[601] 13 Car. 2, c. 1.
[602] Burnet, i. 179.
[603] Life of Clarendon, 159. He intimates that this begot a coldness in the bishops towards himself, which was never fully removed. Yet he had no reason to complain of them on his trial. See, too, Pepys's Diary, Sept. 3, 1662.
[604] Parl. Hist. 257.
[605] Baxter intimates (429) that some disagreement arose between the presbyterians and independents as to the toleration of popery, or rather, as he puts it, as to the active concurrence of the protestant dissenters in accepting such a toleration as should include popery. The latter, conformably to their general principles, were favourable to it; but the former would not make themselves parties to any relaxation of the penal laws against the church of Rome, leaving the king to act as he thought fit. By this stiffness it is very probable that they provoked a good deal of persecution from the court, which they might have avoided by falling into its views of a general indulgence.
[606] Parl. Hist. 260. An adjournment had been moved, and lost by 161 to 119. Journals, 25 Feb.
[607] 19 Feb. Baxter, p. 429.
[608] Journals, 17 and 28 March 1663; Parl. Hist. 264. Burnet, 274, says the declaration of indulgence was usually ascribed to Bristol, but in fact proceeded from the king, and that the opposition to it in the house was chiefly made by the friends of Clarendon. The latter tells us in his Life, 189, that the king was displeased at the insolence of the Romish party, and gave the judges general orders to convict recusants. The minister and historian either was, or pretended to be, his master's dupe; and, if he had any suspicions of what was meant as to religion (as he must surely have had), is far too loyal to hint them. Yet the one circumstance he mentions soon after, that the Countess of Castlemaine suddenly declared herself a catholic, was enough to open his eyes and those of the world.
The Romish partisans assumed the tone of high loyalty, as exclusively characteristic of their religion; but affected, at this time, to use great civility towards the church of England. A book, entitled Philanax Anglicus, published under the name of Bellamy, the second edition of which is in 1663, after a most flattering dedication to Sheldon, launches into virulent abuse of the presbyterians and of the reformation in general, as founded on principles adverse to monarchy. This indeed was common with the ultra or high-church party; but the work in question, though it purports to be written by a clergyman, is manifestly a shaft from the concealed bow of the Roman Apollo.
[609] See proofs of this in Ralph, 53; Rapin, p. 78. There was in 1663 a trifling insurrection in Yorkshire, which the government wished to have been more serious, so as to afford a better pretext for strong measures; as may be collected from a passage in a letter of Bennet to the Duke of Ormond, where he says, "The country was in a greater readiness to prevent the disorders than perhaps were to be wished; but it being the effect of their own care, rather than his majesty's commands, it is the less to be censured." Clarendon, 218, speaks of this as an important and extensive conspiracy; and the king dwelt on it in his next speech to the parliament. Parl. Hist. 289.