finally presidency to be given to Dr. Clifford, a catholic bishop in partibus; and thus Magdalen College, the majority of whose Magdalen Fellows were already catholics, was taken from protestant hands placed in and placed under the control of those who professed the king's faith. The bitterness which arose out of these proceedings was intensified as they advanced by the introduction of Father Father Petre into the council, and by the public reception at Windsor mitted to of the papal nuncio, despite a statute expressly forbidding all the council. diplomatic relations with the court of Rome. hands; Petre ad influence tions; tors" di corpora lord-lieuten counties; The dogged opposition which met every attempt to set aside A royal progress the Test Act by means of the dispensing power convinced made in James that the only effective way of removing that obstacle August to to his designs was through its repeal by parliament, and with the elec that end in view he began in August, 1687, a royal progress, in the hope of convincing by argument those who opposed his political views.1 As an adjunct to that design he at the same time appointed a board called "regulators," who, under the "regulapretext of reforming the corporations, were directed to so rected to remould those bodies as to bring them in harmony with the manage the court, and orders were likewise given to the lord-lieutenants tions, the to so manipulate the political machinery of their counties as ants the to produce the same result. And in order to apply pressure to every individual, the three following questions were asked: Will you vote for the repeal of the Test Act and the penal laws if you are chosen to the next parliament? Will you promise to aid those candidates who pledge themselves to such repeal? Are you willing to live peacefully with men of different religious principles under the liberty of conscience which the crown has already proclaimed? But all such attempts failure of utterly failed. The refusal of half of the lord-lieutenants and the scheme many of the justices to comply was followed by a wholesale sals from dismissal of both, while despite the "regulations " it was found impossible to bend the corporations to the royal will.3 Under such discouraging conditions it was found necessary to adjourn the elections that had been fixed for February, 1688, until a further effort could be made to win popular support. With that end in view a fresh appeal was made to the nation in 1 James, Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 134. 2 Life of James, p. 139; Ralph, p. 965 et seq. 8 For all details, see Lingard, vol. x. p. 264; Green, Hist. of the Eng. People, vol. iv. p. 22. and dismis office; tion of De clergy ordered to the churches; signed by republica April by a republication of the Declaration of Indulgence, to claration of which was now added the statement that as merit and not Indulgence, oaths should henceforth be the one qualification for office, all April, 1688; subjects of the crown would be secured "freedom of conscience forever." A new parliament was then promised for the following November, and all were exhorted to vote for representatives who would carry out therein the good work so happily begun.1 And in order to give the greatest publicity and solemnity to the document, the clergy of the established read it in church, embittered as they were by jealousy and resentment, were commanded by an order in council to read it during divine service on two successive Sundays.2 The almost universal refusal of the clergy to perform what they regarded as protest an act of humiliation was sanctioned by Archbishop Sancroft, archbishop who, together with six of his suffragans, ventured to present a and seven respectful petition to the king, in which they asked that the clergy might be excused from reading the Declaration, not from any lack of reverence for the sovereign or of tenderness for dissenters, but because it was founded on the dispensing power, "often declared illegal in parliament, and particularly in the years 1662 and 1672, and the beginning of your majesty's reign." Despite the respectful form of the petition, its substance was accepted as "a standard of rebellion," and the high com- first answer to its prayer was an order to the "high commismissioners sioners" commanding them to deprive the seven subscribing bishops of their sees. In the presence of that proposal even Jeffreys faltered, and by his advice a prosecution was begun for seditious libel, upon which the seven, after their refusal to give bail, were committed to the Tower on the 8th of June. In the course of the trial, which began in Westminster Hall on the 29th of that month in the presence of a vast and excited auditory, the counsel for the bishops contended (1) that they had simply exercised the right of petition touching an suffragans; command ed to deprive them of their sees; trial of 1 Wilkins, Conc., vol. iv. p. 616. 2 On the 20th and 27th of May at London and Westminster, and on the 3d and 10th of June in all other places. 8 State Trials, vol. xii. p. 183. The first and second Declarations of Indulgence (4th and 27th of April), the order in council (May 4), and the peti tion of the bishops presented on May 18, are all printed in full in the case of the Seven Bishops, in Broom's Const. Law, Denman's ed., pp. 406–519. As to this important trial, see also Burnet, vol. iii. pp. 222-226; Macpherson, vol. i. p. 266; Hist. of Eccl. Commis., pp. 53-60; Macaulay, vol. i. pp. 499, 500, 504, 513-517, 518. tions sub ecclesiastical question with which they were specially charged; (2) that the dispensing power which the petition challenged had no legal existence. After argument the judges held that only two questions remained for the jury; the first involving the two ques fact of the publication of the petition, the second, the char-mitted to acter of its contents. Upon the last point two of the judges, the jury; Wright and Allybone, instructed the jury that the petition was libellous, while the other two, Holloway and Powell, declared that it was not. After a night passed in stormy debate the jury rendered a verdict of not guilty, which was received with verdict of an enthusiastic shout, that swelled through the capital and ad- not guilty. joining hamlets until it reached the king himself at Hounslow Heath, where in the midst of his standing army he thus received the first warning of the mighty change that was soon to come.1 to James tated the 4. Two days after the bishops were committed to the Tower, Birth of a an event occurred which precipitated the Revolution. From