TEST ACT.
1673.
By the passing of the Test Act, Clifford, now an avowed Catholic, was excluded from the House of Lords; and, in consequence of this exclusion, he resigned the White Staff, and retired to the County of Devon, where he died before the end of the year 1673. "He went off the stage in great discontent."[602]
The next important circumstance at this period requiring our notice is the withdrawal of the Declaration of Indulgence. When the address of the Commons on that subject had been presented to the King he replied, that he was troubled to find the Declaration had produced so much disquiet, and had given occasion to the questioning of his authority in ecclesiastical affairs. He was sure, he said, that he had never thought of using power except for the peace and establishment of the Church; he did not wish to suspend laws touching the property, the rights, or the liberties of his subjects; nor to alter the doctrine or discipline of the Church; he only wished to take off penalties, which he believed the Commons did not desire to see inflicted according to the letter of the law. He had no thought of neglecting the advice of Parliament; and if any Bill should be offered him more proper to attain the end in view, he would be ready to concur in it. With this answer the Commons did not feel satisfied; but the King repeated in the month of March that, if any scruple remained as to his suspension of penal laws, he faithfully promised them what had been done should not be drawn into a precedent for the future.[603]
STATE OF NONCONFORMISTS.
At the same time the Lord Chancellor stated that His Majesty had caused the original declaration, under the Great Seal, to be cancelled in his presence the previous evening.[604] By the operation of the Test Act, by the cancelling of the Declaration, and by the dropping of the Bill of Indulgence, Nonconformists were left in a worse plight than that in which they had been before, so far as the law was concerned. The state of the law, however, is not to be taken as an accurate index of their condition. The pressure of a bad law depends very much upon the hands employed in its administration. Happily the Declaration, which ultra-Royalists were disposed to honour, on the very ground that it was unconstitutional, had wrought a change in their feeling towards Dissenters; and when the seal attached to it had been broken, still it left, as it were, a spell upon their minds. The Churchmen's treatment in many instances of those who were not Churchmen continued for a while after the year 1672, to be less severe than it had previously been.[605] The Church, gathered by Dr. Owen, enjoyed much freedom in the year 1673, and afterwards. His Conventicle, which it would appear was situated in White's Alley,[606] Moorfields, presented a list of members including several persons of rank. We are enabled to enter within the doors of the meeting-house, fitted up, no doubt, with Puritan decency and comfort, whilst destitute of all beauty, and to identify, amidst the hearers of the ex-Dean of Christ Church, certain distinguished persons.
1673.
There was Lord Charles Fleetwood, Cromwell's son-in-law, described in an earlier portion of this work, whom Milton has eulogized as inferior to none in humanity, in gentleness, and in benignity of disposition, and whom Noble admits to have been a man of religion, and a venerator of liberty. There was Colonel John Desborough, a staunch Republican, a man of rough manners, whose name, together with that of Fleetwood, Milton has honoured. There was Major-General Berry, once a friend of Baxter's, and applauded by him as a man of sincere piety, till he forfeited that excellent person's favour by becoming an Independent. There was young Sir John Hartopp, of singular intelligence and piety. Ladies of distinction also were there: the Lady Tompson, wife of Sir John Tompson;[607] Lady Vere Wilkinson; Mrs. Abney; and deserving of notice, more, however, for her eccentricities than her excellencies—Mrs. Bendish, granddaughter of Oliver Cromwell.[608]
NONCONFORMISTS.
1674.
Yet about the time that Owen and his congregation remained unmolested, or just afterwards—and the circumstance should be mentioned as an illustration of the parti-coloured character of Church history in those days—Nathaniel Heywood speaks of the persecution he endured. Before the 9th of April, 1674, he had for four months experienced more trouble and opposition in his ministerial employment than he had ever done before in all his life. The archers grieved him, and shot at him thirty-four arrows (by which he meant warrants); "but our bow," he goes on to say, "abides in strength by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob. Officers have come eighteen Lord's days together, but have not as yet scattered us."[609] A year afterwards (May 1st, 1675) he writes,[610] "all these troubles are nothing to that I am now mourning under—the loss of public liberty, a closed mouth, dumb and silent Sabbaths—to be cast out of the vineyard as a dry and withered branch—and to be laid aside as a broken vessel in whom there is no pleasure, is a sore burden I know not how to bear—my heart bleeds under it as a sting and edge added to my other troubles and afflictions. This exercise of my ministry next to Christ is dearer to me than anything in the world. It was my heaven till I came home, even to spend this life in gathering souls to Christ; but I must lay even that down at Christ's feet, and be dumb and silent before the Lord, because He has done it, who can do no wrong, and whose judgments are past finding out. I am sure I have reason to conclude with the prophet, "I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against Him."