[541] Memoirs, p. 229. It appears by some passages in the Clarendon Papers, that the church had not expected to come off so brilliantly; and, while the restoration was yet unsettled, would have been content to give leases of their lands. Pp. 620, 723. Hyde, however, was convinced that the church would be either totally ruined, or restored to a great lustre; and herein he was right, as it turned out. P. 614.
[542] Life of Clarendon, 99. L'Estrange, in a pamphlet printed before the end of 1660, complains that the cavaliers were neglected, the king betrayed, the creatures of Cromwell, Bradshaw, and St. John laden with offices and honours. Of the indemnity he says, "That act made the enemies to the constitution masters in effect of the booty of three nations, bating the Crown and church lands, all which they might now call their own; while those who stood up for the laws were abandoned to the comfort of an irreparable but honourable ruin." He reviles the presbyterian ministers still in possession; and tells the king that misplaced lenity was his father's ruin. Kennet's Register, p. 233. See too, in Somers Tracts, vii. 517, "The Humble Representation of the Sad Condition of the King's Party." Also p. 557.
[543] Commons' Journals, 4 September 1660. Sir Philip Warwick, chancellor of the exchequer, assured Pepys that the revenue fell short by a fourth of the £1,200,000 voted by parliament. See his Diary, March 1, 1664. Ralph, however, says, the income in 1662 was £1,120,593, though the expenditure was £1,439,000. P. 88. It appears probable that the hereditary excise did not yet produce much beyond its estimate. Id. p. 20.
[544] 21 Nov. 1660, 151 to 149. Parl. Hist.
[545] The troops disbanded were fourteen regiments of horse and eighteen of foot in England: one of horse and four of foot in Scotland, besides garrisons. Journals, Nov. 7.
[546] Ralph, 35; Life of James, 447; Grose's Military Antiquities, i. 61.
[547] Neal, 429, 444.
[548] Id. 471; Pepy's Diary, ad init. Even in Oxford, about 300 episcopalians used to meet every Sunday with the connivance of Dr. Owen, dean of Christ Church. Orme's Life of Owen, 188. It is somewhat bold in Anglican writers to complain, as they now and then do, of the persecution they suffered at this period, when we consider what had been the conduct of the bishops before, and what it was afterwards. I do not know that any member of the church of England was imprisoned under the commonwealth, except for some political reason; certain it is that the gaols were not filled with them.
[549] The penal laws were comparatively dormant, though two priests suffered death, one of them before the protectorate. Butler's Mem. of Catholics, ii. 13. But in 1655 Cromwell issued a proclamation for the execution of these statutes; which seems to have been provoked by the persecution of the Vaudois. Whitelocke tells us he opposed it. 625. It was not acted upon.
[550] Several of these appear in Somers Tracts, vol. vii. The king's nearest friends were of course not backward in praising him, though a little at the expense of their consciences. "In a word," says Hyde to a correspondent in 1659, "if being the best protestant and the best Englishman of the nation can do the king good at home, he must prosper with and by his own subjects." Clar. State Papers, 541. Morley says he had been to see Judge Hale, who asked him questions about the king's character and firmness in the protestant religion. Id. 736. Morley's exertions to dispossess men of the notion that the king and his brother were inclined to popery, are also mentioned by Kennet in his Register, 818: a book containing very copious information as to this particular period. Yet Morley could hardly have been without strong suspicions as to both of them.