Note 254 — Chapter VII
Reading edition
Clarendon (1076), says the Independents, at the Restoration, had as free access to the King as the Presbyterians—"both that he might hinder any conjunction between the other factions, and because they seemed wholly to depend upon His Majesty's will and pleasure, without resorting to the Parliament, in which they had no confidence, and had rather that Episcopacy should flourish again, than that the Presbyterians should govern." Clarendon is no authority for the policy of the Congregationalists, and goes too far in the last remark. Nor does their access to Court, which I apprehend he greatly exaggerates, prove that they had anything like the political influence of the Presbyterians.