CHAPTER IX.

PRESBYTERIANS, INDEPENDENTS, ERASTIANS, AND THEIR THEORIES.

O wad some pow’r the giftie gie us To see oursel’s as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us An’ foolish notion; What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us, An’ e’en devotion.--BURNS.

For the last three years the Assembly of Divines had been sitting almost daily in the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey. ♦Presbyterians.♦ The assembly consisted of a hundred and twenty ministers, all Presbyterians but ten or twelve Independents; twenty members of the Commons and ten peers; besides four ministers and three laymen from Scotland. They were preparing a new Prayer-book, a form of Church Government, a Confession of Faith, and a Catechism; but the real questions at issue were the establishment of the Presbyterian Church and the toleration of sectarians.

%ASSEMBLY OF DIVINES.%

The Presbyterians, as we know, desired to establish their own form of Church government by assemblies and synods, without any toleration for nonconformists, whether Catholics, Episcopalians, or sectarians. But though they formed a large majority in the assembly, there was a well-organized opposition of Independents and Erastians, whose union made it no easy matter for the Presbyterians to carry every vote their own way.

♦Church Government--Independents.♦ The Independents agreed with the Presbyterians in freeing the Church from the control of the State, but the essential requirements of their theory of Church government were--1st, the independence of each separate congregation, including the election of its own ministers; 2nd, that penalties for spiritual offences should be spiritual and not temporal; inflicted, not by the civil magistrate, nor by assemblies, but by the congregation. Their theory on this second point was expressed by Milton in a pamphlet in which he wrote, “It is not to be expected all in a church to be gold and silver and precious stones; it is not possible for man to sever the wheat from the tares, the good fish from the other fry; that must be the angels’ ministry, at the end of mortal things. Yet, if all cannot be of one mind, as who looks they should be? this, doubtless, is more wholesome, more prudent, and more Christian, that many be tolerated rather than all compelled.” This noble theory of toleration naturally, but illogically, they confined to all sects who taught the fundamental doctrines of Christianity.

♦Erastians.♦ The name of the Erastian party was derived from a German of the sixteenth century, called Erastus. These were at the opposite pole to their allies. The Independents made each congregation independent of both Church and State; the Presbyterians made the congregation dependent on an independent Church; while the Erastians made the Church itself dependent on the State. Their wish being to reduce the power of the Church, they were as strongly opposed as the Independents to the strong Church government of the Presbyterians, and were quite willing to agree with them in making the congregation independent of any such central authority as the Scotch assembly. They also agreed with the Independents in their objection to civil penalties for spiritual offences. In fact they went further, and objected to spiritual offences being punished by the spiritual weapon of excommunication. Their party mainly consisted of lay members from the Parliament, who had the intuitive dislike of lawyers to courts administered by ecclesiastics. Episcopacy many of them would have been willing to restore, if shorn of the moral and social jurisdiction it enforced under civil penalties. The English Church, as administered at the present day, would have nearly come up to their ideal.

