v 208 LIFE OF RICHARD 'BAXTER: to encourage me to send for them ;) and if I might have the liberty that every beggar bath, to travel from town to town I mean but to London to oversee the press when any thingof mine is liCensed for it; and (3.) if I be sent to Newgate for preaching Christ's gospel, if I mayhave the favor of a better prison where I may but walk and write:these I should take as very great favors, and acknowledge your lordship my benefactor if you procure them; for I will not so much injure you as to desire, nor my reason as to expect, any greater matters.* During all these years, while Protestant dissenters were so hotly persecuted, the Papists had been comparatively at ease; and the king and his mostconfidential servantshad been pursuing the design of subverting the constitutional liberties and the Protestant religion of the English nation. They favored the persecution of the non- conformists, hoping thus to bring about a general toleration, which might be preparatory to the reestablishment of Popery. They were willingto see the Protestantsdivided, and each partymore and more alienated from the other, that there might be no united opposition to their scheme. They knew that the Puritans wereof old the most uncompromising opposers of Popery, and the sturdiest assert- ers of liberty ; and they hoped that this party, humbled by perse- cution, might at last take shelter under the throne, and, finding in the royal prerogative that protection which laws and parliaments had denied, might become the partisans of the power to which they owed their liberties. The first parliament elected after the king's return, had proved thus far sufficiently venal and obsequious to answer all the purposes of the court, and had therefore been con- tinued by successive prorogations eversince May, 1661. It is said that more than one hundred members of this body were kept in pay by the court. It is certain that a, more infamous assembly under that name never disgraced the annals of England. The nation's moneywas given to the king almost without limit ; and had the force of Charles's character been equal to the wickedness of his heart, the monarchy of England might have been made as ab- solute as that of France. But the profligacy of theking was in this instance the safety of the people. Themillions which Charles received from parliament, and the treasures acquired by the sale of Dunkirk, and by a secret treaty with France, which had for its object the,establishment of an absolute monarchy and of the Ro- man Catholic religion in Great Britain, were lavished on harlots and parasites ; and the king was still kept in, a state of dependence. Meanwhile the impiety and shameless debaucheries of the court spread through all the orders of society. Drunkenness and impu- * Narrative, Part III. pp. 75, 76.
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