40, 41.

Kennet, p.

787.
By this bold step, unprecedented in England for many years, and scarcely ever heard of in peaceable times, the commons attacked at once all the king's favorite maxims of government; his cautious and pacific measures, his lenity towards the Romish religion, and his attachment to the Spanish alliance, from which he promised himself such mighty advantages.
But what most disgusted him was, their seeming invasion of his prerogative, and their pretending, under color of advice, to direct his conduct in such points as had ever been acknowledged to belong solely to the management and direction of the sovereign.

He was at that time absent at Newmarket; but as soon as he heard of the intended remonstrance of the commons, he wrote a letter to the speaker, in which he sharply rebuked the house for openly debating matters far above their reach and capacity; and he strictly forbade them to meddle with any thing that regarded his government, or deep matters of state, and especially not to touch on his son's marriage with the daughter of Spain, nor to attack the honor of that king, or any other of his friends and confederates.

In order the more to intimidate them, he mentioned the imprisonment of Sir Edwin Sandys; and though he denied that the confinement of that member had been owing to any offence committed in the house, he plainly told them, that he thought himself fully entitled to punish every misdemeanor in parliament, as well during its sitting as after its dissolution; and that he intended thenceforward to chastise any man whose insolent behavior there should minister occasion of offence.[*] This violent letter, in which the king, though he here imitated former precedents, may be thought not to have acted altogether on the defensive, had the effect which might naturally have been expected from it: the commons were inflamed, not terrified.