Declaration of Breda, which promised liberty of conscience to all his
subjects. But Charles, though secretly in favour of the Catholics on
account of their loyalty to his father and to himself, was not a man
to endanger his throne for the sake of past services, more especially
as his trusted minister, the Earl of Clarendon, was determined to
suppress Dissenters no matter what creed they might profess. A number
of Catholics, lay and cleric, met at Arundel House to prepare a
petition to the House of Lords (1661) for the relaxation of the Penal
Laws. The petition was received favourably, and as there was nobody in
the House of Lords willing to defend the infliction of the death
penalty on account of religion, it was thought that the laws whereby
it was considered treason to be a priest or to shelter a priest might
be abolished. But dissensions soon arose, even in the Catholic
committee itself. The kind of oath of allegiance that might be taken,
the extension of the proposed relaxations so as to include the
Jesuits, and the anxiety of the laymen to get rid of the fines levied
on rich recusants rather than of the penalties meted out to the
clergy, led to the dissolution of the committee, and to the
abandonment of their suggested measures of redress.[16]

Clarendon was determined to crush the Nonconformist party
notwithstanding the promises that had been held out to them in the
Declaration of Breda. He secured the enactment of a number of laws,
the Act of Uniformity (1662), the Conventicle Act (1664) and the Five
Mile Act (1665) known as the Clarendon Code, which, though directed
principally against the Dissenters, helped to increase the hardships
of the Catholic body. Once, indeed, in 1662-63, Charles made a feeble
attempt to redeem his promise to both Catholics and Nonconformists by
announcing his intention of applying to Parliament to allow him to
exercise the dispensing power in regard to the Act of Uniformity and