whom Fairfax himself was one; although by the advice or threats of his wife, he declined sitting among them.  However, by fresh orders under his own hand, which I have seen in print, he appointed guards to attend the judges at the trial, and to keep the city in quiet; as he did likewise to prevent any opposition from the people, upon the day of execution.