ly. All these gross provisions disappeared before the wiser and more humane policy of the Independent leaders of our great Parliament, who provided a full toleration* for every form of religion, with the exception of prelacy, necessarily excluded by its political tendencies, and popery, which Vane and a few others had, however, struggled hard to procure the toleration of also.†

The limits they imposed to this system of toleration will scarcely find favour in many eyes; but it is just to give them here, with the remark, that various circumstances of the time had rendered them wellnigh needful. A bill was passed in 1651 with a view to correct certain extravagances in the professors of religion. There was a sect who had taken to themselves the name of Ranters. The Parliament appointed a committee to consider of the

impious practices" used by these persons. A law was, in consequence, made for the "punishment of atheistical, blasphemous, and execrable opinions." The crimes condemned by this act are, for any person, not under the influence of sickness or distraction, to affirm of him or her self, or of any other mere creature, that he is God; or that the acts of uncleanness and the like are not forbidden by God; or that lying, stealing, and fraud, or murder, adul

swearing, and lascivious talk, are in their own nature as holy and righteous as the duties of prayer, preaching, or thanksgiving; or that there is no such thing as unrighteousness and sin, but as a man or woman judges thereof.

such gross abuse, so the military services them- be adjudged a felon, and shall suffer according. selves, out of which it rose, had long, as the feudal system gradually declined, been compounded and exchanged for a different species of payment, though still under the same name and pretence, and rendered sources of cruelty, tyranny, and oppression, in every kind of shape. Both enormities were struck down together by the leaders of the Long Parliament. A resolution of the House, dated the 24th of February, 1646, declared that the Court of Wards, and all tenures by homage and knight's service, with all fines, licenses, seizures, pardons for alienation, and other charges arising from such tenures, should from that day be taken away. Cromwell found this resolution on the journals in the Protectorate, and prudently turned it into a regular act of Parliament, which, with additional clauses, was re-enacted after the Restoration. Blackstone remarks, of the various benefits conferred by this law, that, in its indi-suppression of the "obscene, licentious, and rect operation, "it opened a wider door to the power of bequeathing property generally than had previously subsisted. By a statute of Henry VIII., all persons were empowered to bequeath two thirds of their lands held in feudal tenure, and the whole of such as were not subjected to such services; and the present law, abolishing all such tenures, gave, by consequence, an unlimited power to the possessor of landed property, under certain restrictions, to dispose of the whole by will as he pleased."*tery, fornication, sodomy, drunkenness, profane Their noble efforts in the great cause of religious toleration claim grateful mention next. They first established in the policy of the state that greatest human privilege, that every man should be free to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience. Enactments followed as a natural consequence, that, whenever a certain number of men agreed to worship their Maker after a given mode, they should consider themselves at liberty to choose their own preacher and officers to their churches, and to arrange, without interference or molestation, all their selected ceremonies and forms. Mr. Godwin has selected from the Journals of the House of Commons† the chief legislative provisions on this subject. The most remarkable appears to have been an act of the 27th of September, 1650, which repealed various acts of Elizabeth, whose professed object had been to establish throughout England a uniformity of religious faith and worship. The chief of these acts were, 1 Elizabeth, chapter 2, commonly called the Act of Uniformity; and 23 Elizabeth, chapter 1, and 35 Elizabeth, chapter 1, each of them entitled "An Act for retaining the Queen's Subjects in their due Obedience." The last of these is the most memorable. It ordains, among other things, that whoever shall be convicted before a magistrate of ab-power and civil, what each means, what severs each, which senting himself (or herself) from the Establish- few have done,' yet it is but just that we should distinguish between one species of persecutor and another. The Epised Church for one month shall be detained in copalians and the Presbyterians persecuted, having for their prison till he conforms; or, if after three months object religious uniformity, and being determined, to the he persists in his nonconformity, shall be re- through the land. Bradshaw, if he were a persecuter, extent of their power, that only one creed should be known quired to abjure the realm of England, and certainly agreed with his brother Independents in a free alshall transport himself out of the country ac-lowance of varieties of religious opinion, and had no wish cordingly; or, lastly, if he refuses to abjure, or, abjuring, does not transport himself, or, having departed the realm, shall return, shall

Blackstone, book ii., c. 23. Godwin, vol. iii., p. 503. + Vol. iii., p. 504.

This toleration, of course, did not interfere with the revenues of the Church, out of which every minister, duly appointed to a living, received the income thereto belonging.

Dr. Lingard mentions a petition from Catholic recu sants, presented to the House on the 30th of June, 1652, in consistent with the public peace, and their comfortable subwhich they solicit such indulgence "as might be thought sistence in their native country." The petition, says Lingard, "was read; Sir Harry Vane spoke in its favour; bat the House was deaf to the voice of reason and humanity." Vane's equally generous and gallant, but more successful exertions in behalf of Biddle, the father of English Unitari ans, have been related in this work; but Mr. Godwin has a remark on the motives of the men who opposed Vane on these points which should not, in fairness, be omitted. Speaking of the circumstance of Biddle, after his first release, being again committed by an order signed Joha Bradshaw, he thus proceeds: "We are told that Biddle order from Bradshaw, whom Biddle's biographer designates I was recalled, and once more committed to custody by an as his mortal enemy. What is the precise truth on the subject I have not been able to discover. If he were com this statesman signed it officially only, as president of the mitted by a warrant from Bradshaw, it is very probable that council. But I have not been able to trace such a warrant in the order books. If it were in any respect the personal act of Bradshaw, however much we may regret that he should have differed in this particular from his illustrious coadjutor, Vane, who had learned to know both spiriteal

to enslave the energies of mind to a vain effort after us thought blasphemous opinions, and to hold it his duty by the formity, but had the weakness to be shocked at what he civil arm to counteract so dire a contagion." Biddle was finally set free in February, 1652. I have elsewhere urged what fairly rests in extenuation of the non-tolerance of po pery, in the memoirs of Eliot and Pym.