For a month or two, indeed, after the terrible ordinance of Nov.

24, 1655, threatening the expulsion of the ejected Anglican clergy from the family-chaplaincies, schoolmasterships, and tutorships, in which so many of them had found refuge, and forbidding them to preach anywhere or use the Book of Common Prayer, there had been a flutter of consternation among the poor dispersed clerics.
That Ordinance, however, as we saw, had merely been _in terrorem_ at a particular moment, and had remained a dead letter.
The admirable John Hales, it is true, did resign a chaplaincy which he held near Eton rather than bring the good lady who sheltered him into trouble; and by his death soon afterwards England lost a man of whom the Protector must have had as kindly thoughts as of any of the old Anglicans.

That case was exceptional.

Ex-Bishop Hall, in the end of his much-battered life, lived quietly near Norwich, remembering his past losses and sequestrations under the Long Parliament rather than suffering anything more of the kind.

Peter Heylin was in similar circumstances in Oxfordshire, and by no means bashful.