Parliament or a Puritan Lord Protector, whilst the incumbent or his predecessor had been expelled from his parsonage and deprived of his livelihood by the same authority. They therefore naturally combined in thinking that the first axiom in politics was to keep Dissenters down, lest they should do again what men like-minded with themselves had done before. Unless some other fear, stronger still, presented itself to them, they would endure almost anything from the king rather than risk the return to power of the Dissenters or of the Whigs, the friends of the Dissenters.

1. The Accession of James II. 1685. The character of the new king, James II., resembled that of his father.

He had the same unalterable belief that whatever he wished to do was absolutely right; the same incapacity for entering into the feelings or motives of his opponents, and even more than his father's inability to see faults in those who took his side. He was bent on procuring religious liberty for the Catholics, and at first imagined it possible to do this with the help of the clergy and laity of the Church of Engiand. In his first speech to the Privy Council he announced his intention of preserving the established government in Church and State. He had mass, indeed, celebrated with open doors in his chapel at Whitehall, and he continued to levy taxes which had been granted to his brother for life only; yet, as he issued writs for a Parliament, these things did not count much against him.

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Unless, indeed, he was to set the law and constitution at defiance he could do no otherwise than summon Parliament, as out of 1,400,000l. which formed the revenue of the Crown, 900,000l. lapsed on Charles's death. James, however, secured himself against all eventualities by procuring from Louis a promise of financial aid in case of Parliament's proving restive. Before Parliament met, the king's inclinations were manifested by sentences pronounced by

James II.: from the National Portrait Gallery.

judges eager to gain his favour. On the one hand, Titus Oates was subjected to a flogging so severe that it would have killed anyone less hardy than himself. On the other hand, Richard Baxter, the most learned and moderate of Dissenters, was sent to prison after being scolded and insulted by Jeffreys, who, at the end of the late reign, had, through James's influence, been made Chief Justice of the King's Bench.

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2. A Tory Parliament. 1685.-Parliament met on May 19, The House of Commons was Tory by an enormous majority, partly because the remodelled corporations (see p. 625) returned Tory members, but still more because the feeling of the country ran strongly in James's favour. The Commons granted to him the full revenue which had been enjoyed by his brother, and refused to listen to a few of its members who raised objections to some things which had been recently done. The House had not been long in session when it heard of two invasions, the one in Scotland and the other in England.

3. Argyle's Landing. 1685.-In Scotland the upper classes

were animated by a savage resolve to keep no terms with the Covenanters, whose fanatical violence alarmed them. The Scottish Parliament, soon after the accession of James, passed a law punishing with death any one attending a conventicle. Argyle, believing, in his exile in Holland, that all honest Scots would be ready to join him against the tyranny of the Government,

sailed early in May at the head of a small expedition, and arrived in the Firth of Clyde. He had himself no military skill, and his followers, no less ignorant than himself, overruled everything that he proposed. Soon after landing he was captured and carried to Edinburgh, where, as he was already legally condemned to death. (see p. 623), he was executed on June 30 without further trial. On the night before his death a member of the Council came to see him in his cell, where he found him in a placid slumber. The visitor rushed off in agony to the house of a friend. "I have

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been," he said, "in Argyle's prison. I have seen him within an hour of eternity, sleeping as sweetly as ever man did. But as for me" His voice failed him, and he could say no more.

4. Monmouth's Landing. 1685.-In the meanwhile Monmouth, the champion of the Dissenters and extreme Protestants, had, cn June 11, landed at Lyme. So popular was he in the west of England that the trained bands could not be trusted to oppose him, and he was left unassailed till regiments of the regular army could be brought against him. The peasants.and townsmen of the western counties flocked to join Monmouth, and he entered Taunton at the head of 5,000 men ; but not a single country gentleman gave him his support. Parliament passed against him an Act of Attainder, condemning him to death without further trial, and the king marched in person against him at the head of a disciplined force. Monmouth declared himself to be the legitimate king, and, his name being James, he was popularly known amongst his followers as King Monmouth, in order to prevent confusion. He advanced as far as Philip's Norton: there, hopeless of gaining support amongst the governing classes, he fell back on Bridgwater. The king followed him with 2,500 regular troops, and 1,500 from the Wiltshire trained bands. Monmouth was soldier enough to know that, with his raw recruits, his only chance lay in surprising the enemy. The king's army lay on Sedgemoor, and Monmouth, in the early morning of July 6, attempted to fall on the enemy unawares. Bro 1 ditches filled with water checked his course, and the sun was up before he reached his goal. It was inevitable that he should be beaten; the only wonder was that his untrained men fought so long as they did. Monmouth himself fled to the New Forest, where he was captured and brought to London. James admitted him to his presence, but refused to pardon him. On July 15 he was executed as an attainted traitor without further trial.

5. The Bloody Assizes. 1685.-Large numbers of Monmouth's followers were hanged by the pursuing soldiers without form of law. Many were thrust into prison to await their trial. Jeffreys, the most insolent of the judges, was sent to hold, in the western counties, what will always be known as the Bloody Assizes. It is true that the law which he had to administer was cruel, but Jeffreys gained peculiar obloquy by delighting in its cruelty, and by sneering at its unhappy victims. At Winchester he condemned to death an old lady, Alice Lisle, who was guilty of hiding in her house two fugitives from vengeance. At Dorchester 74 persons

were hanged. In Somersetshire no less than 233 were put to death. Jeffreys overwhelmed his victims with scornful mockery. One of them pleaded that he was a good Protestant : " Protestant!" cried Jeffreys, "you mean Presbyterian; I'll hold you a wager of it. I can smell a Presbyterian forty miles." Some one tried to move his compassion in favour of one of the accused. "My lord," he said, "this poor creature is on the parish." "Do not trouble yourselves," was the only answer given, "I will ease the parish of the burden," and he ordered the man to be hanged at once. The whole number of those who perished in the Bloody Assizes was 320, whilst 841 were transported to the West Indies to work as slaves under a broiling sun. James welcomed Jeffreys on his return, and made him Lord Chancellor as a reward for his achievements.

6. The Violation of the Test Act. 1685.-James's success made him believe that he could overpower any opposition. He had already increased his army and had appointed officers who had refused to take the test. On his return to London he resolved to ask Parliament to repeal the Test Act, and dismissed Halifax for refusing to support his proposal. It would probably have been difficult for him to obtain the repeal even of the Recusancy Laws which punished Catholics for acting on their religious belief. It was not only hopeless, but rightly hopeless, for him to ask for a repeal of the Test Act, which, as long as a Catholic king was on the throne, stood in the way of his filling all posts in the army as well as in the state with men who would be ready to assist him in designs against the religion and liberties of Englishmen. If anything could increase the dislike of the nation to the repeal of the Test Act it was the fact that, in that very year, Louis had revoked the Edict of Nantes issued by his ancestor, Henry IV., to protect the French Protestants, and had handed them over to a cruel persecution. It might be fairly argued that what Louis had done, James, if he got the power, might be expected to do hereafter.

7. Breach between Parliament and King. 1685.-When the Houses, which had adjourned when the king went into the West, met again on November 9, James informed them not only that he had appointed officers disqualified by law, but that he was determined not to part with them. The House of Commons, the most loyal House that had ever been chosen, remonstrated with him, and there were signs that the Lords intended to support the remonstrance. On November 20 James prorogued Parliament.

8. The Dispensing Power. 1686. Like his father, James