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1658-62]

The Restoration

329

palians, who formed the bulk of the "malignants," and Presbyterians, who had also suffered defeat from him; and the confusion which followed on his death convinced the bulk of the nation that the only hope of good order was in the immediate recall of the King. So the Restoration was carried out by a coalition of the two parties which had always been opposed to toleration. Jeremy Taylor certainly advocated it in his Liberty of Prophesying (1647); but he is much the reverse of a typical Episcopalian, and even he does not keep clear of the sceptical argument that most questions are uncertain, which logically leads back to the old doctrine that truth (when certainly known) has a right to suppress error. So there was no more serious thought of toleration. Charles had promised from Breda (April 14, 1660) "a liberty to tender consciences," and that no man should be called in question for such religious opinions as do not disturb the peace of the kingdom. But this promise had to be put into shape by Parliament; and it soon appeared that comprehension, not toleration, was in view.

The Presbyterians were no longer the haughty Covenanters of twenty years before. Moderate men like Baxter tended to Presbyterianism as a via media between the Laudian churchmen and the fanatics of the Commonwealth. So now the mass of the party wanted only some ceremonies abolished and others made optional, freedom for extempore prayer, and the autocratic power of the Bishops limited by councils of presbyters. They flattered themselves that, if they brought back the King, they would be able to make their own terms with the Episcopalians, and then the united Church could put down the sects. A vigorous persecution of Quakers was set on foot before Venner's insurrection (January 6, 1661). The Convention Parliament, for which "malignants" had not been supposed to vote, held the balance fairly even, though it yielded more and more to the rising tide of royalism. But the new Parliament, which met in May, 1661, was almost entirely Cavalier. It began by imposing the Sacrament on its own members, and went on to pass the Corporation Act. By this all members of corporations were required (1) to swear (besides the oaths of allegiance and supremacy) "that it is not lawful on any pretence whatever to take arms against the King, and that I do abhor that traitorous position of taking arms by his authority against his person," as was done in 1642; (2) to declare the Covenant null and unlawful; (3) to have received the Sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England within a year before their election.

Presbyterianism as a political power was destroyed at once by its exclusion from the Commons and the corporations; but could it not still obtain some concessions in matters of religion? The answer was the Act of Uniformity (May 19, 1662). All persons in Holy Orders, all teachers in the Universities, and all public or private schoolmasters, were to make the same declarations as members of corporations, and all public ministers further to declare their "unfeigned assent and consent to all

330

The Act of Uniformity

[1662

and everything contained and prescribed" in the Book of Common Prayer recently revised; while all Orders not episcopal were made legally invalid. And the revision of the Book had not been conciliatory. The Bishops at the Savoy Conference refused nearly all the demands of the Presbyterians, and the concessions afterwards made by Convocation were not very important. Few of the "offences to tender consciences" were removed, and one or two more were added, such as the reading of Bel and the Dragon. Harsher still was the provision that the assent and consent must be declared before St Bartholomew's Day (August 24)- just before the half-year's tithes fell due. Some clergy were unable to make it, solely because the Book had not reached them in time. But if the Presbyterians got very little by the revision, the Laudians at the other end of the scale got nothing, for the amendments in that direction proposed by Sancroft were all rejected. The restored Church took its stand with the Articles unaltered, and the Liturgy very little changed from its form of 1559, or even from that of 1552.

Once again, and for the last time, England returned to the old ideal of a single national Church with no dissent allowed. And from that Church the Puritanism which had been struggling within it for the last century was now shut out by law. The national Church had been substantially national till it was narrowed into a party by Laud; and now it was condemned to remain a party in the nation—no doubt the strongest party, but still not more than a party; for one whole side of the religious life of the nation was driven into opposition. So persecution assumed a new character. Elizabeth might plead that the contest with Rome was in the main a struggle with foreign enemies for the very existence of Church and State in their national form; and even Laud might fairly say that the Puritans would put him down, if he did not put them down. But there was no excuse of self-defence in 1662. The mass of the Nonconformists were no enemies of the Church, and desired no great changes in it: and, had they been ever so evil-disposed, the Church was utterly beyond the reach of attack. Baxter would have had no more chance against it than Lodowick Muggleton. But, if there was no valid plea of self-defence, persecution was pure and simple revenge on the defeated party; and of mere revenge the better sort of churchmen would sooner or later be ashamed.

