This, says Clarendon, was an arrow out of their own quiver, which the Commons did not expect; and though it was a legitimate consequence of the impeachments of Strafford, Laud, and others, they endeavoured to set it at defiance. The Parliament and its army were, in fact, come to the pass which the brave old Royalist, Sir Jacob Astley, had foreseen when he surrendered his regiment at Stowe, in 1646:--"You have done your work, my masters, and may go and play, unless you will fall out amongst yourselves."
The army, to settle the matter, marched from St. Albans to Uxbridge, and at that sight the eleven members withdrew from the House of Commons, and the Commons assumed a modest and complying behaviour, voting the army under Fairfax to be the real army of England and worthy of all respect. They sent certain proposals to Fairfax, which induced him to remove his headquarters from Uxbridge to Wycombe. The eleven members, looking on this as a degree of submission to Parliament, immediately plucked up courage, and Holles and the rest appeared in their places, preferring charges in return against the officers, and demanding a fair trial. But they soon perceived their mistake, and, soliciting the Speaker's leave of absence and his passport to go out of the kingdom, disappeared.
The struggle between the army and Parliament--that is, between the Presbyterian and Independent interests--was all this time raging. For six weeks the army was advancing or retiring, according as the Parliament acted; the Parliament only giving way through intimidation. According as affairs stood, the City was either peaceful or in alarm, now shutting its shops, now carrying on much negotiation; the army lying still near, and paid more regularly, out of terror, by the Parliament. At length the army had so far succeeded as to have the insulting declaration of Holles--"the blot of ignominy"--erased from the journals of the House, and the ordinance of the 4th of May--procured by Holles--for the placing of the militia of the City in more exclusively Presbyterian hands--revoked. But towards the end of July the strong Presbyterian element in London was again in such ferment that it forgot its terrors of the army, and proceeded to daring extremities. The Presbyterian faction demanded that conventicles--that is, the meeting-houses of all classes, except Presbyterians--should be closed, and called on the citizens to meet in Guildhall to hear the Covenant read, and sign an engagement--soldiers, sailors, citizens, and apprentices--to drive away the army and bring the king to Westminster, and make a treaty with him. A hundred thousand signatures were put to this paper, and had the courage been half as great as the bluster the army had been swept to destruction. On the 26th of July, a few days afterwards, a vast rabble surrounded the Houses of Parliament, calling on both Lords and Commons to restore the order regarding the City militia; they crowded into the Houses with their hats on, crying, "Vote! vote!" and their numbers keeping the doors open. Under this intimidation both Lords and Commons voted the restoration of the Presbyterian ordinance for the change of the militia, and adjourned to Friday.