England’s present discontents, with the King gathering an army in the North to glower at that of Parliament mustering in Northampton, is largely the fault of seditious sermons preached by “coachmen, felt-makers, and such mechanic persons,” Charles said in a proclamation issued on August 12.

The King, in a rambling, tedious discourse that even a close advisor admitted was “very long,” complained that “factious persons” in Parliament, driven by “ill and ambitious ends,” allowed the preaching of the Word of God to be turned into “a license of libeling, and reviling both Church and State, and venting such seditious positions as by the law of the land were no less than treason.”

The King issued the proclamation before he and his entourage departed York for Nottingham, where he intends on August 22 to raise his standard and call upon "all well-affected persons on the north side of Trent to repair" and join him "for the suppression of the rebellion."