[74] During the parliamentary struggles of 1680, the Commons used many arbitrary measures to support their authority, and especially by summarily committing those who, having expressed by petition to the king their abhorrence of addresses for calling a parliament, were called _abhorrers_. “Scarce a day passed, but some _abhorrer_ was dragged before them, and committed to the custody of the serjeant at arms, at the pleasure of the House; and this strange despotism they exercised with so much wantonness, as well as cruelty, that Mr Treby was pleased to say, _they kept an hawk_, (meaning the said serjeant,) _and they must every day find flesh for him_. And the quantity he was this sessions gorged with, gave rise to this proverbial expression—_Take him, Topham!_ [the name of the serjeant,] in all discourse of peremptory commitment.”—_North’s Examen_, p. 561. These arbitrary commitments are elsewhere censured by Dryden, particularly in the Postscript to the History of the League.—See p. 179. [75] _Nolo episcopare._ [76] Morley is anxious to vindicate himself from being one of the two bishops consulted, for, in Maimbourg’s copy of the Duchesses paper, they were not named. “Supposing,” said he, “there was such a conference betwixt her Highness and two bishops of the church of England, and that what they said to her did increase her desire to embrace the Roman Catholic religion; yet what doth that concern you, (may some man say,) as to your own particular? Are you one of the two of the most learned bishops of the church of England? (for so it is said they were, to whom the Duchess proposed her scruples,) No; I am not, I know I am not, I am sure I am not; but yet (how unlearned, and how unworthy soever,) I am a bishop, and a bishop of the church of England; and therefore as he, to whom it was said, _Tantumne otii tibi à re tuâ est, aliena ut cures?_ answered, _Homo sum, Humani nihil à me alienum puto_; so say I, _Episcopus sum, et Episcopus Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ_, and therefore think myself concerned in whatsoever was said in reproach of episcopacy; especially in reproach of any of the bishops of our own church.” [77] Probably her brothers, Clarendon and Rochester. [78] Such was James’s account of the dying hours of his first wife. Burnet gives a different statement, which may be here transcribed:—