The parliament, especially the lower house, perceiving how the queen, and many of the bishops and ecclesiastics abused their spiritual power; what mischiefs they brought upon the church; and the miseries to which honest men were reduced for mere difference in religious sentiments, attempted repeatedly to regulate matters, and to redress the hardships of the non-conformists, but was stopped by her majesty, in the most dictatorial manner. Some of the members, roused by such unwarrantable acts of sovereignty, spake boldly and freely upon the occasion, and censured the arbitrary proceedings of the bishops. The queen added to her other faults, that of sending them to the Tower. But though she could awe the parliament, imprison its members, and protect her favorite bishops, she could not overpower the consciences of the non-conformists. A number of religious people upon the borders of _Nottinghamshire_, _Lincolnshire_, and _Yorkshire_, having suffered persecution patiently for years, and searched the scriptures diligently, were at length fully of opinion, that the _ceremonies_ of the _English_ church were _unlawful_; that the lordly power of her prelates was contrary to the _freedom_ of the gospel; and that her offices, courts and canons, had no warrant in the word of God; but were _popish_. They determined therefore to shake off that yoke of bondage, viz. human impositions, brought into the church by popish policy and power, against the superior law of Christ, the genius of his plain religion and christian liberty. They resolved [1602] as the Lord’s free people, “_to join themselves by covenant into a church state; and, agreeable to present or future knowledge, to walk in all the ways of God, according to their best abilities, whatever it costs them_.”[2]