ther act was passed which required every officer of a corporation to
receive the Eucharist according to the rites of the Church of England,
and to swear that he held resistance to the King's authority to be in
all cases unlawful. A few hotheaded men wished to bring in a bill, which
should at once annul all the statutes passed by the Long Parliament,
and should restore the Star Chamber and the High Commission; but the
reaction, violent as it was, did not proceed quite to this length. It
still continued to be the law that a Parliament should be held every
three years: but the stringent clauses which directed the returning
officers to proceed to election at the proper time, even without the
royal writ, were repealed. The Bishops were restored to their seats in
the Upper House. The old ecclesiastical polity and the old Liturgy were
revived without any modification which had any tendency to conciliate
even the most reasonable Presbyterians. Episcopal ordination was now,
for the first time, made an indispensable qualification for church
preferment. About two thousand ministers of religion, whose conscience
did not suffer them to conform, were driven from their benefices in one
day. The dominant party exultingly reminded the sufferers that the Long
Parliament, when at the height of power, had turned out a still greater
number of Royalist divines. The reproach was but too well founded: but
the Long Parliament had at least allowed to the divines whom it ejected
a provision sufficient to keep them from starving; and this example the
Cavaliers, intoxicated with animosity, had not the justice and humanity
to follow.

Then came penal statutes against Nonconformists, statutes for which
precedents might too easily be found in the Puritan legislation, but to
which the King could not give his assent without a breach of promises
publicly made, in the most important crisis of his life, to those on
whom his fate depended. The Presbyterians, in extreme distress and
terror, fled to the foot of the throne, and pleaded their recent
services and the royal faith solemnly and repeatedly plighted. The King
wavered. He could not deny his own hand and seal. He could not but be
conscious that he owed much to the petitioners. He was little in the
habit of resisting importunate solicitation. His temper was not that of
a persecutor. He disliked the Puritans indeed; but in him dislike was a
languid feeling, very little resembling the energetic hatred whic