ing were procured from several bodies of Dissenters.
Tory writers have with justice remarked that the language of these
compositions was as fulsomely servile as anything that could be found in
the most florid eulogies pronounced by Bishops on the Stuarts. But, on
close inquiry, it will appear that the disgrace belongs to but a small
part of the Puritan party. There was scarcely a market town in England
without at least a knot of separatists. No exertion was spared to induce
them to express their gratitude for the Indulgence. Circular letters,
imploring them to sign, were sent to every corner of the kingdom in such
numbers that the mail bags, it was sportively said, were too heavy for
the posthorses. Yet all the addresses which could be obtained from all
the Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists scattered over England did
not in six months amount to sixty; nor is there any reason to believe
that these addresses were numerously signed. [251]

The great body of Protestant Nonconformists, firmly attached to civil
liberty, and distrusting the promises of the King and of the Jesuits,
steadily refused to return thanks for a favour which, it might well
be suspected, concealed a snare. This was the temper of all the most
illustrious chiefs of the party. One of these was Baxter. He had, as we
have seen, been brought to trial soon after the accession of James, had
been brutally insulted by Jeffreys, and had been convicted by a jury,
such as the courtly Sheriffs of those times were in the habit of
selecting. Baxter had been about a year and a half in prison when the
court began to think seriously of gaining the Nonconformists. He was
not only set at liberty, but was informed that, if he chose to reside in
London, he might do so without fearing that the Five Mile Act would
be enforced against him. The government probably hoped that the
recollection of past sufferings and the sense of present ease would
produce the same effect on him as on Rosewell and Lobb. The hope was
disappointed. Baxter was neither to be corrupted nor to be deceived. He
refused to join in an address of thanks for the Indulgence, and exerted
all his influence to promote good feeling between the Church and the
Presbyterians. [252]

If any man stood higher than Baxter in the estimation of the Protestant
Dissenters, that man was John Howe. Howe had, like Baxter, been
personally a gainer by the recent change of policy. The same tyranny
which had flung Baxter int