Much sorrow and trouble sprung out of the Conference.[252] The Episcopalian Royalists treated their opponents as a vanquished party, and retorted on their old persecutors by calling them seditious and disaffected. Young clergymen hoped they were on the road to preferment if they reviled and calumniated Presbyterians; and Baxter especially became a butt for malignant marksmen. Even his prayers were heard with suspicion, and so, as he said, it was a mercy when he was silenced. Yet his own account of the Conference produced a favourable impression in quarters where he and his friends had been misapprehended. The Independents, in the first instance, had been annoyed that the Presbyterians had not consulted them; some of the latter Divines, too, had been zealous of their more influential brethren, and both parties had joined in saying that the Puritan Commissioners were too forward in meeting the Bishops, and too ready to make concessions; and that Baxter, although unimpeachable as to his motives, had been too eager for concord, and too ready for compromise. But now the printed papers turned the tide; the Independents admitted that the Presbyterian Commissioners had been faithful to their principles.[253] [Sidenote: SAVOY CONFERENCE.] The Independents took no part in the Conference at Worcester House or in that at the Savoy. They were not consulted by Presbyterians--an instance of neglect which some of the Independents resented--but it is plain, from a consideration of the principles of the latter party during the Civil Wars and Commonwealth, that they could not, consistently with those principles, harmoniously unite in any scheme for comprehension. Their methods of Church discipline, felt to be most important for securing the purity of their Churches, rendered it impossible that their ecclesiastical institutions should work in harmony with an Establishment. Why the Independents were overlooked by the Government at that period, is obvious. At the Restoration they were thrown into the background. Their previous political influence had sprung from their connection with the Army, from the favour of Republican officers, and from the religious sympathies of Oliver Cromwell. That influence terminated on the eve of the King's return; and it is easy, without suspecting their loyalty, to understand how they would, at such a crisis, lose social position as well as political influence.[254] Their prosperity under the Protectorate necessarily entailed their adversity at the Restoration. Moreover, although to the Presbyterians there remained friends at Court in the Earl of Manchester and other noblemen, the Independents enjoyed no aristocratic patrons. The Fleetwoods, Desboroughs, and Berrys, so far from being able to assist their fellow-religionists, had enough to do to take care of themselves. The Presbyterians, as we have seen, had still, in London, clergymen of high standing and great activity, but the Independents could not make any boast of that kind.