brother the Duke of York declared himself a convert to the Roman Catholic religion. Then came an excitement which has no parallel in English history. A charge invented by wicked men, and adopted by weak or wicked politicians, was brought against the English Roman Catholics of being concerned in what was called the Popish Plot for the murder of the king. Large numbers of innocent persons were put to death by the verdicts of ignorant and excited juries under the direction. of unscrupulous judges. In parliament the violence and suspicion of the nation took a political form in the demand for an Exclusion Bill, which should deprive the Duke of York of his right of succession to the throne. In the struggle which ensued, the two great parties which have retained their existence to our own days acquired those names of Whig and Tory which they long preserved. There can be little doubt that the Whigs were in the right in wishing to provide against the accession of James. All experience shows that the position of a ruler who takes a different side from his subjects on the great question of the day, becomes rapidly untenable. But it does not follow that they were in the right in seeking to avert by legislation the evil which they were sufficiently quick-sighted to foresee. Masses of men are so constituted as to be slow to take alarm at prospective evils, and to prefer to deal with each grievance when it arises, and not before. The idea of hereditary succession had been adopted by the nation as a guarantee against disorder, and as soon as it became clear that the Whigs were endangering established order as well as hereditary succession, the nation preferred to accept the future risk rather than to launch into immediate agitation. The Whigs suddenly dwindled into a despised minority, and their leaders paid the penalty of real or supposed treason on the scaffold. CHAP. VIII. CHAP. § 10. Reign of James II. Before long those who survived saw their anticipations realised. Charles died, and James ascended the throne. Setting his mind on obtaining liberty of worship and equality of civil rights for his fellow-catholics, he hoped at first to obtain it with the co-operation of the bishops and their supporters. He was too ignorant of the prejudices and feelings of those whom he courted, and too impatient of opposition, to succeed—even if success had been possible. He then tried to obtain his wishes by the exercise of his own prerogative. Every shred of that prerogative which had come down to him from the struggles of the past was magnified till he had created out of it a power which in no respect fell short of absolute sovereignty. He used the right of appointing judges to pack the bench with men who would deliver that to be law which was in accordance with his wishes. He used his supremacy in the Church to strike down those who clearly represented the feelings of the Church. He used his right of granting charters to corporations to modify those charters in such a way as to give him hopes of obtaining a packed House of Commons at the next elections. He issued a Declaration of Indulgence, by which, of his own authority, he set aside the effect of all laws imposing restrictions on religion. In resisting this Declaration the clergy and those who sympathised with them were doubtless not uninfluenced by somewhat questionable motives. But their conduct was such as to commend itself to approbation on higher grounds than they were themselves conscious of. It is doubtless good that no religious belief should stand in the way of admission to political and military offices. A general should be appointed because he understands strategy, and a lord treasurer because he understands finance, not because his opinions coincide with those of the majority on the subject of transubstantiation. But if all religious tests imposed by law are to be taken away, it is absolutely necessary that they shall not be succeeded by a religious test unavowedly imposed by the person who has it in his power to dispose of offices. What our ancestors had to face was, not the danger that James would appoint a casual Catholic here and there to command a regiment or to sit upon the bench as justice of the peace, but that he would flood the army, the navy, the judicial bench, and the civil administration with Catholics to the exclusion of Protestants; and that too at a time when the Catholic monarchy of Lewis XIV. had shown itself especially intolerant, had recommenced the persecution of French Protestants, and had at its disposal a fleet and army which might easily be placed at the disposal of an unscrupulous English king to suppress opposition at home. For a time, even these considerations failed to goad Englishmen to resistance. Whatever James might be, the heir to the throne, his daughter Mary, was a confirmed Protestant. Her husband, William of Orange, was equally a confirmed Protestant, and was the head of the opposition on the Continent to Lewis XIV. James was advanced in life, and it was certain that, whatever he might do, his successor would undo. Suddenly it was announced that the queen was with child, and then it was told that she had borne an heir to the throne. It is no wonder if men received the news with incredulity, and thought that, as James had called into existence a sham bench of judges, and was preparing to call into existence a sham House of Commons, he had now produced a sham heir to the throne. Whether the child was the queen's or not, its very existence made prompt action necessary, unless James's system were to be perpetuated. Hope could no longer be entertained that all would go well as soon as James's life was at an end. M CHAP. VIII. § 11. The Revolution of 1688. СНАР. Leading men of both the great parties invited the Prince of Orange to come to defend the liberties of England. When William landed James found himself helpless. He had made many enemies and no friends. Those whom he had favoured deserted him in his hour of need, and he fled from the country leaving everything, as far as he was concerned, in disorder and confusion. The two houses combined to offer the throne to William and Mary. 163 CHAPTER IX. THE REVOLUTION SETTLEMENT, AND THE RULE CHAP. $1. Su premacy House of THE Revolution was more than a change of sovereigns. It was the rejection of the ideas of the minority of 1641, which had been adopted as sufficient at the Restoration, in favour of the idea of the supremacy of Parliament. of the Pym's political ideas were at last to be realised. The Commons. name and title of the King were to remain as they had been before. But it was to be clearly understood that if a serious difficulty ensued, the king was to give way to parliament, and more especially to the House of Commons, by which the nation was more directly represented. Up to the Revolution, England was under a monarchy surrounded by certain constitutional checks, intended to prevent the will of the monarch from degenerating into arbitrary wilfulness. After the Revolution, England became practically a republic, in which the Crown possessed various constitutional powers, intended to prevent the will of the representatives of the people from degenerating into arbitrary wilfulness. But it is seldom that contemporaries estimate the full importance of changes so great. In this case, at least, they did not. The theory on which they proceeded to build up their conception of the new government was in itself as irrational as the theory of Divine Right which |