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Anthony's sympathy was further aroused by the knowledge that the Papists, too, hated the old man, and longed to injure him. In November matters were so serious that the Archbishop felt himself obliged to take steps to chastise the recusants; and in December came the news of the execution of Cuthbert Maine at Launceston in Cornwall.
Expelled from cities and the mansions of men, they met on the hills and deserts like the French Huguenots. Assailed with arms, they repelled force by force. The severity of the rulers, instigated by the episcopal clergy, increased with the obstinacy of the recusants, until the latter, in 1666, assumed arms for the purpose of asserting their right to worship God in their own way.
In these documents he had succinctly explained that the houses of all recusants should be forthwith burned about their ears, and in consequence of these peremptory measures, he had obtained some ten thousand florins.
People in our days mean by religious persecution what happens when the same sort of repressive policy is applied to a religious party as is applied to vaccination recusants, or to the "Peculiar People." All religious persecution, from the days of Socrates, has taken a legal form, and justified itself on legal grounds.
"I am glad to hear it. I do not approve of this system of relieving parents of their private duties. Mr. Wiley carries it to excess, and will not permit any poor woman to become a member of the coal-and-clothing club who does not send her children to Sunday-school: the doctor has refused his subscription in consequence, and divides it amongst the recusants.
declared the Presbyterian confession of faith to be that of the church of England, ordered copies of the solemn league and covenant to be hung up in all churches, offered rewards for the apprehension of Catholic priests, urged the execution of the laws against Catholic recusants, and fixed the 15th of March for their own dissolution, the 25th of April for the meeting of a new parliament.
To be sure, the laws against recusants were not uniformly enforced; papistry in favourites and friends of the king was winked at, and the rich noblemen, who were able to pay fines, did not suffer much. But the fact remains that for the average gentleman to turn Romanist generally meant to drop out of the world.
The treaty was signed in May 1670, but as Charles was more anxious about the subsidies than about the change of religion, and as Louis XIV. preferred that the religious question should not be raised till the war against Holland had been completed, very little, if anything, was done, except to publish a Declaration of Indulgence in which Charles by virtue of his "supreme power in ecclesiastical matters" suspended "all manner of penal laws against whatsoever sort of Nonconformists and Recusants."
The Catholic lawyers were disbarred and silenced; the Catholic schoolmasters were forbidden to teach, under pain of felony. Recusants, surrounded in glens and caves, offering up the holy sacrifice through the ministry of some daring priest, were shot down or smoked out like vermin. The ecclesiastics never, in any instance, were allowed to escape.
Before his coming Charles had promised for a sum of £120,000 to dispense with the oath of supremacy, to suffer recusants to practise in the courts of law, and to put a stop to the constant extortion of their lands by legal process. The money was paid; but by the management of Wentworth, the "Graces" which it was to bring received no confirmation from the Irish Parliament.
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