feelings were rather political
than religious. The English Roman Catholics formed a far larger part of
the population then than now, and their wealth and local influence gave
them a political importance which they have long since lost. The Stuarts
had taught them to look to the Crown for protection against the
Protestant bigotry around them, and they repaid this shelter by aiding
Charles the First in his war on the Parliament, and by liberally
supplying his son with money during his exile. He had promised in return
to procure toleration for their worship, and every motive of gratitude
as well as self-interest led him to redeem his pledge. But he was
already looking, however vaguely, to something more than Catholic
toleration. He saw that despotism in the State could hardly co-exist
with free inquiry and free action in matters of the conscience; and that
government, in his own words, "was a safer and easier thing where the
authority was believed infallible, and the faith and submission of the
people were implicit." The difficulties in the way of such a religious
change probably seemed the less to him from his long residence in Roman
Catholic countries and from his own religious scepticism. Two years
indeed after his restoration he had already despatched an agent to Rome
to arrange the terms of a reconciliation between the Anglican Church and
the Papacy. But though he counted much for the success of his project of
toleration on taking advantage of the dissensions between Protestant
Churchmen and Protestant Dissenters, he soon discovered that in this or
any wider religious project he stood utterly alone. Clarendon and the
Cavaliers were as bitterly anti-Catholic as the wildest fanatic in his
realm. For any real success in his religious as in his political aims he
must look elsewhere than at home.

[Sidenote: State of Europe.]

Holland had been the first power to offer him its aid in the renewal of
the old defensive alliance which had united the two countries before the
Civil War, and it had accompanied its offer by hints of a heavy
subsidy. But offers and hints were alike withdrawn when it was found
that the new government persisted in enforcing the Navigation Act which
the Long Parliament had passed. Spain, to which Charles looked with
greater hope, demanded terms of alliance which were impossible--the
restoration of Jamaica and the cession of Dunkirk. One ally only
remained. At this moment France was the dominant power