The Bank of England was then only 17 years old. It was founded in 1694, and grew out of a loan of £1,200,000 for the public service, for which the lenders — so low was the public credit — were to have 8 per cent. interest, four thousand a year for expense of management, and a charter for 10 years, afterwards renewed from time to time, as the 'Governor and Company of the Bank of England.'
Magna Charta Libertatum
, the Great Charter of Liberties obtained by the barons of King John, June 16, 1215, not only asserted rights of the subject against despotic power of the king, but included among them right of insurrection against royal authority unlawfully exerted.
The Act of Uniformity, passed May 19, 1662, withheld promotion in the Church from all who had not received episcopal ordination, and required of all clergy assent to the contents of the Prayer Book on pain of being deprived of their spiritual promotion. It forbade all changes in matters of belief otherwise than by the king in Parliament. While it barred the unconstitutional exercise of a dispensing power by the king, and kept the settlement of its faith out of the hands of the clergy and in those of the people, it was so contrived also according to the temper of the majority that it served as a test act for the English Hierarchy, and cast out of the Church, as Nonconformists, those best members of its Puritan clergy, about two thousand in number, whose faith was sincere enough to make them sacrifice their livings to their sense of truth.