both real and personal, for the benefit of the commonwealth.  The fatal march of Charles to Worcester furnished grounds for a new proscription in 1652.  First[a] nine-and-twenty, then[b] six hundred and eighty-two royalists were selected for punishment.  It was enacted that those in the first class should forfeit their whole property; while to those in the second, the right of pre-emption was reserved at the rate of one-third part of the clear value, to be paid within four months.[1]

4.  During the late reign, as long as the Presbyterians retained their ascendancy in parliament, they enforced with all their power uniformity of worship and doctrine.  The clergy of the established church were ejected from their livings, and the professors of the Catholic faith were condemned to forfeit two-thirds of their property, or to abjure their religion.  Nor was the proof of recusancy to depend, as formerly, on the slow process of presentation and conviction; bare suspicion was held a sufficient ground for the sequestrator to seize his prey; and the complainant was told that he had the remedy in his own hands, he might take the oath of abjuration.  When the Independents succeeded to the exercise of the supreme power, both the persecuted parties indulged a hope of more lenient treatment, and both were disappointed.  The Independents, indeed, proclaimed themselves the champions of religious liberty; they repealed the statutes imposing penalties for absence from church; and they declared

[Footnote 1:  Journals, 1651, July 16; 1652, Aug. 4, Nov. 18.  Scobell, 156, 210.  If any of the last were papists, and afterwards disposed of their estates thus redeemed, they were ordered to banish themselves from their native country, under the penalty of having the laws against popery executed against them with the utmost severity.—­Addit.  Act of Nov. 18, 1652.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1652.  August 4.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1652.  Nov. 18.]

that men were free to serve God according to the dictates of conscience.  Yet their notions of toleration were very confined:  they refused to extend it either to prelacy or popery, to the service of the church of England, or of the church of Rome.  The ejected clergymen were still excluded from the pulpit, and the Catholics were still the victims of persecuting statutes.  In 1650, an act was passed[a] offering to the discoverers of priests and Jesuits, or of their receivers and abettors, the same reward as had been granted to the apprehenders of highwaymen.  Immediately officers and informers were employed in every direction; the houses of Catholics were broken open and searched at all hours of the day and night; many clergymen were apprehended, and several were tried, and received[b] judgment of death.  Of these only one, Peter Wright, chaplain to the marquess of Winchester, suffered.  The leaders shrank from the odium of such sanguinary exhibitions, and transported the rest of the prisoners to the continent.[1]