Church. The opponents of the latter stirred the people against them by
raising the cry of Arminianism and Papistry, and by representing them
as abettors of Rome and as hostile to the religious settlement that
had been accomplished. As a result of this controversy, in which the
king sided with Laud and the High Church party against the
Presbyterians and Calvinists,[10] Parliament, which supported the
Puritans, clamoured incessantly for the execution of the penal laws.

In the first Parliament, opened the day after Queen Henrietta's
arrival in England (1625) a petition was presented to the king praying
for the strict enforcement of the penal laws. Yielding to this
petition Charles issued a proclamation ordering the bishops and
officials to see that the laws were put into execution, but at the
same time he took care to let it be known that the extraction of fines
from the wealthy laymen and the imprisonment or transportation of
priests would be more agreeable to him than the infliction of the
death penalty. Louis XIII. and the Pope protested warmly against this
breach of a solemn agreement. Charles replied that he had bound
himself not to enforce the penal laws merely as a means of lulling the
suspicions of Rome and of securing a dispensation for his
marriage.[11] Still, though the queen's French household was
dismissed, the king did everything he could to prevent the shedding of
blood. The Parliamentarians, who were fighting for civil liberty for
themselves, were annoyed that any measure of liberty should be
conceded to their Catholic fellow-countrymen. They presented a
petition to Charles at the very time they were safeguarding their own
position by the Petition of Rights (1628) demanding that priests who
returned to England should be put to death, and that the children of
Catholic parents should be taken from their natural guardians and
reared in the Protestant religion.[12] Charles defended his own policy