Declaration of Indulgence 1662
In December 1662, Charles II issued a Declaration of Indulgence, in which he invoked his royal power to 'dispense' the law in favour of both Catholics and non-Anglican Protestants who 'modestly and without scandal performed their devotions in their own way', and he called on Parliament to make such a suspension general and permanent. However, the mood of the country was against him, and he was forced to withdraw the declaration in 1663.
Declaration of Indulgence 1672
Many suspected that Charles was using the third Anglo-Dutch War simply as an excuse for the reintroduction of rule without Parliament and of Catholicism. Their worst fears were confirmed when, on 15 March 1672, encouraged by his secretary of state, the earl of Arlington, he published another Declaration of Indulgence, which, on the model of the abortive one of a decade earlier, used his royal authority to suspend the restrictions on Catholics as well as Protestant Dissenters. The effect was to confirm the fatal association in the public mind of arbitrary government, Catholicism and an unpopular foreign policy.
As the war foundered, Parliament forced the king to withdraw the declaration. In its place, they enacted the anti-Catholic Test Act.
Declaration of Indulgence 1687
In his struggles with the anti-Catholic forces in Parliament and elsewhere, James II sought to nullify all the laws that had been made against Catholics. In the Declaration of Indulgence (also later known as the Declaration for the Liberty of Conscience), which he issued on 4 April 1687 and commanded to be read out in all parish churches, he proposed religious toleration for all.
To accept such a guarantee of toleration was a strong temptation for the Anglican Church but there was a price. If they did that, they also had to accept James's absolute authority over them and acknowledge the 'more than ordinary providence' by which almighty God had brought him the throne.
The archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, summoned his fellow bishops to a secret supper party at Lambeth Palace to discuss the situation. When the meal was over, seven of them signed a petition to the king denouncing the declaration. This was a frontal attack on royal policy, and, as the petition quickly circulated in print, a public challenge to royal authority as well.
James decided to face it down by prosecuting the bishops for seditious libel, but he underestimated them and the mood of the people. Instead of being intimidated, the bishops refused to raise securities for bail, so they were all imprisoned in the Tower of London. It was a terrific publicity coup: crowds of Londoners cheered them from the riverbank as they were brought to the Tower, and when they landed, the soldiers received them on their knees and the governor treated them as honoured guests.
At the trial in Westminster Hall, passions about the legality of the dispensing power itself were raised to such an extent that decorum broke down: the spectators cheered counsel for the bishops and booed and hissed the royal lawyers. The jurors stayed out all night in continuous deliberation. Then, the following morning, they returned a verdict of not guilty.
James's bid to become an absolute monarch in the mould of his cousin Louis XIV of France or even his ancestor Henry VIII had failed. No English monarch would ever even make the attempt again. The declaration was declared void when James was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688–9.
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 Declaration of Indulgence, 1672
www.swan.ac.uk/history/teaching/teaching
%20resources/Revolutionary%20England/Ind
ulgence.htm
Full text of Charles II's second attempt at securing toleration for Catholics and Dissenters.
Declaration of Indulgence of King James II, April 4, 1687
www.jacobite.ca/documents/16870404.htm
The complete text of James's abortive attempt to get rid of the strictures of the Test Act.
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