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 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY informers, and a renewed outbreak of active persecution a few years later, very few dissenting congregations are known to have been then permanently suppressed, though some meetings were temporarily discontinued. The persecution iust mentioned arose after the dissolution (28 March 1681) of Charles's last Parliament, and seems to have been largely due to a revival of loyalist fanaticism following on the failure of the Whigs to secure the Protestant succession by an Exclusion Bill. Yet after the persecution had actuallv recommenced a new meeting-house was built in Nightingale Lane, Wapping.'' In 1683 was printed, for the special benefit of constables and informers, ' A List of Conventicles or unlawful Meetings within the City of London and Bills of Mortality.' The total number indicated is seventy-five ; forty-one in the City, five in Westminster, eleven in Southwark, and eighteen in the out-parishes. *° The denominations are : thirty-six Presbyterian (two of them being Scottish), one Presbyterian and Independent, fourteen Independent, thirteen Baptist, ten Quaker, and one Millenarian. The compiler of the list notes three or four as ' suppressed'; but these promptly revived. The absence of a few names which appear in earlier and later lists suggests that some meet- ings had been temporarily suspended. The persecution increased in severity throughout 1683 and 1684. Many ministers were imprisoned ; there were nine in Newgate at once," and the venerable Hansard Knollvs, eighty-four years old, was detained there for six or eight months. Several died in prison, as William Jenkyn, Presbyterian, and Francis Bampfield and a Mr. Ralphson, Baptists. The worst case was that of Thomas Delaune, a Baptist schoolmaster, who died in Newgate in 1685, after being imprisoned for fifteen months in default of paying a fine of a hundred marks for publishing A Plea for Non- conformists.*^ The goods of Richard Baxter, George Cockayne, Alatthew Mead, N. Partridge, and other ministers were seized for extortionate fines, and in some cases constables watched the meeting-houses that worshippers might not enter. In 1684 Thomas Rosewell, a minister in Bermondsey, was convicted of treason on the suborned evidence of two notorious women ; but the king, learning the facts, intervened before sentence was pronounced.** During the persecution the greatest of the Nonconformist theologians. Dr. John Owen, died on 24 August 1683, and his funeral in Bunhill Fields was attended by the carriages of sixty-seven noblemen and gentlemen." The persecution received a new impulse in 1685 trom the ill-advised enterprise of the Duke of Monmouth : but it was less severely felt in London than in the west. Suddenly, on 4 April 1687, it was terminated by a new Declaration of Indulgence. It was commonly believed that James II designed thereby to promote the Roman Catholic interest ; and the Nonconformists, while ready to avail themselves of the proffered liberty, were in general too suspicious of the king's motive to express or feel any sentiments of gratitude. However, a few addresses of thanks were presented, the first being from some London Baptists.*^ That of the London Presbyterians expressed a hope that " The builder's contract, dated 8 May 1682, is in the Congregational Library. The building was of timber, on brick fo jndations and tiled, and measured 46 ft. by 4.0 ft. and 1 8 ft. high to the eaves. The con- tract price was ^£170, and extras £1 ~s. '" B.M. Pressmark 491, k, 4 (12). " Mary Frankland's MS. in Cong. Lib. " Narralice of tie Sufferings cf T. Delaune " S. Rosewell, Trial of T. Rosewell fir Hi^ Treason (17 18). " Orme, Life ofOa-en, 450. " Lond. Gaz. 14 Apr. 1687.