of toleration; but when the cry for persecution became too pressing, the desire for ease which prompted all his actions made him yield to it, even as Cromwell, for all his firmness of will, had ultimately given way. This tolerant disposition has already been seen in the grant of the commission to General Middleton in September, 1656, previously mentioned. The promise of protection to the Jews contained in it was only an extension of the terms of the Treaty made with Spain in the spring of the same year, as the price of her assistance for his restoration, by which he agreed to suspend and, if possible, secure the parliamentary revocation of all penal laws. In the same spirit in the Declaration of Breda, issued at the time of his restoration, he says: "And because the passion and uncharitableness of the times have produced several opinions in Religion, by which men are engaged in parties and animosities against each other (which when they shall hereafter unite in a freedom of convocation, will be composed, or better understood), we do declare a Liberty to tender consciences, and that no man shall be disquieted or called in question for differences of opinion in matter of Religion, which do not disturb the peace of the kingdom; and we shall be ready to consent to such an Act of Parliament, as, upon mature deliberation, shall be offered to us, for the full granting that indulgence."

Parlia

toleration.

The Convention Parliament, by which Charles had been The Conre-called, did not pass any legislation on the subject of vention religion. The House of Commons contained many sup- ment and porters of the old régime, who preferred the Presbyterian Church government established under the Commonwealth to the Church of England as formerly established, and when the question came up for discussion in the House, the king was requested to convene a select number of divines to treat concerning the affair. As a result of the conference a Declaration concerning ecclesiastical affairs was issued. It provided modifications in Church government which were a compromise between the views of the

The new

Parliament, 1661.

Episcopalians and the Puritans, and further renewed the promise of toleration contained in the Declaration of Breda, in the self same terms1. The Declaration was presented to Parliament. The House of Commons thanked the king for it, and a bill embodying it and turning it into law was presented and read a first time; but the toleration was thought too wide, and the bill rejected on the second reading by 183 to 157 votes2.

At the end of the year the Parliament was dissolved, and in the spring of the following year the elections for the new House of Commons were held. A wave of loyalty, such as has been seldom experienced, swept over the country. The Cavaliers were everywhere successful; the Puritans everywhere defeated, and when Charles met his Parliament in May, he was confronted by a House of Commons which might truly be called "plus royalist que le roi." "The divine right of kings," "Church and State,” were the mottoes and watchwords of the newly-elected representatives of the people. The Church was to be purged of all dissenting elements, and life in the State to be made endurable only to those who owned allegiance to the doctrines of the national Church. Accordingly, the first thing done by the House of Commons, after the election of Sir Edward Members Turner as their Speaker, was to order all the members to ordered to take the Sacrament according to the old Liturgy, on pain of expulsion, and then, in conjunction with the Lords, to order that "The solemn League and Covenant" should be burned by the common hangman at Westminster and in the City, and that all copies thereof be taken down out of all churches, chapels, and all other public places in the kingdom. Moreover, the first law that it added to the statute

take the Sacrament.

1 Baxter, the leading Puritan divine, desired to exclude from the general toleration those who denied the Trinity and Papists, as had been done in Cromwell's time by both the Instrument of Government and the humble Petition and Advice, but the king, mindful of his promises, published the Declaration without this restrictive clause.

2 See Cobbett's Parliamentary History, vol. IV, pp. 79, 82, 131-42,

152-4.

Act.

book, was "an Act for the well-governing and regulating of Corporations," commonly called the Corporation Act, by The Corporation which no one was eligible to hold any corporate office or Act. be a member of any municipal corporation who should not, in addition to taking certain oaths and making certain declarations set out in the Act," have within one year next before his election taken the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the rites of the Church of England 1." Thus all Nonconformists, of whatsoever creed or sect, were placed under a political disability, which was not removed till the year 1828. This was immediately followed by an Act restoring the bishops to their seats in the Upper House. The next measure passed this session to which attention The must be directed was the Quakers' Act, the passage of Quakers' which was delayed in the Lords, who "had not stomachs strong enough to digest quite so fast as the Commons furnished them with this sort of food." The objection of the Lords had been that the penalties of the bill extended to others besides Quakers, but after a conference between the Houses the bill was passed. It made penal a refusal to take an oath when lawfully tendered, or maintaining that the taking of oaths was unlawful, and also "if the said persons commonly called Quakers shall at any time depart from the places of their several habitations and assemble themselves to the number of five or more of the age of sixteen years or upwards at any one time in any place under pretence of joining in a religious worship not authorized by the laws of this realm." The penalties were five pounds for the first and ten pounds for the second offence, and any one found guilty after two previous convictions, was to abjure the realm, or otherwise be transported to any of the plantations beyond the seas. This Act was not repealed until 1812, after having been on the statute-book more than a century and a half. It may

