His conduct on this occasion deserves undoubtedly the praise of disinterestedness.

It is honourable to him that he attempted to purchase liberty of conscience for his subjects by giving up a safeguard of his own crown.

But it must be acknowledged that he showed less wisdom than virtue.

The only Englishman in his Privy Council whom he had consulted, if Burnet was correctly informed, was Richard Hampden; [94] and Richard Hampden, though a highly respectable man, was so far from being able to answer for the Whig party that he could not answer even for his own son John, whose temper, naturally vindictive, had been exasperated into ferocity by the stings of remorse and shame.
The King soon found that there was in the hatred of the two great factions an energy which was wanting to their love.

The Whigs, though they were almost unanimous in thinking that the Sacramental Test ought to be abolished, were by no means unanimous in thinking that moment well chosen for the abolition; and even those Whigs who were most desirous to see the nonconformists relieved without delay from civil disabilities were fully determined not to forego the opportunity of humbling and punishing the class to whose instrumentality chiefly was to be ascribed that tremendous reflux of public feeling which had followed the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament.