into the ranks of the army, in spite of the legal test of conformity to the Established Church which was re- quired to be taken by every person filling any public office ; and when, after a successful suppression of the insurrectionary attempts, the king reassembled Parlia- ment in November, he not only stated that these Roman Catholics would now be continued, but requested extra sui)plies for the increase of the army, evidently for the purpose <if adding largely men of his own confession to tlie rank and file of the army; and when the people seemed unwilling to grant this request, the king per- emjitorily ))rorogued Parliament, after it had sat a little more than a week. James, however, was determined to continue the policy initiated, and ordered patents to be made out under the great seal for e^-ery Roman Cath- olic officer that he had apjwinted, and upon the same principle continued the benefices of some Protestant di- vines who claimed to have been converted to Roman- ism, Quite different continued to be his dealings with the dissenters. Everywhere they were made to feel " the weight of the arm of the conqueror," especially in the provinces that had lately been subject to mvasion, to which the Papists, as well as High-Churchmen, claim- ed that dissenters had lent their aid. " Thus were the Nonconformists ground between the Papists on the one hand and the High-Church clergy on the other, while the former made their advantage of the latter, conclud- ing that when the dissenters were destroyed, or thor- oughly exasperated, and the clergy divided among them- selves, they should be a match for the hierarchy, and ca- pable of establishing that religion which they had been so long aiming to introduce" (Neale, Puritans, ii, 319). Roman Catholic churches were everywhere opened, Jes- uits anci regular priests came in numbers from abroad, schools were opened under their control in the English I metropolis even, men were forbidden to speak disre- j spectfully of the king's reUgion, and all seemed turning in favor of Rome, when at length the eyes of the clergy j of the State Church were opened, and they deemed it high time to preach against the dangerous tendencies. An open rupture with the State Church had become inev- itable ; for the king, having been made acquainted with the position which the clergy of the Church of England had taken to recover the people, who were deserting their churches in numbers, and to rescue the Protestant religion from the danger into which it had fallen, sent circular letters to the bishops, accompanying them with an order to prohibit the inferior clergy from preaching on the controverted points of reUgion. It could not be other\vise than that these persevering attempts of his against the established religion, as well as upon the law of the land, should eventually involve him in a dispute with the Episcopalians, to be productive of the most im- portant consequences. Finding that to carrj- his schemes in favor of Romanism he must strengthen himself by the opponents of the Stale Cliurch, he suddenly, in the beginning of April, 1G87, published the famous Declara- tion of Indulgence, a paper at once suspending and dis- pensing with all the penal laws against dissenters, and all tests, including even the oaths of allegiance and su- premacy, heretoftjre reciuired of persons appointed to of- fices civil or military ; but at the same time he repeated his promise, "already often repeated and often violated, that he would protect the Established Church in tlie enjoyment of her legal rights." At first the dissenters hailed the seeming approach of a new sera, and great were the rejoicings in behalf of a declaration which se- cured them liberty of conscience, and threw open the doors of the prison that had so long barred them ; and the king felt not a little encouraged in his new-chcsen course when addresses came to him from some of the dissenters (though they afterwards proved to have rep- resented only a small faction ; comp. Neale, Puritans, ii, 328). Emboldened, he immediately showed his predi- lections for his own Church. In Ireland, all places of power imder the crown were put into the hands of Ro- manists. The earl of Castlemaine was at the same time
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JAMES II