itself by Ashley and the Presbyterian
leaders, opposed in the Court by the king's mistress, Lady Castlemaine,
as well as by the supple and adroit Henry Bennet, a creature of the
king's who began to play a foremost part in politics, Clarendon was
still strong in his long and intimate connexion with the king's affairs,
his alliance with the royal house through the marriage of his daughter,
Anne Hyde, with the Duke of York, in his untiring industry, his wide
capacity for business, above all in the support of the Church and the
confidence of the royalist and orthodox House of Commons. To the Commons
and the Church he was only bound the closer by the hatred of Catholics
and Nonconformists or by the futile attempts at impeachment which were
made by the Catholic Earl of Bristol in the summer of 1663. The
"Declaration" indeed had strengthened Clarendon's position. It had
identified his policy of persecution with the maintenance of
constitutional liberty, and had thrown on Ashley and his opponents the
odium of an attempt to set up again the dispensing power and of
betraying, as it was thought, the interests of Protestantism into the
hands of Rome. Never in fact had Clarendon's power seemed stronger than
in 1664; and the only result of the attempt to shake his system of
intolerance was an increase of persecution. Of the sufferings of the
expelled clergy one of their number, Richard Baxter, has given us an
account. "Many hundreds of them with their wives and children had
neither house nor bread. . . . Their congregations had enough to do,
besides a small maintenance, to help them out of prisons or to maintain
them there. Though they were as frugal as possible they could hardly
live; some lived on little more than brown bread and water, many had but
eight or ten pounds a year to maintain a family, so that a piece of
flesh has not come to one of their tables in six weeks' time; their
allowance could scarce afford them bread and cheese. One went to plow
six days and preached on the Lord's Day. Another was forced to cut
tobacco for a livelihood." But poverty was the least of their
sufferings. They were jeered at by the players. They were hooted through
the streets by the mob. "Many of the ministers being afraid to lay down
their ministry after they had been ordained to it, preached to such as
would hear them in fields and private houses, till they were apprehended
and cast into gaols, where many of them perished." They were
excommunic