How was the Declaration received? [Sidenote: 1687.] The Catholics expressed their satisfaction with it; and whilst they gladly availed themselves of the professed benefit, they felt pleasure in seeing liberty extended to all sects without exception, by a prince of their own communion.[176] Politicians, who understood and cared for the liberties of their country, however glad they might be to see different forms of religion tolerated, could not help being alarmed by so daring an exercise of the Royal prerogative, which if conceded, would imperil the Constitution, break down the safeguards of law, and place the destinies of the nation for evil, as well as for good, in the hands of a despotic sovereign. Members of the Church of England, in this hour of its need, said kind things of the Nonconformists, whom they had persecuted before, and spoke of legal securities for freedom of worship; yet they viewed with the utmost alarm this exercise of absolute power, and saw in it only a confirmation of their worst fears, that, under a pretence of general liberty, the Monarch sought to destroy the ascendancy of Protestantism. The selfishness, which blended with their fears, and the compunctions which mingled with their alarm, did not diminish the reasonableness of their apprehension. [Sidenote: DECLARATION OF INDULGENCE.] Some Bishops, however, distinguished themselves by a line of conduct different from that pursued by their brethren. Durham, Rochester, Peterborough, Oxford, and Chester, being invited to meet the Lord Chancellor and the Earl of Sunderland, the latter told them how acceptable to His Majesty would be an address of thanks. Three of them at once signed such an address. Rochester hesitated, but complied; Peterborough decidedly refused. Chester reported that the four who signed altered their first paper, which gave thanks for the Declaration as a whole, into a second, which acknowledged only the King’s promise to protect the Church; and it is further reported that when the Bishop of Durham presented the document to the King, His Majesty said, “I expected this sooner from you of the Church of England, and also now, that it would have come much fuller than what it is. Can you find nothing to give thanks for, but that one clause which relates to yourselves? Have you no sense of that kindness others have received thereby? Methinks you might have given thanks, at least, for that ease and relief your Protestant brethren have received by it.”[177]