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complained to the King, and protested that all Acts passed during 
their absence should be null and void. This protest brought them 
into contact with the House of Commons, which being at the 
moment in no mood to bear with what it chose to consider an 
arrogant interference with its special duties, sent the thirteen 
protesting bishops prisoners to the Tower under a charge of high 
treason against that Honourable Assembly. Amongst them was 
Dr. William Pierce, Bishop of Bath and Wells. A Committee of 
the House was next named to receive evidence against him, and, 
as may be supposed, the earliest witnesses were the people of 
Beckington. But the Bishop always asserted that he had done 
nothing in that matter but by direction of the Archbishop, and 
had acted only as an obedient Diocesan to the orders of his 
Metropolitan* 
This determined conduct of the Parliament produced first an 
Act, passed reluctantly by the King, which deprived the bishops 
of their seats in the House of Lords, and so practically 
disestablished the English Church ; and afterwards in the heat 
and anger of actual war, in hatred of the “ Lordly Prelates” who 
held the office, caused the utter abolition of Episcopacy “ Root 
and Branch.” 
* Canterbury’s Doom. 
