Note 133 — Chapter IV

April 13. Parl. Hist., v. 217. The following passage occurs in the Entering Book, 217, Wednesday, May 15:—“Commons proceeded upon their Indulgence and Toleration Bill for Dissenters. The anti-interest seemed to be that day very calm and mild; and Sir Thomas Clarges took notice that the Lords’ Bill for Indulgence seemed very grateful to those whom it most concerned, and he was very well content it might pass. Yet he thought fit the House of Commons’ own Indulgence Bill should also be committed, and both of the Bills being committed, they might take anything that was good out of their own Bill and insert it into the Lords’ Bill. Of this opinion was Mr. Sacheverel.” It is added, “The Commons’ Bill has one excellent passage in it that is not in the Lords’ Bill, i.e. it repeals all the penal statutes against the Protestant Dissenters, when the Lords’ Bill does only suspend them, and restrain them to that matter of meetings alone, but leaves them in force upon all other accounts.”