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committee itself. The kind of oath of allegiance that might be taken,
the extension of the proposed relaxations so as to include the
Jesuits, and the anxiety of the laymen to get rid of the fines levied
on rich recusants rather than of the penalties meted out to the
clergy, led to the dissolution of the committee, and to the
abandonment of their suggested measures of redress.[16]

Clarendon was determined to crush the Nonconformist party
notwithstanding the promises that had been held out to them in the
Declaration of Breda. He secured the enactment of a number of laws,
the Act of Uniformity (1662), the Conventicle Act (1664) and the Five
Mile Act (1665) known as the Clarendon Code, which, though directed
principally against the Dissenters, helped to increase the hardships
of the Catholic body. Once, indeed, in 1662-63, Charles made a feeble
attempt to redeem his promise to both Catholics and Nonconformists by
announcing his intention of applying to Parliament to allow him to
exercise the dispensing power in regard to the Act of Uniformity and
other such laws, but the opposition was so strong that the proposed
declaration of indulgence was abandoned. The terrible fire that broke
out in London (September 1666) and which raged for five days,
destroying during that time a great part of the city, led to a new
outburst of anti-Catholic feeling. Without the slightest evidence the
fire was attributed to the Papists, and an inscription to this effect
placed upon the monument erected to commemorate the conflagration
remained unchanged until 1830. When Parliament met a committee was
appointed to inquire into the increase of popery, and a demand was
made that proclamations should be issued for the banishment of all
priests and Jesuits.

On the fall of Clarendon (1667) the Cabal ministers succeeded to
power. These were Clifford, who was a convinced Catholic, Arlington
who if not a Catholic at this time had at least Catholic tendencies,
Buckingham, Ashley, a man of no fixed religious opinions, and
Lauderdale, a Scotch Presbyterian (1670).[17] The contest for the
succession to the Spanish throne was at hand, and Louis XIV. was as
anxious to secure the support of England as was Charles to escape from
the Triple Alliance and the domination of Parliament. Besides, his
brother James, Duke of York, and heir-presumptive to the English
throne, had announced his adhesion to the Catholic Church, and his
example produced such an effect upon the king's mind that he
determined to imitate it if only France would promise support. It was
resolved to conclude a secret treaty with France by which Charles
should pledge himself to profess openly the Catholic religion and to
assist Louis in his schemes against Holland and Belgium, provided that
Louis would supply both money and men to suppress the disturbance to
which the king's change of religion might give rise in England. 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 (1672) 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." By this document liberty of public
worship was granted to Dissenters, while Catholics were allowed to
meet for religious service only in private houses.

A strong Protestant feeling had been aroused in the country by the
rumour of the conversion of the Duke of York, by the certainty that
his first wife, the daughter of the Earl of Clarendon, had become a
Catholic on her death-bed, and by the suspicion of some secret
negotiations with France. When Parliament met (1673) a demand was made
that the Declaration of Indulgence should be withdrawn. The Duke of
York urged the king to stand firm in the defence of his prerogatives,
but as neither Charles nor his ally Louis XIV. wished to precipitate a
conflict with the Parliament at that particular period, the king
yielded to the storm by revoking his original declaration. Immediately
the Test Act was introduced and passed through both houses despite the
warm opposition of the Duke of York and of Lord Clifford of Chudleigh.
According to the terms of this measure it was enacted that all civil
or military officials should be obliged to take the oath of supremacy
and allegiance, to receive Communion according to the English service,
and to make a declaration "that there is not any Transubstantiation in
the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, or in the elements of bread and
wine at or after the consecration thereof by any persons whatsoever."