39 8 HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN.

6 ii a r.

LVII.

r«45-

Executionof Laad.

war should not be exercised without the consentof that assembly The prestjyterians, it must beconfessed, after insisting on such conditions, differedonly in words from the independents, who re-quired the establishment of a pure republic. Whenthe debates had been carried on to no purpose,during twenty days, among the commissioners,they separated, and returned; those of the king,to Oxford, those of the parliament, to London.

A little before the commencement of thisfruitless treaty, a deed was executed by the parlia-ment , which proved their determined resolutionto yield nothing, but to proceed in the sameviolent and imperious manner, with which theyhad, at first, entered on these dangerous enterpri-ses. Archbishop Laud, the most favored ministerof the king, was brought to the scaffold ; and inthis instance, the public might fee, that popularassemblies, as, by their very number, they are,in a great measure , exempt from the restraint ofshame, so, when they also overleap the boundsof law, naturally break out into acts of the greatesttyranny and injustice.

From the time, that Laud had been committed,the house of commons, engaged in enterprises ofgreater moment, had found no leisure to finishhis impeachment; and he had patiently enduredso long an imprisonment, without being broughtto any trial. After the union \yith Scotland , thebigotted prejudices of that nation revived the like

" Rusli. vol. vi, p. 8;o- Dugdale, p. 7; 7.