The rapid progress of the royalists threatened the parliament with immediate subjection: the factions and discontents among themselves in the city, and throughout the neighboring counties, prognosticated some dangerous division or insurrection.

Those parliamentary leaders, it must be owned, who had introduced such mighty innovations into the English constitution, and who had projected so much greater, had not engaged in an enterprise which exceeded their courage and capacity.

Great vigor, from the beginning, as well as wisdom, they had displayed in all their counsels; and a furious, headstrong body, broken loose from the restraint of law, had hitherto been retained in subjection under their authority, and firmly united by zeal and passion, as by the most legal and established government.

A small committee, on whom the two houses devolved their power, had directed all their military operations, and had preserved a secrecy in deliberation, and a promptitude in execution, beyond what the king, notwithstanding the advantages possessed by a single leader, had ever been able to attain.
Sensible that no jealousy was by their partisans entertained against them, they had on all occasions exerted an authority much more despotic than the royalists, even during the pressing exigencies of war, could with patience endure in their sovereign.

Whoever incurred their displeasure, or was exposed to their suspicions, was committed to prison, and prosecuted under the notion of delinquency: after all the old jails were full, many new ones were erected; and even the ships were crowded with the royalists, both gentry and clergy, who anguished below decks, and perished in those unhealthy confinements: they imposed taxes, the heaviest and of the most unusual nature, by an ordinance of the two houses; they voted a commission for sequestrations; and they seized, wherever they had power, the revenues of all the king's party;[*] and knowing that themselves, and all their adherents, were, by resisting the prince, exposed to the penalties of law, they resolved, by a severe administration, to overcome those terrors, and to retain the people in obedience by penalties of a more immediate execution.