The first was for the better observance of the Lord's Day; and the reader, who perhaps associates all rigid legislation of that kind with Puritan zealots, will be surprised to find that the Parliament of the Restoration, embodying in many respects the reactionary spirit of the times did, in this particular, actually follow the precedents set by Commonwealth statesmen. The new Statute confirmed existing Acts for requiring attendance at Church, and ordained "that all, and every person and persons whatsoever, should, on every Lord's Day, apply themselves to the observation of the same, by exercising themselves thereon in the duties of piety and true religion, publicly and privately." For exercising their worldly callings everybody above the age of fourteen was to forfeit five shillings; goods cried in the streets or publicly exposed for sale were to be forfeited. No one could travel without special warrant, under a penalty of twenty shillings. The employment of a boat or wherry incurred a fine of five shillings, and those who were not able to pay these fines had to sit in the stocks. No Hundred need answer for a robbery committed on a person who dared to travel on the Lord's Day without license; no writs were then to be served except for treason; but both the dressing of meat in private houses, and the sale of it at inns and cook-shops, were specially excepted from the operation of the law.
It is true the fines were less in amount than they had been under the Commonwealth, and the exceptions with regard to inns and cook-shops, and the dressing of food on the Lord's Day, showed some little relaxation;—but the prohibition of travelling, as well as of trading, proves that zeal for the strict observance of Sunday had been inherited from the Long Parliament by its successor under Charles II.
Acts for uniting parishes, for rebuilding churches, and for the better maintenance of Metropolitan Incumbents, had been passed in 1670; and now a general Act received the Royal assent for the improvement of small livings. Whereas Bishops, Deans, and Chapters, and other ecclesiastical authorities had granted, in obedience to His Majesty, soon after the Restoration, or might yet grant out of their revenues, aid towards the augmentation of poor clerical incomes, this Act confirmed any such grants, and bestowed on Vicars and Curates the means of securing the augmentations thereby accruing to them.[667]
PARLIAMENT.
The last of the three enactments alluded to consisted in the repeal of the law de Hæretico Comburendo, which had kindled so many fires in the Marian age. That form of punishment was regarded by Protestants with a natural and salutary horror; the statutory sanction of it was now swept away, not only with a burst of indignation against it, as a hateful relic of Popish intolerance, but with a prudent fear lest, if the law remained unaltered, it might some day, under a Popish Sovereign—a contingency which was ever looming before the eyes of the nation—be revived for a rekindling of the Smithfield fires. But the repeal did not proceed so far as is generally supposed; for the Lords made some amendments in the Bill, and added a proviso, perpetuating the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts, in cases of atheism, blasphemy, heresy, or schism; and sanctioning excommunication and other ecclesiastical penalties, extending even to death, in such sort as they might have done before the making of this new Act. In this form it was agreed to by the Commons, and received the Royal assent.
1678.
The Houses were adjourned in the month of May, and again in the month of July; nor did they meet any more for business until the middle of the month of January, 1678. These adjournments produced in the Lower House, as might be expected, long and exciting debates. The state of the nation, the removal of evil counsellors, and an address of advice to His Majesty that he would declare war with France, also occupied considerable attention; but if, under these circumstances, there occurred some little ebb in the tide of opposition to Popery, the flow of the waters soon followed with redoubled force. For, in the month of April, we find the Commons engaged in the consideration of a report,—which it must have taken much time and labour to prepare—a report containing the names of Popish priests, of those by whom they were kept, of the chapels and other places where mass was said, in the County of Monmouth:—also of the names of Justices of the Peace in Wales and Northumberland who were Papists, or suspected to be so,—and, lastly, of proceedings which had been carried on in the Court of Exchequer against Popish recusants. The document whilst, no doubt, reflecting the fears of Protestants respecting Papists, also records facts which show that, in spite of persecuting laws, the Roman Catholic religion retained a strong hold upon many people in certain parts of the country. For one of the witnesses, whose evidence is reported, swore—that she had heard a priest say mass forty times, had received the sacrament from him, had seen him administer it to a hundred people; and that, at a service which she had attended, "the crowd was so great, that the loft was forced to be propped, lest it should fall down under the weight."[668] Immediately afterwards the Commons expressed to the Lords, in confidence, a strong conviction that the growth of Popery arose from a laxity in the administration of laws against it.
PARLIAMENT.
After a prorogation, on the 13th of May, the opening of the sixteenth session of Parliament followed, on the 23rd of the same month, when Lord Chancellor Finch sought to calm public apprehension by observing, that it was a scandal upon the Protestant religion, when men so far distrusted the truth and power of it as to be alarmed about its safety, after so many laws had been enacted for its protection, and after all the miraculous deliverances which it had experienced.[669]
The next month saw the Commons again plunged into the old controversy, whilst they discussed a Bill for the exclusion of Papists from both Houses, unless they would take the Oaths of Allegiance and of Supremacy, and accept the test against transubstantiation—in other words except they would turn Protestants.[670] The usual round of arguments reappeared, and once more revolved through their orbits; but this Bill, like some of its predecessors, fell through, in consequence of further prorogation, after a grant of supplies, upon the 8th of July.