All Nonconformist ministers were prohibited from officiating in the pulpits of the Episcopalian Church established by law; few other places of worship were in existence, and the operation of the Act, especially by citing and recognizing the Act of Uniformity under Elizabeth, would be to prevent Nonconformists from preaching anywhere. Two classes then were affected: Incumbents, whom the Act ejected; and ministers, not Incumbents, whom it silenced. Plausible arguments might be adduced for the uniformity of an establishment; strong reasons might be urged against a coalition of Episcopacy with Presbyterianism. The government of Bishops, and the use of a Liturgy, being adopted in the Church, it may be said that it is only consistent, that there should be the maintenance of order in the ministry, and of regularity in the worship. But the Act went much further, and proceeded upon the theory of one ecclesiastical incorporation of the entire State, without recognizing outside the existence of any religion whatever. To Nonconformists there was an utter denial of any spiritual rights. For them there was to be neither comprehension nor toleration. The germs of the Conventicle and Five Mile Acts were in the bosom of the Uniformity Bill. CHAPTER XII. More victims in the month of April were sacrificed upon the altar of revenge. Colonel John Okey, a distinguished officer in the Commonwealth Army, who had adopted Republican and Millenarian views; Miles Corbet, a member of the Long Parliament, and Recorder of Yarmouth, who had been connected with the Church under the pastoral care of William Bridge, in that town; and Colonel John Barkstead, who had been knighted by Cromwell, and had been appointed to a seat in his House of Lords--all three, after a brief trial, and a merciless sentence, for the part they had taken in the High Court of Justice, were executed at Tyburn. A noble victim perished two months afterwards. It has been with Sir Henry Vane as with Oliver Cromwell: having disliked each other in life, they have shared a common fate in the judgment of posterity: for, after years of odium, the names of both are raised to honour. Vane's Republicanism rendered him impracticable, and his mysticism, although undeserving the reproaches of Baxter and Burnet, threw a haze over his speculations, which makes them somewhat unintelligible; but the piety and genius of his _Meditations_, and the purity and virtue of his life, render him an object of reverence and love. [Sidenote: REPUBLICAN VICTIMS.]