st; and
in the interval the Presbyterian party in the royal Council struggled
hard to obtain from the king a suspension of its provisions by the
exercise of his prerogative. Charles had promised this, but the bishops
were resolute to enforce the law; and on St. Bartholomew's Day, August
the 24th, the last day allowed for compliance with its requirements,
nearly two thousand rectors and vicars, or about a fifth of the English
clergy, were driven from their parishes as Nonconformists. No such
sweeping alteration in the religious aspect of the Church had ever been
seen before. The ecclesiastical changes of the Reformation had been
brought about with little change in the clergy itself. Even the
severities of the High Commission under Elizabeth ended in the expulsion
of a few hundreds. If Laud had gone zealously to work in emptying
Puritan pulpits his zeal had been to a great extent foiled by the
restrictions of the law and by the growth of Puritan sentiment in the
clergy as a whole. A far wider change had been brought about in the
expulsion of Royalist clergy from their benefices during the Civil War;
but the change had been gradual, and had been at least ostensibly
wrought for the most part on political or moral rather than on religious
grounds. The parsons expelled were expelled as "malignants," or as
unfitted for their office by idleness or vice or inability to preach.
But the change wrought by St. Bartholomew's Day was a distinctly
religious change, and it was a change which in its suddenness and
completeness stood utterly alone. The rectors and vicars who were driven
out were the most learned and the most active of their order. The bulk
of the great livings throughout the country were in their hands. They
stood at the head of the London clergy, as the London clergy stood in
general repute at the head of their class throughout England. They
occupied the higher posts at the two Universities. No English divine
save Jeremy Taylor rivalled Howe as a preacher. No parson was so
renowned a controversialist or so indefatigable a parish priest as
Baxter. And behind these men stood a fifth of the whole body of the
clergy, men whose zeal and labour had diffused throughout the country a
greater appearance of piety and religion than it had ever displayed
before.

[Sidenote: Its religious results.]

But the expulsion of these men was far more to the Church of England
than the loss of their individual services. It was the definite