[Footnote 1: "The jealousy the English have of our nation, beyond all reason, is not well taken. If Mr. Meldrum bring no satisfaction to us quickly as to conformity of church government, it will be a great impediment in their affairs here."--Baillie, July 26, i. 372. See also Dalrymple, ii. 144.] [Footnote 2: The Scots did not approve of this mission of the Independent ministers. "Mr. Marshall will be most welcome; but if Mr. Nye, the head of the Independents, be his fellow, we cannot take it well."--Baillie, i. 372. They both preached before the Assembly. "We heard Mr. Marshall with great contentment. Mr. Nye did not please. He touched neither in prayer or preaching the common business. All his sermon was on the common head of spiritual life, wherein he ran out above all our understandings."--Id. 388.] [Footnote 3: Baillie, i. 379, 380. Rushworth, v. 467, 470.] [Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. July 20.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. August 27.] preliminary, the sanction of the kirk. It was useless to reply that this was a civil, and not a religious treaty. The Scots rejoined, that the two houses had always announced the reformation of religion as the chief of their objects; that they had repeatedly expressed their wish of "a nearer union of both churches;" and that, in their last letters to the Assembly, they had requested the members to aid them with their prayers and influence, to consult with their commissioners, and to send some Scottish ministers to join the English divines assembled at Westminster.[1] Under these circumstances, Vane and his colleagues could not refuse to admit a deputation from the Assembly, with Henderson the moderator at its head. He submitted to their consideration the form of a "solemn league and covenant" which should bind the two nations to prosecute the public incendiaries, to preserve the king's life and authority in defence of the true religion and the liberties of both kingdoms, to extirpate popery, prelacy, heresy, schism, and profaneness, and to establish a conformity of doctrine, discipline, and church government throughout the island. This last clause alarmed the commissioners. They knew that, though the majority of the parliamentarians inclined to the Presbyterian tenets, there existed among them a numerous and most active party (and of these Vane himself was among the most distinguished) who deemed all ecclesiastical authority an invasion of the rights of conscience; and they saw that, to introduce an obligation so repugnant to the principles of the latter, would be to provoke an open rupture, and to marshal the two sects in hostile array against each other. But the zeal of the [Footnote 1: Journals, vi. 140.]