%PRESBYTERIAN INTOLERANCE.%

The Presbyterian Church could be seen in full work in Scotland. There toleration was unknown. Those who conformed held their goods and chattels at the mercy of ministers and elders sitting in kirk session; while those who did not conform were imprisoned till they did; neighbours and servants acted as informers, and the edifice was crowned by a great Church Assembly, in power more than a match for the Scotch Parliament. Bad as it is to have Church and State acting in antagonism to one another, in Scotland the establishment of the Presbyterian system kept political liberty alive among the people. The Scotch Parliament was corrupt, and did not represent the country. The Church assemblies, on the contrary, were really popular in constitution; conscious that their power was based on the affections of the people, the ministers and elders who sat in them dared to uphold the cause of liberty, when their Parliament was suffering itself to be made a tool in the hands of the executive. Thus, however contentious they showed themselves, however unreasonable the claims they put forward, the assemblies none the less played the same part as the English House of Commons in preventing the establishment of an arbitrary monarchy. Further, the excessive influence which the Presbyterian Church exercised in Scotland was itself due to the fact that a very large proportion of the nation was Presbyterian, so that even where tyranny was exercised the sufferers as a rule themselves approved of the discipline. In England neither of these conditions existed; the Parliament was far better fitted than an assembly of churchmen to defend the nation’s liberties, while the Presbyterians themselves were in a minority. It was impossible, however, that in the warmth of their zeal the Presbyterian party should be brought to recognize the force of the different conditions prevailing in the two countries. In fact, the arguments used in the assembly did not regard these points. The question was debated from the theological point of view, whether the Presbyterian Church had been originally established by the will of God. When the Presbyterians were opposed by Erastians and Independents, the ignorance which accompanied their dogmatism was often exposed. When they quoted a telling text, Selden, the Erastian lawyer, would say, “Perhaps in your little pocket Bibles with gilt leaves” (which they would often pull out and read) “the translation may be thus or thus, but in the Greek or Hebrew it signifies the other.” His opponents had to bow to his superior knowledge. Thus the Opposition went on for months, battling every point; and “besides all this,” says a Presbyterian, plaintively, “we have to answer the pamphlets of our many opponents, often very plausibly written, demanding liberty for all religions.” The Commons, moreover, in summoning the divines, meant to hear their advice, not to abide by their votes. As soon as a debate ended in the assembly it began again in the House. There the Presbyterians found it more difficult to command a majority, for the ranks of their opponents were swelled by a new contingent, the “worldly profane men,” who, though impartial as Gallio as to creeds, evinced a desperate antagonism to any ‘kirk-sessional’ discipline.

%PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH ESTABLISHED.%

♦New Prayer-book.♦ At last, however, after the assembly had sat a year and a half, the Parliament passed an ordinance for putting a directory, prepared by the divines, into force, and taking away the Common Prayer-book (3rd Jan., 1645). The sign of the cross in baptism, the ring in marriage, the wearing of vestments, the keeping of saints’ days, were discontinued. The communion table was ordered to be set in the body of the church, about which the people were to stand or sit; the passages of Scripture to be read were left to the minister’s choice; no forms of prayer were prescribed. The same year a new directory for ordination of ministers was passed into an ordinance. The Presbyterian assemblies, called presbyteries, were empowered to ordain, and none were allowed to enter the ministry without first taking the covenant (8th Nov., 1645). ♦Ordinance for establishment of Presbyterian Church.♦ This was followed by a third ordinance for establishing the Presbyterian system of Church government in England by way of trial for three years. As originally introduced into the House, this ordinance met with great opposition, because it gave power to ministers of refusing the sacrament and turning men out of the Church for scandalous offences. Now, in what, argued the Erastians, did scandalous offences consist? Were 10,000 little courts of justice to be set up over the kingdom, searching into men’s lives, and punishing any fault they pleased to call a scandalous offence? A modified ordinance accordingly was passed; scandalous offences, for which ministers might refuse the sacrament and excommunicate, were specified; assemblies were declared subject to Parliament, and leave was granted to those who thought themselves unjustly sentenced, to appeal right up from one Church assembly after another to the civil power--the Parliament (16th March, 1646).

Presbyterians, both in England and Scotland, felt deeply mortified. After all these years’ contending, then, just when they thought they were entering on the fruits of their labours, to see the Church still left under the power of the State--the disappointment was intense to a degree we cannot estimate. They looked on the Independents as the enemies of God; this ‘lame Erastian Presbytery’ as hardly worth the having.

♦Ordinance for the suppression of blasphemies and heresies.♦ Through Presbyterian influence, a severe ordinance passed the Parliament for the suppression of blasphemies and heresies (2nd May, 1648). Those who denied the doctrines of the Trinity, the Atonement, or the inspiration of the Scriptures, were to be punished with death as felons. Anabaptists and those who denied the lawfulness of the Presbyterian government to be imprisoned until they should recant. But, happily, these terrible persecutors failed in power. It seemed, indeed, as if all their force was spent in the process of getting their ordinances through Parliament. Thus, to the very last, their Church government was only set up in London and Lancashire, while their ordinance to suppress heresies entirely failed in its object. To get the ordinance passed the assembly had sent petition after petition to the Commons, showing the daily growth of heresies and schisms; the city of London had complained that private meetings multiplied, that eleven were held in one parish alone, that women and ignorant persons preached.[128] But, after all, the passing of the ordinance did not abate the evil. The Presbyterian party in Parliament dared not attempt strong measures for the suppression of sectarians, while the fatal Independent army remained undisbanded, while the king obstinately rejected the terms offered him, and the Royalists stood by mocking and exulting over the feuds and heart-burnings of their opponents. Milton with bold bitterness appealed to Parliament against these new forcers of conscience:

