From Charles II. (1660-1685) Catholics had some reason to expect an amelioration of their sad condition. They had fought loyally for his father and had suffered for their loyalty even more than the Protestant loyalists. In the hour of defeat they had shielded the life of the young prince, and had aided him in escaping from enemies who would have dealt with him as they had dealt with the king. Mindful of their services and of promises Charles had made in exile, and well aware that he had inherited from his mother, Queen Henrietta, a strong leaning towards the Catholic Church, they hoped to profit by the Declaration of Breda, which promised liberty of conscience to all his subjects. But Charles, though secretly in favour of the Catholics on account of their loyalty to his father and to himself, was not a man to endanger his throne for the sake of past services, more especially as his trusted minister, the Earl of Clarendon, was determined to suppress Dissenters no matter what creed they might profess. A number of Catholics, lay and cleric, met at Arundel House to prepare a petition to the House of Lords (1661) for the relaxation of the Penal Laws. The petition was received favourably, and as there was nobody in the House of Lords willing to defend the infliction of the death penalty on account of religion, it was thought that the laws whereby it was considered treason to be a priest or to shelter a priest might be abolished. But dissensions soon arose, even in the Catholic committee itself. The kind of oath of allegiance that might be taken, the extension of the proposed relaxations so as to include the Jesuits, and the anxiety of the laymen to get rid of the fines levied on rich recusants rather than of the penalties meted out to the clergy, led to the dissolution of the committee, and to the abandonment of their suggested measures of redress.[16]