Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/488

474 Danby now advised the king to do that which he had repeatedly dissuaded him from—namely, to dissolve the parliament. Accordingly, on the 30th of December, it was prorogued for five weeks, and before it could meet again, namely, on the 24th of January, he dissolved it by proclamation, summoning another to meet in forty days.



This pension parliament had now lasted nearly eighteen years. A wonderful change had come over the spirits of this parliament since its first meeting. Soon after Charles's return no parliament could be more slavishly submissive. It h<id restored to him almost everything that the Long Parliament had taken from his father—the power of the army, the Customs, and excise; it had passed the most severe and arbitrary acts for the supremacy of the church, and the plunder and persecution of catholics and dissenters. The act of uniformity, the corporation act, the test act, the conventicle act, the five mile act, the act which excluded catholic peers from their house, by which the church and crown had been exalted, and the liberties of the people abridged, were all the work of this parliament. But in time, a different temper displayed itself in this very pliant house. It stiffened and became uncompliant. But this was not at all by a growth of virtue in it. Various circumstances had produced this change. Buckingham, Shaftesbury, and other^ of the cabal ministry and their adherents, had lost place and favour, and had organised a stout opposition. Their chief object were to mortify and thwart the king, to destroy the prospect of the popish duke of York's