Note 274 — Chapter X

Rushworth Abr. v. 266, and 296; where is an address to the king, intimating, if attentively considered, a little apprehension of popery and arbitrary power. Baillie says, in one of his letters, "The first day the Oxford parliament met, the king made a long speech; but many being ready to give in papers for the removing of Digby, Cottington, and others from court, the meeting was adjourned for some days."—i. 429. Indeed, the restoration of Cottington, and still more of Windebank, to the king's councils, was no pledge of protestant or constitutional measures. This opposition, so natural to parliaments in any circumstances, disgusted Charles. In one of his letters to the queen, he congratulates himself on being "freed from the place of all mutinous motions, his mongrel parliament." It may be presumed that some of those who obeyed the king's summons to Oxford were influenced less by loyalty than a consideration that their estates lay in parts occupied by his troops; of course the same is applicable to the Westminster parliament.