Then the king's whole plan was carried into full effect. The college was turned into a popish seminary. Bonaventure Giffard, the Roman Catholic bishop of Madura, was appointed president. The Roman Catholic service was performed in the chapel. In one day twelve Roman Catholics were admitted fellows. Some servile Protestants applied for fellowships, but met with refusals. Smith, an enthusiast in loyalty, but still a sincere member of the Anglican Church, could not bear to see the altered aspect of the house. He absented himself; he was ordered to return into residence; he disobeyed; he was expelled; and the work of spoliation was complete.*

The nature of the academical system of England is such that no event which seriously affects the interests and honor of either university can fail to excite a strong feeling throughout the country. Every successive blow, therefore, which fell on Magdalene College, was felt to the extremities of the kingdom. In the coffee-houses of London, in the inns of court, in the closes of all the cathedral towns, in parsonages and manor houses scattered over the remotest shires, pity for the sufferers and indignation against the government went on growing. The protest of Hough was every where applauded; the forcing of his door was every where mentioned with abhorrence; and at length the sentence of deprivation fulminated against the fellows dissolved those ties, once so close and dear, which had bound the Church of England to the house of Stuart. Bitter resentment and cruel apprehension took the place of love and confidence. There was no prebendary, no rector, no vicar whose mind was not haunted by the thought that, however quiet his temper, however obscure his situation, he might, in a few months, be driven from his dwelling by an arbitrary edict, to beg in a rag

* Proceedings against Magdalene College, in Oxon., for not electing Anthony Farmer president of the said College, in the Collection of State Trials, Howell's edition; Luttrell's Diary, June 15, 17, Oct. 24, Dec. 10, 1687; Smith's Narrative; Reresby's Memoirs; Burnet, i., 699; Cartwright's Diary;

ged cassock with his wife and children, while his freehold, secured to him by laws of immemorial antiquity and by the royal word, was occupied by some apostate. This, then, was the reward of that heroic loyalty never once found wanting through the vicissitudes of fifty tempestuous years. It was for this that the clergy had endured spoliation and persecution in the cause of Charles the First. It was for this that they had supported Charles the Second in his hard contest with the Whig opposition. It was for this that they had stood in the front of the battle against those who sought to despoil James of his birthright. To their fidelity alone their oppressor owed the power which he was now employing to their ruin. They had long been in the habit of recounting in acrimonious language all that they had suffered at the hand of the Puritan in the day of his power. Yet for the Puritan there was some excuse. He was an avowed enemy; he had wrongs to avenge; and even he, while remodeling the ecclesiastical constitution of the country, and ejecting all who would not subscribe his covenant, had not been altogether without compassion. He had at least granted to those whose benefices he seized a pittance sufficient to support life. But the hatred felt by the king toward that Church which had saved him from exile and placed him on a throne was not to be so easily satiated. Nothing but the utter ruin of his victims would content him. was not enough that they were expelled from their homes and stripped of their revenues. They found every walk

It

of life toward which men of their habits could look for a subsistence closed against them with malignant care, and nothing left to them but the precarious and degrading resource of alms.

The Anglican clergy, therefore, and that portion of the laity which was strongly attached to Protestant episcopacy, now regarded the king with those feelings which injustice aggravated by ingratitude naturally excite. Yet had the Churchman still many scruples of conscience and honor to surmount before he could bring himself to op

He had been taught that

pose the government by force. passive obedience was enjoined without restriction or exception by the divine law. He had professed this opinion ostentatiously. He had treated with contempt the suggestion that an extreme case might possibly arise which would justify a people in drawing the sword against regal tyranny. Both principle and shame therefore restrained him from imitating the example of the rebellious Roundheads, while any hope of a peaceful and legal deliverance remained; and such a hope might reasonably be cherished as long as the Princess of Orange stood next in succession to the crown. If he would but endure with patience this trial of his faith, the laws of nature would soon do for him what he could not, without sin and dishonor, do for himself. The wrongs of the Church would be redressed; her property and dignity would be fenced by new guarantees; and those wicked ministers who had injured and insulted her in the day of her adversity would be signally punished.

