Morgan Owen, bishop of Llandaff--said to be under the influence of Laud, and connected with him by the Puritans, in a story respecting some popish image of the virgin at Oxford--was a protester, and imprisoned accordingly. His death occurred towards the end of 1644. Walter Curle, bishop of Winchester, resided in that city when the Parliamentary forces besieged it. Upon its surrender, he retired to Subberton, in Hampshire, where he died in 1647, after suffering the sequestration of his own proper estate for refusing to take the covenant. John Towers, bishop of Peterborough, having been confined for his connection with the protest, subsequently repaired to the King, at Oxford, and remained there till its surrender to the Parliament, when he returned to Peterborough, and there found himself, as a delinquent, stripped of his revenues. He died in 1649.[263] [Sidenote: _Bishops._] John Prideaux, a man of eminent learning, promoted to the bishopric of Worcester amidst the troubles of 1641, excommunicated all in his diocese who took up arms on the Parliament's behalf. By such conduct of course he subjected himself to penalties; and it is related, that he turned his books and everything else into bread for himself and his family, so that, when he was saluted in the usual way, "How doth your lordship do?" he facetiously replied, "Never better in my life, only I have too great a stomach, for I have eaten that little plate which the sequestrators left me; I have eaten a great library of excellent books; I have eaten a great deal of linen, much of my brass, some of my pewter, and now I am come to eat iron, and what will come next I know not."[264] This humorous prelate died in 1650, leaving to his children--"no legacy but pious poverty, God's blessing, and a father's prayers." John Williams, archbishop of York, who has appeared prominently in this volume, after the imprisonment and sequestration which he brought upon himself by the conduct which we have already described, took, by royal command, the charge of Conway Castle and the government of North Wales, in which country he was born; and, at last--either in accordance with his established character for trimming his sails according to the wind, or to gratify a personal grudge against the Royalist captain, by whom he had been violently displaced--he joined a Parliamentary troop in order to recover his old fortress; after which military transaction he ended his strange and chequered career, in 1650, at Glodded, in the house of his kinswoman, Lady Mostyn. It is related of him, that during the last year of his life, he rose out of bed regularly at midnight for one quarter of an hour, when he knelt on his bare knees, and prayed earnestly, "Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly, and put an end to these days of sin and misery."[265] [Sidenote: 1641, October.] On returning to the complicated web of religious interests and excitements at the close of the year 1641, some dark threads remain to be unravelled.