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CHAP. influence against the intolerant precepts of his patron Laud? Was it from the parliament of 1641, which urged among its grounds of complaint the King's lenity to popish recusants? Was it from his fellow committee-men, who demanded the execution of the priest Goodman? Was it from the committee for "scandalous ministers,' which, armed with inquisitorial powers, and under a plea of enforcing church discipline, persecuted the episcopal clergy with imprisonment, sequestration, and expulsion? No; the liberality of those times was less tolerant than the bigotry of the present. In 1643 papists were condemned, by parliamentary ordinance, to forfeit two thirds of all their property; sequestrations were permitted upon bare suspicion; and informers stimulated by a share of the spoil. In the same year the covenant was imposed as a test on the beneficed clergy, and it effected the expulsion of all those conscientious adherents to episcopacy whom the inquisitorial committee for "scandalous ministers" had been unable to reach. A number of the clergy, which Neal admits to be 1600, and Walker estimates at 8000, refused the test, and suffered beggary for conscience sake.*

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In 1646 an attempt was made to revive the

"The biographical collections," says Mr. Hallam, "furnish a pretty copious martyrology of men the most distinguished by their learning " and virtues in that age. The remorselessness and indiscriminate bigotry of presbyterianism might boast that it had heaped disgrace on Walton, and driven Lydiat to beggary; that it trampled on the old age of Hales, and embittered with insult the dying moments of Chillingworth." (Constitutional History, ii. 228.)

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punishment of death for heresy, which had not CHAP. been inflicted since Legat and Wightman were burned in 1614. An ordinance was brought in to punish with death one Best, who had written against the Trinity. Best recanted, and his punishment was not pressed; but an ordinance passed, in May, 1648, by which it was made a capital offence to deny the Trinity, the incarnation, the atonement, or the inspiration of any book of the Old or New Testament.*

The Independents, while struggling against the predominant intolerance of presbyterianism, signalised their opposition by maintaining, in theory, the principles of religious toleration—principles, a denial of which would, in truth, have been scarcely reconcilable with their assertion of the independence of each separate congregation in all matters of church discipline. But these theoretical champions of religious liberty, when they succeeded to the power of the Presbyterians, were scarcely less intolerant in practice. They were equal in rapacity, though they shed less blood: yet even under their sway Catholics were still executed, whose crime was their religion. Forfeitures were exacted with merciless severity. Two thirds of the earnings of the Catholic poor were wrung from them under the sanction of an oppressive statute; and their humble petitions were rejected with disdain. In 1650 an act was passed offering rewards for the detection of Roman Ca

*Commons' Journals, January 1., April, 1646.; May 2. 1648.

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CHAP. tholic priests, or their receivers and abettors; sanctioning domiciliary visits at all hours of the day and night; allowing the houses of Roman Catholics to be broken open, and Roman Catholics, or persons suspected to be such, to be apprehended almost at the pleasure of the officers, to be dragged before magistrates, and their books, and whatever appertained to religious worship, to be searched for, seized, and taken from them.

But the rigour exercised against Roman Catholics scarcely exceeded that which was displayed in the treatment of the Quakers.

The proceedings of the Parliament of 1656 against Naylor are not only opposed to the principles of toleration, but revolting to every feeling of humanity and justice. Twelve days was the case of this poor insane fanatic debated in the House of Commons, in a spirit on which we now look back with astonishment and disgust. English members of Parliament stood up and advocated the infliction of death for an offence which was not so punishable by the law of the land, and which they could render so punishable only by an ex post facto law. A member asked, "Shall punctilios, and mo"dalities, and forms, bind and tie up a parlia“ment?” and Smith (a judge!) rose to encourage the House in its iniquitous violations of justice, by telling them, that "our laws make it death for "robbing a man, though he take but twelve-pence "from him. Yet we make nothing of robbing "God of his glory. My motion is, that a bill "of attainder may be brought in; and, if you

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"have no other punishment that you would fill CHAP. up the blank with, that he may be stoned to "death."* By the Mosaic law," said MajorGeneral Boteler, " blasphemy was to be stoned to "death. The morality of this remains; and, for my part, if this sentence should pass upon him, "I could freely consent to it." + In the same spirit, texts from the Old Testament, in favour of the punishment of blasphemy by death, were cited by several other members; in reply to whom it was justly observed by Sir William Strickland, that if they took their rules from those texts, they might punish with death " sabbath-breaking and disobe"dience to parents." Nebuchadnezzar and his fiery furnace, and even the example of the Turks, who put men to death for speaking against Mahomet, were quoted in the House in support of persecution. After ten days spent in debate, a great part of which was occupied in discussing whether the epithet "horrid" should be affixed to blasphemy, (during which time the most sanguinary sentiments were frequently expressed, and it was proposed that he should be condemned unheard, upon the sole report of the committee,) it was put to the vote, whether Naylor's offence should be punished with death; and his life was saved only by a division of 96 to 82. Then followed a debate on the punishment that should be substituted; a debate in which malignity seems to have revelled, and than which any thing more execrably disgust

* Burton's Diary, i. 87.

+ Ibid. i. 25, 26.

Ibid. i. 131.

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CHAP. ing is not to be found in our parliamentary annals.* The separate items of that aggregate of severities with which they propose to load the unhappy maniac were discussed with cold cruelty, like the clauses of a bill; and the result of the collective wisdom and justice of the only legislative assembly then existing in England was a resolution t, by

* In justification of the terms in which I have mentioned this debate, I subjoin the following specimens:—

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"The question for the lesser punishment being read, Col. White proposed that his (Naylor's) tongue might be bored through.

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Major-General Harris, that his tongue might be slit or bored through,

"and that he might be stigmatised with the letter B.

Major-General Whalley proposed that his lips might be slitted. "Colonel Coker, that his hair might be cut off.

"Alderman Foot, that his head may be set in the pillory, and that he "be whipped from Westminster to the Old Exchange.

Resolved, That instead of the word Cheapside,' be added 'Old 66 6 Exchange.'

"Colonel Cromwell, that he may be whipped through the whole city, "from Westminster to Aldgate.

"Dr. Clarges, that he may stand in the pillory in Glastonbury and "Wells.

"Colonel Shapcot, that his Bridewell may be at York, whence he came. "Mr. Speaker and Sir William Strickland. He came not thence: I "shall put it upon Bristol.

"Mr. Ridley and Colonel Purefoy proposed that his prison might be "in the Isle of Scilly.

"Colonel Clarke. If you put him to hard labour, indeed, Bridewell, London, is the fittest place. A gentleman in my eye will inspect it. "Mr. Bond. Do what you can, resort for monies will be had to him. "Send him rather into the Orcades, or Scotland, or other remote parts. "Mr. Pullen proposed that he might be sent to Jamaica." (Burton's Diary, i. 153, 154, 155.)

+ Commons' Journals, Dec. 16. 1656, vii. 468. This monstrous sentence was consistently followed by another debate, in which it was proposed that it be entered in the Journals, that the aforesaid was adjudged," in order that Naylor might not enjoy the protection of the habeas corpus, and be released by the courts of law when the parliament was dissolved,-in which it was reluctantly conceded that he should be called to the bar, and asked what he could say why judgment should not be passed against him, and in which, when such a summons was at length accorded, it was rendered a cruel mockery by the refusal to hear his defence.