JAMES THE SECOND.

75

wordly talk.* It was natural that James should make a wide cn ] * p -distinction between this harmless race and those fierce and" 16S5.restless sects which considered resistance to tyranny as aChristian duty, which had, in Germany, France, and Hol-land, made war on legitimate princes, and which had, duringfour generations, borne peculiar enmity to the House ofStuart.

It happened, moreover, that it was possible to grant largerelief to the Roman Catholic and to the Quaker without miti-gating the sufferings of the Puritan sects. A law which wasthen in force imposed severe penalties on every person whorefused to take the oath of supremacy when required to do so.

This law did not affect Presbyterians, Independents, or Bap-tists ; for they were all ready to call God to witness that theyrenounced all spiritual connection with foreign prelates andpotentates. But the Roman Catholic would not swear thatthe Pope had no jurisdiction in England, and the Quakerwould not swear to any thing. On the other hand, neitherthe Roman Catholic nor the Quaker was touched by the FiveMile Act, which, of all the laws in the Statute Book, wasperhaps the most annoying to the Puritan Nonconformists.**

The Quakers had a powerful and zealous advocate atcourt. Though, as a class, they mixed little with the world,and shunned politics as a pursuit dangerous to their spiritualinterests, one of them, widely distinguished from the rest bystation and fortune, lived in the highest circles, and had con-

* Clarkson on Quakerism; Peculiar Customs, chapter v.

*• After this passage was written, I round, in the British Museum, amanuscript (llarl. MS. 7506.) entitled, 4 'An Account of the Seizures, Se-questrations, great Spoil and Ifavock made upon the Estates of the se-veral Protestant Dissenters called Quakers, upon Prosecution of oldStatutes made against Papist and Popish Recusants.” The manuscriptis marked as having belonged to James, and appears to have been givenby his confidential servant, Colonel Graham, to Lord Oxford. This cir-cumstance appears to me to confirm the view which I have taken of theKing's conduct towards the Quakers.