The Presbyterians found themselves. deceived. Charles was himself a good-natured sensualist, secretly fond of the Romish Church, to which he conformed on his deathbed. But had he been disposed to be indulgent to Puritanism, the wave of the Anglican Reaction, which rose higher day by day; the Reaction in which a tender sențiment of loyalty to the family of the King was mingled with resentment against the party by whose instrumentality his father had been brought to the block, and with love to the Church, which had fallen with the throne, might have hindered him from carrying out his inclination. The anti-Puritan measures had the potent support of Clarendon. The Savoy Conference, in May, 1661, between twenty-one Anglican, and as many Presbyterian divines, after acrimonious debates, in which the Churchmen showed no disposition to come to an accommodation with their opponents, which would have retained in the Church a vast number of able and useful ministers, broke up without any result. Thus another great opportunity for Comprehension, for converting the Anglican establishment into a Broad Church, in which, with uniformity in essentials, there should be room for diversity in things of less moment, was thrown away. The Episcopal system was re-instated by Parliament. It was required that all ministers who had not been ordained by bishops should receive episcopal ordination; that all ministers should make a declaration of unfeigned assent and consent to the Prayer-book and to the whole system of the Church of England, should take the oath of canonical obedience, abjure the Solemn League and Covenant, and, moreover, solemnly abjure the doctrine of the lawfulness of taking up arms against the King or any commissioned by him, on any pretense whatsoever. Two thousand ministers many of whom were among the best in the kingdom, men like Richard Baxter- who refused to comply with the terms. of the Act of Uniformity, were in one day, in 1662, ejected

EJECTION OF PURITAN MINISTERS.

443

from their livings. This hard measure may, to be sure, be looked upon as a retaliation for what was done to the Episcopal clergy under the Long Parliament. But those who rejected the Covenant received a fifth of the income of their places, for the supply of their immediate necessities. In their case, also, there was a great political division, a civil war in which the ejected ministers were against the Parliament; while the ministers who were driven from their parishes in 1662 were loyal supporters of Charles, without whom he might never have obtained his throne.

Whoever would form a vivid idea of the demoralization of the English Court, should read the Diaries of Pepys and Evelyn, both of them Royalists, and the latter a man of elevated character, as well as of high culture. Men who had risked their lives for the fallen dynasty, but who retained some respect for morality and decency, were compelled to hide their heads with mortification at the shameless profligacy that was encouraged by the example of the King.

In 1670, Charles II. entered into the secret treaty with Louis XIV., which has been described as "a coalition against the Protestant faith and the liberties of Europe." It was agreed that Charles, at the fitting time, should avow himself a Catholic, and, with the help of Louis, establish the Catholic religion and absolute government

1 Documents relating to the Settlement of the Church of England by the Act of Uniformity, 1662. (London, 1862.) This is a valuable compilation. An excellent monograph on the Restoration in its ecclesiastical aspects, is the work of Stoughton, Church and State Two Hundred Years Ago: From 1660 to 1663 (1862). The Life and Times of Richard Baxter, is a most instructive and entertaining contemporaneous authority. Baxter played a prominent part in the events of the period. If his scholarship was not accurate, his reading was vast. His mind was acute and fertile, and his piety was honored by his adversaries. But in public affairs, he was singularly destitute of tact, and he had a most exaggerated faith in the efficacy of disputations and of "a few necessary distinctions," where hostile parties were to be reconciled. On the treatment of Baxter and his associates in 1662, there are good remarks by Coleridge in his Notes on the Old Divines, in the section: Notes on Baxter's Life of Himself.

in England. In return, Charles was to help Louis in his ambitious designs upon the Netherlands. The dominions of Spain in America were, if practicable, at a later day, to be divided between the two contracting powers. It is hardly probable that Louis expected to carry out the plot contained in this treaty, so far as the forcible establishment of the Catholic religion in England is concerned. It was enough for him, if the King and Parliament remained in a constant disagreement, and if England could be at least prevented from interfering with his schemes of conquest. The hesitation of Charles about professing his Catholicism retarded the movement for the accomplishment of the treaty. Strenuous opposition had sprung up in Parliament to the King, and especially to his brother, the Duke of York, who was an avowed Catholic. Fresh severities against Dissenters were undertaken, for the purpose of conciliating the Anglican clergy. The real designs and policy of Charles became evident, after the commencement of the war against Holland. In 1673, a Declaration of Indulgence, suspending the penal laws against Dissenters, was issued, for the purpose of winning their support, or of deluding them into a false sense of security. Charles II. died in 1685.

