That I consented to the Bil of putting the Bishops out of the House of Peers, was done with a firm perswasion of their contentedness to suffer a present diminution in their Rights and Honour for my sake, and the Commonweals, which I was confident they would readily yeeld unto, rather then occasion (by the least obstruction on their part) any dangers to Me, or to my Kingdom. That I cannot add my consent for the totall extirpation of that Government (which I have often offered to all fit regulations) hath so much further tie upon My Conscience, as what I think Religious and Apostolicall, and so very sacred and Divine, is not to be dispensed with, or destroyed, when what is onely of civill Favour, and priviledge of Honour granted to men of that Order, may with their consent who are concerned in it, be annulled.
This is the true state of those obstructions pretended to be in point of Justice and Authority of Parliament; when I call God to witness, I know none of such consequence as was worth speaking of a War, being onely such as Justice, Reason and Religion had made in my own and other mens Consciences.
Afterwards indeed a great shew of Delinquents was made, which were but consequences necessarily following upon Mine, or others withdrawing from, or defence against violence: but those could not be the first occasion of raising an Army against Me. Wherein I was so far from preventing them, (as they have declared often, that they might seem to have the advantage and Justice of the defensive part, and load Me with all the envie and injuries of first assaulting them) that (God knows) I had not so much as any hopes of an Army in My thoughts. Had the Tumults been honourably and effectually repressed by exemplary justice, and the Liberty of the Houses so vindicated, that all Members of either House might with Honour and Freedom, becoming such a Senate, have come and discharged their Consciences, I had obtained all that I designed by My withdrawing, and had much more willingly and speedily returned, then I retired; this being My necessity driving, the other my choice desiring.
But some men knew, I was like to bring the same Judgment and Constancy which I carryed with Me, which would never fit their designes; and so while they invited Me to come, and grievously complained of My absence, yet they could not but be pleased with it: especially, when they had found out that plausible and popular pretexts of raising an Army to fetch in Delinquents: when all that while they never punished the greatest and most intolerable delinquencie of the Tumults, and their Exciters, which drave my Self, and so many of both Houses from their places, by most barbarous indignities; which yet in all Reason and Honour, they were as loath to have deserted, as those others were willing they should, that so they might have occasion to persecute them with the injuries of an Army, for not suffering more tamely the injuries of Tumults.