refused to conform to the Episcopal Church. From this date Protestant non-conformists are usually called Dissenters, and this latter term is applied only to those outside the Established Church. In 1661 a Corporation Act was passed making it unlawful for any one to hold office in a municipal corporation who would not renounce the Covenant and take the communion according to the forms of the Church of England. This act had the effect of excluding Dissenters from Parliament, since in many cases the corporations chose the members. By the Act of Uniformity passed in 1662 every clergyman and schoolmaster was required to assent to everything contained in the Book of Common Prayer. This drove out of the Church two thousand clergymen at one time. In the towns, Presbyterians generally went with the Dissenters; in the country, they went with the Episcopalians. Thus the towns became full of dissent, while the country was Episcopalian.

The King proposed to relieve Dissenters from the penalties of the Act of Uniformity by the exercise of his royal prerogative. His chief motive was believed to be sympathy with Papists. The Parliament, though intensely loyal, would not brook the idea of tolerating either Papists or Dissenters. The Conventicle Act of 1664 forbade, under heavy penalties, any meeting for worship other than according to the practice of the Church of England; and the following year witnessed the passing of the Five Mile Act, forbidding a Dissenting minister to come within five miles of a town, or borough, or any place where he had officiated as a pastor.

During the early years of the Cavalier Parliament various declarations were made to the effect that it was a great crime to take up arms against the King. One act directed against Dissenters required them to take an oath of non-resistance, and another that they would never

endeavour to alter the government of Church or State. It is interesting to notice that the House of Commons in this Cavalier Parliament had become the English Pope. It exercised the power which in the former reign was in the hands of the King, and Laud, and the High Commission Court. Charles II. desired to be indulgent towards Dissenters, and especially towards Roman Catholics, but that was the one thing which the Cavaliers in the House of Commons would not permit. They were quite willing to pass laws requiring other people to obey the King, but in the matter of religion the King must submit to the House of Commons.

With the disappearance of the old arbitrary courts, which had been the chief weapons in the hands of kings, since the coming in of the Tudors, greater prominence was given to the King's ministers. The rule of Charles II. furnished a sort of prophecy of this great and unique feature of the modern Constitution. He had something a little like a Cabinet, with a statesman at its head who

suggests the Prime Minister. The changing of these ministers also corresponded with important acts in Parliament. For seven years, until 1667, Lord Clarendon was at the head of the Ministry. Clarendon was driven from office by a demand of the House of Commons for an investigation as to the way in which money, voted for the war with Holland, had been spent. The Commons suspected that it had been squandered on the King's mistress, a suspicion which was well founded. The minister resigned, was impeached by the House, and, at the suggestion of Charles, fled the country. After Clarendon, the King relied for advice upon a group of men whose initial letters chanced to spell the word "Cabal.” It has been falsely assumed that these men acted together after the manner of a Cabinet. The fact is that they were jealous of each other, and were not consulted by the King

in a body. One was a staunch Romanist, others were Protestants, still others were indifferent as to religion. In 1673 Arlington, an unscrupulous man, wishing to supplant Clifford, a staunch Romanist, in the office of the Treasury, secured the passage of a Test Act which required all office-holders in the government to take an oath declaring a disbelief in the doctrine of transubstantiation, and to take the communion according to the forms. of the Church of England. By this act not only was Clifford driven from office, but the Duke of York, afterwards James II., was forced to resign his office in the Admiralty, and all consistent Papists were deprived of office.

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CHAPTER XXVIII

THE BEGINNINGS OF POLITICAL PARTIES

ROM 1667 to 1675, during the so-called Cabal

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Ministry, the King was really his own minister, consulting one or other of his advisers as occasion served. In 1675 Charles found in the Earl of Danby a minister able to relieve him of some of the burdens of political leadership. All the ministers of the Cabal group were discarded. Among these was Ashley Cooper, commonly known as the Earl of Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury now became the recognized leader of the opposition to the King's policy. These events are of the utmost importance in their relation to the modern Constitution, because under the leadership of Danby and Shaftesbury were developed permanent political parties and party names which have continued to the present day.

More than a hundred years earlier, England was divided into papal and Protestant parties of almost equal strength, and Elizabeth ruled by a personation of party politics, holding an even balance and following the dominant tendency in the State. The contest under the first Stuarts followed, in the main, the analogy of the old factions, rather than that of the modern party. It was a contest chiefly for privileges. Yet this contest had in it resemblances to modern political strife, in that there was a constant appeal to the people on matters of opinion as touching both the nature

of the government and the question of religion. In the time of the Civil War, the two sections were known as Cavaliers and Roundheads, but there was little more resemblance to the modern political party than was suggested by the Red Rose and the White Rose two hundred years earlier. In 1629, when Pym and a few other leaders proposed to make common cause with all tax-payers in the contest over the Petition of Right rather than contend for the peculiar exemption of members of the House, there was an issue raised between two divisions of the parliamentary party which is quite suggestive of the methods of modern parties.

The modern party assumes to represent the true interests of the entire people. It accepts the essential features of existing institutions, and proposes to adopt such a policy as will be for the public good. The life of the party of the present day is dependent upon the existence of conflicting opinions about definite policies. The historical continuity of the two modern parties has been dependent largely upon two views of English history. One party emphasizes the blessings which have come to England through the authority of the Church and through orderly government. The other party lays greater stress upon the blessings which have come to Englishmen through contests for liberty. In its origin one of the parties took the Stuart view of the ancient Constitution, while the other was more inclined to the parliamentary view of the Constitution. As history recedes, there is a tendency in each party to take an identical view of the remote past. Yet in the one there is a superior fondness for the ancient institutions, such as the monarchy, the House of Lords, and the Episcopacy; while in the other party there is a special fondness for reforms and for the House of Commons as the chief agency of reform.

When Shaftesbury was dismissed from office, in 1675,