426 The HISTORY of the PURITANS. Chap. I. KngJamesT. « Therefore the puritan miners offer (if his majefty will give them 1603. " leave) in one week's fpace to deliver his majefty in writing, a full anfwer tMl " to any argument or affection propounded in that conference by any pre- " late; and in the mean time they do aver them to be moft vain and " frivolous." . If the bithops had been men of moderation, or if the king had difco- vered any part ofthat wifdom he was flatteredwith, all parties might have been made eafy at this time; for the bithops in filch a crifis would have complied with any thing his majefty had infifled on; but the king's cowar- dice, his love of flattery, his high and arbitrary principles, and his mor- tal hatred of the puritans, loft one of the faireft opportunities that had ever offered, of healing the difTfönsof the church. Prodarnation On the 5th of March the king publifhed a proclamation, in which ta cXnflycecon- he fays, " that though the dottrine and difciplineof the eftablifhed church were unexceptionable, and agreeable to primitive antiquity, neverthe- ,< lefs he had given way to a conference, to hear the exceptions of the non-conformifts, which he had found very flender ; but that fome few " explanations of paffages had been yielded to for theirfatisfa&ion ; there- " e fore now he requires and enjoins all his fubjeds to conform to it, as " the only publick firm eflablifhed in this realm ; and admonifhes them " not to expect any further alterations, for that his refolutions were ab- " folutely fettled." The common-prayer-book was accordingly printed with the amendments, and the proclamation prefixed. It was a high (train of the prerogative, to alter a form of worfhip efla- blifhed by law, merely by a royal proclamation, without confent of par- liament or convocation ; for by the fame power that his majefty altered one article in the liturgy, he might fet afide the whole; every fentence being equally eftablifhed by att of parliament ; but this wife monarch made no fcruple of difpenfing with the laws. However the force of all proclamations determined with . the king's life, and there being no fubfequent a& of parliament to eftablifh thefe amendments, it was argued very juftly in the next reign, that this was not the liturgy of the church of England ßablifhed by law, and confequently not binding upon the clergy. Mr. Cart- A fortnight before this conference was held, died the learned and re- wrighr's verend Mr. Thomas Cartwright, one of the chief of the puritans, and a death and real fufferer for non-conformity. He was born in Hert ord ire t eharaaer. $ Y ÌÌh r 535 and entered into St. yohn's college Cambridge, i 55o. where he became a hard ftudent, never fleeping above five hours in a night. During the reign of queen .Mary he left the univerfity, and became a lawyer's clerk ; but upon the acceffion of queen Elizabeth be returned his theological ftudies,
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