Note 675 — Chapter VII
Reading edition
It was in the autumn of 1685, that the clergy and the government persecuted the dissenters with the greatest virulence. See Macaulay's Hist. vol. i. pp. 667, 668. Compare Neal's Hist. of the Puritans, vol. v. pp. 4–12, with a letter from Lord Clarendon, dated 21st December 1685, in Clarendon Correspond. vol. i. p. 192. It is said (Burnet's Own Time, vol. iii. pp. 175, 176), that on many occasions the church party made use of the ecclesiastical courts to extort money from the Nonconformists; and for confirmation of this, see Mackintosh's Revolution of 1688, pp. 173, 640.