But whatever might be the temporary relief then tacitly granted, or the patronage and protection then virtually offered to Dissenters, a manifest change occurred in their circumstances after the Oxford dissolution of 1681. The causes of this change require attention. Sir William Temple’s Utopian scheme had broken down. However plausible on paper, it had proved a failure in practice. Shaftesbury and Russell could not work with Temple and Halifax; and in the spring of 1681 the three former had disappeared from the Board, so also had Salisbury, Essex, and Sunderland,--the management of affairs being chiefly in the hands of Halifax, of Lord Radnor, of Hyde, created Lord Rochester, and of the Secretaries of State, Jenkins and Conway. [Sidenote: 1681.] Halifax is described as a man of great wit, which he often employed upon the subject of religion. “He confessed he could not swallow down everything that Divines imposed on the world; he was a Christian in submission, he believed as much as he could, and he hoped that God would not lay it to his charge if he could not digest iron as an ostrich did, nor take into his belief things that must burst him.” Accustomed to run on in conversation after this fashion, he excited a suspicion of his being an atheist, a charge which he utterly denied; betraying at the same time, in the midst of sickness, some kind and degree of spiritual feeling, whilst at other tunes he would profess a philosophical contempt of the world, and call the titles of rank rattles to please children.[62] The colouring of his mind was better than the drawing. He admired justice and liberty in theory,--he gave them up for places and titles in practice.[63] With little or no principle of any kind, he answered Dryden’s description-- “Jotham of piercing wit and frequent thought, Endued by nature, and by learning taught To move assemblies; but who only tried The worse awhile, then chose the better side.” The last line is scarcely true, but he well merited the name of Trimmer,[64] his constancy being confined to his warfare with the Church of Rome. Radnor, if we are to believe Burnet, was morose and cynical, learned but intractable, just in the administration of affairs, yet vicious under the appearance of virtue.[65] The gossip of the Court called him “an old snarling, troublesome, peevish fellow;” and even Clarendon speaks of him as of “a sour and surly nature, a great _opiniâtre_, and one who must be overcome before he would believe that he could be so.”[66] Of the Earl of Rochester, it is remarked by Roger North, “His infirmities were passion, in which he would swear like a cutter, and the indulging himself in wine. But his party was that of the Church of England, of whom he had the honour, for many years, to be accounted the head.”[67] But North, it must be remembered, was a man of violent prejudices, and his judgment of contemporaries must be estimated accordingly. [Sidenote: MEN IN POWER.]