“Men whose life, learning, faith, and pure intent, Would have been held in high esteem with Paul, Must now be named and printed Heretics, By shallow Edwards and Scotch what-d’ye-call; But we do hope to find out all your tricks, Your plots and packing, worse than those of Trent, That so the Parliament May with their wholesome and preventive shears Clip your phylacteries, though balk your ears,[129] And succour our just fears, When they shall read this clearly in your charge New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ large.”

%SECTARIANS.%

Colonel Hutchinson, governor of Nottingham Castle, and Cromwell’s friend, was not a man who could be imprisoned because he refused to have his child baptized, nor yet one likely to fail in protecting poorer brethren of his own persuasion. Persecution to any extent was only possible against Catholics and Episcopalians, who were regarded as Royalists by Independents and Presbyterians alike. An ordinance was passed, forbidding the Prayer-book to be publicly or privately read, on payment of a fine of £5 for the first offence, £10 for the second, a year’s imprisonment for the third. Catholic priests taken in the country were remorselessly imprisoned, banished, or executed. Meanwhile new sects sprung up on all sides, and obtained safe shelter under the shadow of the army and its leaders. Any man, however ignorant and untaught, might obtain his little band of followers, for the people’s minds were restless and willing to give ear to every new doctrine. A book written at this time asserted that there were 176 heresies which found believers in the nation. ♦Leading sects.♦ Amongst many other sects, appeared the Brownists, who would have had the laws of England modelled upon those of the Old Testament, and even blasphemers and Sabbath-breakers punished by the magistrates with death; the Anabaptists, who rejected the baptism of infants, and went about re-baptizing their converts in the rivers by a hundred at a time: the Quakers, who lived lives of extreme austerity, refusing to take oaths, declaring all war sinful, and teaching that the light within man is his sufficient rule of conduct:[130] and lastly the Fifth Monarchists, who held that the world’s history was comprised under four monarchies,--the Assyrian, the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman; that the Roman was soon, like its predecessors, to pass away, and the Fifth Monarchy--the reign of Christ upon earth--to begin. In every country town and village, an Anabaptist, or some other sectarian, would appear, and it was well for the Presbyterian minister, if, by holding a public disputation in his church,[131] he could convince his parishioners of the stranger’s error, and drive schism from their doors.[132]

%REPUBLICANS.%

The mental excitement, the questioning, revolving, doubting, was not confined to one side or to one question. Not only did sectarians increase in numbers, but also men of new political ideas, demanding reforms in the law, the Church, the constitution of the State; some called for a reform of the law, observing that lawyers pocketed enormous fees, and that suitors were often kept waiting years before they could get a cause decided in Westminster Hall; others, with feeling for poor debtors, shut up for life within a prison’s walls, demanded the abolition of imprisonment for debt; Republicans, disgusted with Charles’ perfidy, openly avowed their opinion, that a republic, in which a House of Commons, or some other representative assembly, exercised supreme authority by itself, was a far superior form of government to a monarchy, and the only one under which liberty could be secured; whilst boldest of all, sectarian soldiers, who had read in the Old Testament that blood defiles a land, and that a land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it, talked of the duty of bringing the king to justice, as guilty of the blood of the thousands who had lost their lives in the war. Amid the general confusion, the Presbyterians made their voices heard plainly enough. Though they could not produce a Milton to write, or a Cromwell to act, they at least endeavoured to make up for quality by quantity, and gave to the world thousands of pamphlets extolling their own form of Church government. Yet all their efforts to keep down their opponents were unavailing. Sectarians, Republicans, law reformers, though they did not necessarily share one another’s special views, all agreed in opposing the Presbyterians, whose ideas of reform were rapidly narrowing to the establishment of their own Church in place of the Episcopal. The Presbyterians gazed in dismay upon the increasing numbers of their enemies, the birth of the war they had themselves begun. Nor was their fear groundless; for, either on the side of Independents or of Royalists, the greater part of the intellect of England was engaged against them.

