Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/119

 of church government. The “device,” according to Prynne, was dropped out of the petition by the common council of London when the petition was submitted to the council for presentation. To Prynne and Bastwick, Lilburne appeared to be the leader of a coterie of desperate Independents who plotted to elect their adherents to Parliament, dissolve the Assembly, overthrow the Presbyterians, and destroy the peerage and all ranks and orders in the state.

Charges and counter charges of treasonable correspondence with Oxford marked the height to which party jealousy had arisen. Similar charges had clustered around the names of individual Parliament members since the beginning of the war; and now neither Presbyterians nor Independents