If the reader would know what became of this Independent party, upon whom all the mischief is charged by their Presbyterian brethren; he may please to observe, that during the whole usurpation, they contended by degrees with their parent sect, and, as I have already said, shared in employments; and gradually, after the Restoration, mingled with the mass of Presbyterians; lying ever since undistinguished in the herd of dissenters.

The Presbyterian merit is of as little weight, when they allege themselves instrumental towards the King’s restoration.  The kingdom grew tired with those ridiculous models of government:  First, by a House of Lords and Commons, without a king; then without bishops; afterwards by a Rump[8] and lords temporal:  then by a Rump alone; next by a single person for life, in conjunction with a council:  by agitators:  by major-generals:  by a new kind of representatives from the three kingdoms:  by the keepers of the liberties of England; with other schemes that have slipped out of my memory.  Cromwell was dead; his son Richard, a weak, ignorant wretch, who gave up his monarchy much in the same manner with the two usurping kings of Brentford.[9] The people harassed with taxes and other oppressions; the King’s party, then called the Cavaliers began to recover their spirits.  The few nobility scattered through the kingdom, who lived in a most retired manner, observing the confusion of things, could no longer endure to be ridden by bakers, cobblers, brewers, and the like, at the head of armies; and plundering everywhere like French dragoons:  The Rump assembly grew despicable to those who had raised them:  The city of London, exhausted by almost twenty years contributing to their own ruin, declared against them.  The Rump, after many deaths and resurrections, was, in the most contemptuous manner, kicked out, and burned in effigy.  The excluded members were let in:  a free Parliament called in as legal a manner as the times would allow; and the King restored.

[Footnote 8:  This name was given to that part of the House of Commons which remained after the moderate men had been expelled by military-force. [S.]]

[Footnote 9:  In the “Rehearsal.”]

The second claim of Presbyterian merit is founded upon their services against the dangerous designs of King James the Second; while that prince was using all his endeavours to introduce Popery, which he openly professed upon his coming to the crown:  To this they add, their eminent services at the Revolution, under the Prince of Orange.

Now, the quantum of Presbyterian merit, during the four years’ reign of that weak, bigoted, and ill-advised prince, as well as at the time of the Revolution, will easily be computed, by a recourse to a great number of histories, pamphlets, and public papers, printed in those times, and some afterwards; beside the verbal testimonies of many persons yet alive, who are old enough to have known and observed the Dissenters’ conduct in that critical period.