The event to which the Church of England looked forward as to an honorable and peaceful termination of her troubles was one of which even the most reckless members of the Jesuitical cabal could not think without painful apprehensions. If their master should die, leaving them no better security against the penal laws than a declaration which the general voice of the nation pronounced to be a nullity; if a Parliament, animated by the same spirit which had prevailed in the Parliament of Charles the Second, should assemble round the throne of a Protestant sovereign, was it not probable that a terrible retribution would be exacted, that the old laws against popery would be rigidly enforced, and that new laws still more severe would be added to the statute-book ? The evil counselors had long been tormented by these gloomy apprehensions, and some of them had contemplated strange and desperate remedies. James had scarcely mounted the throne when it began to be whispered about Whitehall that, if the Lady Anne would turn Roman Catholic, it might not be impossible, with the help of Louis, to trans

fer to her the birthright of her elder sister. At the French embassy this scheme was warmly approved, and Bonrepaux gave it as his opinion that the assent of James would be easily obtained.* Soon, however, it became manifest that Anne was unalterably attached to the Established Church. All thought of making her queen was therefore relinquished. Nevertheless, a small knot of fanatics still continued to cherish a wild hope that they might be able to change the order of succession. The plan formed by these men was set forth in a minute of which a rude French translation has been preserved. It was to be hoped, they said, that the king might be able to establish the true faith without resorting to extremities; but, in the worst event, he might leave his crown at the disposal of Louis. It was better for Englishmen to be the vassals of France than the slaves of the Devil. This extraor dinary document was handed about from Jesuit to Jesuit, and from courtier to courtier, till some eminent Roman Catholics, in whom bigotry had not extinguished patriotism, furnished the Dutch embassador with a copy. He put the paper into the hands of James. James, greatly agitated, pronounced it a vile forgery, contrived by some pamphleteer in Holland. The Dutch minister resolutely answered that he could prove the contrary by the testimony of several distinguished members of his majesty's own Church; nay, that there would be no difficulty in pointing out the writer, who, after all, had written only what many priests and many busy politicians said every day in the galleries of the palace. The king did not think

* .. Quand on connoit le dedans de cette cour aussi intimement que je la connois, on peut croire que sa Majesté Britannique donnera volontiers dans ces sortes de projets.”—Bonrepaux to Seignelay, March 13, 1686.

"Que, quand pour établir la religion Catholique et pour la confirmer icy, il (James) devroit se rendre en quelque façon dépendant de la France, et mettre la décision de la succession à la couronne entre les mains de ce monarque là, qu'il seroit obligé de le faire, parcequ'il vaudroit mieux pour ses sujets qu'ils devinssent vassaux du Roy de France, étant Catholiques, que de demeurer comme esclaves du Diable." This paper is in the archives of both France and Holland.

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it expedient to ask who the writer was, but, abandoning the charge of forgery, protested, with great vehemence and solemnity, that no thought of disinheriting his eldest daughter had ever crossed his mind. Nobody," he said, "ever dared to hint such a thing to me. I never would listen to it. God does not command us to propagate the true religion by injustice; and this would be the foulest, the most unnatural injustice."* Notwithstanding all these professions, Barillon, a few days later, reported to his eourt that James had begun to listen to suggestions respecting a change in the order of succession; that the question was doubtless a delicate one, but that there was reason to hope that, with time and management, a way might be found to settle the crown on some Roman Catholic to the exclusion of the two princesses.† During many months this subject continued to be discussed by the fiercest and most extravagant papists about the court, and candidates for the regal office were actually named.+

It is not probable, however, that James ever meant to take a course so insane. He must have known that England would never bear for a single day the yoke of a usurper who was also a papist, and that any attempt to set aside the Lady Mary would have been withstood to the death, both by all those who had supported the Exclusion Bill, and by all those who had opposed it. There is, however, no doubt that the king was an accomplice in a plot less absurd, but not less unjustifiable, against the rights of his children. Tyrconnel had, with his master's approbation, made arrangements for separating Ireland from the empire, and for placing her under the protection of Louis, as soon as the crown should devolve on a Protestant sovereign. Bonrepaux had been consulted, had im

*Citters, Aug., 17, 1686; Barillon, Aug. 18.

+ Barillon, Sept. 13, 1686. "La succession est une matière fort délicate à traiter. Je sais pourtant qu'on en parle au Roy d'Angleterre, et qu'on ne désespère pas avec le temps de trouver des moyens pour faire passer la couronne sur la tête d'un héritier Catholique."

Bonrepaux, July 11, 1687.