It is necessary also to bear in mind this circumstance, that both parties were advocates for a national establishment of religion. Each party fixed its thoughts upon one society in which substantial uniformity of government and worship should be maintained--one society engrossing patronage and absorbing emoluments. It requires some effort for persons familiar only with modern phases of thought, thoroughly to enter into the ideas of the seventeenth century, and accurately to apprehend and estimate the views which were then current. Ecclesiastical controversy has undergone an immense change since that day; and could those who met together, as about to be described, now rise from the dead, it would be difficult for them to comprehend the position into which the Church questions of our age seem to be drifting.[137] Remembering all this we proceed with our history. [Sidenote: 1660.] [Sidenote: WORCESTER HOUSE DECLARATION.] There was a house in the Strand known as Worcester House. It had belonged to the Bishops of Carlisle; it had been bestowed on the Bedford family; it had been transferred to the author of the _Century of Inventions_, whose family title of Marquis of Worcester, gave it its name; and it had been fitted up by the Long Parliament for the reception of the Scotch Commissioners. By a turn in the wheel of fortune, which, at the Restoration, brought about so many changes, this residence had come once more into the possession of the Marquis, and he had lent it to Lord Chancellor Clarendon, as a residence, without requiring "one penny rent." The mansion, over which had fallen such varying shadows--and which had been designed to accommodate the deputation in 1643 from the Presbyterians of Scotland--now appeared as the scene of important negotiations between the Court and the Presbyterians of England.