14. =The Question of Toleration Raised. 1662-1663.=--Before Parliament met, Charles, on December 26, =1662=, issued a declaration in favour of toleration. He asked Parliament to pass an Act enabling him to mitigate the rigour of the Act of Uniformity by exercising that dispensing power 'which he conceived to be inherent in him.' Again and again, in former reigns, the king had dispensed from the penalties imposed by various laws, though there had been times when Parliament had remonstrated in cases where those penalties were imposed to restrain the Roman Catholic religion. When Parliament met again in =1663=, the Cavaliers rejected the king's proposal. They would hear nothing of toleration for Dissenters, and still less of toleration for 'Papists.' The fear of a restoration of 'Popery' was the strongest motive of Englishmen of that day, and Charles, who, unlike his father, always recoiled from strong opposition, even consented to banish all Roman Catholic priests. Yet it was in their interest and not in that of the Dissenters that he had issued his declaration. This affair sowed the first seeds of ill-will between Charles and Clarendon, as the latter had warmly supported the opposition to the Declaration. 15. =The Conventicle Act. 1664.=--Parliament was roused to proceed still farther in its course of intolerance. The Act of Uniformity had turned the Dissenting clergy out of the Church, but had not prevented them from holding meetings for worship. In May =1664= a Conventicle Act was passed, by which any adult attending a conventicle was made liable to an ascending scale of penalties, ending in seven years' transportation, according to the number of times that the offence had been committed. A conventicle was defined as being a religious meeting not in accordance with the practice of the Church of England, at which more than four persons were present in addition to the household. The sentence of transportation was, indeed, a terrible one, as it implied working like a slave, generally under the burning sun in Barbadoes or some West India colony. The simple-minded Pepys, whose Diary throws light on the social conditions of the time, met some of the worshippers on their way to the inevitable sentence. "They go like lambs," he writes, "without any resistance. I would to God they would conform, or be more wise and not be catched." It was fear which produced the eagerness of English gentlemen to persecute Dissenters. They remembered how they had themselves been kept under by Cromwell's Puritan army, and, knowing that most of Cromwell's soldiers were still in the prime of life, they feared lest, if the Dissenters were allowed to gather head, they might become strong enough to call again to arms that ever-victorious army.