The English parliament was now assembled, and discovered in every vote the same dispositions in which they had separated. The exalting of their own authority, the diminishing of the king's, were still the objects pursued by the majority. Every attempt which had been made to gain the popular leaders, and by offices to attach them to the crown, had failed of success, either for want of skill in conducting it, or by reason of the slender preferments which it was then in the king's power to confer. The ambitious and enterprising patriots disdained to accept, in detail, of a precarious power, while they deemed it so easy, by one bold and vigorous assault, to possess themselves forever of the entire sovereignty. Sensible that the measures which they had hitherto pursued rendered them extremely obnoxious to the king; were many of them in themselves exceptionable; some of them, strictly speaking, illegal; they resolved to seek their own security, as well as greatness, by enlarging popular authority in England. The great necessities to which the king was reduced; the violent prejudices which generally, throughout the nation, prevailed against him; his facility in making the most important concessions; the example of the Scots, whose encroachments had totally subverted monarchy; all these circumstances further instigated the commons in their invasion of royal prerogative. And the danger to which the constitution seemed to have been so lately exposed, persuaded many that it never could be sufficiently secured, but by the entire abolition of that authority which had invaded it.