alternative of civil war. But Archbishop Laud, a Catholic under the disguise of Protestantism, and who was the medium of the pope's influence, exercised a despotism over the king's mind too absolute to allow his reason to instruct, or his conscience to admonish him. The religious views and secret designs of this professed Protestant bishop cannot be misunderstood. He maintained that the papal authority had always been visible in the realm. He furnished the king with a significant list of the names of all his Catholic and Protestant subjects. He was also the principal actor in the Star Chamber, and Court of High Commission. So well was the pope satisfied with the orthodoxy of this sacerdotal miscreant that he sent him a cardinal's hat, which he declined for the ambiguous reason that the "Church of Rome was no other than it was!" The king, controlled and ill-advised by such a counsellor, blinded by his own bigotry, and elated with self-conceit, was led to scorn the rising spirit of the nation, and to adopt measures for its suppression. But parliament with prudent foresight, and patriotic boldness, taught him that the Commons were the constitutional dispensers and guardians of the public treasury. He next resolved to oblige Scotland to conform to the ritual prescribed by the Church of England; and as parliament had refused to allow him the use of the public funds for that and other purposes, he attempted to raise means for their accomplishment by unconstitutional methods. By this impolitic course he aroused a lion from its den, with whose strength and fury he could not well cope. The Scotch formed a league of Covenanters, composed of all classes and factions, for the defence of their religious liberty; and as the king viewed their enthusiastic and formidable array, and compared it with the suspicious material of his own army, he prudently concluded terms of pacification.