land--the confidential friend and agent of the
king, and his unscrupulous instrument in imposing the yoke of bondage
on an insulted nation.

[Sidenote: Persecution of the Dissenters.]

At this period, the condition of the Puritans was deplorable. At no
previous time was persecution more inveterate, not even under the
administration of Laud and Strafford. The persecution commenced soon
after the restoration of Charles II., and increased in malignity until
the elevation of Jeffreys to the chancellorship. The sufferings of no
class of sectaries bore any proportion to theirs. They found it
difficult to meet together for prayer or exhortation even in the
smallest assemblies. Their ministers were introduced in disguise.
Their houses were searched. They were fined, imprisoned, and banished.
Among the ministers who were deprived of their livings, were Gilpin,
Bates, Howe, Owen, Baxter, Calamy, Poole, Charnock, and Flavel, who
still, after a lapse of one hundred and fifty years, enjoy a
wide-spread reputation as standard writers on theological subjects.
These great lights of the seventeenth century were doomed to privation
and poverty, with thousands of their brethren, most of whom had been
educated at the Universities, and were among the best men in the
kingdom. All the Stuart kings hated the Dissenters, but none hated
them more than Charles II. and James II. Under their sanction,
complying parliaments passed repeated acts of injustice and cruelty.
The laws which were enacted during Queen Elizabeth's reign were
reenacted and enforced. The Act of Uniformity, in one day, ejected two
thousand ministers from their parishes, because they refused to
conform to the standard of the Established Church. The Conventicle Act
ordained that if any person, above sixteen years of age, should be
present at any religious meeting, in any other manner than allowed by
the Church of England, he should suffer three months' imprisonment, or
pay a fine of five pounds, that six months imprisonment and ten pounds
fine should be inflicted as a penalty for the second offence, and
banishment for the third. Married women taken at "conventicles," were
sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment. It is calculated that
twenty-five thousand Dissenters were immured in gloomy prisons, and
that four thousand of the sect of the Quakers died during their
imprisonment in consequence of the filth and malaria of the jails,
added to cruel treatment.

Among the illustrio