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 Baxter for the conference. Orme succinctly characterises Baxter's conduct at this time: 'Baxter's conduct during the several changes which have been noticed, does credit to his conscientiousness rather than to his wisdom. He acted with the parliament, but maintained the rights of the king; he enjoyed the benefits of the protectorate, but spoke and reasoned against the Protector; he hailed the return of Charles, but doubted whether he was freed from allegiance to Richard. Abstract principles and refined distinctions, in these as in some other matters, influenced his judgment more than plain matters of fact. Speculations, de jure and de facto, often occupied and distracted his mind and fettered his conduct, while another man would have formed his opinions on a few obvious principles and facts, and have done, both as a subject and a christian, all that circumstances and the Scriptures required.'

When the tumult of the restoration was past, after declining the offered mitre, he pleaded to be allowed to return as lecturer (60l. a year) to his beloved Kidderminster. This could not be granted. The bishop and Sir Ralph Clare opposed. Being thus disappointed he preached occasionally in the churches of London under license by Sheldon. Three days before the Act of Uniformity was passed, on 16 May 1662, he bade farewell to the church of England in the great church of Blackfriars. He then quietly and unostentatiously retired to Acton in Middlesex. In 1665, during the plague, he was the guest of Richard Hampden in Buckinghamshire. When it ended he once more settled at Acton. He remained in this village as long as the act against conventicles was in force, writing many books and preaching as opportunity offered. When the act was allowed to lapse, he had crowded audiences. But the eyes of the royalists were upon him. He suffered in common with all the nonconformists cast out by the St. Bartholomew Act. Once the authorities blundered in their hate. Whilst preaching, he was committed for six months to New Prison by a warrant signed by two justices, but having procured a habeas corpus he was discharged, and thereupon removed to Totteridge, near Barnet. His discharge happened thus. On his way to prison he called upon Serjeant Fountain for his advice, who, after reading the mittimus, pronounced it illegal and irregular. The earls of Orrery, Manchester, Arlington, and Buckingham mentioned the affair to the king, who sent Sir John Baker to Baxter with this message, that though his majesty might not relax the law yet he would not be offended if by any application in Westminster Hall he obtained his liberty. Upon this habeas corpus was demanded at the bar of the Common Pleas, and granted. This vexed the justices who had committed him, and they made out a fresh mittimus in order to have him sent to Newgate. This he avoided by keeping out of the way. It is needless to record his successive meeting-houses, or his monotonously cruel wrongs. He bore himself in all meekness and patience from first to last. Bad as was the treatment of Baxter under Charles II, still worse was it under James II. Macaulay's narrative of his trial before Jeffreys has become one of the classic quotations in historic literature. It is founded upon an account published by Orme from the Baxter MSS. in Dr. Williams's library. Baxter was imprisoned 28 Feb. 1684-5, on a charge of libelling the church in his 'Paraphrase of the New Testament' (1685). His trial took place on 30 May, after an appeal for delay 18 May. Jeffreys insulted him grossly on both occasions.

It is believed that had Jeffreys had his own way, Baxter would have been 'whipped through London at the cart tail.' The 'actual sentence was a fine of 500 marks and imprisonment till it was paid. For about a year and a half he remained in prison easy conditions, as the visit of Matthew Henry reveals (, pp. 375-6). There were portents in the heavens. There were ominous shakings as of the solid globe. 'The court,' says Macaulay, 'began to think of gaining the nonconformists. Baxter was not only set at liberty, but was informed that if he chose to reside in London he might do so without fearing that the Five Mile Act would be enforced against him. The government probably hoped that the recollection of past sufferings and the sense of present ease would produce the same effect on him as on Rosewall and Lobb. The hope was disappointed. Baxter was neither to be corrupted nor to be deceived. He refused to join in any address of thanks for the indulgence, and exerted all his influence to promote good feeling between the church and the presbyterians' (History of England, ch. vii.)

Released on 24 Nov. 1686–the fine was remitted–Baxter was now in loneliness. His like-hearted wife, Margaret Charlton, whom he had married on 10 Sept. 1662 when well advanced in years, and the 'Breviate' of whose life (1681) is perhaps the most perfect of his minor writings, had died on 14 June 1681, and he mourned for her irreparably. He held his orders to be indefeasible. Still, therefore, he preached as opportunity was found, and always to immense gatherings. He took 