In this form the Bill received the royal assent on the day when Parliament was adjourned, May 19th. No long delay was to occur before the axe of authority fell, and the penalty of any divergence from the uniform discipline of the Church was to take effect forthwith. On August 24th, St. Bartholomew's Day—of evil omen—all incumbents who declined to accept and conform to the whole contents of the Book of Common Prayer were, ipso facto, with no further legal process, to be deprived of their benefices, and the patrons were to present others in their place.
Clarendon was too sober in his judgment, and had too much of the statesman in his composition, to welcome the rigid terms which the triumphant Churchmen were determined to exact. He was not one of those who thought a victory was confirmed by an arrogant disregard of the claims of the vanquished. Had he been able to shape the terms of the Act according to his own ideas of policy and prudence, he would undoubtedly have imposed checks upon the ambition of the fiery spirits of his party. But we must remember his position and his sympathies. The double object of all his long struggles had been to establish in all its dignity the constitutional monarchy, and to restore the Church to its rights and privileges. It was not for him to fight too hard against the full assertion of these rights. We must remember, too, that his own inclination towards moderation came from policy and prudence, and not from any sympathy with the vanquished, or any conviction that the measure meted out to them was in any whit more severe than that which they had exacted in their day of triumph, and would readily have reinforced were it again in their power to do so. Above all, Clarendon saw that in the hard task which lay before him in re- establishing a settled Government, the first essential was the ending of weary struggles, and the settling of doubtful contentions. Any settlement was better than perpetual controversy. It was a smaller matter to adjust the balance according to an ideal of just and politic moderation, than to comply with the imperious maxim, "that it is for the advantage of the State that there be an end of litigation."
That there should be an outburst of anger from those who believed themselves to be martyrs was only to be expected. The Declaration of Breda, it was said, had been flagrantly violated. The answer was perfectly easy. The King had referred the religious settlement to Parliament, and had promised that meanwhile there should be no interference with liberty of conscience. It is noteworthy that Clarendon rests the case upon this plea—that the Crown must act subject to a Parliamentary decision. So far as it goes it is an adequate defence. But there remains the far stronger argument that liberty of conscience was a very different thing from a pledge that those who refused to accept the principles of the Church should have a right to hold her benefices and dictate her policy. That would have meant, not toleration of, but surrender to, the divergent forces.
But the outburst of anger on the part of a defeated faction had serious effects on the action of Charles II. Now, as often before, his Chancellor had to lament that "he was too irresolute, and apt to be shaken in those counsels which, with the greatest deliberation, he had concluded." Concessions might be right or wrong; but once a policy was decided, concessions wrung from the weakness of a vacillating and indolent nature were fatal. Anything that love of ease did not accomplish, the flattery of the defeated Nonconformists achieved. The King was their only hope; in his mercy they looked for a recompense for that loyalty which was none the less sincere because they shrank from straining their consciences by compliance with minute points of order and of discipline. At least, let three months pass before the blow fell that was to strip them of their livelihood and separate them from their flocks. Such an act of mercy would vindicate the royal prerogative. Whether the King "thought it would do them no good," in other words, that he was giving a worthless concession, or that he thought the delay "no prejudice to the Church," or, as was more likely, that it would rid him of painful importunity, the desired promise was given. That it proceeded from any inclination to the Roman Catholic faith, and any hope that, by its means, easier terms might be obtained for that faith, was a supposition that Clarendon would have deemed derogatory to the King's honesty. Clarendon would gladly have seen terms more merciful granted by the Act of Uniformity. But once the Bill was passed he saw how fatal vacillation was, and would fain have persuaded his master against it. But the promise had been given; and once again he had to remind that master that it was for his honour that a promise given should be redeemed. Such a position was no unusual experience to any one who served Charles II. "It was no new thing to the Chancellor to be reproached for opposing the resolving to do such or such a thing, and then to be reproached again for pursuing the resolution."
A new conference was hastily summoned at Hampton Court. Archbishop Juxon, Sheldon and Duppa were to represent the Church, while the Chancellor, Monk, and Ormonde, with the Secretaries Nicholas and Morrice, were there as lay politicians, and the Chief Justice Bridgeman, with the Attorney General, were to advise as to the law. The Bishops did not conceal their vexation, and resolutely demanded "to be excused for not conniving at any breach of the law." Clarendon attempted to maintain the pledge given by the King, as but a small matter, which could not harm the Church. But the opinion of the lawyers was clear and decided. The King had no power to suspend the law, nor to interfere with the rights of patrons. Once more that vacillating temper yielded. The poor fragment of the royal honour which Clarendon would fain have saved had to be abandoned. The Church had to resent a threatened danger; the Nonconformists were embittered by the overclouding of those hopes on which they had been taught to rely. The only effect of Clarendon's enforced interference was to involve him in the hatred of the dissenters, and in the suspicions of the Bishops and the Churchmen.
