[186] Journals; _Parliamentary Hist._ 784; May, 67; Clarendon. According to Mrs. Hutchinson (p. 97) this bill originated with Mr. Pierpoint. If we should draw any inference from the Journals, Sir John Colepepper seems to have been the most prominent of its supporters. Mr. Hyde and Lord Falkland were also managers of the conference with the Lords. But in Sir Ralph Verney's manuscript notes, I find Mr. Whitelock mentioned as being ordered by the house to prepare the bill; which seems to imply that he had moved it, or at least been very forward in it. Yet all these were moderate men. [187] Neal (p. 632) has printed these canons imperfectly. They may be found at length in Nalson, i. 542. It is remarkable that the seventh canon expressly denies a corporal presence in the eucharist, which is quite contrary to what Laud had asserted in his speech in the star-chamber. His influence does not seem to have wholly predominated in this particular canon, which is expressed with a moderation of which he was incapable. [188] Clarendon; _Parl. Hist._ 678, 896; Neal, 647, 720. These votes as to the canons, however, were carried _nem. con._ Journals, 16th Dec. 1640. [189] Neal, 709. Laud and Wren were both impeached Dec. 18: the latter entirely for introducing superstitions. _Parl. Hist._ 861. He lay in the Tower till 1659. [190] Neal says that the major part of the parliamentarians at the beginning of the war were for moderated episcopacy (ii. 4), and asserts the same in another place (i. 715) of the puritans, in contradiction of Rapin. "How this will go," says Baillie, in April 1641, "the Lord knows; all are for the creating of a kind of presbytery, and for bringing down the bishops in all things spiritual and temporal, so low as can be with any subsistence; but their utter abolition, which is the only aim of the most godly, is the knot of the question."--i. 245. [191] Neal, 666, 672, 713; Collier, 805; Baxter's _Life_, p. 62. The ministers' petition, as it was called, presented Jan. 23, 1641, with the signatures of 700 beneficed clergymen, went to this extent of reformation. Neal, 679. [192] _Parl. Hist._ 673; Clarendon, i. 356; Baillie's _Letters_, 218, etc. Though sanguine as to the progress of his sect, he admits that it was very difficult to pluck up episcopacy by the roots; for this reason they did not wish the house to give a speedy answer to the city petition. P. 241. It was carried by 36 or 37 voices, he says, to refer it to the committee of religion. P. 245. No division appears on the Journals. The whole influence of the Scots commissioners was directed to this object; as not only Baillie's _Letters_, but those of Johnstone of Wariston (Dalrymple's _Memorials of James and Charles I._, ii. 114, etc.) show. Besides their extreme bigotry, which was the predominant motive, they had a better apology for interfering with church-government in England, with which the archbishop had furnished them: it was the only sure means of preserving their own.