Not less flagrant were the abuses of a religious nature. The Commons, in the last moments of the session of 1629, had resolved that “whoever should bring in innovations in religion,” as well as “whoever advised the levy of subsidies not granted in Parliament,” was to be regarded as “a capital enemy of the kingdom and commonwealth.” And yet it was to “bring in innovations in religion” that the energies of the English church were now chiefly directed. At the head of the church was Archbishop Laud, whose determination was “to raise the Church of England to what he conceived to be its real position as a branch, though a reformed branch, of the great Catholic church throughout the world.” He protested alike against the innovations of Rome and the innovations of Calvin. In his view the Episcopal succession was the essence of the church; and, therefore, when the Lutheran and Calvanistic churches rejected the office of Bishop, they “ceased to be churches at all.” As he rejected the church of the reformers, and as he acknowledged Rome as a true branch of the church, he drew constantly nearer to Rome, and removed further and further from the doctrines of the Reformers. In all parts of England ministers who refused to conform were expelled from their cures. It was this aggressive and revolutionary policy that drove thousands of Puritans to New England. Three thousand emigrants left England in a single year; and during the period between 1629 and 1640 no less than about twenty thousand Puritans found a refuge in the New World. In Scotland resistance to the innovations of Laud took a more active turn. Royal proclamation had been made, reinstating the Episcopal forms; but when the Dean of Edinburgh opened the new Prayer Book, a murmur of discontent ran through the congregation, and a stool, hurled by one of the members, felled him to the ground. Petitions for the removal of the Prayer Book were showered in upon the court. Various writers were dragged before the Star Chamber and branded as “trumpets of sedition.” To a petition presented by the Duke of Hamilton the King replied: “I will rather die than yield to these impertinent and damnable demands.” Of these seething discontents, what is sometimes called the “Bishops’ War” was the result. The King was determined to suppress opposition by force of arms, and for that purpose he committed the fatal error of calling over Strafford from Ireland. Scotland at once arose to resist him, while at his back all England was at the point of revolt. A London mob burst into the Bishop’s palace at Lambeth, and then proceeded to break up the sittings of the High Commission at St. Paul’s. Charles, finding the army in no condition to cope with the discontents of the time, at length, with great reluctance, yielded to his advisers, and once more summoned the Houses of Parliament.