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 complain when the church livings were given back to the Church of England; but it was a great mistake of Parliament and Church to prevent the Dissenters from holding their public worship as they pleased. It was a lasting misfortune for England that a series of laws was passed in the reign of Charles II to shut out both Catholics and Protestant Dissenters from all offices in the State, and even from offices in town councils. Catholics were excluded from Parliament, for the Great Rebellion had left a hatred of Popery greater than that which had existed before it. These intolerant laws, though partly softened for Protestant Dissenters in 1690, and for Catholics also in the reign of George III, were not abolished till 1828 and 1829. Of course, no persons now suffered death for their religion (and it was in Charles II’s reign that Queen Mary’s laws for burning heretics were finally wiped out), but many Dissenters were imprisoned, among them John Bunyan, author of the Pilgrim’s Progress.

In Scotland a similar restoration took place of the old Scottish Parliament, in which Lords and Commons had always sat in one house; of Church government by bishops; of lands which had been confiscated. The extreme Covenanters refused to recognize these changes, and before long broke out into open rebellion in the south-west. Rebellion went on smouldering a good deal until 1688; much cruelty was exercised, and much more was wrongly believed to have been exercised, in putting it down. Charles's English ministers would have liked to govern Scotland from London and to unite the two Parliaments, but the patriotic spirit of the smaller country was as yet entirely against this.

King Charles II came back to find a new kind of Eng-