and ministers of state. The bishops expressed much disgust at those fellows, the nonconformists, still insisting on interrupting the king in the exercise of his undoubted prerogative; they were supported by the crown lawyers, and the act was enforced in all its rigour, spite of the royal promise, which had over and over lost its slightest value. The storm of persecution burst forth on the nonconformists with fury. Their meetings were forcibly broken up by soldiery, and their preachers and many of themselves thrust into prison on charges of heresy and violation of the laws. Numbers again prepared for flight to New England, and to prevent this sweeping emigration of useful artisans, the earl of Bristol, the former impetuous and eccentric lord Digby of the civil wars, and Ashley Cooper planned a scheme which should at once relieve both dissenters and catholics. This was to induce the king, on the plea of fulfilling his declaration of Breda, to issue a declaration of indulgence of a broad and comprehensive character. This was supported in the council by Robartes, lord privy seal, and Bennet, the new secretary of state. Accordingly, Charles, on the 6th of December, issued his declaration, called a declaration for refuting four scandals cast on the government—namely, that the act of indemnity had been merely intended to be temporary, that there was an intention to keep a large standing army, that the king was a persecutor; and that he was a favourer of popery. In answer to the third scandal, he declared he would submit to parliament a bill for ample indulgence to tender consciences; and though he would not refuse to make the catholics, like the rest of his subjects, a partaker in this privilege, yet to show the fallacy of the fourth scandal, if they abused his goodness he would pursue them with all the rigour of the laws already existing against them.
This announcement was received with an outburst of indignation by all parties except the independents and the other dissenters who partook of their ideas of general toleration. But the presbyterians adhered to their ancient bigotry so firmly, that rather than catholics should enjoy toleration, they were ready to forego it themselves. The church, and a vast number of people of no religion at all, joined in the cry out of their hereditary alarm at popery. The moment that the session of 1663 opened, on the 18th of February, both houses fell on the declaration, and the commons, though the bill was not before them, sent an address to the king, thanking him for the other parts of the declaration, but represented the third clause as pregnant with schism, endless liberties and importunities of sects, and certain disturbance of the national tranquillity. In the lords the lord treasurer led the opposition, and the bishops supported him with all their energies, and, to the astonishment of Charles himself, Clarendon, who had been laid up with the gout, on the second day of the debate went to the house, and attacked it with a vehemence of language which gave great offence to the king. Probably Clarendon calculated on more serious damage from the popular feeling, of which his Dunkirk policy had recently given him a sharp taste, than on any strong resentment of Charles, but he was mistaken; the bill was defeated, but the king expressed his wrath to Southampton, the treasurer, and Clarendon, in such terms as struck terror into them, and from that time it was evident that neither of them possessed his confidence any longer. Nor did he spare the bishops. He reproached them with bigotry and ingratitude. He told them that it was owing to his declaration of Breda that they owed their restoration, and that now they were driving him to break that promise. That the intolerance of the bishops in his father's time had caused the destruction of the hierarchy, and done much to ruin the monarchy itself; and no sooner were they reinstated, than they were pursuing the same blind and fatal course. From that day, too, his manner to them changed, and his courtiers, quick to perceive the change, imitated it, and glad to excuse their profligacy, indulged in ridicule of their persons, and mocking of their sermons.
But though Charles had boldly spoken much severe truth in the moment of his resentment, all parties calculated too well on the evanescence of anything in him like a wise or virtuous perseverance, and they pursued their object with an obstinacy which compelled the ease-loving monarch to give way. The commons passed a bill to check the growth of popery, and another that of nonconformity, but though strongly supported in the lords, they were defeated by the presbyterian and catholic members. They then changed their tack, and presented an address to the king, praying him to put in force all the penal laws against the catholics and sectaries of every description. Having expressed their wishes, the commons granted the king four subsidies, and he was about to prorogue parliament, when a strange incident delayed this event for some time. The king, during the discussion on the supplies, made a statement which seemed to commit the earl of Bristol with parliament. The earl and the king becoming warm in mutual explanation before lord Arlington, Charles used strong language, and Bristol, losing his temper, reproached the king with his amours, his indolence, and the sacrifice of his best friends to the malice of Clarendon, and vowed that unless justice was done him within twenty-four hours, he would do a thing that would astonish both the king and the chancellor. This thing was to impeach Clarendon of high treason on the ground that he had, both publicly and privately, endeavoured to fix the character of a papist on the king, and had represented that he alone protected the protestant establishment. Bristol's hasty temper had betrayed him into a charge which he could not substantiate. He was foiled with disgrace, and he only escaped being arrested by flight.
When the next session of parliament opened, on the 16th of March, 1664, the commons returned with unabated animus, and circumstances in the interim had occurred, which, as they favoured both the orthodox scheme and a scheme of the king's, they managed to carry their point by conceding his. In October, a trifling insurrection broke out at Farnley Wood, in Yorkshire. The people, who were of an obscure class, appeared to be fifth-monarchy men and republicans, who complained of the persecutions for religion, and of the violation of the triennial act, and contended that as the present parliament had sate more than three years, it was illegal, and the people had nothing to do but to erect another of their own accord. This was a mistake; the act did not limit the duration of parliament, but the interval betwixt one parliament and another. The triennial act,
