these unwelcome sharers in the counsels of Parliament: and in order to seize the favourable moment, a motion was immediately made for their definitive exclusion from all political affairs, nor under existing circumstances was there much doubt of its being passed. It is obvious how greatly the movement in the city helped the Puritan party in the House of Commons, which was led by Pym and Hampden: for it must be reckoned as at least [A.D. 1641.] an indirect result of the tumult, that the bishops, who sought to maintain their rights in the face of it, were, perhaps in rather a clumsy manner, removed from the Upper House. This party united to consistency in their demands the skill to take advantage of every error or display of weakness on the part of their opponents. From a somewhat depressed position at the beginning of the session they had, within two months, worked their way up to predominant authority. Nothing was wanting to their full possession of power except control over the court and the King’s counsellors. The obvious and immediate aim in all movements of this sort is always a change of the persons who wield executive power, or share the secrets of its deliberations. No one at this time possessed so much influence in both domestic and foreign affairs as the hated Lords Bristol and Digby, father and son. The French ambassador, who hated them as the heads of the Spanish faction, once talked with his friends in Parliament of the necessity for overthrowing them: he asserted that they swore to him to undertake the attack, even though they should perish in it. So it came to pass that formal impeachments against Digby and Bristol were proposed in the Lower House: the father for having advised the King to put the army into effective condition, which could only have been done with views hostile to Parliament: the son for having accused the Commons of encroachments on the liberties of the Lords, and on the rights of subjects, and for having said that Parliament was no longer free. The Lower House had this claim at any rate to supreme power, that it already treated as a crime every expression injurious to it. The matter advanced so far as a conference with the Lords. A very widely spread idea was to proceed with an impeachment against the Queen, as the personage who gave the most support to Catholic and anti-Parliamentary tendencies.