The Directory, upon being dispatched to Scotland,[512] obtained there the sanction of the General Assembly; and on its return, after the book had been endorsed by the English Commons, it was presented to the House of Lords, who gave it their sanction. Presbyterian statesmen are sometimes charged with a rash abolition of old ecclesiastical laws, without the previous or immediate institution of others to occupy their room. It is alleged that these men short-sightedly pulled down the ancient buildings and left them in ruins, and that they were for some time not prepared to raise a new structure on the ancient site. This is an incorrect representation. Elizabeth's Act of Uniformity, it is very true, fell into desuetude from the opening of the Long Parliament; also many Puritans in the Establishment laid aside the Liturgy, and even reviled it. Notwithstanding, no specific law appears against it, until the Directory had been sanctioned by Parliament. The same ordinance which forbids the Liturgy enforces the Directory. In the first place that authority rehearses and repeals the statutes of uniformity, and at the same time declares that the Book of Common Prayer should not remain in any place of worship within the kingdom of England or the dominion of Wales. The same ordinance then goes on to declare that the Directory should be observed in all public religious exercises throughout the realm, and that fair register books of vellum for births, marriages, and burials should be kept by the minister and other officers of the Church. It is remarkable that no penalty whatever is mentioned for a breach of this ordinance. So far as the terms of it are concerned, it looks as if it might be broken with impunity; and it was so broken. In country parishes where Royalism was predominant, and such parishes were very numerous, parsons and churchwardens set at nought the enactment of the two Houses, and would not acknowledge as law that which had not received the Royal sanction. The Prayer Book was dear to them from associations with the past in their own lives and those of their fathers; and they were resolved still to read its litany and collects. Finding that simple advice and exhortation produced no effect in many quarters, Parliament adopted more stringent measures. It would appear that, as early as the month of May, 1645, penalties for contempt of the new enactment were under consideration,[513] but an explicit threatening for disobedience was not uttered until the month of August. Then came an ordinance[514] which--after providing for the supply of printed books of the Directory, and commanding that it should be read the Sunday after it was received--proceeded to declare that any person using the Book of Common Prayer in church or chapel should, for the first offence, pay the sum of five pounds, for the second offence the sum of ten pounds, and for the third offence suffer one year's imprisonment. Every minister was to pay forty shillings each