1660] THE CONVENTION PARLIAMENT 723 the claims of the Church, the King, and the dispossessed Cavaliers), the settlement of the Church and of the King's revenue, became thus the main questions for the Convention Parliament to discuss. Under the peculiar circumstances of the Restoration, the amnesty should have been as full as possible. Such had been The Amnesty. Monk's advice, such the first feelings of the Parliament. The presence of the King, the known wishes of the Court, and the constantly-growing strength of the Cavalier party, increased the number of the exceptions, originally fixed at seven, till the Bill, as sent up to the Lords, excepted from the benefit of the Amnesty all such of the King's judges as had not surrendered themselves to justice in accordance with a proclamation which Charles had lately issued. That proclamation had fixed a period of fourteen days, within which the regicides must surrender themselves, on pain of being excepted from the indemnity. This obviously implied that such as acted in accordance with the proclamation should not be so excepted. Regardless of the King's faith thus pledged, the House of Lords excepted all the regicides promiscuously, together with five others, Hacker, Axtel, Vane, Lambert, and Haselrig, and added other clauses of great severity. But the Commons would not hear of this breach of faith, and after much discussion, a compromise was arrived at. Most of the King's judges were indeed excepted, but with a proviso that a special Act of Parliament was necessary for their execution, while a joint address of the two Houses desired the King to spare the lives of Lambert and Vane, even though found guilty. Ten persons were actually put to death immediately, three more were seized in Holland some time afterwards. Nineteen of the regicides who had surrendered under the proclamation were imprisoned for life; there were nineteen others still surviving who took refuge in foreign countries. The spirit of vengeance was further glutted by a mean revenge upon the dead bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, which were dragged from their tombs in Westminster Abbey and hanged at Tyburn. Admiral Blake's corpse, too, was removed from Westminster Abbey to St. Margaret's Church. of property. The settlement of the property which had changed hands during the Revolution was a more difficult, and, except to the The settlement persons immediately concerned, a more important question. Of such property there were three great divisions-the Crown lands, the Church lands, and the lands of private individuals. The two first of these had been sold by the authority of the late Govern1 For the settlement of Ireland, see pages 772 773. PER. MON. 2 a ment at full prices. Private individuals had suffered in several ways; in some instances their lands had been sold by the Government, in some they had sold their own lands to raise money or to avoid sequestration, in a far larger number of cases their estates had been sequestrated, and the management placed in the hands of their enemies. Many of the Convention Parliament had doubtless profited by these means. The purchases had frequently been made at prices which only a good title could secure. It seemed hard that such purchases should be invalidated. A Bill was early brought in to confirm such sales or give indemnity to the purchaser. As the influence of the Court increased, Crown lands were exempted from the action of this Bill, and the discussion on the other two sections was postponed till the dissolution of Parliament brought all such quarrels to be settled by the common law. By law the titles of the new purchasers were obviously defective, the old possessors, the Crown, the Church and Cavaliers, regained their property. The law, however, gave no relief when the sale had been made by the possessor himself, nor did it restore to the claimant any of the profits which had come from his property during the sequestration, or while he had been excluded from possession. The Act of Indemnity and Oblivion stopped all such claims. Clarendon's honest support of that measure drew on him much hatred from his party, who jeeringly called the statute an Act of Indemnity for the King's enemies, of Oblivion for the King's friends. The Church had thus entered into possession of its lost property. the Church. The more important difficulty of the settlement of the form of Settlement of Church worship and of the possession of Church livings was yet open, nor did the efforts of this Parliament succeed in closing it. It will be recollected that under Cromwell wide toleration had been granted, that the stipends of parochial clergy and the collection of tithes had proceeded as heretofore, that the right of presentation to livings had not been interfered with, that the only qualification necessary was the acceptance of the nominee by the Committee of Triers. The Presbyterian form of worship had been established only in very few counties, and on the whole the livings were in the hands of very competent men, but men of very various ways of thinking. The excellence and respectability of the clergy and their general acceptance by the people rendered any immediate measures of expulsion difficult. Though the restoration of the monarchy and the abrogation of the ordinances of the Long Parliament re-established the Episcopal Church as the legal Church of 1660] THE CONVENTION PARLIAMENT 725 the nation, the strength of the Presbyterians in the Convention Parliament, and the great part they had played in his restoration, prevented Charles from openly offending them. At the same time Clarendon, his chief adviser, was a bigoted English Churchman, and would be satisfied with nothing but the restoration of his friends. Charles, for the present, held out hopes of a great measure of comprehension, intending undoubtedly that it should never be completed. It was found that there was no insuperable difficulty, as regarded the Presbyterians at least, in the establishment of what is known as Bishop Usher's Model, a compromise which, while re-establishing Bishops, greatly increased the number of suffragan Bishops, making them virtually standing presidents of councils of Presbyters, and thus establishing a form of Government neither wholly Republican nor wholly Episcopal. Charles even went so far as to issue in October a declaration in favour of this form of union, containing a promise that he would cause an assembly to be called, of equal numbers of Episcopalians and Nonconformists, to revise the Liturgy ; but it became evident how little in earnest he was in this matter, when an attempt was made to change this Declaration into an Act, for then, no doubt