well
as a declaration that it was unlawful to bear arms against the
sovereign, on the 19th of May 1662, and these were followed by the
Conventicle Act in 1664 suppressing conventicles and by the Five-Mile
Act in 1665 forbidding ministers who had refused subscription to the Act
of Uniformity to teach or reside within 5 m. of a borough. Clarendon
appears to have reluctantly acquiesced in these civil measures rather
than to have originated them, and to have endeavoured to mitigate their
injustice and severity. He supported the continuance of the tenure by
presbyterian ministers of livings not held by Anglicans and an amendment
in the Lords allowing a pension to those deprived, earning the gratitude
of Baxter and the nonconformists. On the 17th of March 1662 he
introduced into parliament a declaration enabling the king to dispense
with the Act of Uniformity in the case of ministers of merit.[9] But
once committed to the narrow policy of intolerance, Clarendon was
inevitably involved in all its consequences. His characteristic respect
for the law and constitution rendered him hostile to the general policy
of indulgence, which, though the favourite project of the king, he
strongly opposed in the Lords, and in the end caused its withdrawal. He
declared that he could have wished the law otherwise, "but when it was
passed, he thought it absolutely necessary to see obedience paid to it
without any connivance."[10] Charles was greatly angered. It was
believed in May 1663 that the intrigues of Bennet and Buckingham, who
seized the opportunity of ingratiating themselves with the king by
zealously supporting the indulgence, had secured Clarendon's dismissal,
and in July Bristol ventured to accuse him of high treason in the
parliament; but the attack, which did not receive the king's support,
failed entirely and only ended in the banishment from court of its
promoter. Clarendon's opposition to the court policy in this way
acquired a personal character, and he was compelled to identify himself
more completely with the intolerant measures of the House of Commons.
Though not the originator of the Conventicle Act or of the Five-Mile
Act, he has recorded his approval,[11] and he ended by taking alarm at
plots and rumours and by regarding the great party of nonconformists,
through whose co-operation the monarchy had been restored, as a danger
to the state whose "faction was their religion."[12]

Meanwhile Clarendon's influence and directio