_B._ Besides, if the King, upon the refusal, should fall upon them in anger; who shall (the Parliament not sitting) protect either the Chancellor or the sheriffs in their disobedience? _A._ I pray you do not ask me any reason of such things I understand no better than you. I tell you only an act passed to that purpose, and was signed by the King in the middle of February, a little before the Archbishop was sent to the Tower. Besides this bill, the two Houses of Parliament agreed upon another, wherein it was enacted, that the present Parliament should continue till both the Houses did consent to the dissolution of it; which bill also the King signed the same day he signed the warrant for the execution of the Earl of Strafford. _B._ What a great progress made the Parliament towards the ends of the most seditious Members of both Houses in so little time! They sat down in November, and now it was May; in this space of time, which is but half a year, they won from the King the adherence which was due to him from his people; they drove his faithfullest servants from him; beheaded the Earl of Strafford; imprisoned the Archbishop of Canterbury; obtained a triennial Parliament after their own dissolution, and a continuance of their own sitting as long as they listed: which last amounted to a total extinction of the King’s right, in case that such a grant were valid; which I think it is not, unless the Sovereignty itself be in plain terms renounced, which it was not. But what money, by way of subsidy or otherwise, did they grant the King, in recompense of all these his large concessions? _A._ None at all; but often promised they would make him the most glorious King that ever was in England; which were words that passed well enough for well meaning with the common people. _B._ But the Parliament was contented now? For I cannot imagine what they should desire more from the King, than he had now granted them. _A._ Yes; they desired the whole and absolute sovereignty, and to change the monarchical government into an oligarchy; that is to say, to make the Parliament, consisting of a few Lords and about four hundred Commoners, absolute in the sovereignty, for the present, and shortly after to lay the House of Lords aside. For this was the design of the Presbyterian ministers, who taking themselves to be, by divine right, the only lawful governors of the Church, endeavoured to bring the same form of Government into the civil state. And as the spiritual laws were to be made by their synods, so the civil laws should be made by the House of Commons; who, as they thought, would no less be ruled by them afterwards, than they formerly had been: wherein they were deceived, and found themselves outgone by their own disciples, though not in malice, yet in wit. _B._ What followed after this?