An abrupt and violent dissolution naturally excites discontents among the people, who usually put entire confidence in their representatives, and expect from them the redress of all grievances. As if there were not already sufficient grounds of complaint, the king persevered still in those counsels which, from experience, he might have been sensible were so dangerous and unpopular. Bellasis and Sir John Hotham were summoned before the council; and, refusing to give any account of their conduct in parliament, were committed to prison. All the petitions and complaints which had been sent to the committee of religion, were demanded from Crew, chairman of that committee; and on his refusal to deliver them, he was sent to the Tower. The studies, and even the pockets of the earl of Warwick and Lord Broke, before the expiration of privilege, were searched, in expectation of finding treasonable papers. These acts of authority were interpreted, with some appearance of reason, to be invasions on the right of national assemblies.[*] But the king, after the first provocation which he met with, never sufficiently respected the privileges of parliament; and, by his example, he further confirmed their resolution, when they should acquire power, to pay like disregard to the prerogatives of the crown. * Rush. vol. iii. p. 1167. May, p. 61. Though the parliament was dissolved, the convocation was still allowed to sit; a practice of which, since the reformation, there were but few instances,[*] and which was for that reason supposed by many to be irregular. Besides granting to the king a supply from the spirituality, and framing many canons, the convocation, jealous of like innovations with those which had taken place in Scotland, imposed an oath on the clergy and the graduates in the universities, by which every one swore to maintain the established government of the church by archbishops, bishops, deans, chapters, etc.[**] These steps, in the present discontented humor of the nation, were commonly deemed illegal; because not ratified by consent of parliament, in whom all authority was now supposed to be centred. And nothing, besides, could afford more subject of ridicule, than an oath which contained an "et cætera," in the midst of it.