Charles, as we have seen, had his own game to play, and his own reasons for protecting Ashley during his vehement struggle against the Test and Corporation Act, the Act of Uniformity, and the persecution of the Dissidents. But the struggle had been fruitless, and the only chance--as it seemed to Ashley--of securing toleration was to receive it on the king's own terms. It was with the assent therefore of the Presbyterian party in the Council that Charles issued in December a royal proclamation which expressed the king's resolve to exempt from the penalties of the Acts which had been passed "those who living peaceably do not conform themselves thereunto through scruple and tenderness of misguided conscience, but modestly and without scandal perform their devotions in their own way." The desire for toleration had in fact not only overcome their dread of Catholicism, but even blinded them to the political dangers of a revival of the dispensing power. The indulgence applied equally to Catholics as to Protestants; it was in itself a bold assertion of the royal prerogative of suspending the execution of the law. The Presbyterian statesmen indeed aimed at giving the dispensing power a legal basis. A bill introduced by Lords Ashley and Robartes in the opening of 1663, in redemption of a pledge contained in the declaration itself, gave Charles the power to dispense not only with the provisions of the Act of Uniformity but with the penalties provided by all laws which enforced religious conformity or which imposed religious tests. But the policy of Charles as of Ashley broke instantly down before the good sense as well as the religious passion of the people at large. If the Presbyterian leaders in the council had stooped to accept the aid of the declaration, the bulk of the Dissidents had no mind to have their grievances used as a means of procuring by a side wind toleration for Roman Catholics, or of building up again that dispensing power which the civil wars had thrown down. The Churchmen on the other hand with the bishops at their head were resolute in opposition. Ever since the issue of the Declaration of Indulgence the hatred felt by the Churchmen for the Dissidents had been embittered by suspicions of a secret league between the Dissidents and the Catholics in which the king was taking part. The Houses therefore struck simultaneously at both their opponents. They forced Charles by an address to withdraw his pledge of toleration. They then extorted from him a proclamation for the banishment of all Catholic priests, and followed this up by a Conventicle Act, which punished with fine, imprisonment, and transportation on a third offence all persons who met in greater number than five for any religious worship save that of the Common Prayer. [Sidenote: Clarendon's triumph.]