uted the separatists only because his affairs had been
in such a state that he could not venture to disoblige the established
clergy. The established clergy protested that they had borne a part
in severity uncongenial to their feelings only from deference to the
authority of the King. The King got together a collection of stories
about rectors and vicars who had by threats of prosecution wrung
money out of Protestant Dissenters. He talked on this subject much and
publicly, threatened to institute an inquiry which would exhibit the
parsons in their true character to the whole world, and actually issued
several commissions empowering agents on whom he thought that he could
depend to ascertain the amount of the sums extorted in different parts
of the country by professors of the dominant religion from sectaries.
The advocates of the Church, on the other hand, cited instances of
honest parish priests who had been reprimanded and menaced by the court
for recommending toleration in the pulpit, and for refusing to spy out
and hunt down little congregations of Nonconformists. The King asserted
that some of the Churchmen whom he had closeted had offered to make
large concessions to the Catholics, on condition that the persecution
of the Puritans might go on. The accused Churchmen vehemently denied the
truth of this charge; and alleged that, if they would have complied
with what he demanded for his own religion, he would most gladly
have suffered them to indemnify themselves by harassing and pillaging
Protestant Dissenters. [240]

The court had changed its face. The scarf and cassock could hardly
appear there without calling forth sneers and malicious whispers. Maids
of honour forbore to giggle, and Lords of the Bedchamber bowed low, when
the Puritanical visage and the Puritanical garb, so long the favourite
subjects of mockery in fashionable circles, were seen in the galleries.
Taunton, which had been during two generations the stronghold of the
Roundhead party in the West, which had twice resolutely repelled the
armies of Charles the First, which had risen as one man to support
Monmouth, and which had been turned into a shambles by Kirke and
Jeffreys, seemed to have suddenly succeeded to the place which Oxford
had once occupied in the royal favour. [241] The King constrained
himself to show even fawning courtesy to eminent Dissenters. To some
he offered money, to some municipal honours, to some pardons for their
relations and f