50

HISTORY OP ENGLAND.

CHAP.

VII.

iGsr.

gladly have suffered them to indemnify themselves by harass-ing and pillaging Protestant Dissenters.*

The court had changed its face. The scarf and cassockcould hardly appear there without calling forth sneers andmalicious whispers. Maids of honour forbore to giggle, andLords of the Bedchamber bowed low, when the Puritanicalvisage and the Puritanical garb, so long the favourite subjectsof mockery in fashionable circles, were seen in the galleries.Taunton, which had been during two generations the strong-hold of the Roundhead party in the West, which had twiceresolutely repelled the armies of Charles the First, which hadrisen as one man to support Monmouth, and which had beenturned into a shambles by Kirke and Jeffreys, seemed to havesuddenly succeeded to the place which Oxford had onceoccupied in the royal favour.** The King constrained himselfto show even fawning courtesy to eminent Dissenters. Tosome he offered money, to some municipal honours, to somepardons for their relations and friends who, having beenimplicated in the Rye House Plot, or having joined thestandard of Monmouth, were now wandering on the Con-tinent, or toiling among the sugar canes of Barbadoes. Pieaffected even to sympathize with the kindness which the Eng-lish Puritans felt for their foreign brethren. A second and athird proclamation were published at Edinburgh, whichgreatly extended the nugatory toleration granted to the Pres-byterians by the edict of February.*** The banished Hugue-nots, on whom the King had frowned during many months,and whom he had defrauded pf the alms contributed by thenation, were now relieved and caressed. An Order in Councilwas issued, appealing again in their behalf to the public* Warrant Book of the Treasury. See particularly the instructionsdated March 8. 1G8J; Burnet, i. 115.; Reflections on his Majesty’sProclamation for a Toleration in Scotland; Letters containing someReflections on his Majesty’s Declaration lor Liberty of Conscience;Apology for the Church of England with relation to the spirit of Perse-cution for which she is accused, 168J. But it is impossible for me tocite all the pamphlets from which I have formed my notion of the stateof parties at this lime.

** Letter to a Dissenter.

*•* Wodrow, Appendix, vol. ii. Nos. 132.134.