Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/783

 Struggle in England betzveen King and Parliament Syj supreme. It showed its hostility, however, to the Puritans by a series of intolerant acts, which are very important in English history. It ordered that no one should hold a town office who had not received the communion according to the rites of the Church of England. This was aimed at both the Presbyterians and the Independents. By the Act of Uniformity (1662) every The Act of clergyman who refused to accept everything contained in the "' ^^^^ ^ Book of Common Prayer was to be excluded from holding his benefice. Two thousand clergymen thereupon resigned their positions for conscience' sake. These laws tended to throw all those Protestants who refused The Dis- SOltO'S to conform to the Church of England into a single class, still known to-day as Dissente?'s. It included the Independents, the Pres- byterians, and the newer bodies of the Baptists and the Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers. These sects aban- doned any idea of controlling the religion or politics of the coun- try, and asked only that they might be permitted to worship in their own way outside of the English Church. Toleration found an unexpected ally in the king, who, in Toleration spite of his dissolute habits, had interest enough in religion to the^ktng ^ have secret leanings toward Catholicism. He asked Parliament to permit him to moderate the rigor of the Act of Uniformity by making some exceptions. He even issued a declaration in the interest of toleration, with a view of bettering the posi- tion of the Catholics and Dissenters. Suspicion was, however, aroused lest this toleration might lead to the restpration of "popery," — as the Protestants called the Catholic beliefs, — and Parliament passed the harsh Conventicle Act (1664). The Conven- Any adult attending a conventicle — that is to say, any reli- gious meeting not held in accordance with the practice of the English Church — was liable to penalties which might culminate in transportation to some distant colony. Samuel Pepys, who saw some of the victims of this law upon their way to a terrible exile, notes in his famous diary : " They go like lambs without any resistance. I would to God that they would conform, or be