Dr. Peter Heylyn--the admiring biographer of Archbishop Laud--was aware of the difficulty, at this crisis, of convoking the clergy after the ancient manner; and at the beginning of the month of March, 1661, he referred to it as raising sad thoughts in the hearts of those who wished for the peace and happiness of the English Sion.[202] The matter came before the Council Board at Whitehall, on the 10th of April; and it was then ordered, that the Lord Chancellor should direct the Clerk of the Crown to draw up the writs for Convocation in the usual form. This occurred more than a fortnight after the date of the Commission, and five days before the Commissioners were to meet. Clarendon remarks that at the time when the King "issued out his writs for convening the Parliament, he had likewise sent summons to the Bishops, for the meeting of the clergy in Convocation, which is the legal synod in England; _against the coming together whereof the Liturgy would be finished, which His Majesty intended to send thither to be examined, debated, and confirmed_. And then he hoped to provide, with the assistance of the Parliament, such a settlement in religion, as would prevent any disorder in the State upon those pretences."[203]
Not to dwell upon this instance of carelessness respecting dates--inasmuch as the writ for calling a Parliament is dated the 9th of March, and the summons for a Convocation the 11th of April--it is worth asking, what is meant by the Liturgy being finished against the coming together of Convocation? It could not mean that in the Conference the Liturgy was to be finished; for that would be contradicted by the whole policy of the Bishops. Surely it must mean that the King and his Minister intended that the Liturgy should be finished by the Bishops themselves, as it will afterwards appear, it really was by Cosin and others before Convocation met, without any regard to the transactions of the Conference; and if such was the case, the issue of the Conference is seen to have been determined at the commencement.
When the 15th of April arrived, the Commissioners came together--and the Presbyterians must have been as much vexed as the Anglicans would be pleased, not only with the treatment of the business of the Worcester House Declaration in the House of Commons, but with the prospect of Convocation meeting for business at the same time as they themselves were engaged in the appointed Conference. The Commissioners met upon unequal terms. All London was astir with the approaching Convocation; and the Officers of the Crown and of the Herald's College had just been busy in examining claims and searching precedents relative to the solemnity.