riends who, having been implicated in the Rye House Plot,
or having joined the standard of Monmouth, were now wandering on the
Continent, or toiling among the sugar canes of Barbadoes. He affected
even to sympathize with the kindness which the English Puritans felt for
their foreign brethren. A second and a third proclamation were published
at Edinburgh, which greatly extended the nugatory toleration granted
to the Presbyterians by the edict of February. [242] The banished
Huguenots, on whom the King had frowned during many months, and whom he
had defrauded of the alms contributed by the nation, were now relieved
and caressed. An Order in Council was issued, appealing again in their
behalf to the public liberality. The rule which required them to qualify
themselves for the receipt of charity, by conforming to the Anglican
worship, seems to have been at this time silently abrogated; and the
defenders of the King's policy had the effrontery to affirm that this
rule, which, as we know from the best evidence, was really devised by
himself in concert with Barillon, had been adopted at the instance of
the prelates of the Established Church. [243]

While the King was thus courting his old adversaries, the friends of
the Church were not less active. Of the acrimony and scorn with which
prelates and priests had, since the Restoration, been in the habit of
treating the sectaries scarcely a trace was discernible. Those who had
lately been designated as schismatics and fanatics were now dear fellow
Protestants, weak brethren it might be, but still brethren, whose
scruples were entitled to tender regard. If they would but be true at
this crisis to the cause of the English constitution and of the reformed
religion, their generosity should be speedily and largely rewarded. They
should have, instead of an indulgence which was of no legal validity, a
real indulgence, secured by Act of Parliament. Nay, many Churchmen, who
had hitherto been distinguished by their inflexible attachment to every
gesture and every word prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer, now
declared themselves favourable, not only to toleration, but even to
comprehension. The dispute, they said, about surplices and attitudes,
had too long divided those who were agreed as to the essentials of
religion. When the struggle for life and death against the common enemy
was over, it would be found that the Anglican clergy would be ready to
make every fair concession. If the Dis