of Rome
had been to issue Declarations of Indulgence (S488). It was generally
believed that his object in granting these measures of toleration,
which promised freedom to all religious beliefs, was that he might
place Roman Catholics in power.

As an offset to these Declarations, Parliament now passed the
Toleration Act, 1689, which secured freedom of worship to all
religious believers except "Papists and such as deny the Trinity."
This measure, though one-sided and utterly inconsistent with the
broader and juster ideas of toleration which have since prevailed, was
nevertheless a most important reform. It put an end at once and
forever to the persecution which had disgraced the reigns of the
Stuarts, though unfortunately it still left the Catholics, the
Unitarians, and the Jews subject to the heavy hand of tyrannical
oppression,[1] and they remained so for many years (SS573, 599).

[1] In 1663 Charles granted a charter to Rhode Island which secured
religious liberty to that colony. It was the first royal charter
recognizing the principle of toleration.

497. The Bill of Rights, 1689, and Act of Settlement, 1701.

Not many months later, Parliament embodied the Declaration of Right
(S494), with some slight changes, in the Bill of Rights, 1689,[2]
which received the signature of the King and became law. It
constitutes the third and last great step which England has taken in
making anything like a formal WRITTEN Constitution,[3]--the first
being Magna Carta, or the Great Charter (S199), and the second the
Petition of Right (S432). The Habeas Corpus Act (S482) was contained,
in germ at least, in Magna Carta (S199 (2)); hence these three
measures, namely, Magna Carta, 1215; the Petition of Right, 1628; and
the Bill of Rights, 1689 (including the Act of Settlement to be
mentioned presently), sum up the written safeguards of the nation, and
constitute, as Lord Chatham said, "The Bible of English Liberty."

[2] See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p. xxii,
S25, and p. xxxi.
[3] It should be borne in mind that a large part of the English
Constitution is based on ancient customs or unwritten laws, and
another part on acts of Parliament passed for specific purposes.

With the passage of the Bill of Rights,[4] the doctrine of the Divine
Right of Kings to govern without being accountable to their subjects
(SS419, 429), which James I and his descendants had tried so hard to
reduce to practice, came to a