The ecclesiastics exhibited no hesitation. By a strange coincidence it was on the day of St. Bartholomew that two thousand of their number took farewell of their charges and their congregations, followed by their families. They retired from the spots where they had looked forward to ending their days, abandoning the care of souls to the old pastors, who had been driven out like themselves by the revolution, and who now resumed possession of their benefices. The Long Parliament had of old shown compassion, though often without effect, by ordering the application of a fifth part of the ecclesiastical revenues to the dispossessed ministers. The Royalist Parliament did not take the same precaution. The Presbyterian ministers remained long deprived of resources, an object of the spleen of the Government. The Church of England, transformed by her triumph, and become more entire and more dominant than she had hitherto been or desired to be, henceforth enjoyed an undisputed reign. She had regained possession of all her advantages, both spiritual and temporal. This was in great part the work of the lord chancellor, recently created Lord Clarendon, who pursued with passionate ardor a labor which the king regarded with indifference. Yielding to the obstinacy or the enthusiasm of his ministers, Charles contemplated the measures neither with satisfaction nor personal sympathy. Inclining at that time, in the bottom of his heart, towards the doctrines of Catholicism, he would willingly have granted toleration to the Nonconformists in the hope of including the Catholics in the universal indulgence. {351} This his Parliament would not permit; at the same time they hurried him towards a descent which conducted to rigors of which Charles was already weary. "I am tired of hanging!" he said to Clarendon. Illustrious victims excited the furious passions of the Cavaliers. Sir Harry Vane and Lambert in England and the Marquis of Argyll in Scotland imagined themselves safe when the political executions had ceased. They were deceived, and their friends had rejoiced prematurely. Argyll died first (1661), finally ruined by some old letters which he had written to Monk, and which the latter forwarded to his judges. "I placed the crown upon the head of the king at Scone," said the marquis, "and this is my recompense!" The able defence of Vane troubled the Crown lawyers charged with his indictment. "If we do not know what to say to him, we know what to do," muttered Chief Justice Foster. The king was struck with the attitude of the accused. "He is too dangerous a man to let live if we can honestly put him out of the way," he wrote to Clarendon. Vane was executed on the 14th of June, 1662; Lambert was condemned to imprisonment for life. He was sent to the Island of Guernsey, where he was destined soon afterwards to end his days.