Note 193 — Chapter V
Reading edition
The following letter by Sydney Bere, secretary to Sir Balthazar Gerbier, afterwards to Sir H. Vane, is preserved in the State Paper Office.
"Whitehall, 17th June, 1641.
"You will surely have heard that the utter abolishing of the bishops and all titular ecclesiastics, with the dependents, hath been agreed upon in the House of Commons, and met with less noes in the debate than the business of the Earl of Strafford had. This day they voted it again, and now it is to be engrossed, a draft of the Act goes herewith.
"The business of the bishops will be of dangerous consequence, they being violent and passionate in their own defence, and having engaged, as it were, the Lords, by their late votes in their favour, to the maintenance of their cause; whereas the Commons seem as resolute to pass the Bill for their utter extirpation, and so transmitting it to the Lords, according to the custom; and then it may be justly inferred the city will prove as turbulent as they were on Strafford's cause."
Sidney Bere became under-secretary upon the appointment of Nicholas, in November, to the chief secretaryship of state.