the right, and even the existence of conscience.

Clarendon was minister; and it was an ingenious and politic thing in
his eyes to suppress the Roundhead by suppressing the Presbyterian.
He had reflected more deeply than any man then living on the problem
of Church and State; and he did not believe in the sacred fixity of
divisions founded on schemes of Church government only. Archbishop
Ussher had made great concessions to the Presbyterians. Baxter had
made concessions to Prelacy. The see of Hereford was offered to him,
and it was thought he might accept it. Leighton, who was as much the
greatest Puritan divine in Scotland as Baxter in England, did accept
the offer of a mitre, and became Archbishop of Glasgow. The restored
government was intolerant, because, by intolerance, it could exercise
political repression. This did not apply to the Catholics. Clarendon
had pledged himself that they should profit by the indulgence which
was afterwards promised at Breda. When he adopted the policy of
coercion against the Puritans, he was unable to keep his promise. The
unnatural situation could not last after his fall. The Puritans had
made war upon the throne, and the Catholics had defended it. When it
was restored, they proclaimed their principles in a series of
voluntary declarations which dealt with the customary suspicions and
reproaches, and fully satisfied the purpose aimed at by the oath of
allegiance. No people could be more remote from the type of Allen and
Parsons than the English Benedictines and the Irish Franciscans who
hailed the revived monarchy. Against such men the old argument of
Elizabethan persecutors was vain.

After the fall of Clarendon a different policy was attempted. The
rigid exclusiveness of the Puritans had bequeathed one sinister vice
to the English people. They were complacent in their insularity, and