1670.
Of all sufferers the Quakers suffered most, because they were the most persistent and resolute in continuing their meetings; because when officers were on their way to seize them they would not escape; and further, because they would pay no fines, not even gaol fees, nor offer any petition to be set at liberty. Such people occasioned the greatest perplexity to magistrates and the Government, and completely wore out their patience; thus ultimately gaining their own point by an invincible resistance under the form of perfect passivity. The famous trial, in the month of August, 1670, of two friends, William Penn and William Mead, affords an example of the injustice and oppression which this remarkable sect had to endure, and also of the sympathy with them in their wrongs which they inspired in the breasts of their fellow-subjects. These two gentlemen were accused of holding a tumultuous assembly in the public streets, simply because they preached in the open air, and they were fined forty marks each, in consequence of not pulling off their hats in court. The jury returned a verdict to which the court objected, and for persistence in their own course, the jurymen were fined forty marks apiece, and were imprisoned until they should pay the amount. Afterwards they were discharged by writ of Habeas Corpus, their commitments being pronounced, in the Court of Common Pleas, to be totally illegal.[560]
CONVENTICLES.
In terminating this chapter it may safely be asserted that, during the reign of Charles II., after the time when the Act of Uniformity came into force, except for the short space presently to be described, there occurred not any period, when persecution, in some form or other, did not disturb the Nonconformists of this country; yet perhaps it would not be going too far also to assert, that when persecution reached its greatest height, there were some of the proscribed who successfully asserted their liberty, and, either from the ignorance or from the connivance of the predominant party, escaped the rigours of the law. Sixteen months after the new statute for the suppression of Conventicles had been passed, and when in many directions it was being severely enforced, the Dissenters at Taunton, not only met together for worship, but boldly celebrated a festival in honour of the deliverance of the place, in the midst of the Civil Wars, under their illustrious townsman Robert Blake.[561]
CHAPTER XXI.
The fall of Clarendon had been succeeded by a Ministry well known in history under the name of the Cabal.[562] With the merely political conduct of the statesmen indicated by that word, we have nothing to do; their policy in relation to ecclesiastical affairs alone demands our notice.
A change of feeling in the upper classes towards Nonconformists ensued, now that Clarendon's influence had been withdrawn, the virtues of distinguished sufferers became better known, and rumours about plots were far less frequent. This change prepared for a measure, which, unconstitutional as to its basis, was liberal in its operation. To found indulgence upon Royal authority alone, and not upon an Act of Parliament, was in harmony with a scheme for the exaltation of the Crown; but there is reason to believe that the measure proceeded, in part at least, from the better side of the nature of the Ministers, as well as from the better side of the nature of the Monarch. The previous history of those Ministers had been such as to dispose them to befriend oppressed Nonconformists.