English to the Irish? They were subject to the King of England; but so also were the English to the King of Ireland.
A. This distinction is somewhat too subtile for common understandings.—In Scotland the Marquis of Montrose for the King, with a very few men and miraculous victories, had overrun all Scotland, where many of his forces (out of too much security) were permitted to be absent for awhile; of which the enemy having intelligence, suddenly came upon them, and forced them to fly back into the Highlands to recruit; where he began to recover strength, when he was commanded by the King (then in the hands of the Scots at Newcastle) to disband; and *so* he departed from Scotland by sea.
In the end of the same year, 1646, the Parliament caused the King’s Great Seal to be broken; also the King was brought to Holmeby, and there kept by the Parliament’s commissioners. And here was an end of that war as to England and Scotland, but not to Ireland. About this time also died the Earl of Essex, whom the Parliament had *formerly* discarded.
B. Now that there was peace in England, and the King in prison, in whom was the sovereign power?
A. The right was certainly in the King, but the exercise was yet in nobody; but contended for, as in a game at cards, without fighting, all the years 1647 and 1648, between the Parliament and Oliver Cromwell, lieutenant-general to Sir Thomas Fairfax.
*B. What cards could Cromwell have for it?
A.* You must know: that when King Henry VIII. abolished the pope’s authority here, and took upon him to be the head of this Church, the bishops, as they could not resist him, so neither were they discontented with it. For whereas before the pope allowed not the bishops to claim jurisdiction in their dioceses jure divina, that is of right immediately from God, but by the gift and authority of the pope, now that the pope was ousted, they made no doubt
