The cry for the Exclusion Bill grew louder than ever. The nation was determined not to have the Duke of York as king after Charles; and many of them desired that the Duke of Monmouth, an illegitimate son of the king, should be declared the heir apparent. It was asserted that Charles had been secretly married to Monmouth's mother; and the leaders of the opposition used Monmouth's name and influence to further their plans against the court.

In this struggle were heard for the first time two nicknames, which, though originally given in insult, were soon assumed with pride, and which are still daily in use amongst us. The courtiers gave the country party, their opponents, the name of Whigs, an appellation of the Covenanters of Scotland then in arms against the royal authority; while the Whigs retorted by calling the courtiers Tories, from the Roman Catholic outlaws who lurked in the bogs of Ireland.

In October 1680, the Parliament met again. The Whigs had a vast majority in the Commons, and again the Exclusion Bill passed. In the House of Lords it was thrown out, chiefly by the exertions of the eloquent Earl of Halifax. The king dissolved the Parliament, and, conscious of the strength his enemies had from meeting in the capital, he summoned it to meet at Oxford in March 1681.

In the meantime, a reaction took place; the people began to see that the stories of Oates and Dangerfield were contradictory and untrue; and the judicial murder of an aged Roman Catholic peer, the Earl of Stafford, closed the list of those who had suffered innocently for their religion.

At Oxford the Parliament met. The king offered to accept anything but the Exclusion Bill, while the Commons would accept nothing but that bill. Again the king dissolved Parliament. The majority of the people now thought the king had been too hard pressed, and applauded his firmness. The Church of England was devoted to his interests, and he triumphed. He was determined to take revenge on the Whigs for years of restraint and humiliation. As the judges and sheriffs were of his own nomination, he found little difficulty in this. The more desperate Whigs engaged in a plot, called from the place of the conspirators' meeting the Ryehouse plot, the design of which was to waylay and kill the king and his brother. This dark design was concealed from the leaders of the party, but betrayed to the court. All the Whigs' leaders were accused of complicity in it. Shaftesbury escaped to Holland. Monmouth threw himself on the king's mercy, and obtained forgiveness. Russell and Sidney were tried for high treason, and without sufficient evidence, and in direct violation of English law, were condemned and executed. Numbers of less known men perished. The cities and boroughs which had been in the habit of returning Whig members had their charters taken from them, and nominees of the court were appointed to all places of authority within them. The Duke of York, who had retired to Scotland, and there had inflicted the most fearful tortures on the Covenanters, now returned to England, and was reinstated in all his former offices.

No more Parliaments were summoned by Charles, and he governed England with absolute power till

his death.

In the winter of 1684 the king's health began to give way. He was no longer able to spend so much time in the open air as he had been wont to do. The people missed him from his usual morning walks in the park, where they had been accustomed to see him affably nod and smile to all who came near.

On the second of February, 1685, he was attacked with a disease that baffled all the skill of his physicians, and on the sixth of that month he died, after declaring himself a Roman Catholic. The common people attributed his death to poison, as they are wont to do when popular princes die unexpectedly; but there seems little reason to suspect it in the case of Charles. Charles left no legitimate children, and was succeeded by his brother James, Duke of York.

CHAP. XXXI.

JAMES II. 1685-1688.

JAMES THE SECOND declared on his accession that he would govern strictly in accordance with the laws of England; and that he would protect the church, which he knew to be loyal to the throne. But with that duplicity which characterised the house of Stuart, and which was the cause of their misfortunes, he immediately set about violating the promise he had just made, and bent all his energies to the accomplishment of his favourite, but hopeless, design of making England again Roman Catholic. The Parliament which assembled immediately after his accession was entirely de

voted to the king, and James said that, with the exception of about forty members, the House of Commons was just such as he should himself have named. His chief ministers were the Earls of Rochester, Sunderland, and Godolphin,-none of them men of principle; and he found another adviser in the infamous Judge Jeffreys, who had risen to be lord chief justice by an unswerving course of servility to the court. Jeffreys had been the judge of the Whigs, and his merciless cruelty and the indignities which he heaped on helpless prisoners had gained him the favour of his employers.

James was anxious that the pension his brother had received from Louis the Fourteenth should be continued; and to secure it he made the most humiliating promises to the French monarch.

One of the first acts of James was to avenge the wrongs he and his Roman Catholic subjects had suffered from the perjuries of Titus Oates and the authors of the Popish plot. Oates was sentenced to be publicly whipped, and exposed on the pillory five times every year during the remainder of his life.

The Covenanters of Scotland were persecuted by James more rigorously than ever; even women and children were fastened to stakes and drowned on the sea shore. Claverhouse and his brutal dragoons were let loose on an inoffensive population, whose only crime was their desire to worship God according to their own consciences.

In 1685 many of the Whig outlaws and exiles had congregated in Holland, where they were meditating schemes for their return to England, and the overthrow of James's government. The atrocities com

mitted in Scotland, and the discontent that began to manifest itself in England, gave them hopes of success. The Duke of Monmouth was induced to put himself at their head; and trusting in his popular name he determined to invade England. The Earl of Argyle first landed with a small force in Scotland; but finding no support he was captured and executed. Meanwhile Monmouth landed in Devonshire, and issued a declaration setting forth the misgovernment of James, the designs for the re-establishment of Popery, and his own claims to the throne as the legitimate son of Charles. The common people in the west of England flocked to his standard; but no men of eminence joined him. The army he thus collected was untrained, half armed, and unable to cope with the royal troops. At Sedgemoor these came up with the rebels, and in spite of a brave resistance, Monmouth's little army was routed and himself captured a few days afterwards. He appealed to James to spare his life, offering any concessions; but his uncle would not be moved, and Monmouth was executed.

Jeffreys was sent down to the west at the head of a special commission to try the insurgents there. To him this was a labour of love. Hundreds were hanged on suspicion of being engaged with Monmouth; while some who had wealth, purchased their lives from the corrupt judge, who shared the booty with the ladies of the The fate of one victim excited more than usual horror and commiseration. Alice Lisle, the wife of John Lisle, one of Cromwell's lords, was charged with sheltering some poor fugitives from Sedgemoor, just as she had, in the Protector's time, sheltered fugitive cava

court.