remodel the organization of the English church, at which Scotch representatives were to have a seat. After long and violent debates with an Independent minority, till A.D. 1648, the Assembly drew up a Presbyterian constitution with a Puritan service, and in the Westminster Confession a strictly Calvinistic creed. But only in Scotland were these decisions heartily accepted. In England, notwithstanding their confirmation by the Parliament, they received only partial and occasional acceptance, owing to the prevalence of Independent opinions among the people.--Since A.D. 1642, the tension between court and Parliament had brought about the Civil War between Cavaliers and Roundheads. In A.D. 1645, the royal troops were cut to pieces at Naseby by the parliamentary army under Fairfax and Cromwell. The king fled to the Scotch, by whom he was surrendered to the English Parliament in A.D. 1647. But when now the fanatical Independents, who formed a majority in the army, began to terrorise the Parliament, it opened negotiations for peace with the king. He was now ready to make almost any sacrifice, only on religious and conscientious grounds he could not agree to the unconditional abandonment of Episcopacy. Even the Scotch, whose Presbyterianism was now threatened by the Independents, as before it had been by the Episcopalians, longed for the restoration of royalty, and to aid in this sent an army into England in A.D. 1648. But they were defeated by Cromwell, who then dismissed the Parliament and had all its Presbyterian members either imprisoned or driven into retirement. The Independent remnant, known as the Rump Parliament, A.D. 1648-1653, tried the king for high treason and sentenced him to death. On January 30th, A.D. 1649, he mounted the scaffold, on which Archbishop Laud had preceded him in A.D. 1645, and fell under the executioner’s axe.[454]