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CONVENTICLE AND TEST ACTS. 397
his way to be enthroned in the Minster, when he
looked back upon that summer's night in 1644 when,
as a weary and wounded fugitive, he formed one of
the thronging crowd of defeated Royalists who were
pressing through its narrow portal to seek refuge and
shelter within the walls of York.
During the period covered by the episcopates of
these three last-named prelates, severe measures were
passed affecting alike the Nonconformists and the
Roman Catholics. In 1670 the act against conventicles
received the royal assent. Its provisions
were very stringent.
Five persons or more assembled
in a house, over and above the family or household
;
and five or more in a house, field, or place where
there was no family or household, were held to constitute
a conventicle. As in the case of the Act of
Uniformity, the House of Lords agreed, indeed, to
the passing of the bill, but not without indications of
strong repugnance to its bitter and intolerant spirit.
A record of this occurs in a letter written by a chaplain
of Bishop Cosin (April 14, 1670) "
: I heard the great
hum when the words Le Roy le veult were spoken at
the passing of the Act against Conventicles." ^
Fresh
impetus was given by the passing of this statute to
the persecution of dissenters.
In 1673 the Test Act
was passed, under the provisions of which no office
could be filled by any one who had not communicated
according to the rites of the Church of England.
This affected equally the Nonconformists and the
Roman Catholics. The former were perpetually
'
"Cosin Correspondence," Introd., p. xxx.