it is not unlikely that Claverhouse followed it.  A large body of English troops was a few years later serving under the French standard.  In 1672 the Duke of Monmouth, then in the prime of his fortune, joined Turenne with a force of six thousand English and Scottish troops, amongst whom marched John Churchill, a captain of the Grenadier company of Monmouth’s own regiment.  But the military glory Claverhouse is said to have won in the French service cannot have been great:  his studies in the art of war must have been mainly theoretical.  In the year 1668, the year in which Claverhouse is said to have left Scotland for France, Lewis had been compelled to pause in his career of conquest.  The Triple Alliance had in that year forced upon him the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.  He had been compelled to restore Franche Comte, though he still kept hold of the towns he had won in the Low Countries.  But the joy with which all parties in England welcomed this alliance had scarcely found expression when Charles, impatient of the economy of his Parliament and indifferent to its approval, opened those negotiations which, with the help of his sister the Duchess of Orleans, and that other Duchess, Louisa of Portsmouth, resulted in the secret treaty of Dover.  We are not now concerned to examine the particulars of a transaction which even Charles himself did not dare to confide entirely to his ministers, familiar as the Cabal was with shameless deeds.  It is enough for our present purpose to remember that, in return for a large annual subsidy and the promise of help should England again take up arms against her king, Charles bound himself to aid Lewis in crushing the rising power of Holland and to support the claims of the House of Bourbon to the throne of Spain.  Supplies were obtained for immediate purposes by closing the Exchequer, an act which ruined half the goldsmiths in London.  As a set-off against this, a royal proclamation, arrogating to itself powers only Parliament could rightly exercise, suspended the laws against Nonconformists and Catholics.  The latter were, indeed, allowed to say Mass only within their private houses, but to dissenters of every other class was granted the freest liberty of public worship.

The declaration of war followed close on the declaration of indulgence.  The immediate result of the latter was the release of John Bunyan from an imprisonment of twelve years, and the publication of the “Pilgrim’s Progress.”  A more important and lasting result was the Revolution of 1688.  Both declarations were unpopular, but the Declaration of Indulgence was the most unpopular of the two.  It was unpopular with the zealous Churchman for the concessions it made both to Papist and Puritan.  It was unpopular with the Puritan because he was compelled to share it with the Papist.  It was unpopular with the Papist because it was less liberal to him than to the Puritan.  It was unpopular with all classes of patriotic Englishmen alike, because it directly