-9-                             
 
 
were members of the Privy Council and thus guided the policy of the
Crown; these controlling members of the Council were also the masters
of His Majesty's famous Board of Trade and Plantations which worked out
the new British colonial and commercial program, they likewise
dominated both the East India Company and the new African Slave Trade
corporation, in which the Duke of York and the King's "devoted" sister,
the Duchess of Orleans, were heavy stockholders.  Every important
political and economic interest of Restoration England was thus under
the control of eight intimates of His Majesty who were "interlocking"
directors of one political and three commercial boards (1).
 
 
Their purposes were clearly revealed in the Clarendon Code of 1662-65,
which decreed a complete surrender of all dissenters to the State
Church, dismissed at a single stroke twelve hundred clergymen, cast
such men as John Bunyan and Richard Baxter into prison and sometimes
exectuted groups of religious or political opponents who refused to
surrender. If
 
 
1. Andrews, Charles M.: 
British Committee, Commissions and Councils of Trade and Plantations,
1622-1675,
- 1908, gives valuable information on this subject.