JAMES THE SECOND.

57

a market town in England without at least a knot of sepa- C "| I P -ratists. No exertion was spared to induce them to express - 1687 _ -tlieir gratitude for, the Indulgence. Circular letters, imploringthem to sign, were sent to every corner of the kingdom insuch numbers that the mail bags, it was sportively said, weretoo heavy for the post-horses. Yet all the addresses whichcould be obtained from all the Presbyterians, Independents,and Baptists scattered over England did not in six monthsamount to sixty; nor is there any reason to believe that theseaddresses were numerously signed. *

The great body of Protestant Nonconformists, firmly at-Thema-tached to civil liberty, and distrusting the promises of the {U” l'uri-King and of the Jesuits, steadily refused to return thanks for ‘ a " a I1 ar t 0a favour which, it might well be suspected, concealed a snare. theCourt.This was the temper of all the most illustrious chiefs of theparty. One of these was Baxter. He had, as we have seen, Baiter,been brought to trial soon after the accession of James, hadbeen brutally insulted by Jeffreys, and had been convictedby a jury, such as the courtly Sheriffs of those times were inthe habit of selecting. Baxter had been about a year and ahalf in prison when the court began to think seriously of gain-ing the Nonconformists. He was not only set at liberty, butwas informed that, if he chose to reside in London, he mightdo so without fearing that the Five Mile Act would be enforcedagainst him. The government probably hoped that the re-collection of past sufferings and the sense of present easewould produce the same effect on him as on Rosewell andLobb. The hope was disappointed. Baxter was neither tobe corrupted nor to be deceived. He refused to join in anyaddress of thanks for the Indulgence, and exerted all hisinfluence to promote good feeling between the Church andthe Presbyterians. **

If any man stood higher than Baxter in the estimation Howe,of the Px’Otestant Dissenters, that man was John Howe. Howehad, like Baxter, been personally a gainer by the recentchange of policy. The same tyranny which had flung Baxter

* The Addresses will be found in the London Gazelles.

** Calamy’s Life of Baxter.