The party of the parliament was now triumphant, and the question of religion again became the subject of dispute. The Presbyterians had been establishing a sort of tyranny over men's minds, and sought to proscribe all other sects, till their intolerance gradually raised up a strong and general feeling of resistance. Since 1643 a brisk war of political pamphlets had been carried on between the Presbyterians and their opponents, when, in 1647, the Independents, whose cause had been espoused by the army, gained the mastery. "Sir John Presbyter" or to use the more familiar phrase, "Jack Presbyter," furnished a subject for frequent satire, and the Presbyterians were not slow in returning the blow. In the collection in the British Museum we find a caricature which must have come from the Presbyterian party, entitled "Reall Persecution, or the Foundation of a general Toleration, displaied and portrayed by a proper emblem, and adorned with the same flowers wherewith the scoffers of this last age have strowed their libellous pamphlets." The group which occupies the middle part of this broadside, is copied in our cut No. 181. It has its separate title, "The Picture of an English Persecutor, or a foole-ridden ante-Presbeterian sectary." (I give the spelling as in the original.) Folly is riding on the sectarian, whom he holds with a bridle, the sectarian having the ears of an ass. The following homely rhymes are placed in the mouth of Folly,--
_Behould my habit, like my witt, Equalls his on whom sitt._
Anti-Presbyterian is, as will be seen, dressed in the height of the fashion, and says--
_My cursed speeches against Presbetry Declares unto the world my foolery._
The mortification of the Presbyterians led in Scotland to the proclamation of Charles II. as king, and to the ill-fated expedition which ended in the battle of Worcester in 1651, when satirical pamphlets, ballads, and caricatures against the Scottish Presbyterians became for a while very popular. One of the best of the latter is represented in our cut No. 182. Its object is to ridicule the conditions which the Presbyterians exacted from the young prince before they offered him the crown. It is printed in the middle of the broadside, in prose, published on the 14th of July, 1651, with the general title, "Old Sayings and Predictions verified and fulfilled, touching the young King of Scotland and his gude subjects." The picture has its separate title, "The Scots holding their young kinges nose to the grinstone." followed by the lines--