ssion, Saftesbury, Halifax, Buckingham,
Mulgrave, Sunderland Essex, Rochester, Sidney, Temple, are supposed to
have adopted these principles.

The same factions which formerly distracted the nation were revived,
and exerted themselves in the most ungenerous and unmanly enterprises
against each other. King Charles, being in his whole deportment a model
of easy and gentleman-like behavior, improved the politeness of the
nation; as much as faction, which of all things is most destructive
to that virtue, could possibly permit. His courtiers were long
distinguishable in England by their obliging and agreeable manners.

Till the revolution, the liberty of the press was very imperfectly
enjoyed in England, and during a very short period. The star chamber,
while that court subsisted, put effectual restraints upon printing.
On the suppression of that tribunal in 1641, the long parliament, after
their rupture with the king, assumed the same power with regard to the
licensing of books; and this authority was continued during all the
period of the republic and protectorship.[*]

* Scobell i. 44, 134; ii. 88, 230.

Two years after the restoration, an act was passed reviving the
republican ordinances. This act expired in 1679; but was revived in the
first of King James. The liberty of the press did not even commence with
the revolution. It was not till 1694 that the restraints were taken
off; to the great displeasure of the king and his ministers, who, seeing
nowhere, in any government, during present or past ages, any example
of such unlimited freedom, doubted much of its salutary effects; and
probably thought, that no books or writings would ever so much improve
the general understanding of men, as to render it safe to intrust them
with an indulgence so easily abused.

In 1677, the old law for burning heretics was repealed; a prudent
measure, while the nation was in continual dread of the return of
Papery.

Amidst the thick cloud of bigotry and ignorance which overspread the
nation during the commonwealth and protectorship, there were a few
sedate philosophers, who, in the retirement of Oxford, cultivated their
reason, and established conferences for the mutual communication of
their discoveries in physics and geometry. Wilkins, a clergyman, who
had married Cromwell's sister, and was afterwards bishop of Chester,
promoted these philosophical conversations. Immediately after the
restoration, these men procured a patent,