These military events at the very beginning powerfully influenced the Westminster Assembly. As the members mourned the loss of illustrious captains, reports of disastrous turns in the fate of war would be brought to London from Yorkshire, by the letter-carriers, who rode along the dusty roads in those long summer days; and the Divines, amidst their theological discussions, would anxiously listen to tidings respecting the army. The success of their cause, if not their personal safety, depended upon the acquisition of some military advantages at that critical juncture, and therefore--whilst feeling that only God could help them--they presented, on the 19th of July, to the two Houses, a petition, in which--after expressing their fear of the Divine wrath, manifested by the sad and unexpected defeats in the north and west--they implored, as watchmen set on the walls of the Church and the kingdom, that a day of solemn fasting and humiliation might be fixed for universal observance throughout the cities of London and Westminster: and with a further view of removing Divine displeasure, they entreated, that Parliament would speedily set up Christ more gloriously in all His ordinances within the kingdom, and remove throughout the land all things which were amiss. Then followed a painful enumeration of national evils, including brutish ignorance, pollution of the Lord's Supper, corruption of doctrine, profanation of the Sabbath, blind guides and scandalous ministers, and finally, the prevalence of vice, idolatry, and superstition.[358] [Sidenote: 1643, August.] The fall of Bristol on the 26th of July, preparing as it did for the siege of Gloucester, further alarmed the Assembly, who would not fail also to watch with trembling anxiety the progress of the assaults on the latter city. In the month of August, all London too was in a state of excitement, as disastrous news from the west reached it day by day. Some of the citizens were in favour of propositions of peace voted in the House of Lords; others--the majority--influenced by Alderman Pennington and by Pym, who eventually prevailed on the Commons to reject the Peers' propositions, were for resisting the royal army to the utmost, though the waves of war should surge up to the very walls. In the strife the pulpits had a share; and on the Sunday after the propositions were submitted to the Commons, the Divines of the popular party eloquently appealed to their disheartened hearers in favour of opposing the overtures of the Upper House, at a moment when the Monarch was successful in the field, and persisted in his proclamations against the freedom of the Parliament.[359]