Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/302

294 the parish churches; for the puritan clergy had received episcopal orders, as well as the rest. But soon after the rebellion broke out, the term puritan gradually dropped, and that of presbyterian succeeded; which sect was in two or three years established in all its forms, by what they called an ordinance of the lords and commons, without consulting the king, who was then at war against his rebels. And from this period, the church continued under persecution, until monarchy was restored in the year 1660.

In a year or two after we began to hear of a new party risen, and growing in the parliament as well as the army, under the name of independent: it spread indeed somewhat more in the latter, but not equal with the presbyterians, either in weight or number, until the very time the king was murdered.

When the king, who was then a prisoner in the isle of Wight, had made his last concessions for a peace to the commissioners of the parliament, who attended him there; upon their return to London they reported his majesty's answer in the house. Whereupon a number of moderate members, who, as Ludlow says, had secured their own terms with that prince, managed with so much art, as to obtain a majority in a thin house for passing a vote, that the king's concessions were a ground for a future settlement. But the great officers of the army, joining with the discontented members, came to a resolution of excluding all those who had consented to that vote; which they executed in a military way. Ireton told Fairfax the general, a rigid presbyterian, of this resolution; who thereupon issued his