male heir the time of James' conversion to catholicism the nation had precipibeen pacified by the assurance that, although temporary evils Revolution; might flow from his accession, the crown at his death would pass first to Mary and then to Anne, the two surviving children of his first marriage with Anne Hyde, the daughter of Clarendon. In order to strengthen that hope, Mary as presumptive heir was confirmed a protestant by royal order in 1674; and to make assurance doubly sure she was married on November 4, 1677, to her cousin, the great protestant prince, William of Orange. When the first Exclusion Bill was read in the commons on the 5th of November, 1680, Mary was still until then her father's presumptive heir,2 and thus it was that William Mary the came to be looked upon, not only by the protestant chiefs but tive heir; by James himself, as a person to be reckoned with in every crisis which involved the future of the succession. Thus it was that, when in May, 1687, the month following the Declaration of Indulgence, the king appealed to William and Mary to declare in favor of the abolition of the penal laws and of the Test, many of the great nobles, together with the bishop of 1 Barillon, in his letter to Louis (July 12), said: " La joie et les acclamations ont été fort grandes à Westminster, quand on a su la décision. Il y a eu des boites tirées sur la rivière. On fit des feux de joie. La populace 2 Bailey, Succession to the English presump refusal to aid aboli tion of the penal laws and the Test; or old Pre London, hastened to offer the prince either assurances of support, or counsel against compliance with the king's demand. William's William's firm response that "I cannot concur in what your majesty desires of me," left no room for doubt as to his position upon the vital question by which the nation was then convulsed. In the following December a proclamation appeared in the "Gazette" that Mary of Modena, the catholic princess whom James had married two years after Anne James III., Hyde's death, was again pregnant; and on the 10th of June, tender, 1688, in the midst of the indignation excited by the committal born June of the bishops to the Tower, the queen, then only thirty years 10, 1688; old, gave birth to a son, the ill-fated prince generally known in history as James III., or the old Pretender. Thus it was that the prospect, so long assured, of a protestant succession was suddenly blasted by the advent of a catholic heir, just at the moment when James' fierce and persistent attack upon the established church he had promised to defend was fast driving protestant the nation to open resistance. In the presence of the emergency leaders assumed that thus presented the leaders of the protestant cause resolved, a fraud had in the teeth of facts no longer disputed, to assume that the birth of a male heir to James was a deliberate invention, and then to invite William to come in arms not only for the defence of English liberty and religion, but also for the restoration of the reign of law which had broken down under the king's attempts to coerce the church and remodel the magistracy in open defiance of existing statutes. Under the pressure of this common danger tories and whigs, high churchmen and nonconformists, putting aside for the moment all differences, drew invitation together; and on the 30th of June, the very day on which the to William verdict in favor of the bishops was rendered, the leaders of the coalition subscribed in cipher an invitation to William to come at once at the head of an army strong enough to justify his friends in rising to sustain him.2 Danby signed as the chief of the tories, Devonshire as the leader of the general body of whigs and non-conformists, Compton, bishop of London, as the representative of the high churchmen; and to their names were added those of the earl of Shrewsbury, of Lord Lumley, of Edward the cousin of Lord Russell, and of Henry the been prac tised; signed June 30; 1 Green, Hist. of the Eng. People, 2 See Burnet, vol. iii. p. 265. vol. iv. p. 22. win back by conces brother of Algernon Sidney. Tempted less, perhaps, by the prospect of securing the English crown for his wife than by the hope of ending with England's aid the supremacy of France in Europe, the ruling passion of his life, William resolved to his acceptaccept the invitation; and as soon as the assent of those in ance; Holland who opposed his plans could be obtained, he began to gather a fleet with forces sufficient for the enterprise. Thus menaced, James suddenly gave way; and in the hope of winning James' atback the confidence he had lost, he began before the end of tempt to September to reverse all of his recent acts by appealing for aid the nation and counsel to the bishops whom he had so lately prosecuted; sions; by sending back in state its forfeited charter to the city of London, and by restoring to other cities and towns their ancient privileges; by the dissolution of the ecclesiastical commission; and by the restoration of Dr. Hough and the Fellows to their places in Magdalen College, and the removed deputy lieutenants and magistrates to their offices in the counties. When Sunderland pressed James to go a step further by calling a parliament, the king, suspicious of a treacherous design to place him absolutely in William's hands, drew back; and before the end of October he dismissed Sunderland from office. At that moment it was that William's declaration arrival of William's reached England, promising freedom of conscience to catholics declara and toleration to protestant non-conformists, and demanding tion; the calling of a free parliament for the settlement of the succession, and for the reëstablishment of English freedom and religion upon a secure basis.1 On the 5th of November the he landed. prince landed at Torbay at the head of a force including re- Novem presentatives from every part of the protestant world, which, ber 5; after a momentary hesitation, was so swelled by adherents from every quarter as to make its advance a peaceful and triumphal progress. In the midst of the panic that ensued, Grafton and Churchill deserted the king and went over to the enemy's camp, where they were soon joined by Prince George and Princess Anne; while the royal army, broken by dissensions and distrust, after shrinking from an engagement with William's forces, was disbanded. Thus abandoned, James re 1 Burnet, vol. iii. p. 286; Dumont, vol. vii. pt. ii. pp. 198, 205. He was "called in to vindicate practically those maxims of liberty for which, in good and evil days, England had contended at Torbay |