asserted that some of the Churchmen whom he had closeted had offered to make large concessions to the Catholics, on condition that the persecution of the Puritans might go on. The accused Churchmen vehemently denied the truth of this charge; and alleged that, if they would have complied with what he demanded for his own religion, he would most gladly have suffered them to indemnify themselves by harassing and pillaging Protestant Dissenters.[1]
The court had changed its face. The scarf and cassock could hardly appear there without calling forth sneers and malicious whispers. Maids of honour forbore to giggle, and Lords of the Bedchamber bowed low, when the Puritanical visage and the Puritanical garb, so long the favourite subjects of mockery in fashionable circles, were seen in the galleries. Taunton, which had been during two generations the stronghold of the Roundhead party in the West, which had twice resolutely repelled the armies of Charles the First, which had risen as one man to support Monmouth, and which had been turned into a shambles by Kirke and Jeffreys, seemed to have suddenly succeeded to the place which Oxford had once occupied in the royal favour.[2] The King constrained himself to show even fawning courtesy to eminent Dissenters. To some he offered money, to some municipal honours, to some pardons for their relations and friends who, having been implicated in the Rye House Plot, or having joined the standard of Monmouth, were now wandering on the Continent, or toiling among the sugar canes of Barbadoes. He affected even to sympathize with the kindness which the English Puritans felt for their foreign brethren. A second and a third proclamation were published at Edinburgh, which greatly extended the nugatory toleration granted to the Presbyterians by the edict of February.[3] The banished Huguenots, on whom
- ↑ Warrant Book of the Treasury. See particularly the instructions dated March 8, 1687/8 Burnet, i. 715. Reflections on his Majesty's Proclamation for a Toleration in Scotland; Letters containing some Reflections on his Majesty's Declaration for Liberty of Conscience; Apology for the Church of England with a relation to the spirit of Persecution for which she is accused, 1687/8. But it is impossible for me to cite all the pamphlets from which I have formed my notion of the state of parties at this time.
- ↑ Letter to a Dissenter.
- ↑ Wodrow, Appendix, vol. ii. Nos. 132. 134.
