Dress of the Horse Guards at the Restoration: from Ogilby's Coronation Procession of Charles II.
Yeoman of the Guard: from Ogilby's Coronation Procession of Charles II.
6. Ecclesiastical Debates. 1660.—On ecclesiastical matters the two parties were less harmonious. The cavaliers wanted to restore episcopacy and the Prayer Book. The Presbyterians were ready to go back in religion, as in politics, to the ideas of August, 1641, and to establish a modified episcopacy, in which bishops would be surrounded with clerical councillors, whose advice they would be bound to take. To this scheme Charles gave his approval, and it is probable that if nothing else had been in question Parliament would have accepted it. Charles, however, had an object of his own. His life was dissolute, and, being without any religious convictions, he cherished, like some other dissolute men of that time, a secret attachment to the Church of Rome. In order to do that Church a good turn, he now asked for a toleration in which all religions should be included. The proposal to include Roman Catholics in the proposed toleration wrecked the chances of modified episcopacy. Cavaliers and Presbyterians were so much afraid of the Roman Catholics that when a bill for giving effect to the scheme for uniting episcopacy and Presbyterianism was brought into Parliament, it was rejected through fear lest it should be a prelude to some other tolerationist measure favouring the Roman Catholics. On December 29, 1660, the Convention Parliament was dissolved.
7. Venner's Plot and its Results. 1661.—No one in the Convention Parliament had had any sympathy with the Independents, and still less with the more fanatical sects which had received toleration when the Independents were in power. The one thing which the people of England as a body specially detested was the rule of the Cromwellian army, and the two parties therefore combined to persecute the Independents by whom that army had been supported. In January, 1661, a party of fanatics, knowing that they at least had nothing to hope, rose in insurrection in London under one Venner, a cooper. The rising was easily put down, but it gave an excuse to Charles—who was just then paying off the army—to retain two regiments, one of horse and one of foot, besides a third, which was in garrison at Dunkirk. There was thus formed the nucleus of an army the numbers of which, before long, amounted to 5,000. To have an armed force at all was likely to bring suspicion upon Charles, especially as his revenue did not suffice for the payment of 5,000 men without having recourse to means which would cause ill-feeling between himself and Parliament.