It has always been a matter of surprise, both at the time and since, that King Charles attached so much importance to the maintenance of Episcopacy, even more than to the preservation of his military prerogative. In one of his letters to his wife he writes that a King of England, even if he remains in possession of military power, will have but little enjoyment of it, so long as obedience is not preached from the pulpits, and that this can never be obtained from the Presbyterians: for their view was to wrest from the crown its ecclesiastical authority, and place it in the hands of Parliament, and also to introduce the doctrine that the supreme power belongs to the people, that the prince may be called to account and punished by them, and that resistance to him is a lawful thing. To these views and doctrines Charles I would not submit, being every moment conscious that he was contending for right by the grace of God, for the old personal authority of the crown.

Even in the condition of strict imprisonment in which he was kept, he still possessed power, and felt it. The Lower House changed a number of the propositions rejected by him—for instance the abolition of Episcopacy, and the arrangements about the military authority—into ordinances; but laws they could not become without the King's assent: it was felt to be of some importance to obtain it from him.