1 followed, by which it was enacted that the revised Book of Common Prayer, and of Ordination of Ministers, and no other, should be used in all places of public worship; and that all beneficed clergymen should read the service from it within a given time, and, at the close, profess in a set form of words their «< unfeigned assent and consent « to every thing contained and prescribed in it. » To this declaration many objected. In obedience to the legislature, they were willing to make use of the book, though they found in it articles and practices of the truth and propriety of which they doubted; but to assert an unfeigned assent and consent to what they did not really believe or approve, was repugnant to the common notions of honesty and conscience. An attempt was made to relieve them on the transmission of a bill to amend the act of uniformity from the lower to the upper house. The lords added a July 25. declaratory clause, that the words «< assent and consent << should be understood only as to practice and obedience << to the said act; » but the commons instantly rejected the amendment; the lords in a conference submitted to July 27. withdraw it; and the only effect of the controversy was to place beyond a doubt the meaning in which the subscription was understood by the legislature. ' 1663. There were two other clauses, which also gave offence. By one, it was provided that no person should administer the sacrament, or hold ecclesiastical preferment, who had not received episcopal ordination; by the other, that all incumbents, dignitaries, officers in universities, public schoolmasters, and even private tutors, should sub * Lords' Journals, xi. 573. 577. The duke of York and thirteen other peers entered their protests against the amendment, « because it was destructive to the church of England as then established ». 573. scribe a renunciation of the covenant, and a declaration of the unlawfulness of taking up arms against the sovereign under any pretence. It was in vain that the lords objected: a conference followed; the court came to the aid of the commons; the opposition was abandoned, and the bill in its improved form received the royal assent. more libe During the progress of this question, the lords had The lords displayed a spirit of liberality which shocked the more ri- ral than the gid orthodoxy of the lower house. They appealed to the commons. declaration from Breda. That instrument was an offer made by the king as head of the adherents to the church and the throne, and accepted by the several other parties within the kingdom. It was virtually a compact between him and the people, which fixed the price of his restoration. The people had done their part in receiving him ; it became him now to secure to them the boon which he had promised. That boon, as far as regarded religion, was liberty to tender consciences, and freedom from molestation on account of difference of religious opinion; two things which, it was apprehended, could not be reconciled with the disqualifying enactments of the bill. The manager for the commons replied, that the declaration from Breda had been misunderstood. « Tender >> was an epithet implying susceptibility of impression from St. 13, 14. Car. ii. c. iv. Clarendon, 153. In the conference between the houses much stress was laid on the opportunity which tutors possess of impressing what notions they please on the minds of their pupils. To this circumstance was attributed the strong opposition made to Charles I. in parliament by the younger members; for, during the commonwealth, the clergy of the church of England supported themselves by teaching, and brought up their pupils in principles of loyalty. Lords' Journals, 447. Bishops restored to liament. without; a tender conscience was one which suffered itself to be guided by others; the liberty to tender consciences was therefore confined to the « misled and not extended to the « misleaders » ; it was granted to the flocks, but not to the ministers. In aid of this sophistical exposition, he also observed, that the declaration referred to the peace of the kingdom and to a future act of parliament, as if the act to be passed had been one to impose restraint, instead of « granting indulgence », or the allusion to the peace of the kingdom had not been understood as an exception of the seditious and anarchical doctrines promulgated by some of the fanatical preachers'. The act of uniformity may have been necessary for the restoration of the church to its former discipline and doctrine; but if such was the intention of those who formed the declaration from Breda, they were guilty of infidelity to the king and of fraud to the people, by putting into his mouth language, which, with the aid of equivocation, they might explain away; and by raising in them expectations, which it was never meant to fulfil. The triumph of the church was now complete. The seats in par- bishops had already been restored to their seats in parliament, and the spiritual courts had been re-established. To the first of these measures a strong opposition was anticipated from the united efforts of the catholics and presbyterians in the house of lords: but of the catholic peers, one only, the viscount Stafford, voted against it; and among the presbyterians the opposition was confined to the survivors of those who had originally supported the bill incapacitating clergymen from the exercise of temporal authority. The second was accomplished with equal 'Lords' Journals, xi. 449. facility; but, at the same time, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction was curtailed of two of its most obnoxious appendages, the high commission court, and the power of administering the oath ex officio. ' the catho lics. Among others, the English catholics had cherished a Petition of hope of profiting by the declaration from Breda; and that hope was supported by the recollection of their sufferings in the royal cause, and their knowledge of the promises made by Charles during his exile. The king was, indeed, well disposed in their favour. He deemed himself bound in honour and gratitude to procure them relief; he knew the execration in which the penal laws against them were held on the continent, and had often declared his resolution to mitigate, whenever he should be restored to his father's throne, the severity of such barbarous enactments. In June, 1661, the catholics met at Arundel-house, and presented to the lords a petition complaining of the penalties to which they were liable for the refusal of oaths incompatible with their religious opinions. The presbyterian leaders lent their aid to the catholic peers; and Clarendon placed himself at the head of their adversaries. Not a voice was raised in favour of the statutes inflicting capital punishments; but, after several debates, the house resolved that « nothing had St. 13. Car. ii. c. 2. 12. Whoever will compare the account in Clarendon, 138, with the Journals xi. 279. 81. 83, will be astonished at the inaccuracies of the historian. In five material points, including the principal part of his narrative, he is flatly contradicted by the testimony of the Journals. So far was the bill from being detained in the house of lords, that it was forwarded through all its stages with almost unprecedented rapidity. It was sent from the commons on Thursday, and passed by the lords on the Tuesday following. 1661. June 8. << been offered to move their lordships to alter any thing << in the oaths of allegiance and supremacy ». In the mean June 28. time, colonel Tuke' was heard at the bar against the June 21. sanguinary laws; and several papers stating the grievances and prayer of the catholics had been laid on the table. The petitioners claimed the benefit of the declaration from Breda, and observed, that the only objection to their claim rested on the supposition that the acknowledgment of the spiritual supremacy of the pope implied the admission of his temporal superiority. Against this they protested. The doctrine of his temporal authority was a problematical opinion, admitted indeed by some individuals, but no part of the catholic creed; and the petitioners (so far were they from holding it), offered to bind themselves by oath « to oppose with their lives and << fortunes the pontiff himself, if he should ever attempt « to execute that pretended power, and to obey their so<< vereign in opposition to all foreign and domestic power « whatsoever without restriction ». The house, having July 16. received the report of a committee to inquire into « the << sanguinary laws », resolved to abolish the writ de hæretico inquirendo, and to repeal all the statutes which imposed the penalties of treason on catholic clergymèn found within the realm, or those of felony on the harbourers of such clergymen, or those of premunire on all who maintained the authority of the bishop of Rome. But this measure of relief, did not equal the expectations of the laity, who sought to be freed from the fines and forfeitures of recusancy; and the whole project was quashed by the cunning of an adversary, who moved and carried 1 Sir G. Tuke, of Cressing Temple in Essex. Pepys, i. 364. |