History of the English People, Volume VI: Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683Green, John Richard
History
History of the English People, Volume VI: Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683
Green, John Richard
Great Britain -- History
Independents only but for all Christians. Dexterous as the move was, it
at once spread alarm. The silence of the bishops, the protest of Baxter,
proved that on the point of tolerating the Catholics all were at one. In
itself however the declaration satisfied the Puritan party, and one of
their leaders, Dr. Reynolds, accepted a bishopric on the strength of it.
But the king's disappointment at the check given to his plans showed
itself in the new attitude of the government when a bill was introduced
into the House of Commons by Sir Matthew Hale to turn the declaration
into a law. The opposition of the Episcopalian party was secretly
encouraged by the Royalist section of the ministry, and the bill thrown
out by a small majority. A fresh conference was promised, but in the
absence of any Parliamentary action the Episcopal party boldly availed
themselves of their legal rights. The ejected clergy who still remained
alive entered again into their parsonages, the bishops returned to their
sees, and the dissolution of the Convention-Parliament destroyed the
last hope of an ecclesiastical compromise.
[Sidenote: The Constitutional Royalists.]
The tide of loyalty had in fact been rising fast during its session,
and its influence was already seen in a shameful outrage wrought under
the very orders of the Convention itself. The bodies of Cromwell,
Bradshaw, and Ireton were torn from their graves and hung on gibbets at
Tyburn, while those of Pym and Blake were cast out of Westminster Abbey
into St. Margaret's churchyard. But it was only on the dissolution of
the Convention-Parliament at the end of 1660 that the new political
temper made itself vigorously felt. For the first time during twenty
years half England found itself able to go to the poll. From the outset
of the war all who had taken part on the Royalist side had been
disfranchised as "malignants," and this disfranchisement had been
rigorously enforced even in the elections to the Convention. But
"malignity" had now ceased to be a crime, and the voters so long
deprived of all share in the suffrage, vicars, country gentlemen,
farmers, with the whole body of the Catholics, rushed again to the poll.
Their temper, as might be expected, was one of vengeance on the men who
had held them down so long. In counties and towns alike the zeal for
Church and king, the two causes for which the voters had suffered, swept
all hope of moderation or compromise before it. The ruling impulse was
to get utterly rid of the old representatives. The Presbyterians,
dominant in the Convention, sank in the Cavalier Parliament, as that of
1661 was called, to a handful of fifty members.
[Sidenote: The Parliament of 1661.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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