secution.]

On great questions so imperfect a composition of the representative body
mattered indeed little, for whatever were their origin the members
shared in the general national feeling and expressed fairly the national
sentiment. But in the common business of Parliament and in questions of
detail it told fatally on the temper of the House. The members were
conscious of their power, but they were checked by little sense of
responsibility for its exercise. They were open therefore to the meanest
and most selfish influences. Charles had done much by "closeting" them.
Danby, bolder and less ingenious, trusted to coarser means. With him
began the system of direct bribery which was to culminate in the
Parliamentary corruption of the Pelhams. He was more successful in
winning back the majority of the Commons from their alliance with the
Country party by reviving the old spirit of religious persecution. With
the view of breaking up the growing union between the Churchmen and the
Nonconformists as well as of driving from Parliament the Presbyterian
members who formed the strength of the Country party, and whose numbers
increased as time brought fresh elections, he proposed that the test
which had been imposed by Clarendon on municipal officers should be
extended to all functionaries of the State, that every member of either
House, every magistrate and public officer, should swear never to take
arms against the king or to "endeavour any alteration of the Protestant
religion now established by law in the Church of England, or any
alteration in the Government in Church and State as it is by law
established." The Bill was forced through the Lords by the bishops and
the Cavalier party, and its passage through the Commons was only averted
by a quarrel on privilege between the two Houses which Shaftesbury
dexterously fanned into flame.

[Sidenote: Charles turns to France.]

On the other hand the Country party remained strong enough to hamper
their grant of supplies with conditions which rendered it unacceptable
to the king. Eager as they were for the war with France which Danby
promised, the Commons could not trust the king; and Danby was soon to
discover how wise their distrust had been. For the Houses were no sooner
prorogued in November 1675 than Charles revealed to him the negotiations
he had been all the while carrying on with Lewis. To France, hard
pressed as she was by the allies, the entry of England into the war
would