_A._ The King had these things indeed in his right; but that signifies little, when they that had the custody of the navy and magazines, and with them all the trained soldiers, and in a manner all his subjects, were, by the preaching of Presbyterian ministers, and the seditious whisperings of false and ignorant politicians, made his enemies; and when the King could have no money but what the Parliament should give him, which you may be sure should not be enough to maintain his regal power, which they intended to take from him. And yet, I think, they never would have ventured into the field, but for that unlucky business of imposing upon the Scots, who were all Presbyterians, our book of Common-prayer. For I believe the English would never have taken well that the Parliament should make war upon the King, upon any provocation, unless it were in their own defence, in case the King should first make war upon them; and, therefore, it behoved them to provoke the King, that he might do something that might look like hostility. It happened in the year 1637, that the King, by the advice, as it is thought, of the Archbishop of Canterbury, sent down a book of Common-prayer into Scotland, not differing in substance from ours, nor much in words besides the putting of the word Presbyter for that of Minister, commanding it to be used, for conformity to this kingdom, by the ministers there, for an ordinary form of Divine service. This being read in the church at Edinburgh, caused such a tumult there, that he that read it had much ado to escape with his life; and gave occasion to the greatest part of the nobility and others to enter, by their own authority, into a covenant amongst themselves, which impudently they called a covenant with God, to put down episcopacy, without consulting with the King: which they presently did, animated thereto by their own confidence, or by assurance from some of the democratical Englishmen that in former Parliaments had been the greatest opposers of the King’s interest, that the King would not be able to raise an army to chastise them without calling a Parliament, which would be sure to favour them. For the thing which those democraticals chiefly then aimed at, was to force the King to call a Parliament, which he had not done for ten years before, as having found no help, but hindrance to his designs in the Parliaments he had formerly called. Howsoever, contrary to their expectation, by the help of his better-affected subjects of the nobility and gentry, he made a shift to raise a sufficient army to have reduced the Scots to their former obedience, if it had proceeded to battle. And with this army he marched himself into Scotland; where the Scotch army was also brought into the field against him, as if they meant to fight. But then the Scotch sent to the King for leave to treat by commissioners on both sides; and the King, willing to avoid the destruction of his own subjects, condescended to it.