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JIISTOKY OP ENGLAND.

cnAP. willing, if the legislature would comply with liis request, to let-Jgj— clergymen who were already beneficed continue to hold theirbenefices without swearing allegiance to him. His conduct onthis occasion deserves undoubtedly the praise of disinterested-ness. It is honourable to him that he attempted to purchaseliberty of conscience for his subjects by giving up a safeguardof his own crown. But it must be acknowledged that heshowed less wisdom than virtue. The only Englishman in hisPrivy Council whom he had consulted, if Burnet was correctlyinformed, -was Richard Hampden*; and Richard Hampden,though a highly respectable man, was so far from being able toanswer for the Whig party that he could not answer even for hisown son John, whose temper, naturally vindictive, had beenexasperated into ferocity by the stings of remorse and shame.The King soon found that there was in the hatred of the twogreat factions an energy which was wanting to their love. TheWhigs, though they were almost unanimous in thinking thatthe Sacramental Test ought to be abolished, were by no meansunanimous in thinking that moment well chosen for the aboli-tion; and even those Whigs who were most desirous to see thenonconformists relieved without delay from civil disabilitieswere full)' determined not to forego the opportunity of humblingand punishing the class to whose instrumentality chiefly was tobe ascribed that tremendous reflux of public feeling which hadfollowed the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament. To put theJanes, the Souths, the Sherlocks into such a situation that theymust either starve, or recant, publicly, and with the Gospel attheir lips, all the ostentatious professions of many years, was arevenge too delicious to be relinquished. The Tory, on theother hand, sincerely respected and pitied those clergymen whofelt scruples about the oaths. But the Test was, in his view,essential to the safety of the established religion, and must not* Burnet, ii. 7, 8.