under the influence of the Crown, the whole Court party strongly opposed the Bill, and it was rejected. The question was thus left unsettled when the Parliament was dissolved in December. The revenue was more successfully handled. It was determined, at all events, to get rid of the vexatious duties of feudal tenure. A great quantity of the land of England was still held by knight service. And though the meaning of that tenure had disappeared in the course of time, the disagreeable incidents which belonged to it remained. Fines were still paid upon every alienation; reliefs upon the accession to his property of each new heir. Minors were still wards of the Crown, and still liable to the odious necessity of marrying at the will of their guardian, unless heavy fines were paid to avoid it. It was the hope of a good wardship or a rich marriage which still attracted needy adventurers to the Court. All these claims of the Crown, together with the old obnoxious privileges of purveyance and pre-emption, were now abolished. Their place was supplied, not as might naturally be supposed by a land-tax, but by an excise upon beer and other liquors, the landed interests thus finding means to shift the burden upon the shoulders of the whole nation. The sum at which the revenue was fixed was £1,200,000 a year, to complete which the subsidy of tonnage and poundage was granted to the King for life. The Revenue, Thus the customs upon exports, tonnage and poundage upon imports, and the excise upon liquors, were all placed in the hands of the King, who ought to have found himself tolerably independent of Parliament. But obviously, in granting such a sum, Parliament did not contemplate a standing army. The great army of the Commonwealth was still paid by large monthly assessments. A grant was now given which enabled the King to pay off all arrears, and to disband that formidable body. Fifteen regiments of horse and twenty-two of foot were discharged, and, such were their habits of discipline, absorbed without disturbance into the body of the industrious classes of the country. Two regiments, Monks', called the Coldstream, and one other, brought from Dunkirk, were retained under the name of the Guards. In 1662 they amounted to about 5000 men. Its work done, Charles dissolves it. violently Royalist. 1661. The King had thus gained all that was absolutely necessary for him from the Convention Parliament; well knowing that from the present temper of the people a new Parliament would be far more devoted to his interests, he dissolved it on the 29th of December. He had not miscalculated. In the New Parliament Parliament of 1661 the Roundhead elemen'; was very small. The large majority of the members consisted of old Cavaliers or their sons, eager to restore England to what it had been before the Revolution, enthusiastic Royalists, still more enthusiastic supporters of the Episcopal English Church. So violent was their reactionary temper, that it required considerable exertion on the part of both the King and Clarendon to keep them within decent bounds. They were called upon, as the first legally formed Parliament of the reign, to confirm the Acts of the Convention. It was not without much difficulty and much loss of popularity, that Clarendon induced them to confirm the late Act of Indemnity. They proceeded to pass a series of very strong reactionary measures. The Covenant was ordered to be burnt by the common hangman; all the members had to receive the Sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. They declared that there was no legislative power in either or both of the Houses without the sanction of the King, that the sole command of the forces of the country was undoubtedly vested in the Crown, that neither House of Parliament could lawfully levy any war, offensive or defensive, against the King. They strengthened the law of high treason, forbad the presentation of petitions by more than ten persons, and aimed a destructive blow at the Presbyterian interest by the Cor The Corporation Act. Dec. 20. 1661] THE ACT OF UNIFORMITY 727 poration Act, for it was in the town councils that the Presbyterians were most influential. This Act commanded all office-bearers in corporations to swear to their belief in the doctrine of passive obedience, to renounce the Covenant, and to receive the Sacrament in the English form, within one year before their election. Although the Parliament had confirmed the Act of Indemnity, they could not refrain from attacking Lambert and Vane, for Trial of Lamwhose life a joint address from the Houses had been bert and Vane. sent to the King. They were charged with acts of high treason against Charles II., in exercising their offices under the Commonwealth. Such a charge seemed a direct violation of the Statute of Henry VII., which declared that to serve the "de facto" King was not treasonable. But the Court lawyers of this time declared that Charles II. had not only been King "de jure," but "de facto," during the whole of his exile, kept out of the exercise of his authority by traitors and rebels. In spite of the absurdity of this assertion, Vane was found guilty. The King himself, enraged at the independence of his defence, urged on his condemnation. The cringing behaviour of Lambert secured his life, but could not save him from perpetual imprisonment. Vane was executed, a victim Execution to the servility of the Bench and the calculating falseness of Vane. of the King. June 14, 1662. The Act of May 19. The Act of Uniformity, passed on May 19, 1662, completed the work of the first year of Parliament. After the dissolution of the Convention, the King had continued to Uniformity. keep up the pretence of desiring some compromise with the Nonconformists, and so far fulfilled his promises, that a Conference was held at the Savoy Palace, between an equal number of Episcopalian and Presbyterian divines. The list of emendations to the Liturgy urged by the Presbyterians was a long one. They were discussed with great bitterness. As neither party would yield, the Conference broke up, and the emendation of the Liturgy fell into the hands of Convocation. A few alterations were made, but of a character rather to irritate than to please the Nonconformists. The Act of Uniformity was then brought to the Lords, rendering even more stringent the clauses of the old Act. It was now enacted that not only every clergyman, but every fellow of a college, or schoolmaster, should accept everything contained in the Book of Common Prayer. Every minister who, before the Feast of St. Bartholomew 1662, declined to do so, was ipso facto deprived of his benefice. No allowance of any sort was made for the deprived |