ve with his power, he might safely
venture to indulge himself in a display of his attachment to his
religion; and perhaps, too, it might be thought good policy to show that
a prince, who had been so highly complimented as Charles had been, for
the restoration and protection of the Church, had, in truth, been a
Catholic, and thus to inculcate an opinion that the Church of England
might not only be safe, but highly favoured, under the reign of a popish
prince.

Partly from similar motives, and partly to gratify the natural
vindictiveness of his temper, he persevered in a most cruel persecution
of the Protestant dissenters, upon the most frivolous pretences. The
courts of justice, as in Charles's days, were instruments equally ready,
either for seconding the policy or for gratifying the bad passions of the
monarch; and Jeffreys, whom the late king had appointed chief justice of
England a little before Sidney's trial, was a man entirely agreeable to
the temper, and suitable to the purposes, of the present government. He
was thought not to be very learned in his profession; but what might be
wanting in knowledge he made up in positiveness; and, indeed, whatever
might be the difficulties in questions between one subject and another,
the fashionable doctrine, which prevailed at that time, of supporting the
king's prerogative in its full extent, and without restriction or
limitation, rendered, to such as espoused it, all that branch of law
which is called constitutional extremely easy and simple. He was as
submissive and mean to those above him as he was haughty and insolent to
those who were in any degree in his power; and if in his own conduct he
did not exhibit a very nice regard for morality, or even for decency, he
never failed to animadvert upon, and to punish, the most slight deviation
in others with the utmost severity, especially if they were persons whom
he suspected to be no favourites of the court.

Before this magistrate was brought for trial, by a jury sufficiently
prepossessed in favour of Tory politics, the Rev. Richard Baxter, a
dissenting minister, a pious and learned man, of exemplary character,
always remarkable for his attachment to monarchy, and for leaning to
moderate measures in the differences between the Church and those of his
persuasion. The pretence for this prosecution was a supposed reference
of some passages in one of his works to the bishops of the Church of
England; a reference which was c