THE HISTORY OF NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 
55 
liberty to tender consciences, and that no man shall be disquieted, 
or called in question for differences of opinion, which do not disturb 
the peace of the kingdom. " And in the following October another 
declaration conceded, for the sake of pacification, "that the ministers 
should be freed from the subscription required by the Canon, and 
the oath of canonical obedience ; receive Ordination, Institution, 
and Induction, and exercise their function and enjoy the profits of 
their livings without being obliged to it ; and that the use of the 
Ceremonies should be dispensed with where they were scrupled."* 
Within less than two years came the Act of Uniformity, and 
Bartholomew -day, 1662, saw two thousand of the ablest, most 
learned, and most pious ministers of the Church cast out there- 
from, because their consciences would not allow them to declare 
their unfeigned assent and consent to everything contained in and 
prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer, which, by the way, as 
modified by Convocation, very few of the seven thousand whose 
consciences were less tender could have seen. 
" Nor shall the eternal roll of praise reject 
Those Unconforming ; whom one rigorous day 
Drives from their Cures, a voluntary prey 
To poverty, and grief, and disrespect, 
And some to want — as if by tempest wrecked 
On a wild coast. 
******* 
Men the dictate of whose inward sense 
Outweighs the world ! whom self- deceiving wit 
Lures not from what they deem the cause of God." 
Persecution began in Plymouth before the Black Bartholomew. 
One Captain William Pestell paid the West a visit in 1661, 
apparently in the character of spy. He wrote to Secretary Mcholas, 
on the 26th September, that the Pifth Monarchy Men were as- 
sociated with the Presbyterians in encouraging the people to 
withstand the common prayer ; that " several of the old sea-cap- 
tains at Plymouth were determined that the common prayer should 
not come into Mr. Hughes's church,' ' and that there was the same 
feeling at other places on the coast, where Anabaptists and Quakers 
abounded. 
The Presbyterians could not be touched until the Act of Uni- 
formity ; the Quakers were in prison before Charles returned ; only 
* Calamy's " Abridgment," vol. i. p. 152. 
