s were allowed to build chapels, and even
to carry the host in procession anywhere except in the high streets of
royal burghs: the Quakers were suffered to assemble in public edifices:
but the Presbyterians were interdicted from worshipping God anywhere but
in private dwellings: they were not to presume to build meeting houses:
they were not even to use a barn or an outhouse for religious exercises:
and it was distinctly notified to them that, if they dared to hold
conventicles in the open air, the law, which denounced death against
both preachers and hearers, should be enforced without mercy. Any
Catholic priest might say mass: any Quaker might harangue his brethren:
but the Privy Council was directed to see that no Presbyterian minister
presumed to preach without a special license from the government. Every
line of this instrument, and of the letters by which it was accompanied,
shows how much it cost the King to relax in the smallest degree the
rigour with which he had ever treated the old enemies of his house.
[235]

There is reason, indeed, to believe that, when he published this
proclamation, he had by no means fully made up his mind to a coalition
with the Puritans, and that his object was to grant just so much favour
to them as might suffice to frighten the Churchmen into submission.
He therefore waited a month, in order to see what effect the edict put
forth at Edinburgh would produce in England. That month he employed
assiduously, by Petre's advice, in what was called closeting. London was
very full. It was expected that the Parliament would shortly meet for
the dispatch of business; and many members were in town. The King set
himself to canvass them man by man. He flattered himself that zealous
Tories,--and of such, with few exceptions, the House of Commons
consisted,--would find it difficult to resist his earnest request,
addressed to them, not collectively, but separately, not from the
throne, but in the familiarity of conversation. The members, therefore,
who came to pay their duty at Whitehall were taken aside, and honoured
with long private interviews. The King pressed them, as they were loyal
gentlemen, to gratify him in the one thing on which his heart was fixed.
The question, he said, touched his personal honour. The laws enacted in
the late reign by factious Parliaments against the Roman Catholics had
really been aimed at himself. Those laws had put a stigma on him, had
driven him from the Admiralty