It had been generally supposed that he would readily comply with the royal wishes: for he was heedless of religion; he was fond of pleasure and expense; he had no private estate; his places brought him in four thousand pounds a year; and he had long been reckoned among the most devoted personal adherents of James.

When, however, the Rear Admiral was closeted, and required to promise that he would vote for the repeal of the Test Act, his answer was, that his honour and conscience would not permit him to give any such pledge.

"Nobody doubts your honour," said the King; "but a man who lives as you do ought not to talk about his conscience." To this reproach, a reproach which came with a bad grace from the lover of Catharine Sedley, Herbert manfully replied, "I have my faults, sir: but I could name people who talk much more about conscience than I am in the habit of doing, and yet lead lives as loose as mine." He was dismissed from all his places; and the account of what he had disbursed and received as Master of the Robes was scrutinised with great and, as he complained, with unjust severity.

[237] It was now evident that all hope of an alliance between the Churches of England and of Rome, for the purpose of sharing offices and emoluments, and of crushing the Puritan sects, must be abandoned.

Nothing remained but to try a coalition between the Church of Rome and the Puritan sects against the Church of England.
On the eighteenth of March the King informed the Privy Council that he had determined to prorogue the Parliament till the end of November, and to grant, by his own authority, entire liberty of conscience to all his subjects.