nt Parliament on the 7th of May ensuing: these mere headings
will indicate much of the miscellaneous activity of the Council, or
of the House, or of committees of the House, as far as to the end of
July. One may glance more closely at their proceedings and intentions
in two departments: (1) _Church and Religion_, On the 27th of
June, In reply to a petition from "many thousands of the free-born
people of this Commonwealth" for the abolition of Tithes, the House
voted that "the payment of Tithes shall continue as now they are,
unless this Parliament shall find out some other and more equal and
comfortable maintenance." Evidently, therefore, the Restored Rumpers
were not yet prepared to interfere materially with the
Church-Establishment as it had been left by Oliver. The petition,
however, which drew from them this declaration, is itself
significant. In the opinion of many over the country absolute
Voluntaryism in Religion was part and parcel of "the good old cause,"
and ought to be re-proclaimed as such, at once. Nor, though the
Rumpers now refused to admit that, was sympathy with the demand
wanting within their own body. The majority of the Parliament and of
its Council were, indeed, orthodox Independents or
Semi-Presbyterians, approving of Cromwell's Church policy, and
anxious to support the existing public ministry. But Vane and some
other leading Rumpers were men of mystic and extreme theological
lights, pointing in the direction of Fifth-Monarchyism, Quakerism,
and all other varieties of that fervency for Religion itself which
would destroy mere state-paid machinery in its behalf, while a few,
on the other hand, such as Neville, were cool freethinkers,
contemptuous of Church and Clergy as but an apparatus for the
prevalent superstition. For the present, it had been thought
impolitic perhaps to divide counsels in that matter, or to give
offence to the sober majority of the people by reviving the question,
so much agitated between 1649 and 1653, whether pure Republicanism in
politics did not necessarily involve absolute Voluntaryism in
Religion; but the probability is that the question was only
adjourned. In the connected question of Religious Toleration the new
Government was more free at once to give effect to strong views; and,
though it was not formally announced that unlimited Toleration was to
be the rule of the Restored Republic, this was substantially the
understanding. On the whole, Cromwell's policy in Church