None but members of the Assembly were allowed to be present, and there was no deviation from this rule except on the very rarest occasions and by special authority from Parliament. The Assembly sat commonly from nine in the morning till one or two P.M. The Prolocutor sat at one end of the room on a raised chair; his two Assessors were near him; and a table ran through the whole length of the room, at one end of which sat the Scribes, close to the Prolocutor, while the members were seated in tiers at the sides and other end. The forms of debate and voting were very much those of the House of Commons. Besides the meetings of the Assembly as such, there were afternoon meetings of Committees for the preparation of business for the Assembly. There were three such chief Standing Committees, to one or other of which every member belonged.2

FIRST BUSINESS OF THE ASSEMBLY: REVISION OF THE

ARTICLES.

Not till Thursday, July 6, or indeed Saturday, July 8, was the Assembly constituted for actual business. On the first of these days the Regulations which had been drawn up by the two Houses of Parliament for the procedure of the Assembly were duly received; and on the second all the members of Assembly present took the solemn Protestation which had been settled for them by the Commons with the concurrence of the Lords. It was in these terms: "I, A. B., "do seriously and solemnly protest, in the presence of Almighty God, that in this Assembly, wherein I am a member, I will not maintain anything in matters of Doctrine "but what I think in my conscience to be truth, or in point. of Discipline but what I shall conceive to conduce most to "the glory of God and the good and peace of His Church." So sworn, the members were ready for their first work. That also had been rigidly prescribed for them by Parliament.

1 The Ordinance of Parliament authorizing the change of the place of meeting to the Jerusalem Chamber is dated Sept. 23, 1643: see Lords Journals for

that day.

2 Lightfoot's Notes of Assembly: Works (ed. 1824), Vol. XIII. pp. 4, 5; and Baillie, II. 107-109.

On July 5 the Commons had ruled and the Lords had agreed "that the Assembly, in their beginning, in the first place "shall take the ten first Articles of the Church of England "into their consideration, to vindicate them from all false "doctrine and heresy." In other words, it was the pleasure of Parliament that the first business of the Assembly should consist in a revision and amendment of the Thirty-nine Articles, and that, by way of a commencement in this business, or specimen to Parliament of the manner in which it might be done, they were to confine themselves at first to the first Ten of the Articles. Accordingly, the Assembly at once addressed themselves to this business. It was with a view to it that they first adopted that machinery of Committees which was to be employed subsequently, with so much effect, in all the deliberations. The Divines of the Assembly were distributed, in the order in which their names stood in the Ordinance calling the Assembly, into three Committees for preparatory revision of the said Articles in such a manner that the whole Assembly might more clearly exercise its final judgment on them; while a fourth Committee, in which the lay-members were included, was to assist the others by procuring the most correct copies of the text of the Articles. To the first revising Committee, of which Dr. Burges was appointed chairman, were entrusted the first four Articles; to the second, of which Dr. Stanton was chairman, the fifth, sixth, and seventh Articles; and to the third, which had Mr. Gibbon for chairman, the eighth, ninth, and tenth.

Imagine the Assembly collectively in Henry the Seventh's Chapel, and its Committees distributively there or in other places of meeting, busy day after day, through the rest of the hot month of July, and then into August, over its appointed revision of the Articles. "I. Of Faith in the Holy Trinity"; "II. Of the Word, or Son of God, which was made very Man"; "III. Of the going down of Christ into Hell"; "IV. Of the Resurrection of Christ"; "V. Of the Holy Ghost"; "VI. Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation"; "VII. Of the Old Testament"; "VIII. Of the

Three Creeds"; "IX. Of Original or Birth Sin"; "X. Of Free Will": imagine the Articles under these headings discussed successively, sentence by sentence and clause by clause, most of the sentences and clauses allowed to pass without change as perfectly satisfactory, but here and there at intervals a phrase modified or omitted, or a slight addition made, so as to bring the meaning more sharply into accord with the letter of Scripture or the Calvinistic system of doctrine. Such mere imagination of the general process will suffice, and it is unnecessary to take account of the actual changes proposed in the phraseology of particular Articles. For, in fact, these first weeks of the Assembly's pains over the Articles of the Church were to be labour wasted. Before the end of August, and while they were still probing through the first Ten Articles, events had taken such a course that the Assembly was called upon to co-operate with the Parliament in matters of greater urgency.

THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT: SCOTTISH COMMISSIONERS TO THE ASSEMBLY.

The war, which had been on the whole in the King's favour hitherto, was going more and more against Parliament. In the north, Lord Fairfax had been beaten at Atherston Moor by the Earl of Newcastle (June 30); Sir William Waller, the hitherto unconquered, had been beaten twice in the south-west (at Lansdowne, July 5, and at Roundway Down, July 13); the Queen, coming from the north, had joined the King in his quarters, amid great rejoicing, after their seventeen months of separation; and Bristol, inefficiently defended by Nathaniel Fiennes, was on the point of yielding to Prince Rupert. It was time, in short, to do what it had long been in the mind of Parliament to do-call in once more the aid of the Scots.

On this the Parliament had already resolved. As it was judged likely, however, that the Scots would listen more readily to the application for armed aid if it were accom

panied with some distinct proof of a desire for "uniformity of religion" between the two kingdoms, the Assembly was required to assist Parliament in pleading with the Scots. The Scottish Convention of Estates was then sitting (it had met, by express call, June 22); and the Scottish General Assembly was to meet on the 2nd of August. Let there be Commissioners from both the English Parliament and the Westminster Assembly to these two bodies; let the Assembly write letters to the Scottish Assembly, backing the political application with religious arguments; let every exertion be made to secure a new alliance with the Scottish nation! Accordingly, while the Assembly was pursuing its revision of the Articles, or occupying itself with such incidental matters as the appointment of ministers to preach before the two Houses, and the recommendation of a Fast Day extraordinary in London, their thoughts, like those of Parliament, were chiefly fixed on the issue of their joint embassy to Edinburgh.1

The Scots had foreseen the application. Three courses were before them. They might remain neutral; they might interfere as "redders," or mediators between the King and the English Parliament; or they might openly side with the Parliament and help it in the war. Great efforts had been made by the King to induce the Scots to the first course.2 Five or six of the Scottish noblemen who were with the King at Oxford had been sent back among their countrymen to labour for this end, All in vain. It had become clear to Argyle, Loudoun, Warriston, and the other Scottish leaders, that neutrality would be ruinous. Things were in this state when the Commissioners from the English Parliament and the Westminster Assembly arrived in Edinburgh (Aug. 7). The Scottish Convention of Estates was then still sitting; and the General Assembly of the Scottish Kirk, with Alexander Henderson again its Moderator (the third time he had been raised to this Presidency), was in the middle of its annual fortnight or so of Scottish ecclesiastical business

1 Lightfoot's Notes for July 1643; and my MS. chronology of events.

2 Burnet's Dukes of Hamilton (ed. 1852), pp. 279-298.

-one item of the business this time being, I find, "the late extraordinar multiplying of witches," especially in Fifeshire. Both the Convention and the Assembly had been anxiously waiting for the English Commissioners, and were delighted when they arrived. They were six in all-Sir William Armyn, Sir Harry Vane the younger, Mr. Hatcher, and Mr. Darley, from the Parliament; and Stephen Marshall and Philip Nye from the Westminster Divines. And what moving letters they brought with them-official letters from the Parliament and the Westminster Assembly to the Scottish Convention of Estates and General Assembly, and also a more private letter signed by about seventy English Divines! And how the Scots were impressed by the letters! The private letter of the seventy Divines in especial was "so lamentable" that, when it was read in the General Assembly, "it drew tears from many." And how all were struck by the ability and gravity of young Sir Harry Vane, and liked him and Stephen Marshall, but did not take so much to Mr. Nye, because of his known Independency! In short, in conferences between the English Commissioners and Commissioners appointed by the Scottish Convention and General Assembly to meet them, it was all arranged. There was, indeed, still some lingering question at first among the Scottish leaders whether it might not do to "go as redders or friends to both, without siding altogether with the Parliament;" but Warriston alone "did show the vanity of that notion and the impossibility of it." And so Vane and the other Commissioners could write to England that their mission had been successful, and that the armed aid of the Scottish nation might be expected.

Ay, but there was a special condition. The Commissioners had come to treat about "Scottish assistance to Parliament and a uniformity of religion," and it was the prospect held out in the second phrase that most reconciled the Scots to all that was involved in the first. The extension of Scottish Presbyterianism over all England and Ireland, or, at all events, the union of the two kingdoms in some common form of Church-government not essentially differing from Scottish