The history of Congregationalism after the Restoration is a history of development. Between Presbyterianism and an Establishment there are strong affinities; but there are insuperable difficulties connected with the maintenance of Congregational order in a parish, and the only real kind of Congregational Church, formed by any incumbent under the Commonwealth, had to be practically severed from the legal position which he held as a parochial clergyman. When, therefore, upon the fall of Cromwell’s Broad Church, the bark of Congregationalism was cut completely adrift from its State moorings, it was, so far as intervals of peace would allow, left to make its way, under God’s blessing, by the efforts of the rowers whom it carried on board. [Sidenote: DEVELOPMENT OF NONCONFORMITY.] Independents and Baptists are included under the general denomination of Congregationalists. Independents retired into obscurity for a while after the Restoration. The doors of buildings where they had been wont to assemble were nailed up; the pastors were driven out; flocks were scattered; the administration of ordinances could not take place; and meetings could not be held, as the still existing records of communities, which had been prosperous under the Commonwealth, bear ample witness. There is reason to believe that the Independents had diminished in number. The Court influence in their favour, which they enjoyed so long as the Protector, Oliver, lived, would die when he died; and those who had joined their company, so long as the sun shone on their side of the street, and who had walked with them in silver slippers, would forsake their old companions, and go another way when the path was overshadowed, and the silver slippers were changed for spiked sandals. The political antecedents of the Independents as a party, their allegiance to Oliver Cromwell, the sympathy of many of them in Republican ideas, and their supposed complicity in the execution of Charles I., combined to make them exceedingly unpopular with the Royalists, whilst their democratic notions of Church government appeared most offensive to Episcopalians; consequently, to maintain a position under so much odium, and to withstand the steady fire of persecution, required a degree of faith, and a measure of decision, not very common in this world, where the love of ease and the sacrifice of principle too frequently set the fashion. The principles of Congregationalism, however, proved their vitality, and although assemblies of Church-members were unfrequent, or were altogether discontinued for a while, the identity of Churches was preserved, and whenever an opportunity presented itself, the scattered ones gladly re-united in the pleasant fellowship after which they yearned.