Clarendon was determined to crush the Nonconformist party notwithstanding the promises that had been held out to them in the Declaration of Breda. He secured the enactment of a number of laws, the Act of Uniformity (1662), the Conventicle Act (1664) and the Five Mile Act (1665) known as the Clarendon Code, which, though directed principally against the Dissenters, helped to increase the hardships of the Catholic body. Once, indeed, in 1662-63, Charles made a feeble attempt to redeem his promise to both Catholics and Nonconformists by announcing his intention of applying to Parliament to allow him to exercise the dispensing power in regard to the Act of Uniformity and other such laws, but the opposition was so strong that the proposed declaration of indulgence was abandoned. The terrible fire that broke out in London (September 1666) and which raged for five days, destroying during that time a great part of the city, led to a new outburst of anti-Catholic feeling. Without the slightest evidence the fire was attributed to the Papists, and an inscription to this effect placed upon the monument erected to commemorate the conflagration remained unchanged until 1830. When Parliament met a committee was appointed to inquire into the increase of popery, and a demand was made that proclamations should be issued for the banishment of all priests and Jesuits. On the fall of Clarendon (1667) the Cabal ministers succeeded to power. These were Clifford, who was a convinced Catholic, Arlington who if not a Catholic at this time had at least Catholic tendencies, Buckingham, Ashley, a man of no fixed religious opinions, and Lauderdale, a Scotch Presbyterian (1670).[17] The contest for the succession to the Spanish throne was at hand, and Louis XIV. was as anxious to secure the support of England as was Charles to escape from the Triple Alliance and the domination of Parliament. Besides, his brother James, Duke of York, and heir-presumptive to the English throne, had announced his adhesion to the Catholic Church, and his example produced such an effect upon the king's mind that he determined to imitate it if only France would promise support. It was resolved to conclude a secret treaty with France by which Charles should pledge himself to profess openly the Catholic religion and to assist Louis in his schemes against Holland and Belgium, provided that Louis would supply both money and men to suppress the disturbance to which the king's change of religion might give rise in England. The treaty was signed in May 1670, but as Charles was more anxious about the subsidies than about the change of religion, and as Louis XIV. preferred that the religious question should not be raised till the war against Holland had been completed, very little, if anything, was done, except to publish a Declaration of Indulgence (1672) in which Charles by virtue of his "supreme power in ecclesiastical matters" suspended "all manner of penal laws against whatsoever sort of