compromise was made. It is quite certain that Nottingham
undertook to bring in a Toleration Bill and a Comprehension Bill,
and to use his best endeavours to carry both bills through the
House of Lords. It is highly probable that, in return for this
great service, some of the leading Whigs consented to let the
Test Act remain for the present unaltered.

There was no difficulty in framing either the Toleration Bill or
the Comprehension Bill. The situation of the dissenters had been
much discussed nine or ten years before, when the kingdom was
distracted by the fear of a Popish plot, and when there was among
Protestants a general disposition to unite against the common
enemy. The government had then been willing to make large
concessions to the Whig party, on condition that the crown should
be suffered to descend according to the regular course. A draught
of a law authorising the public worship of the nonconformists,
and a draught of a law making some alterations in the public
worship of the Established Church, had been prepared, and would
probably have been passed by both Houses without difficulty, had
not Shaftesbury and his coadjutors refused to listen to any
terms, and, by grasping at what was beyond their reach, missed
advantages which might easily have been secured. In the framing
of these draughts, Nottingham, then an active member of the House
of Commons, had borne a considerable part. He now brought them
forth from the obscurity in which they had remained since the
dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, and laid them, with some
slight alterations, on the table of the Lords.83

The Toleration Bill passed both Houses with little debate. This
celebrated statute, long considered as the Great Charter of