A large meeting of Presbyterian and Independent brethren was held just afterwards, to depute four of their number to wait on Compton, to thank him for his courtesy, and whilst they were considering this matter, “there were divers bundles of the King’s letters, containing the reasons of his withdrawing, delivered or thrown in amongst them by a stranger. Some bundles had particular directions on them.” The circumstance indicates the activity of James’ agents, and their idea that he had special claims on the Dissenters, who had taken advantage of his Indulgences. But, says the person who records the incident, “they are the more fortified hereby in their purpose, that they may cast off the imputation cast upon them by their enemies, as betrayers of the religion and laws of the kingdom, by complying with the Court.”[77] Other Nonconformists, who did not hear of the Bishops’ audience in sufficient time, presented a distinct address a few days afterwards, promising “the utmost endeavour, which in their stations they were capable of affording, for the promoting the excellent and most desirable ends for which His Highness had declared.”[78] CHAPTER III. England was now in the midst of a revolution. What was its character? Its ecclesiastical aspects alone demand our attention, but these are so closely connected with others, that we shall be compelled to look at them all together. Politics and religion were inextricably interwoven. They had been so in earlier changes. Changes mainly religious were also political; changes mainly political were also religious. Lollardism wrought a vast religious revolution, but though it principally aimed at purifying the Church, it sought, as a means to that end, the amendment of the State. The Reformation was pre-eminently an ecclesiastical movement, but its political entanglements are obvious to everybody. The Civil Wars were struggles for civil liberty--for the rights of the people against the oppression of the Crown; but the religious spirit, at first hidden in the heart of those conflicts, was so strong, and soon burst out in other forms so conspicuously, that the Commonwealth of England and the Protectorate of Cromwell became entangled with ecclesiastical and theological controversies. The Revolution of 1688 came in the wake of the Puritan movement. [Sidenote: 1688.]