UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND.

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useful: but policy, as well as justice and gratitude, enjoined the chap.

King to give the highest place in his regard to those who, from- -

first to last, through good and evil, had stood by his house. Onthese grounds the Cavaliers very naturally demanded indem-nity for all that they had suffered, and preference in the distri-bution of the favours of the crown. Some violent members ofthe party went further, and clamoured for large categories ofproscription. „

The political feud was, as usual, exasperated by a religiousfeud. The King found the Church in a singular state. A s »° n -short time before the commencement of the civil war, hisfather had given a reluctant assent to a bill, strongly supportedby Falkland, which deprived the Bishops of their seats in theHouse of Lords: but Episcopacy and the Liturgy had neverbeen abolished by law. The Long Parliament, however, hadpassed ordinances which had made a complete revolution inChurch government and in public worship. The new systemwas, in principle, scarcely less Erastian than that which it dis-placed. The Houses, guided chiefly by the counsels of theaccomplished Selden, had determined to keep the spiritualpower strictly subordinate to the temporal power. They hadrefused to declare that any form of ecclesiastical polity was ofdivine origin; and they had provided that, from all the Churchcourts, an appeal should lie in the last resort to Parliament.

With this highly important reservation it had been resolved toset up in England a hierarchy closely resembling that whichnow exists in Scotland. The authority of councils, rising oneabove another in regular gradation, was substituted for theauthority of Bishops and Archbishops. The Liturgy gaveplace to the Presbyterian directory. But scarcely had the newregulations been framed, when the Independents rose to su-preme influence in the state. The Independents had no dis-position to enforce the ordinances touching classical, pro-vincial, and national synods. Those ordinances, therefore,