The blow fell on St. Bartholomew's Day; and on August 24th the Church saw her full triumph, when the nonconforming ministers, to the number, it was said, of some two thousand, were ejected from their livings. [Footnote: The number was variously reckoned; a more moderate computation was 1200. Mr. Bates's careful calculations (Declaration of Indulgence, Appendix II.) give 450 as the number of ministers ejected between May, 1660, and August, 1662, and 1800 as ejected on the latter date.] The triumph was bought at the price of establishing a solid, permanent, and increasing body of irreconcilable foes. The Church was entrenched in a position rendered impregnable by law, which secured her even against the power of the Crown. But the forces of nonconformity were consolidated, and gradually gathered to themselves a mass of political adherents, and equipped themselves with a whole armoury of political weapons. The Act of Uniformity did much more than settle the terms between the Church and Nonconformity. It shaped the course of the two parties which, gradually diverging farther and farther, were to divide the nation into two camps.
Charles still sought to secure his own ease by efforts after conciliation —some of them more questionable in law, and more insidious in their motives, even than his ill-considered promises to the Nonconformist ministers. To what lengths his own Roman Catholic sympathies went it is difficult to say. But there were many influences at Court which were working for the abandonment of the penal laws against the Catholics. Bristol was restless in this matter, to which personal ambition and his growing jealousy of Clarendon stimulated him, much more than any religious zeal. Concessions granted by royal prerogative would mean new force for that prerogative; it would bring with it the increase of personal influence at the expense of the law; it seemed to promise the conciliation of new adherents; and it certainly involved the weakening of the orthodox Churchman as well as the Nonconformist. Before the end of this year, 1662, Charles issued a Declaration, purporting to dispense with the more severe laws against the Roman Catholics. It was contrived by a little clique of courtiers opposed to Clarendon, and of their gradual rise to influence we shall presently see more. It was intended as a means of consolidating their hold upon the King, and of increasing the number of their own adherents. It soon became clear that the Declaration assumed a dispensing power for the royal prerogative, which the nation would repudiate, and which even the House of Commons, with all its effusive loyalty, would not confirm. In that Declaration, published on December 6th, the King expressly confirmed the Act of Uniformity and stated his own intention of maintaining it. He defended himself against the charge that in that Act he had violated the Declaration of Breda. It was intended to provide for the discipline and government of the Church; but there still remained for consideration what concessions should be made for tender consciences in view of the severe penal laws; and he announced that he would ask the concurrence of Parliament to an Act which would allow him "to exercise with a more universal satisfaction that power of dispensing which he conceived to be inherent in him." But the Declaration was careful to add that no tightening of the most severe of the penal laws was to be construed as an intention of permitting equal toleration to all religions.
Clarendon was laid aside by illness when this Declaration was concocted and published, and although those who planned it endeavoured to make out that he had been an assenting party, his own words give a direct denial to this.
When, in the spring of 1663, Charles attempted to give legislative effect to this Declaration by a Bill introduced by Lord Robartes and Lord Ashley into the House of Lords, he very quickly found out that the temper of the nation was in no compliant mood, and that there were marked limits to the submissive loyalty of the Commons. That House was not patient enough to wait for the Bill to be sent to it. A committee was at once appointed, and pronounced in no measured terms against any such scheme. It was inconsistent with the laws of England; it would endanger the peace of the kingdom; it would expose the King to the restless importunity of every sect; and it would "establish schism by law." The House of Lords acted in the same temper. Clarendon was joined in his opposition by Southampton and the Bishops, who thus fulfilled the part which Bristol had prophesied for them, of stalwart opponents of Catholic concessions. The Chancellor would not have been unwilling to see some sort of toleration. But his duty and his policy in this matter were clear. To have proceeded with the Bill would have strained to breaking point the loyalty of the Commons and of the nation. Toleration, to have any good effect, must be the voluntary work of Parliament, and not the contrivance of a Court clique. But Clarendon was under no mistake as to the odium he incurred with that clique, or as to the irritation which his conduct must arouse in the mind of the King, his master.