%SIR HENRY VANE.%

♦Sir Henry Vane.♦ Ever since Pym’s death, the young Sir Henry Vane had stood at the head of civil leaders. This English stoic at the age of twenty sacrificed his brilliant prospects at court and emigrated to America for conscience’ sake. Chosen governor of the little colony of Massachusetts at twenty-three, after exciting enthusiastic admiration for a time, he soon displeased the colonists by his advocacy of toleration. He thus returned to England in time to take an active part in the discussions preceding the meeting of the Long Parliament, of which he was elected a member. Though he was hated by the Presbyterians, the troublous war times necessarily brought to the helm of the State the men, whatever their opinions, whose judgment and skill were greatest in directing immediate operations. Vane’s sagacity in practical matters even his enemies did not dispute. Clarendon describes him as a man of extraordinary parts, with a wonderful insight into character, and in fact as “all in any business where others were joined with him.” It had chiefly been through his exertions that the Parliament secured the aid of the Scots in 1643, at the critical juncture when the triumph of the king’s arms made many regard the cause of the Parliament as lost. Milton recognized his greatness, and thus at a later date described his administration in the perilous times of the Dutch war:

“Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel old, Than whom a better senator ne’er held The helm of Rome, when gowns not arms repelled The fierce Epirot and the African bold, Whether to settle peace, or to unfold The drift of hollow States, hard to be spelled, Then to advise how war may, best upheld, Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold, In all her equipage; besides to know Both spiritual power and civil, what each means, What severs each, thou hast learn’d, which few have done: The bounds of either sword to thee we owe: Therefore, on thy firm hand Religion leans In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son.”

His abstract theories of government, however, for Church and State, were generally ill understood, and laid him open to much misrepresentation. Though called an Independent, he in fact belonged to no particular sect, being, as some said, ‘above ordinances;’ for he held that there was no true church established by Divine Right--neither Episcopalian, Presbyterian, nor Independent; but that they, whatever their creed, who acted in the spirit of Christ, best deserved to be called members of the true Church of Christ. Thus he lost caste with each sect by his enthusiastic advocacy of toleration of all; he braved the denunciations of Baxter in supporting Catholics, and stood by the Unitarian on trial; and, while himself spending much of most days in prayer, he claimed to be at one with Paul in accounting the Sabbath as now a mere “magisterial institution.” With an infinite belief in the perfectibility of human nature he aimed at attaining this object, not through weakening the will by repression, but through strengthening it by freedom. In the government of the State, as in that of the Church, he desired that, as far as possible, men should be left free to think and act for themselves. While at one with his age in earnestness, his ideas were tinged with mysticism, and his theories were too far in advance of his age to be understood. By his friends he was regarded as an impracticable enthusiast; by the Presbyterians as a dreamer of dreams, a man of obscure doctrines; by the Royalists as a fanatic who was expecting the saints to govern the earth, and himself to reign as their king.

