The lectureship at St. Margaret's brought Marshall into close connection with the Commons, which naturally, under the circumstances, imparted a political tinge to his oratory. But Calamy,[322] being perpetual curate of Aldermanbury, had to do with parishioners whose spiritual wants came immediately under his notice; and he delighted in that experimental strain of discourse which ever touches the hearts of men. What made him acceptable to the citizens in his own neighbourhood, made him acceptable to the citizens generally. No church was so thronged as his. Admired by the Puritan, he was lampooned by the Royalist. "Well, who's for Aldermanbury?" asked the latter, in one of the scurrilous party tracts, of which some are reprinted in well-known collections, and many more are preserved in the British Museum. "You would think a phœnix preached there. A foot-ball in cold weather is as much followed as Calamy by all his rampant dog-day zealots." Reporters, not for the press, but for private edification, waited on the divine, as we learn from the pamphleteer, who proceeds to exclaim, "Instead of a dumb shew, enter the sermon daubers. Oh! what a gracious sight is a silver ink-horn. How blessed a gift is it to write short-hand! What necessary implements for a saint are cotton wool and blotting-paper. These dabblers turn the Church into a scrivener's shop. A country fellow, last term, mistook it for the six clerks' office."[323] This vulgar ridicule at once testifies to the popularity of Calamy, illustrates the manners and customs of the time in places of worship, and shews that, whatever might be the religious extravagances of some Presbyterians, they were more than matched by the godless ridicule of people who claimed to be exceedingly zealous for Episcopacy. [Sidenote: _Popular Preachers in London._] Coincident with the increasing popularity of these preachers, the actual outbreak of the Civil Wars, and the excitement in London respecting ecclesiastical affairs, were certain measures adopted by Parliament for abolishing Episcopacy. The Scotch did not fail to press this subject most earnestly upon their English brethren. They looked at it in the lurid light which their own annals had thrown on the institution, and in their view it had become identified with the arrogance and intolerance of Popery and Anglicanism. Unable to rest till England was saved from what they considered to be the secret of its weakness, and the precursor of its ruin, the General Assembly of Scotland sent a letter to Parliament, urging a thorough reformation, with a view to "one confession of faith, one directory of worship, one public catechism, and one form of Church government."[324]