They had formed an estimate of James’s character, of which it was eminently undeserving. When the demise of the queen brought him to the English metropolis, he was met by a petition from the puritan clergy (popularly called the _millenary_ petition) for the reformation of ceremonies and abuses in the church. The signatures to this document were obtained in twenty-five counties of England. They amounted to a less number than the name implied, and Suffolk supplied _seventy-one_, while the highest number from any other county was fifty-seven. {92c} The petitioners learned the fate of their application, when at the conclusion of a conference the king had appointed to be held at Hampton Court, he declared that they should conform, or he would “hurry them out of the kingdom, or do worse.” James fell an easy prey to the adulation of the English bishops, and was soon converted to a church of which he found he could be “supreme head.” While he thus revived and pronounced the claim of infallibility, Whitgift echoed the language employed by the pope on a former occasion, declaring that “undoubtedly his majesty spake by the special assistance of God’s Spirit.” The archbishop died soon after, and was succeeded by Dr. Richard Bancroft, who “trod in the steps of his predecessor in all the iniquities of persecution.” {93a} In the second year of King James’s reign three hundred ministers were deprived, imprisoned, or banished. Persons were subjected to fine and imprisonment, for barely repeating to their families, in the evening, what they had heard at church, during the day, under the pretence that this constituted the crime of irregular preaching. {93b} Mr. Maunsell, minister of Yarmouth, and Mr. Lad, a merchant of the same place, were cited before the High Commission at Lambeth, for holding a supposed conventicle, and cast into prison. Nicholas Fuller, a learned bencher of Gray’s Inn, appeared as their counsel when they were brought to the bar; for which crime he also was consigned to prison, where he lay to the end of his days. {94} Among those who were proscribed and exiled for professing the Brownist tenets, were Mr. John Robinson, and Mr. Henry Jacob.