James II., with the same subservience to foreign powers, and the same arbitrary notions of government which had belonged to his brother, was of a slower and more obstinate mind, and differed from Charles in cherishing a sincere and bigoted attachment to the Catholic religion. In 1686, the Court of High Commission, which had been abolished forever by the Long Parliament, was revived, and the notorious Jeffreys placed at its head. Finding that the Episcopalians were not to be won by the persecution of the Puritans, the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience was issued in 1687, for the sake of enlisting the Dissenters in behalf of his scheme of arbitrary government. However just the measure might be, it involved

REVOLUTION OF 1688.

445 in itself a violent stretch of prerogative. But it was recognized as a part of a scheme, which, if accomplished, would bring upon Nonconformists and Churchmen alike a renewal of persecution in the most unrelenting form. The combination of parties, which was produced by the plot of James for subverting the Protestant religion and establishing Popery, gave rise to the Revolution of 1688, and the establishment of William of Orange upon the throne, who had married the eldest daughter of James, and had defended Holland and Protestantism against the assaults of Louis XIV. At the accession of William and Mary, says Hallam, "the Act of Toleration was passed with little difficulty, though not without murmurs of the bigoted Churchmen. It exempts from the penalties of existing statutes against separate conventicles, or absence from the established worship, such as should take the oath of allegiance and subscribe to the Declaration against Popery, and such ministers of separate congregations as should subscribe the thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, except three, and a part of a fourth. It gives, also, an indulgence to Quakers, without this condition. Meeting-houses are required to be registered, and are protected from insult by a penalty. No part of this toleration is extended to Papists, or such as deny the Trinity." The subscription to the Articles of Faith was practically dispensed with; "though,” adds Hallam, "such a genuine toleration as Christianity and philosophy alike demand, had no place in our statute book before the reign of George III."

The ministry of William III., when they introduced the Toleration Act, introduced, also, a Comprehension Bill, which released Nonconformists from the necessity of subscribing the Articles and Homilies, and delivered them from the obligation to fulfill certain ceremonies that were most obnoxious. Had this scheme been adopted, Presbyterians would have been admitted to the charge

of parishes without re-ordination. It failed by the force of the opposition to it in Convocation, to which it was referred. Moderate churchmen, like Tillotson, Burnet, Stillingfleet, Patrick, and Beveridge, were outnumbered by those who were resolutely averse to any modifications of the Prayer-book. The measure was lost, partly from the strength of this Anti-Puritan feeling, partly from the fact that Independents, Baptists, and Quakers were left out of the arrangement, which was shaped for the benefit of the Presbyterian ministers exclusively. The fear of strengthening the Church too much, which was apt to be an ally of arbitrary government, influenced, in some degree, the minds of certain statesmen. The great danger connected with this measure, a danger that was better appreciated afterwards, was that of giving a great augmentation of strength to the party of non-jurors, who had forfeited their benefices rather than acknowledge the new dynasty, and who, had the Liturgy been remodeled, might have grown into a powerful sect. It is stated, also, by Hallam and Macaulay, that the Presbyterian ministers, who at the head of large churches in London, had a much higher and more comfortable station than fell to the lot of the degenerate and often ill-treated parish clergy, were lukewarm in favoring the adoption of the scheme, if not decidedly opposed to it. That they took this position is, however, questioned by other wellinformed writers.1

The Revolution of 1688 led to the permanent establishment of the Presbyterian as the national Church of Scotland.2 Under Charles II., Episcopacy was estab lished by law in Scotland, although some latitude was granted, under the name of Indulgence, with regard to the forms of public worship. A fierce resistance was made

1 Vaughan, p. 461. The character of the scheme and the proceedings of Convocation are fully described by Macaulay, iii. 424 seq.

2 See Hallam, Const. Hist., ch. xvii. Macaulay, Hist. of England (Harpers' Am. ed.), i. 172; ii. 103 seq.; 115 seq., 192; iii. 225, 622.