cause for their violent and unconstitutional vote; and whether they, by the obstinate refusal of a personal conference, had not betrayed their resolve not to come to any accommodation.[1] The impression made by this paper called for an answer: a long and laboured vindication of the proceedings of the House of Commons was prepared, and after many erasures and amendments approved; copies of it were allotted to the members to be circulated among their constituents, and others were sent to the curates to be read by them to their parishioners.[2] It contained a tedious enumeration of all the charges, founded or unfounded, which had ever been made against the king from the commencement of his reign; and thence deduced the inference that, to treat with a prince so hostile to popular rights, so often convicted of fraud and dissimulation, would be nothing less than to betray the trust reposed in the two houses by the country. But the framers of the vindication marred their own object. They had introduced much questionable matter, and made numerous statements open to refutation: the advantage was eagerly seized by the royalists; and, notwithstanding the penalties recently enacted on account of unlicensed publications, several answers, eloquently and convincingly written, were circulated in many parts of the country. Of these the most celebrated came from the pens of Hyde the chancellor, and of Dr. Bates, the king's physician.[3] But, whilst the royal cause made rapid progress among the people, in the army itself the principles of the Levellers had been embraced by the majority of [Footnote 1: King's Works, 130. Parl. Hist. iii. 863.] [Footnote 2: Journals, v. Feb. 10, 11. Parl. Hist. iii. 847. Perrinchiefe, 44.] [Footnote 3: Ibid. Parl. Hist. iii. 866. King's Works, 132.]