Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/308

300 the king had sent an account to their highnesses, to know how far they approved of it. The substance of their answer, as reported by Fagel, was this, "That their highnesses thought very well of a liberty of conscience; but by no means of giving employments to any other persons, than those who were of the national church." This opinion was confirmed by several reasons: I cannot be more particular, not having the paper by me, although it has been printed in many accounts of those times. And thus much every moderate churchman would perhaps submit to: but to trust any part of the civil power in the hands of those, whose interest, inclination, conscience, and former practices, have been wholly turned to introduce a different system of religion and government, has very few examples in any christian state; nor any at all in Holland, the great patroness of universal toleration.

Upon the first intelligence king James received of an intended invasion by the prince of Orange, among great numbers of papists, to increase his troops, he gave commissions to several presbyterians; some of whom had been officers under the rump; and particularly he placed one Richards, a noted presbyterian, at the head of a regiment, who had been governor of Wexford in Cromwell's time, and is often mentioned by Ludlow in his Memoirs. This regiment was raised in England against the prince of Orange: the colonel made his son a captain, whom I knew, and who was as zealous a presbyterian as his father. However, at the time of the prince's landing, the father easily foreseeing how things would go, went over, like many others, to the prince, who continued him in his regiment; but coming over a year