From the Picture by E. M. Ward, R.A.
In the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington.

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This announcement was received with an outburst of indignation by all parties except the Independents and the other Dissenters who partook of their ideas of general toleration. But the Presbyterians adhered to their ancient bigotry so firmly, that rather than Catholics should enjoy toleration, they were ready to forego it themselves. The Church, and a vast number of people of no religion at all, joined in the cry out of their hereditary alarm at Popery. The moment that the session of 1663 opened, on the 18th of February, both houses attacked the Declaration, and the Commons, though the Bill was not before them, sent an address to the king, thanking him for the other parts of the Declaration, but represented the third clause as pregnant with schism, endless liberties and importunities of sects, and certain disturbance of the national tranquillity. In the Lords the Lord-Treasurer led the opposition, and the bishops supported him with all their energies, and, to the astonishment of Charles himself, Clarendon, who had been laid up with gout, on the second day of the debate went to the House, and attacked it with a vehemence of language which gave great offence to the king. Probably Clarendon calculated on more serious damage from the popular feeling, of which his Dunkirk policy had recently given him a sharp taste, than on any strong resentment of Charles, but he was mistaken; the Bill was defeated, but the king expressed his wrath to Southampton, the Treasurer, and Clarendon, in such terms as struck terror into them, and from that time it was evident that neither of them possessed his confidence any longer. Nor did he spare the bishops. He reproached them with bigotry and ingratitude. He told them that it was owing to his Declaration of Breda that they owed their restoration, and that now they were driving him to break that promise. The intolerance of the bishops in his father's time had caused, he said, the destruction of the hierarchy, and done much to ruin the monarchy itself; and no sooner were they reinstated, than they were pursuing the same blind and fatal course. From that day, too, his manner to them changed, and his courtiers, quick to perceive the change, imitated it, and, glad to excuse their profligacy, indulged in ridicule of their persons, and mockery of their sermons.

But though Charles had boldly spoken much severe truth in the moment of his resentment, all parties calculated too well on the evanescence of anything in him like a wise or virtuous perseverance, and they pursued their object with an obstinacy which compelled the ease-loving monarch to give way. The Commons passed a Bill to check the growth of Popery, and another that of Nonconformity, but though strongly supported in the Lords, they were defeated by the Presbyterian and Catholic members. They then changed their tack, and presented an address to the king, praying him to put in force all the penal laws against the Catholics and sectaries of every description. Having expressed their wishes, the Commons granted the king four subsidies, and he was about to prorogue Parliament, when a strange incident delayed this event for some time. The king, during the discussion on the Supplies, made a statement which seemed to commit the Earl of Bristol with Parliament. The earl and the king becoming warm in mutual explanation before Lord Arlington, Charles used strong language, and Bristol, losing his temper, reproached the king with his amours, his indolence, and the sacrifice of his best friends to the malice of Clarendon, and vowed that unless justice was done him within twenty-four hours, he would do a thing that would astonish both the king and the Chancellor. This thing was to impeach Clarendon of high treason on the ground that he had, both publicly and privately, endeavoured to fix the character of a papist on the king, and had represented that he alone protected the Protestant establishment. Bristol's hasty temper had betrayed him into a charge which he could not substantiate. He was foiled with disgrace, and he only escaped being arrested by flight.

When the next session of Parliament opened, on the 16th of March, 1664, the Commons returned with unabated animus, and circumstances in the interim had occurred, which, as they favoured both the orthodox scheme and a scheme of the king's, enabled them to carry their point by conceding his. In October, a trifling insurrection broke out at Farnley Wood, in Yorkshire. The people, who were of an obscure class, appeared to be Fifth-Monarchy men and Republicans, who complained of the persecutions for religion, and of the violation of the Triennial Act, and contended that as the present Parliament had sat more than three years, it was illegal, and the people had nothing to do but to elect another of their own accord. This was a mistake; the Act did not limit the duration of Parliament, but the interval between one Parliament and another. The Triennial Act, passed in the 16th of Charles I., when his Parliament wrung a number of those guarantees from him, authorised the sheriffs to issue writs for an election after any Parliament had ceased to sit three years, if the Government did not summon one, and in default of the sheriffs issuing such writs, the people might assemble, and proceed to election without writs.

The Government wanted to be rid of this Act, and therefore the Duke of Buckingham set Gere, sheriff of Yorkshire, and others, to send incendiaries amongst the people to excite them to proceedings of this sort. They were then arrested to the number of about fifty persons in Yorkshire and Westmoreland, on the plea that they were assembled without lawful cause, the Parliament, so far from having ceased to sit three years, being still sitting. The ignorant people had been probably purposely misinformed, and some of them were hanged for it. The end of Charles was gained. He told the Parliament that the Act thus encouraged seditious meetings, and that though he never wished to be without a Parliament for three years, he was resolved never to allow of a Parliament summoned by such means as prescribed by that Act. The Parliament readily repealed the Act, and passed another, still requiring a Parliament at farthest after three years' interval, but sweeping away what Charles called the "wonderful clauses" of the Bill.

In return for this favour, the Commons now solicited his assent to the Conventicle Act, which it was hoped would extinguish Dissent altogether. This was a continuation of those tyrannic Acts which were passed in this infamous reign, some of which, as the Corporation and Test Acts, even survived the revolution of 1688. The Test Act, the Act of Uniformity, by which Bishop Sheldon, the Laud of his time, ejected two thousand ministers, now the Conventicle, and soon after this the Five Mile Act, completed the code of despotism.

Here was the king, who, in the last session of Parliament, published his declaration for the indulgence of tender consciences, now wheeling round like a weathercock, and consenting to the Conventicle Act. And what was this Act? It forbade more than five persons to meet together for worship, except that worship was according to the Common Prayer Book. All magistrates were empowered to levy ten pounds on the ministers, five pounds on every hearer, and twenty pounds on the house where this conventicle, as it was called, was held. This fine, or three months' imprisonment, was the punishment for the first offence; ten pounds a hearer or six months' imprisonment for the second offence; one hundred pounds a hearer or seven years' transportation for the third; and death without benefit of clergy in case of return or escape. This diabolical Act Clarendon applauded, and said that if rigorously executed, it would have produced entire Conformity. What was Clarendon's idea of rigour?

Sheldon, the Bishop of London, let loose all the myrmidons of the law on the devoted country. The houses of Nonconformists were invaded by informers, constables, and the vilest and lowest rabble of their assailants. They broke open the houses of all Nonconformists, in search of offenders, but still more in search of plunder; they drove them from their meetings with soldiery, and thrust them into prisons—and such prisons! No language can describe the horrors and vileness of the pestiferous prisons of those days. The two thousand Nonconformist ministers were starving. "Their wives and children," says Baxter, "had neither house nor home." Such as dared to preach in fields and private houses were dragged to those horrible prisons; those who ventured to offer them food or shelter, if discovered, were treated the same. To prevent the Nonconformist ministers from remaining amongst their old friends, Sheldon, the very next session, procured the Five Mile Act, which restrained all dissenting clergy from coming within five miles of any place where they had exercised their ministry, and from teaching school, under a penalty of forty pounds for each offence.