26, 1656.] (2) _The Episcopalians._ The question under this heading is not about those moderate Episcopalian divines who had conformed so far as to retain their rectories and vicarages in the Established Church, but about those Episcopalians of stronger principle, whether High Church and Arminian or not, who had been ejected from their former livings, or were trying to maintain themselves by some kind of private practice of their clerical profession in various parts of England.

Against these, just at the time when the Major-Generalcies were coming into full operation, there did issue one fell Ordinance.
It was published Nov.

24, 1655, under the title of _An Ordinance for Securing the Peace of the Commonwealth_, and it ordered that after Jan.

1, 1655-6 no persons should keep in their houses as chaplains or tutors any of the ejected clergy, and also that none of the ejected should teach in schools, preach publicly or privately, celebrate baptism or marriage, or use the Book of Common Prayer, under pain of being prosecuted.

The Ordinance seems to have been issued merely as part and parcel of that almost ostentatious menace of severities against the Royalists by which Cromwell sought at that particular time to terrify them into submission and prevent farther plottings.