They were half ashamed all along. Even the Cavalier Parliament only passed the Act by a majority of six (186 to 180). The Lords would have exempted schoolmasters and allowed a maintenance to ejected ministers, as the Commonwealth had done, and Clarendon himself wished to give the King some power of dispensation; but the Commons would allow no change. The distress caused by the Act was great and widespread. Near two thousand ministers-including those already displaced by the old royalist incumbents- went out; and these were of the better sort, for of course all time-servers conformed. Thenceforth the

1662-7]

The contest under Charles II

331

controversy never rested till the Revolution. On the side of the Church were Sheldon's chaplains, first Thomas Tomkins, then Samuel Parker (James II's Bishop of Oxford, 1686) and men of learning like Richard Perrinchief and Herbert Thorndike. The main argument was rather political than religious. Nonconformists had been rebels before, and were still rebels at heart. The worst they got was less than they deserved, and they would not complain if they were honest men. Herbert Thorndike was more of a Laudian, and wanted the Catholic faith enforced, and the laws of the primitive Church within the first six General Councils. This, however, was not the general view of Sheldon and the Bishops. Roger L'Estrange, writing as a layman and a man of the world, refers to the answer of the Judges in 1604, that it was an offence " very near to treason and felony" to collect petitions in a public cause as the Puritans had done, in order to tell the King that, if he denied their suit, many thousands of his subjects would be discontented. The most remarkable position he takes is that the malcontents had perfect freedom of conscience already; because they were free to think what they pleased; but that freedom of action in religion must be absolutely at the command of the State. This last might have been a hint from Hobbes. On the other side were moderate men like Corbet, who advocated "an establishment, a limited toleration, and a discreet connivance." The limited toleration was meant to shut out the Roman Catholics, on the ground that it was part of their religion to kill kings, and to persecute all who differed from them. Later, in 1675, Herbert Croft, Bishop of Hereford, published The Naked Truth, which called out a host of answers. Croft saw no need of any Confession beyond the Apostles' Creed; and, as for ceremonies, the only wonder was that anyone thought it worth while to dispute about them.

One of the most effective charges against the Nonconformists was that they were disciples and allies of the Jesuits, who also held meetings in holes and corners, set up "enthusiastic " preaching, hated the Liturgy, and laboured for the overthrow of Church and State. In fact, the Church was a bulwark of Protestantism, and the Nonconformists themselves lamented that the separation weakened it in the critical times that followed. The Puritan controversy was very soon entangled with the Roman, and gradually became secondary to it. Catholic, so far as he had any serious belief at to France, which under Louis XIV was moving Romanising policy, very unlike that of Richelieu. reign resolves itself into a triangular contest of King, Commons and Nonconformists. The Commons are resolute for persecution; but they are also resolute for the liberties of England as they stood at the opening of the Civil War. The King is plotting to restore despotism and Romanism, leaning on French subsidies, and striving to win the Nonconformists to his plans by first letting loose the Commons to persecute

Charles II was a Roman all; and this drew him towards a distinctly So the history of his

332

The contest under Charles II

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[1662-7 them, then offering them an illegal dispensation which also covered the Roman Catholics. It was a hard choice for them; and the future of England turned very much on the question whether they would have sense enough to see that religious liberty is precarious without civil liberty. If the King gave them toleration for his own purposes, he could also revoke it for his own purposes.

