=37. The Ejection.=--The promised Act of Indemnity was not passed till 1662, and it was not a free pardon, as had been looked for. Between seven and eight hundred persons were heavily fined. In this same year an Act was passed requiring all persons holding any public office to sign a _Declaration_ that the Covenant was an unlawful oath; and lastly a law was passed that all ministers presented to livings since 1639 should be turned out, unless they would agree to be collated or instituted by the new bishops. The ministers who refused to consent to episcopal collation were required to remove with their families out of their parishes within a month from the date of the passing of this Act. The meeting of the Council in which it was passed was called the _Drunken Parliament_, from the condition of the members present. Sooner than submit to this, three hundred and fifty ministers resigned. Most of their parishioners followed them, and the churches were left empty, while the people flocked to the open-air services of their former pastors. To prevent this an Act was passed for levying fines on all persons who did not go to their parish church on the Lord's Day. Another Act, called the _Mile Act_, was also passed, which forbade the recusant or refusing ministers to come within twenty miles of their former parishes, or within three miles of any royal burgh. The _Court of High Commission_ was revived, and empowered to proceed against all dissenters from the Episcopal (now the Established) Church, whether they were Romanists or Presbyterians. But this tyranny drove the people to revolt, and a third _Religious War_ began. In the first the people had taken up arms for a question of doctrine; the second arose from disputes about a form of prayer; this, the third, was caused by enforcing a form of Church-government specially disliked by the nation. In the conduct of public prayer no change was made. As there had been in James's reign a _Presbyterian Church_ with a _Liturgy_, so now there was an _Episcopal Church_ without one. But, though the cause of dispute seemed this time of less importance than in the two former wars, the zeal on the one side and the persecution on the other were greater than they had been in the former struggles. Then Edinburgh and the Eastern Lowlands had borne the brunt of the battle; now it was in the West, where it was latest kindled, that religious zeal flamed fiercest and lasted longest.