Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/297

 Struggle for Constitutional Government 259 prison ; they stayed there till they were dismissed, for they would not petition to be set at liberty, nor would they pay the fines set on them, nor so much as the jail fees, calling these wages of unrighteousness. And as soon as they were let out they went to their meeting-houses again ; and when they found these were shut up by order, they held their meetings on the street, before the doors of those houses. They said that they would not disown or be ashamed of their meeting together to worship God ; but, in imitation of Daniel, they would do it the more publicly because they were forbidden doing it. Some called this obstinacy, while, others called it firmness. But by it they carried their point, for the government grew weary of dealing with so much perverseness and so began with letting them alone. X. James II and the Revolution of 1688 Two writers of the time make clear the impression which James II' s attempt to restore the Roman Catholic faith in England made upon the Protestants. November 20, 168 '5. The popish party at this time behaved themselves with an insolence which did them a prejudice. The king of France continued to practice all the cruelties imaginable towards the Protestants in France to make them turn papists, commanding that all extremities should be used but death, — as seizing their lands, razing their temples and houses, taking all their goods, putting them into prisons, quartering dragoons with them to eat up their estates and to watch them that they should not sleep till they changed their religion. Many of them fled into all parts as they could escape, poor and naked ; for their estates were stopped and themselves condemned to the gallows if they w r ere taken attempting to fly. March 1, 1686. Though it could not be said that there was as yet any remarkable invasion upon the rights of the Church of England, yet the king gave all the encouragement he could to the increase of his own, by putting more papists 329. James II, like the French king, seems about to restore the Roman Catholic Church. (From Reresby's Memoires.)