They hastened, for the ground trembled beneath their feet. It was too much to cope, on the one hand, with the Royalists, and on the other with the religious or political Independents, who every day became more numerous and more bold. In religious matters, the Presbyterians admitted neither discussion nor liberty. They looked upon their doctrinal and ecclesiastical system as the only law and the only government permitted and revealed by the word of God. In politics they were moderate. They liked the monarchy while fighting against the king; they respected the prerogative while laboring to subjugate the crown; and they obeyed old customs as much as new requirements, without knowing precisely whether they were proceeding by means of the reforms which they had prosecuted for three years with so much ardor. The leaders themselves came from different sides, and were not all animated by the same desires. Hesitation began to discover itself among them: Rudyard no longer appeared in Parliament, except at rare intervals. St. John and Pym treated the Independents gently; the lords quitted Westminster by degrees and withdrew to their estates, when they did not proceed to rejoin the king. On the morrow of the battle of Newbury, ten lords only sat in the Upper House; they were, for the Presbyterians, an incumbrance rather than a support; the popular movement became every day more estranged from the high aristocracy, separated from the Presbyterians by the religious fanaticism of the latter. Revolution succeeded reform. {113} The new party had grown in the shadow of the Presbyterian power; but from the first it had set up a very different flag. Liberty was the basis of the structure that liberty yet so misunderstood and so often dishonored by the very persons who demanded it. "Whatever may have been the boldness of their ventures, neither the politicians nor the devotees of the new party were a prey to vague desires, to unlimited pretensions. No precise design regulated their course, no historical or legal act comprised the limits of their belief. It was this very belief which they wished, at all costs, to set forth. Proud of its elevation, of its holiness, of its daring, they awarded to it the right of judging all, of ruling all; and taking it solely for their guide, the philosophers sought with indefatigable ardor, the truth; the enthusiasts, the Lord; the libertines, success. All could find therein full satisfaction for their schemes and hopes. The double policy of the Presbyterians did not hinder the progress of those free spirits who claimed to shake off all impediments and remake the world in their own fashion. Hostility increased every day between the new party of the Independents, impelled by the breeze of revolution as well as by popular favor, and the old Presbyterian party, triumphant and everywhere in power, but hesitating and uneasy in the very midst of its victories." {114}