It was mainly in order to counteract this intention that Pym and his friends proceeded with the Grand Remonstrance, which in more than two hundred clauses enumerated the grievances which the King’s government had occasioned since its commencement[281]. It is, we may say, a kind of history of the administration: for this estimate of it, though often disputed and generally rejected, has in later times again obtained acceptance through the advocacy of some able writers. It is a narrative of the foregoing events for the purpose of inculpating the royalists and justifying their opponents. For the latter were beginning to feel that the general opinion was setting against them, seeking, so they complain, to reverse what they had done, and hinder what was still contemplated. The Remonstrance is a party manifesto, containing at once a defence of the past and a programme for the future. Above all it was intended to represent the steps which its framers still purposed to take, as being the necessary consequences of those which Parliament had taken from the very beginning. As in April and November 1640 John Pym had referred all the evils in England to an intention of changing the religion and the government, so now in the Remonstrance proof had to be given that the King had been from the first, [A.D. 1641.] and still was, ruled by a Jesuitical faction. The dissolution of previous Parliaments, the war with France and its disastrous result, the increase of the spiritual power--for Episcopalians, Arminians, even Libertines, were all represented as in league with the Papists--the opposition which many good laws had met with in the Upper House--all was deduced from the same source. Just then was published the news of the rising in Ireland and of the cruelties perpetrated there. It made naturally a very great impression, and was regarded as a confirmation of the general complaints. There was no idea of other influences, or of the effect which the harsh behaviour of Parliament itself had had on the course of events: it was more than ever regarded as the chief merit of Parliament that it had opposed and checked Popish tendencies. And still the same danger was threatening: for the future the same determined resistance was necessary, and the only hope of rescue lay in Parliament. There was no doubt of the good-will and firmness of the Lower House: but this would avail little if met in the Upper House by the hostility of the bishops and lords inclined to Catholicism. Thus the way was paved for a return to the earlier projects of a thorough ecclesiastical reform. From the imminent danger in which the country was, and which had one of its sources in the ecclesiastical constitution, was deduced the necessity of transforming the latter. ‘We admit that our design is to put an end to the excessive power of the prelates, and deprive them of their temporal dignities and offices.’ It was proposed to call a general synod of the chief theologians of the island,