es II., Parliament destroyed for all future time in England the
belief in the sacred character of kingship. The King was henceforth a part
of the constitution, and came to the throne by authority of Parliament, on
conditions laid down by Parliament.

William resented the decision of Parliament not to allow the Crown a
revenue for life, but to vote an annual supply; but the decision was
adhered to, and has remained in force ever since. The Mutiny Act, passed
the same year, placed the army under the control of Parliament, and the
annual vote for military expenses has, in like manner, remained.

The Toleration Act (1689) gave Nonconformists a legal right to worship in
their own chapels, but expressly excluded Unitarians and Roman Catholics
from this liberty. Life was made still harder for Roman Catholics in
England by the Act of 1700, which forbade a Catholic priest, under penalty
of imprisonment for life, to say mass, hear confessions, or exercise any
clerical function, and denied the right of the Catholic laity to hold, buy
or inherit property, or to have their children educated abroad. The
objection to Roman Catholics was that their loyalty to the Pope was an
allegiance to a "foreign" ruler which prevented their being good citizens
at home. Against this prejudice it was useless to point to what had been
done by Englishmen for their country, when all the land was Catholic, and
all accepted the supremacy of the Pope. It was not till 1778 that the first
Catholic Relief Bill was carried, a Bill that "shook the general prejudice
against Catholics to the centre, and restored to them a thousand
indescribable charities in the ordinary intercourse of social life which
they had seldom experienced."

The last Roman Catholic to die for conscience' sake was Oliver Plunket,
Archbishop of Armagh, who was executed at Tyburn, when Charles II. was
King, in 1681. After the Revolution, Nonconformists and Catholics were no
longer hanged or tortured for declining the ministrations of the
Established Church, but still were penalised in many lesser ways. But the
spirit of the eighteenth century made for toleration, and the Whigs were as
unostentatious in their own piety as they were indifferent to the piety of
others.

The killing of "witches," however, went on in Scotland and in England long
after toleration had been secured for Nonconformists. As late as 1712 a
woman was executed for witchcraft in England.[67]

GROWTH OF CABINET RULE