Alongside of this triangular contest which brought politics into religion, there was another which had a more directly philosophical bearing, however little some of the combatants may have perceived it. The sharpest clash of the Civil War was that of men who thought Episcopacy needful and Calvinism false against men who thought Calvinism needful and Episcopacy sinful. These were the main parties, though the division was not sharp; for some Episcopalians like Hammond were decided Calvinists, and many of the later Presbyterians modified the Calvinism and allowed a limited Episcopacy. But, even so, the two parties were never the whole of the nation. There were always many who believed in, and perhaps fought for, one side or the other without regarding the difference as vital. The common intercourse of life was teaching moderate men of all parties a good deal of mutual respect; and intermarriages were not always unfortunate as in Milton's case. A good foundation is already laid for legal toleration, when the regret that a decent neighbour is on the wrong side is not because it will bring him to hell some day, but because it gets him into trouble now. And this was often the feeling, even as regards Roman Catholics.

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The larger number of these men went their own way without much regard to the reason of the thing; but, as others thought it out more or less distinctly, opinions from all sides drew together to form a third party in favour of toleration. The Puritan side contributed something. Baxter and Howe were not the only champions of past controversy who fell back in later life upon the simplest teaching of a common Christianity. On the Episcopalian side also we find a succession of conspicuous men more or less of this way of thinking, such as Chillingworth, John Hales, Jeremy Taylor (three friends of Laud), Hammond, Sir Thomas Browne, Wilkins and the Cambridge Platonists, Tillotson and Locke. Greatly as in many respects they differed from each other, they were as earnest in religion as any of the zealots, and all upheld toleration and respect for other men's conclusions. Nothing marks more clearly the change of feeling than the way Locke takes it as self-evident that the saving power of a religion is not to be reached by an assent of the old sort, but only by full belief in such religion.

Now that we have seen the forces at work in the transition period (1662-89), we can trace the history of their action. The first despair of the Nonconformists was soothed by a proclamation which announced the King's desire to exempt peaceable persons from the penalties of the Act. Next year (1663) a Bill was brought in enabling him to dispense

1663-73]

The Test Act

333

not only with the Act of Uniformity but with all other such Acts, and to grant such dispensation not only to Protestants but to Roman Catholic recusants. The aim was too clear. The Nonconformists themselves would not support the proposal, and the Commons took alarm. Next year (1664) they passed the first Conventicle Act, making penal all meetings of more than five persons (beyond a household, if any) for worship other than that prescribed by the Liturgy. And in 1665 they followed this up with the Five Mile Act, which forbade an ejected minister to come within five miles of any market-town or of any place where he used to minister aforetime, unless he took the oath of non-resistance, and further swore that he would at no time endeavour any alteration of government, either in Church or State. This completed Clarendon's work of persecution; for the second Conventicle Act (1670) was not passed till after his fall, and the Test Act, as we shall see, was not aimed chiefly at the Puritans.

Charles was watching his opportunity. The fall of Clarendon in 1667 made way for the Cabal and an attempt at comprehension. The scheme of 1668 bore the name of John Wilkins, one of the founders of the Royal Society, and a man of such eminence that his marriage with Cromwell's sister did not prevent his appointment to the see of Chester. Its chief novelty was that those ordained by presbyters were to receive imposition of hands from the Bishop with the form "Take thou legal authority"; so that it was not a re-ordination, but simply a calling according to the existing law. The scheme had strong support, but the Commons threw it out: nor would the King have cared to strengthen the Church.

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In 1670 came the secret Treaty of Dover. The first condition, that Charles should declare himself a Roman Catholic, had to be postponed; but the other- war with the United Provinces - could be taken up at once. Charles won over to it Ashley, the political advocate of the Nonconformists, by promising an illegal indulgence not extending to Roman Catholics (issued in 1672), while French subsidies enabled him to do without Parliament. But the Dutch held France and England together at bay so long that Parliament had to be summoned (1673). It met in a dangerous temper, for grave and just suspicions of a Romish plot were widespread, and yet could not be fully proved. They began by forcing the King to recall the Indulgence and promise that it should never be made a precedent. Their next step was a Test Act, of which the provisions and the results have been alike described in a previous chapter. It required from all persons in the employment of the State the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, a declaration against transubstantiation, and reception of the Sacrament according to the Liturgy. The Duke of York avowed himself a Roman Catholic; Clifford laid down the Treasurer's staff, and numbers of officials resigned their posts. Suspicion was now thoroughly roused, and deepened yearly. The

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