"Touch not, taste not, handle not;" this cry went out amongst them: and the king's ministers at last perceived, that they should prostitute the dignity of government, by making advances, to which the malecontents were determined not to correspond.
The next project adopted was that of indulgence.

In prosecution of this scheme, the most popular of the expelled preachers, without requiring any terms of submission to the established religion, were settled in vacant churches; and small salaries of about twenty pounds a year were offered to the rest, till they should otherwise be provided for.

These last refused the king's bounty, which they considered as the wages of a criminal silence.

Even the former soon repented their compliance.
The people, who had been accustomed to hear them rail against their superiors, and preach to the times, as they termed it, deemed their sermons languid and spiritless when deprived of these ornaments.
Their usual gifts, they thought, had left them, on account of their submission, which was stigmatized as Erastianism.

They gave them the appellation, not of ministers of Christ, but of the king's curates, as the clergy of the established church were commonly denominated the bishop's curates.