Parliament (Nov. 1640) there had been a grand Committee of the Commons,
of which Mr. White, member for Southwark, was chairman, for inquiring
into the scandalous immoralities of the clergy, and an acting Sub-
committee, of which Mr. White also was chairman, for considering how
scandalous ministers might be removed, and real preaching ministers put
in their places. By the action of these committees month after month--
receiving and duly investigating complaints brought against clergymen,
either of scandalous lives or of notoriously Laudian opinions and
practices--a very large number of clergymen had been placed on the black
books, and some actually ejected, before the commencement of the war.
But, after the war began, sharper action became necessary. For now the
Parliament had to provide for what were called "the plundered ministers"
--_i.e._ for those Puritan ministers who, driven from their parsonages
in various parts of the country by the King's soldiers, had to flock into
London, with their families, for refuge and subsistence. A special
Committee of the Commons had been appointed (Dec. 1642) to devise ways
and means for the relief of these "godly and well-affected ministers;"
and, as was natural, the proceedings of this Committee had become inter-
wound with those of the Committee for the ejection of scandalous
ministers--Mr. White at the head of the whole agency. And so, in the
Commons, we hear ultimately of such determinations as these respecting
"scandalous ministers:"--July 3,1643: "Ordinance to be prepared to enable
the Committees (for sequestration) in the several counties to sequester
their livings;"--July 27: "the Committee for plundered Ministers to
consider of informations against them and to put them to the proof;"--
Sept. 6: "Deputy Lieutenants and Committees in the counties empowered to
examine witnesses against them." The result was the beginning of that
"great and general purgation of the clergy in the Parliament's quarters"
about which there was such an outcry among the Royalists at the time, and
which, after having been a rankling memory in the High Church heart for