%JOHN MILTON.%

♦John Milton.♦ Milton’s name had already emerged among the Independents. In 1644 he published a tract, maintaining that non-suitability of temper between man and wife is a sufficient ground for divorce; a doctrine so objectionable to the Presbyterians, that they caused the author to be called to account before the House of Lords. But Milton’s pen was soon engaged in a nobler cause, the freedom of the press (1644). Since the Reformation, the crown had assumed the power before exercised by the Church, of maintaining a censorship over the publication of books; and authors, printers, and importers of prohibited works had been prosecuted in the Star Chamber, and often barbarously punished. The Presbyterians, copying the example of the tyranny they had overthrown, framed an ordinance, forbidding the publication of books, that had not been first perused and licensed by officers appointed by Parliament (June, 1643). ♦Areopagitica or liberty of unlicensed printing (1644).♦ The ordinance was evaded by all parties, but Milton wrote to show the falseness of the principles on which it rested. He addressed his tract to the Lords and Commons, and told them that their ordinance could do no good, because evil manners are learnt in a thousand other ways than by books; that if it answered its purpose it must do harm, because it would stop the search for truth and expel as much of virtue as of sin. “Truth, indeed,” he wrote, “came once into the world with her Divine Master, and was a perfect shape, most glorious to look on; but when He ascended, and His apostles after Him were laid asleep, there straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon, with his conspirators took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall do, till her Master’s second coming; He shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection. Suffer not these licensing prohibitions to stand at every place of opportunity forbidding and disturbing them that continue seeking, that continue to do our obsequies to the torn body of our martyred saint.” “Opinion in good men,” he said, “is but knowledge in the making.” That the greater part of the people should be taken up with the study of the highest and most important matters; that there should be a disputing, reasoning, reading, inventing, discoursing, he told them, betokened, not that the nation was degenerated or “drooping to a fatal decay, but casting off the old and wrinkled skin of corruption, to outlive these pangs and wax young again, entering the glorious ways of truth and prosperous virtue, destined to become great and honourable in these later ages. Methinks I see in my mind,” he continued, “a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle, muing[133] her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms.”[134] The Parliament, however, far from being influenced by Milton’s noble appeal, passed several further ordinances for restraining unlicensed printing[135] (Ord. 1647--1649--1652).

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♦Ludlow and Hutchinson.♦ On the military side there were Ludlow and Hutchinson, both of them officers in the army and members of the Commons, open-hearted men, who made no concealment of their desire to effect a revolution in the government of the State. Distrust of the king had gradually ripened into distrust of monarchy, and a belief that England could never enjoy true liberty or freedom of conscience under any but a republican form of government. Ireton, Cromwell’s son-in-law, was abler and more reserved than these brother-officers of his. Though devoted to the cause of freedom, he had not, as they, attached himself blindly to republicanism as the only security for England’s liberties.

%IRETON--OLIVER CROMWELL.%

It was Cromwell, however, whom all adherents of the party that now found itself standing in such fierce opposition to the Presbyterians, regarded as their chief; whom the enthusiastic Vane, the cautious Ireton, the generous Hutchinson, the sincere Ludlow, as well as the sectarian, whatever his denomination, Independent, Brownist, or Anabaptist, all alike looked upon as the one man able to understand their wants, and to lead them to the accomplishment of their aims. For above others he possessed a power of sympathy, talking to each in the language of the hearer’s heart, until one and all found it impossible to doubt that his obvious sympathy with their feelings must spring from a sympathy with their views; with Ludlow and Hutchinson he would discuss republican government; with Vane he could look forward to the time when men, instead of being governed by self-interest, should strive to act as Christ would act did He reign upon earth; with his soldiers he could pray and humble himself before the Lord, feeling that he and they were but as weak worms, and that it was God in His mercy who bestowed victory upon His saints; with the more worldly-minded he could unbend and be a pleasant companion, using the language of the ordinary English gentleman, while in debate he could either attest his sincerity with the fervid words and tears of a more demonstrative age, or rein in his feelings and battle with the calm arguments of reason. Freedom with the various forms of vigorous life that spring from freedom--this was his ideal, and it was one that had room within itself for all the others. A man whose nature is based on a principle so wide and deep, when dealing with those whose aims converge in different lines on the same point as his own, is not to be considered false-hearted because his conversation seems to accord with his companion’s character; it is rather that his mind is more capacious, able to entertain more ideas and feelings than those of his fellows; he sees the many sides to a question, they but one. Sympathy is, in fact, the first quality of a leader. To move men he must be moved by them; thus alone will they follow while he leads. It was thus through his being able to obtain the confidence of all that Cromwell took his natural position as chief of a coalition, united by common hatred of Presbyterian ascendancy, and including fanatical Anabaptists and Fifth-Monarchists, aristocratical Republicans and Independents, democratical law reformers and Church reformers, with lawyers and Erastians who were Monarchists at heart.

