All the special dispensations which he had granted had been granted to Roman Catholics.

All the laws which bore hardest on the Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, had been for a time severely executed by him.

While Hales commanded a regiment, while Powis sate at the Council board, while Massey held a deanery, while breviaries and mass books were printed at Oxford under a royal license, while the host was publicly exposed in London under the protection of the pikes and muskets of the footguards, while friars and monks walked the streets of London in their robes, Baxter was in gaol; Howe was in exile; the Five Mile Act and the Conventicle Act were in full vigour; Puritan writers were compelled to resort to foreign or to secret presses; Puritan congregations could meet only by night or in waste places, and Puritan ministers were forced to preach in the garb of colliers or of sailors.
In Scotland the King, while he spared no exertion to extort from the Estates full relief for Roman Catholics, had demanded and obtained new statutes of unprecedented severity against the Presbyterians.

His conduct to the exiled Huguenots had not less clearly indicated his feelings.

We have seen that, when the public munificence had placed in his hands a large sum for the relief of those unhappy men, he, in violation of every law of hospitality and good faith, required them to renounce the Calvinistic ritual to which they were strongly attached, and to conform to the Church of England, before he would dole out to them any portion of the alms which had been entrusted to his care.
Such had been his policy as long as he could cherish, any hope that the Church of England would consent to share ascendency with the Church of Rome.