ned belonged to this very class, which, having
suffered most severely during the Puritan usurpation, was least likely to
show consideration to a leading teacher of the Puritan body. Nor were
reasons wanting to justify their severity. The circumstances of the
times were critical. The public mind was still in an excitable state,
agitated by the wild schemes of political and religious enthusiasts
plotting to destroy the whole existing framework both of Church and
State, and set up their own chimerical fabric. We cannot be surprised
that, as Southey has said, after all the nation had suffered from
fanatical zeal, "The government, rendered suspicious by the constant
sense of danger, was led as much by fear as by resentment to seventies
which are explained by the necessities of self-defence," and which the
nervous apprehensions of the nation not only condoned, but incited.
Already Churchmen in Wales had been taking the law into their own hands,
and manifesting their orthodoxy by harrying Quakers and Nonconformists.
In the May and June of this year, we hear of sectaries being taken from
their beds and haled to prison, and brought manacled to the Quarter
Sessions and committed to loathsome dungeons. Matters had advanced since
then. The Church had returned in its full power and privileges together
with the monarchy, and everything went back into its old groove. Every
Act passed for the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church was
declared a dead letter. Those of the ejected incumbents who remained
alive entered again into their parsonages, and occupied their pulpits as
of old; the surviving bishops returned to their sees; and the whole
existing statute law regarding the Church revived from its suspended
animation. No new enactment was required to punish Nonconformists and to
silence their ministers; though, to the disgrace of the nation and its
parliament, many new ones were subsequently passed, with ever-increasing
disabilities. The various Acts of Elizabeth supplied all that was
needed. Under these Acts all who refused to attend public worship in
their parish churches were subject to fines; while those who resorted to
conventicles were to be imprisoned till they made their submissions; if
at the end of three months they refused to submit they were to be
banished the realm, and if they returned from banishment, without
permission of the Crown, they were liable to execution as felons. This
long-disused sword was