"HONOURED SIR,--Let us rejoice and praise God together. My occupation is gone. The prisons bid fair to be cleared of all save their rightful tenants. Parish after parish will welcome back faithful ministers, undone and imprisoned by Star-Chamber and High Commission. Heaven send that prison and persecution have made their voices strong and gentle, and not bitter and shrill; for I have found the devil not locked out by prison-bolts. And too surely also he will find his way into triumphal processions such as we have had in London to-day, on behalf of Mistress Olive's old friends, Mr. Prynne, Mr. Bastwick, and Mr. Burton. But let me set my narrative in order. "A fortnight before the Parliament was opened two thousand rioters had torn down the benches in St. Paul's, where the cruel High Commission were sitting, shouting that they would have no bishop, no High Commission. Now these disorders cease. Once more the gag is off the lips of every borough and county in Old England; and the bitter helpless moans and wild inarticulate cries which have vainly filled the land these eleven years give place to calm and temperate speech. Petitions and remonstrances pour in from north, south, east and west; some brought by troops of horsemen. The calmest voices are heard more clearly. "'He is a great stranger in Israel,' said Lord Falkland, 'who knoweth not that this kingdom hath long laboured under great oppression both in religion and liberty. Under pretence of uniformity they have brought in superstition and scandal; under the titles of reverence and decency they have defiled our Church by adorning our churches. They have made the conforming to ceremonies more important than the conforming to Christianity.' "Said Sir Edward Deering, in attacking the High Commission Court,-- "'A Pope at Rome will do me less hurt than a patriarch at Lambeth.' "Said Sir Benjamin Rudyard,-- "'We have seen ministers, their wives, and families, undone against law, against conscience, about not dancing on Sundays. They have brought it so to pass, that under the name of Puritans all our religion is branded. Whosoever squares his actions by any rule divine or human, he is a Puritan; whosoever would be governed by the king's laws, he is a Puritan; he that will not do whatsoever other men will have him do, he is a Puritan.' "The Commons had not sate four days when, on the 7th of November, by warrant of the house, they sent for Mr. Prynne, Mr. Bastwick, and Mr. Burton, from their prisons beyond the seas, to certify by whose authority they had been mutilated, branded, and imprisoned. "And now after three weeks these three gentlemen, freed from their sea-washed dungeons in Jersey, Guernsey, and the Scilly Islands, have this day arrived in the city. All the way from the coast they have been eagerly welcomed, escorted by troops of friends with songs and garlands, from town to town.