common interest
and a common danger had changed the old jealousy of Holland into a
growing inclination towards the Dutch. Charles and his ministers stood
almost alone in their resolve. "Nearly all the court and all the members
of Parliament that are in town," wrote the French ambassador, "make
cabals to turn the king from his designs." Prince Rupert and the Duke of
Ormond, the heads of the old Royalist and constitutional party,
supported the Dutch embassy which was sent to meet the offers of
mediation made by Spain. So great was the pressure that Charles was only
able to escape from it by plunging hastily into hostilities. In March
1672 a captain in the king's service attacked a Dutch convoy in the
Channel. The attack was at once followed by a declaration of war, and
fresh supplies were obtained for the coming struggle by closing the
Exchequer and suspending, under Clifford's advice, the payment of either
principal or interest on loans advanced to the public Treasury. The
suspension spread bankruptcy among half the goldsmiths of London; but
with the opening of the war Ashley and his colleagues gained the
toleration they had bought so dear. By virtue of his ecclesiastical
powers the king ordered "that all manner of penal laws on matters
ecclesiastical against whatever sort of Nonconformists or recusants
should be from that day suspended," and gave liberty of public worship
to all dissidents save Catholics who were allowed to say mass only in
private houses.

[Sidenote: Bunyan.]

The effect of the Declaration of Indulgence went far to justify Ashley
and his colleagues (if anything could justify their course) in the
bargain by which they purchased toleration. Ministers returned after
years of banishment to their homes and flocks. Chapels were reopened.
The gaols were emptied. Hundreds of Quakers who had been the special
objects of persecution were set free to worship God after their own
fashion. John Bunyan left the prison which had for twelve years been his
home. We have seen the atmosphere of excited feeling in which the youth
of Bunyan had been spent. From his childhood he heard heavenly voices
and saw visions of heaven; from his childhood too he had been wrestling
with an overpowering sense of sin which sickness and repeated escapes
from death did much as he grew up to deepen. But in spite of his
self-reproaches his life was a religious one; and the purity and
sobriety of his youth were shown by his admission at seve