1 13 Car. II, stat. 2, cap. 1, in force till 1828, when it was virtually repealed by 9 Geo. IV, cap. 17, and finally repealed by 34 & 35 Vict., cap. 48 (the Promissory Oaths Act, 1871).

K

The Act of Uniformity, 1662.

First De

of Indul

1662.

be remarked that it was fortunate for the Jews that their name was not coupled with the Quakers, as it has been in several subsequent Acts of the legislature1.

The other Act of this session that it is necessary to mention is the Act of Uniformity (13 & 14 Car. II, cap. 4), which ordained the exclusive use of the newly-revised Prayer-book in all places of public worship, and rendered incapable of holding any benefice all who had not been episcopally ordained. Moreover, all professors, tutors of colleges, and schoolmasters keeping any public or private school, were required to subscribe a declaration, which included a promise to "conform to the Liturgy of the Church of England, as it is now by law established," and schoolmasters or tutors in private houses, though not compelled to sign this declaration, had to obtain a licence from the bishop of the diocese before exercising their calling, under pain of suffering three months imprisonment," without bail or mainprize," for each offence. It is to be noted that these last provisions, though allowed to become obsolete, were not repealed till the year 1846.

The Act of Uniformity came into force on St. Barthoclaration lomew's Day (Aug. 24), 1662. Its effect was not only to gence, drive more than 3,000 ministers from their livings, but also, as the earlier legislation punishing non-attendance at church was now revived, to expose Dissenters of every description to severe pains and penalties. In order to prevent the execution of these cruel laws, the king, on December 20, issued "a declaration to all his loving subjects," in which, among other things, he repels the charge of not performing the promises of toleration made at Breda, as to which he says: "We remember well the confirmations of them since upon several occasions in parliament; and as all these things are still fresh in our memory, so are we still firm in the resolution of performing them to the full. But it must not be wondered at,

1 The Act is 13 & 14 Car. II, cap. 1, the repealing Act 5a Geo. III, cap. 155. See Cobbett's Parl. Hist., vol. IV, p. 233.

since that parliament to which those promises were made in relation to an Act, never thought fit to offer us any to that purpose, and being so zealous as we are (and by the grace of God shall ever be) for the maintenance of the true Protestant religion, finding it so shaken (not to say overthrown) as we did, we should give its establishment the precedency before matters of indulgence to dissenters from it. But that once done (as we hope it is sufficiently. by the Bill of Uniformity) we are glad to lay hold on this occasion to renew unto all our subjects concerned in those promises of indulgence by a true tenderness of conscience, this assurance:

"That as in the first place we have been zealous to settle the uniformity of the Church of England, in discipline, ceremony, and government, and shall constantly maintain it;

So as for what concerns the penalties upon those who (living peaceable) do not conform thereunto through scruple and tenderness of misguided conscience; but modestly and without scandal perform their devotions in their own way, we shall make it our special care so far forth as in us lies, without invading the freedom of parliament, to incline their wisdom at this next approaching sessions, to concur with us in the making some such act for that purpose, as may enable us to exercise with a more universal satisfaction, that power of dispensing which we conceive to be inherent in us1."

In the face of this declaration we are not surprised to find that the penal laws were not strictly enforced, and that in particular cases, in which the declaration itself was not considered a general dispensation, the power of dispensing conceived to be inherent in the Crown was liberally exercised. Among the Cavaliers the declaration was unpopular, partly because toleration was disliked, but especially because it was thought that undue favour was shown to the Papists. The king referred to this matter in his speech

1 The whole Declaration is printed in Cardwell's Documentary Annals of the Church of England, vol. II, pp. 311-20.