not imprisoned for reading the Liturgy. Alluding to the violence of some of the Presbyterians, the writer of the Life of Carstairs says, "he felt this in a variety of instances, during the course of those prosecutions which were carried on by his more rigid brethren, in different corners of Scotland, against some of the Episcopal Clergy, who, by virtue of the powers entrusted with Presbyteries, were, upon the most frivolous pretexts, turned out of their livings. But he felt it most of all in the case of Greenshields. Having in vain attempted to dissuade his brethren and the civil magistrate from so impolitic a step as that of stating themselves in downright opposition to the Church of England, at the bar of the House of Peers, he ventured to prognosticate that their severity in that instance would only open a door for other encroachments." He adds: "Accordingly it is well known that it was the proceedings in the affair of Greenshields which laid the foundation, as it afforded the fairest pretext for the Act of Toleration, and the Act restoring patronages, which in the circumstances of the country at that time were considered as preludes to the restoration of prelacy and the Pretender."[1]
Yet De Foe laboured to prove that the refusal to permit the English Liturgy to be used was not an act of persecution. The House of Lords had not given their decision, at the period of his writing: or perhaps, as a professed advocate of liberty of conscience, he might not have adopted such an unreasonable course. He asserted that the attempt to introduce the Liturgy was "a political design to carry on a party interest among us in England, and embroil,
- ↑ Carstairs, 79, 776, 782, 783.
