country, leaving England united in the purpose to permit neither James nor the son of James to ever occupy the English throne.

Had James been capable of learning from experience or from observation, he would have known that it was useless to attempt to force the Roman Catholic religion upon the English Tories. Even in their acceptance of the extreme doctrine of divine right they had recognized the fact that a king might order an act contrary to the divine law. In that case they taught that it was the duty of the subject to suffer the penalties of the King's government rather than disobey God. James called a Parliament which was largely Tory, partly because of his own popularity, and partly because, three years before, Charles had placed the municipal corporations in the hands of Tories. Yet this Tory Parliament soon found itself in opposition to the King's policy.

The King asked for the repeal of the Test Act, and Parliament refused. The King had already adopted the policy of appointing Roman Catholics to office in violation of the Act. Parliament began to prepare a formal remonstrance, and the King prorogued the two Houses. Failing to get his acts legalized in one way, he tried another. He asked the judges if it would be legal for him by the exercise of royal prerogative to dispense with the operation of the Test Act. Four of the judges decided contrary to his wishes, whereupon he immediately dismissed them and filled their places with four others who held his view. He then secured a unanimous decision by the court that the King had power to dispense with the operation of a law.

Having now an obedient and efficient judiciary, the King's policy rapidly developed. Clergymen who had openly espoused the Roman Catholic religion were kept in office. Papists were appointed to vacant benefices.

To assist in reforming the Church he established by royal order an Ecclesiastical Commission Court, and issued a declaration suspending the operation of all laws against Dissenters and Papists. In the teeth of the fiercest opposition he forced a Catholic president upon Magdalen College, Oxford. James had succeeded so thoroughly in the packing of courts and juries that at the end of two years he determined to pack a Parliament. As Charles in 1682 had changed the voting constituency in municipal corporations from Whigs to Tories, so James, in 1687, reorganized the corporations and changed the voting constituency from Protestant to Roman Catholic. Yet even in these changed municipalities, with the notorious Jeffreys at the head of the Commission of Elections, it was found to be impossible to get a Parliament which would ratify the King's policy.

Failing in his efforts to pack a Parliament, James then fell back upon his packed courts and the royal prerogative. He issued a second Declaration of Indulgence, which he ordered clergymen to read in all places of worship. By a sort of poetic justice, the brunt of the opposition to the detested policy of James fell upon those very clergymen who, by their narrow partisan policy, had driven from their ranks the Presbyterians, had pursued a cruel and vindictive course towards all Dissenters, and had for a quarter of a century most assiduously preached the doctrine that it was a sin to resist a king. When six bishops came into the presence of the King with a petition. requesting that the clergymen be excused from obeying the King's order, James saw in the act the raising of the standard of rebellion, and expressed surprise that these men, above all others, should be the first to rebel against his authority. He did not understand that in political matters it makes a very great difference who owns the ox that is gored. Whatever may be said of the

clergymen of the Restoration, they were Protestant in their convictions and would sacrifice their lives rather than see the Roman Catholic religion restored. Encouraged by the example of the bishops, the Protestant clergy, generally, refused to obey the King's order. Instead of reading the Declaration of Indulgence according to the order, the father of John Wesley preached from the text, "Be it known unto thee, O king, we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up."

James seemed not in the least daunted at this demonstration, which would have convinced a wiser ruler that his position was untenable. What could a What could a king do in such a country, where even Jeffreys, with almost unlimited power of choice, could not find in the towns and cities of England men who would sustain the King's policy, and where even the Tory Church was almost a unit in the determination to disobey the Sovereign's express command? The King, however, had still one agency which had thus far proved faithful. At the time of the Monmouth rebellion, there seemed to be no limit to the cruelty which could be wreaked upon the sympathizers with the Monmouth faction. Even the Bloody Assize of Jeffreys seemed at the time to be not out of harmony with the temper of the public. In the use of his judicial and administrative agents, the King had not been seriously resisted. Sheriffs, constables, juries, and judges had been found who would do what they were told to do by the King and his friends. James relied upon these agencies to effect the summary punishment of the seven bishops who had signed the petition. They were tried upon the charge of seditious libel; but such had come now to be the feeling of opposition to the King, that even the packed jury united in a verdict of not guilty. Under the very eye of James, the soldiers whom he was reviewing,

and upon whom he was confidently relying to crush out rebellion, joined in the popular clamour when the news was received that the bishops had been acquitted.

In the midst of the contest between king and bishops, a son was born to James and his Roman Catholic wife. So long as the direct heirs to the throne were the Protestant daughters of James, the English Tories could hold the theory of the divine right of inheritance. They could submit to much worrying at the hands of the King, with the prospect of relief as soon as he should die. But to contemplate the succession of a Papist son was more than they could endure. A partisan interest was felt by the Tories in James's oldest daughter Mary, who was the wife of William of Orange, because when Shaftesbury and the Whigs put forward the candidacy of Monmouth, the Tories broke the force of the movement by urging the claims of Mary. When Monmouth was out of the way, William and Mary became the candidates of the Whigs also. The birth of a son to the King coincided with the height of national indignation at the royal policy. The bishops were under arrest ; the exigencies of the condition of William of Orange in his efforts to save his country from the grasp of Louis XIV. made it seem absolutely necessary that he should have the coöperation of England. So, upon the topmost wave of the national rejoicing at the acquittal of the bishops, leading Tories and Whigs united in an invitation to William to come over and deliver them from their king. William promptly began to prepare an army of invasion. When he landed he was received as a deliverer. A large part of James's army deserted him and joined that of William. The King remembered the fate of his father, and took refuge with his friend, the enemy of England, Louis XIV. of France.

CHAPTER XXX

WITH

THE GREAT REVOLUTION

ITH the departure of James, England was without a legal, orderly government. William consulted with the House of Lords and such members of the various Parliaments of Charles II. as could be assembled. The members of the one Parliament of James II. were not called, because they had been chosen by the remodelled corporations, and it was assumed that such a choice was invalid. The Lords and the Assembly advised the calling of a Parliament. The Parliament thus called was regular and legal, except that there was no king to summon it. This Parliament declared that "King James II., having endeavoured to subvert the Constitution of the kingdom by breaking the original contract between king and people, and by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked. persons having violated the fundamental laws, and having withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, had abdicated the government, and the throne had thereby become vacant." Parliament having thus satisfied its members that the throne was vacant, proceeded to fill the throne by crowning William and Mary as jointly King and Queen of England, with the proviso that the administration should rest wholly with William. The crowning of the new Monarchs was conditioned upon the acceptance of an elaborate statute then known as the Petition of Right,