%OLIVER CROMWELL.%

The features of this man who, having begun life as a farmer, was rapidly rising to become the director of a great nation, rough as they were to look upon, could not fail to bear upon them the expression of his true worth. A big head, which was covered with light brown hair curling down upon his neck; a forehead broad and high; shaggy eyebrows, with stern, deep-set eyes looking out from beneath them; a nose that stood well out from the face, rather broad and red; a chin and mouth expressive of firmness; a skin tanned brown with exposure to wind and weather; a rough-looking face, with a big wart over the right eyebrow; the whole, bearing the expression of dignity though not of grace, showing a man of strong feelings with stronger self-control, of spirit stern and just. One of his household, writing to a friend in America, thus describes him: “His body was well compact and strong, his stature under six foot about two inches; his head so shaped, as you might see it a store-house and shop both of a vast treasury of natural parts; his temper exceeding fiery (as I have known), but the flame of it kept down for the most part, or soon allayed with those moral endowments he had. He was naturally compassionate towards objects in distress, even to an effeminate measure. Though God had made him a heart wherein was little room for any fear, but what was due to Himself, of which there was a large proportion, yet he did exceed in tenderness towards sufferers. A larger soul, I think, hath seldom dwelt in a house of clay than his was.”[136]

The thorough Presbyterians boasted no great names, but there were those among the king’s friends who have won fame for their theories on Church and State. The philosopher Hobbes published the ‘Leviathan’ in 1651: in this he proposed to give the sovereign absolute power, both in Church and State, with the right to make laws, impose taxes, and decide what creeds should be tolerated in his kingdom, arguing that whatever dangers attended this form of government were none of them so bad as that anarchy which attends civil war. In short, Hobbes’ ideal was a wise and just despotism, a form of government almost impossible to get, and quite impossible to keep.

%JEREMY TAYLOR--CHILLINGWORTH.%

There were others among the Royalists who could plead for religious toleration in words as noble as those of the Independents themselves. Jeremy Taylor, an Episcopalian minister, driven from his living during the war, but drawing a noble lesson from his own and others’ sufferings, was teaching in his ‘Liberty of Prophesying’ (1647), that no matters of mere opinion, no errors that are not sins, ought to be persecuted or punished. Chillingworth, also, who fought in the royal armies, had written before the war broke out a book called the “Religion of Protestants,” in which he maintains that the Bible is the sole religion of Protestants, and each man’s reason its interpreter. Protestants, he says, are inexcusable, if they offer violence to other men’s consciences, and if faulty in the matter of claiming authority, “it is for doing it too much and not too little. This presumptuous imposing of the senses of men upon the words of God, the special senses of men upon the general words of God, and laying them upon men’s conscience together, under the equal penalty of death and damnation ... this restraining of the word of God from that latitude and generality, and the understandings of men from that liberty wherein Christ and the apostles left them, is and hath been the only fountain of all the schisms of the Church, and that which makes them immortal.... Take away these walls of separation, and all will quickly be one. Take away this persecuting, burning, cursing, damning of men for not subscribing the words of men as the words of God; require of Christians only to believe Christ and to call no man master but Him only; let those leave claiming infallibility that have no title to it, and let them that in their words disclaim it, disclaim it also in their actions.”

FOOTNOTES:

[128] Weekly Account, Jan., 1646.

[129] _I.e_., leave untouched.

[130] Baxter’s Life; Neal; Baillie.

[131] Baxter’s Life, 30, 76.

[132] The Assembly of Divines practically came to an end in 1649, when it was changed into a committee for examining candidates for the Presbyterian ministry. It finally broke up without any formal dismissal on the dispersion of the Rump Parliament in March, 1653.

[133] The _mew_ was the dark cage where falcons were _mewed up_ while they _mewed_ or moulted their feathers. See Spenser’s ‘darksome _mew_’ and Hastings’ exclamation on Clarence’s imprisonment:

‘More pity that the eagle should be _mew’d_, While kites and buzzards prey at liberty.’--Richard III., i. 132.

[134] Areopagitica, or speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing. Published 1644.

[135] The press was set free in 1695, when the Commons refused to renew the Licensing Act passed soon after the Restoration (1662).

[136] Thurloe, i. 766.