And

were excluded from sitting in parliament. those penal laws of which mention hath been made heretofore in due place, were now restrained except the test act, properly required for serving in high offices, and to keep out the Papists. The aforesaid act gave also liberty to dissenters to keep religious meetings, provided the doors were not locked, barred, or bolted, during the time of such meeting. But none of these dissenters were freed from paying tithes, or other church duties so called, to the clergy, nor from being cited before bishops courts. But this liberty of keeping public meetings was not allowed to Papists; for all that would participate of the said liberty, were required to take the oath of allegiance; yet to comply with the people called Quakers who for conscience sake scrupled to take any oath, this act enjoined that they should subscribe the following

declaration:

"I A. B. do sincerely promise and solemnly declare, before God and the world, that I will be true and faithful to king William and queen Mary; and I do solemnly profess and declare, that I do from my heart abhor, detest and renounce, as impious and heretical, that damnable doctrine and position, that princes excommunicated or deprived by the pope, or any authority of the see of Rome, may be deposed or murder

ed by their subjects, or any other whatsoever. And I declare that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state, or potentate, hath, or ought to have any power, jurisdiction, superiority, preeminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm."

Besides this they were obliged to subscribe also another, with respect to their orthodoxy, and for excluding Socinianism.

"I A. B. profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ his eternal Son, the true God, and in the holy Spirit, one God, blessed for evermore and do acknowledge the holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration."

And lest any Papist might make use of this declaration, there were required sufficient Protestant witnesses that the declarer was a Protestant dissenter. Besides no congregation or assembly for religious worship was permitted. or allowed by this act, until the place of such meeting should be certified to the bishop of the diocese, or to the archdeacon of the archdeaconry; or to the justices of the peace at the general or quarter sessions of the peace for the county, city, or place, in which such meeting should be held and registered in the said bishop's or archdeacon's court respectively, or recorded

at the said general or quarter-sessions: for which the registrar or clerk should not take greater fee or reward than sixpence.

By this we now see the religion of the Quakers, acknowledged and tolerated by an act of parliament; and themselves released from all persecution for performance of their public worship, and their refusal of the oath of allegiance. This was a work reserved for that great prince king William, who being born in a country where force upon conscience was abrogated, when a Protestant government was settled there, now also according to his ability introduced the like Christian liberty in England: but to release from the payment of tithes was beyond his reach, how unreasonably soever the clergy acted in this case; whereof about this time a notable instance was published in print, of one John Bishop, a countryman at Wortham, from whom for two years tithes there had been taken, horses, kine, and sheep, to the value of seventy-six pounds, according to the estimate of impartial persons, though rated by himself at eighty-three pounds. And yet the priest, Thomas Turlow, had declared upon his oath, that he believed that the tithes of every year's growth of the said John Bishop, did amount one year with another, to three pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence; but the charges were reckoned so high, and the rating of the distrained

goods was so very much beneath the real value that the loss thereby sustained was exceeding great.

In Barbadoes in the West Indies, where the inhabitants were marshalled to bear arms, the Quakers notwithstanding what had been ordered in their favour by king James, continued yet under hard sufferings, of which more in the sequel. They now that were thus oppressed sent over a petition to the king wherein they set forth how they were molested, and prayed for relief; which had such effect, that the king issued forth the following order.

At the council at Whitehall, Dec. 12, 1689.

Present the king's most excellent Majesty in council.

"Upon reading a petition of the people called Quakers, inhabiting the island of Barbadoes setting forth, that because the said Quakers could not bear arms, nor take an oath in any case, they have suffered much by virtue of an act made to settle the militia in the said island; as in the petition hereunto annexed is more at large. expressed; his majesty in council is graciously pleased to refer the matter of the said petition to the examination of James Kendal, Esq. his majesty's governor of Barbadoes for the time

being, who is to give the petitioners such relief in relation to the militia, as to him shall seem just and reasonable to answer their particular circumstances, and to make report thereof to his majesty.

"Richard Collinge."

This year deceased Alexander Parker, sometimes mentioned in this history, being a man not only of a godly life and conversation, but also of a goodly mien and grave deportment. In the following year, viz. that of 1690, Robert Barclay also departed this life; a man of eminent gifts and great endowments, expert not only in the languages of the learned, but also well versed in the writings of the ancient fathers, and other ecclesiastical writers, and furnished with a great understanding, being not only of a sound judgment, but also strong in arguments, and cheerful in sufferings. Besides, he was of a friendly and pleasant, yet grave conversation, and eminently fitted for composing of differences; and he really lived up to what he professed, being of an unblameable deportment, truly pious, and well beloved of those he conversed with. And in this happy state it pleased God to take him away out of this vale of tears, into a glorious immortality, in the prime of his age, having not lived much above half the life of a man, as