This plot got rid of, and Sir Walter Raleigh safely shut up in the
Tower, his Sowship held a great dispute with the Puritans on their
presenting a petition to him, and had it all his own way—not so very
wonderful, as he would talk continually, and would not hear anybody
else—and filled the Bishops with admiration. It was comfortably settled
that there was to be only one form of religion, and that all men were
to think exactly alike. But, although this was arranged two centuries
and a half ago, and although the arrangement was supported by much
fining and imprisonment, I do not find that it is quite successful,
even yet.
His Sowship, having that uncommonly high opinion of himself as a king,
had a very low opinion of Parliament as a power that audaciously wanted
to control him. When he called his first Parliament after he had been
king a year, he accordingly thought he would take pretty high ground
with them, and told them that he commanded them ‘as an absolute king.’
The Parliament thought those strong words, and saw the necessity of
upholding their authority. His Sowship had three children: Prince
Henry, Prince Charles, and the Princess Elizabeth. It would have been
well for one of these, and we shall too soon see which, if he had
learnt a little wisdom concerning Parliaments from his father’s
obstinacy.
Now, the people still labouring under their old dread of the Catholic
religion, this Parliament revived and strengthened the severe laws
against it. And this so angered Robert Catesby, a restless Catholic
gentleman of an old family, that he formed one of the most desperate
and terrible designs ever conceived in the mind of man; no less a
scheme than the Gunpowder Plot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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