The warning was hardly needed by James. The voice of Melville was still in his ears when he summoned four Puritan ministers to meet the Archbishop and eight of his suffragans at Hampton Court in January 1604. From the first he showed no purpose of discussing the grievances alleged in the petition. He revelled in the opportunity for a display of his theological reading; but he viewed the Puritan demands in a purely political light. He charged the petitioners with aiming at a Scottish presbytery, "where Jack and Tom and Will and Dick shall meet, and at their pleasure censure me and my Council and all their proceedings. Stay," he went on with amusing vehemence, "stay, I pray you, for one seven years before you demand that from me, and if you find me pursy and fat and my windpipe stuffed, I will perhaps hearken to you, for let that government be once up, and I am sure I shall be kept in health." No words could have better shown the new king's unconsciousness that he had passed into a land where parliaments were realities, and where the "censure" of king and council was a national tradition. But neither his theology nor his politics met with any protest from the prelates about him. On the contrary, the bishops declared that the insults James showered on their opponents were inspired by the Holy Ghost. The Puritans however still ventured to question his infallibility, and the king broke up the conference with a threat which disclosed the policy of the Crown. "I will make them conform," he said of the remonstrants, "or I will harry them out of the land!" [Sidenote: The Parliament of 1604.]