" This message the two
houses considered an insult,[a] because it implied that they were not a
full and free convention of parliament. In their answer they called on the
king to join them at Westminster; and in a public declaration denounced
the proceeding as "a popish and Jesuitical practice to allure them by the
specious pretence of peace to disavow their own authority, and resign
themselves, their religion, laws, and liberties, to the power of idolatry,
superstition, and slavery."[1] In opposition, the houses at Oxford declared
that the Scots had broken the act of pacification, that all English
subjects who aided them should be deemed traitors and enemies of the state,
and that the lords and commons
[Footnote 1: Journals, vi. 451, 459. The reader will notice in the king's
letter an allusion to religious toleration ("with due consideration to
the ease of tender consciences"), the first which had yet been made by
authority, and which a few years before would have scandalized the members
of the church of England as much as it did now the Presbyterians and Scots.
But policy had taught that which reason could not. It was now thrown out
as a bait to the Independents, whose apprehensions of persecution were
aggravated by the intolerance of their Scottish allies, and who were on
that account suspected of having already made some secret overtures to the
court.
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