[Illustration: CARICATURE OF THE BISHOPS, 1642.] The Bishops were treated with as little ceremony as the Pope. In one caricature four of them are represented as falling to the earth, with the following lines underneath the woodcut:-- 'The tottering prelates, with their trumpery all, Shall moulder downe, like elder from the wall.' In a pamphlet called _The Decoy Duck_, printed in 1642, there is a quaint woodcut caricature and a satirical account of how the Bishops of Durham, Lichfield, Norwich, Asaph, Bath, Hereford, Oxford, Ely, Gloucester, Peterborough, and Llandaff were decoyed and deceived by the Bishop of Lincoln (Bishop Williams). I have copied the woodcut, but no quotation from the pamphlet would be understood unless given at great length. It doubtless refers to the charge of high treason against the twelve Bishops. The abuses of the Established Church in an age when the spirit of dissent was strong were pretty sure to attract the notice of the satirical writer and the caricaturist. Accordingly, we find representations of the pluralist holding a church in each hand and one on each shoulder; while the non-resident clergyman was compared to the locust:--'The Locust is given to spoile and devoure greene things; it was one of the plagues of Egypt. Non-residents devoure the tithes of many parishes in this kingdome; and they are not to be numbered amongst the least of those plagues that God inflicts upon us for our sins. The Locusts caused Pharaoh and his servants to cry unto Moses that he would entreat the Lord to take them away; and our Non-Residents cause all good people to cry mightily unto God, to the King's Majesty, and to the Honourable House of Parliament, to reform them or remove them; that there may not be any carelesse Non-Resident in all the coasts of England.... Some of our carelesse Non-Residents have a cure of soules in one place and live in another, like fugitive Captaines forsake their Ensigne and Company at Barwick, and flee to Dover; who being with Jonah commanded for Nineveh, flee to Tarshish; being placed in the Country they run to the Cathedrals, they leave their charge as the Ostrich doth her eggs in the earth and sands, forgetting that either the foot may crush them or that the wild beast may break them, or at the best they leave their Congregations, as the Cuckoo doth her eggs to be hatched of a sparrow or some other bird.' The following woodcut is copied from a pamphlet entitled '_A Purge for Pluralities, showing the unlawfulnesse of men to have two Livings, or the Downefall of Double Benifices_.' [Illustration: THE PLURALIST, 1642.]