The king was determined to proceed with violence in the prosecution of this affair.

The bishop himself he resolved to punish for disobedience to his commands; and the expedient which he employed for that purpose, was of a nature at once the most illegal and most alarming.
* D'Avaux, January 10, 1687.
Among all the engines of authority formerly employed by the crown, none had been more dangerous or even destructive to liberty, than the court of high commission, which, together with the star chamber, had been abolished in the reign of Charles I.by act of parliament; in which a clause was also inserted, prohibiting the erection, in all future times, of that court, or any of a like nature.

But this law was deemed by James no obstacle; and an ecclesiastical commission was anew issued, by which seven commissioners[*] were vested with full and unlimited authority over the church of England.
* The persons named were, the archbishop of Canterbury, Sancroft; the bishop of Durham, Crew; of Rochester, Sprat; the earl of Rochester, Sunderland, Chancellor Jeffries, and Lord Chief Justice Herbert.

The archbishop refused to act and the bishop of Chester was substituted in his place.
On them were bestowed the same inquisitorial powers possessed by the former court of high commission: they might proceed upon bare suspicion; and the better to set the law at defiance, it was expressly inserted in their patent itself, that they were to exercise their jurisdiction, notwithstanding any law or statute to the contrary.

The king's design to subdue the church was now sufficiently known; and had he been able to establish the authority of this new-erected court, his success was infallible.