different schools, comprising adherents of Melville, of Gladstane, and even of Spottiswood, who sought to adjust their differences, they all agreed in opposing the present innovations. The complaint was first proposed and resolved upon among the clergy, then among the gentry, then among the nobility. Before the close of the evening a commission from the three orders was appointed to draw it up, and executed a draught of it without delay[96]. In this the reasons assigned were first set out. It was therein said that the petitioners, as in duty bound, addressed their complaints against the prelates and bishops, to God, the King, and the country, and prayed to be heard against them before a legal tribunal. Next morning this document was signed by twenty-four lords and three hundred gentlemen, and in the afternoon by all the ministers present. To many the expressions seemed too harsh; others thought the whole proceeding too violent: but it was the only step from which they promised themselves any result. A skilful lawyer, [A.D. 1637.] Archibald Johnstone, the advocate, who combined zeal for the cause with a capacity for finding amid the flames of legal controversy forms which could be justified, had principally influenced the assembly at this moment, and had led them to think of a petition. They were wise in taking his advice, for what they required was not a manifestation of feeling, but the certainty of firm ground in the further conflicts that were to be expected. People felt that they would be brought to account for what had happened, and that the petition submitted to the King would be an object of judicial proceedings. The complaint against the bishops was first of all intended to put them in the position of parties concerned, and to prevent them from being able any longer to sit or to give judgment in the court of justice from which a sentence of condemnation might emanate. But this complaint had also a more comprehensive scope. Its authors did not intend to oppose the King as such, but to oppose the combination of temporal and spiritual authority, which constituted the essence of the form of state government he intended to set up. While the leaders of the movement recurred to the old laws, and considered the anti-hierarchical usage of the country as the foundation of all legality, and as that which above all must be represented in independent courts, an opportunity was gained for attacking the existence of episcopal power, whether in its present extension or under any form at all. From the existing order they went back to the circumstances of the time when Presbyterianism was in its vigour as the only legal state of things.