Dissenting ministers been generally zealous in supporting the measure, they would have been charged by their neighbours with looking after the loaves and fishes. Where, however, no love of this world influenced the decision, the decision might be influenced by prejudice and suspicion; for persons must have been more or less than human, who, after such treatment as they had received for thirty years, could be free from all passionate emotion in estimating the conduct of those who had been either bitter persecutors or unconcerned witnesses of wrong. The motives of Churchmen at the Revolution would not always be fairly weighed by Dissenters. Suspicion, where it could not be justified, may still be condoned, looking at the antecedents of the case; and where there was not sufficient ground for imputing dishonourable motives to Churchmen, there might be enough to lead Nonconformists to suspect, that no warm welcome would be afforded them within the Establishment, even should the iron gates unfold. When reports of Comprehension were rife at an earlier period, an old story had been told to this effect: Sancho the Third, King of Spain, put aside his brother’s children that he might ascend the throne. A lady who was the representative and heir of the dispossessed line of Princes married the Duke of Medina Celi, who assumed the rights of his wife. He and his descendants accordingly presented a petition to the Sovereign that he would restore the crown--a petition to which he gave the reply, “_No es lugar_,” “There is no room.” This story had been applied by Presbyterians to the abeyance in which their claims to Church readmission had been held for more than a quarter of a century. “So our just liberty is talked of,” says Newcome, of Manchester, “by fits in course; and in course doft off with _No es lugar_, There is no room.”[143] It was thought the story remained as applicable after the Revolution as before. [Sidenote: 1689.] [Sidenote: COMPREHENSION.] This fact should be remembered. Comprehension became to all parties more and more difficult, and to some parties less and less desirable, as time rolled on. However hard it might be to effect a reconciliation, looking at the temper of Churchmen in 1662, it became harder in 1689, looking at the position of Dissenters. They had increased in numbers, had formed themselves into distinct Churches, had obtained their own ordained ministers, and had begun to create an ecclesiastical history, and to cherish in their separate capacity something of an _esprit de corps_. The opportunity of reclaiming the wanderers, once possessed by the Church party, had slipped away beyond recall. Overtures, which would have been eagerly grasped before, were coldly looked at now.[144]