could not thus allay the suspicions which his former conduct had awakened, and which, aided by the general contempt into which the Government had fallen, were about to produce bitter fruit of a character to which the history of no country in the world presents a parallel.

The whole nation went suddenly mad on the subject of the dangers to be apprehended from Popery; a gang of infamous informers invented a strange story of a plot which had been organized by the Pope and the Jesuits to bring back the kingdom under the dominion of Rome; they supported their statements by the most hardened perjuries; and inconsistent and absurd and monstrous as was their tale in every particular, nothing which they could invent was so preposterous as to shock the credulity of their hearers.

The plot, according to their testimony, embraced plans for burning London, and for murdering the King; members of Parliament, ministers of state, and nobles were accused of being privy to the conspiracy, at which the Queen herself was accused of conniving. Numbers of innocent men were brought to trial on these wicked and ridiculous charges; the judges, never more corrupt than in this shameless reign, pressed their conviction; the juries, whom mingled credulity and terror seemed to have deprived of their senses, thought the mere indictment a sufficient evidence of guilt; the King, with a baseness which exceeds all his other infamies, did not scruple to sign the deathwarrants of men whom he knew to be honest and loyal, on accusations which in private he denied and ridiculed; the leaders of the country party, as those were called who in general opposed his government, for once agreeing with him in this iniquity; hounding on the informers, lending their

The Exclusion Bill.

15

voices to intimidate the tribunals, and even seeking to deny the King the power of mitigating sentences, which, callous as he was, he sometimes recoiled from inflicting in all their pitiless severity.

But on other points the Opposition grew less and less accommodating. They impeached his minister, the Earl of Danby; and Charles did not conceal from his French ally his apprehensions that the kingdom was again on the verge of rebellion. To save his minister, whose trial might have brought to light the secret conditions of the treaty with Louis, he dissolved the Parliament, which, in defiance of all propriety, he had maintained in existence for seventeen years. But the new Parliament, which he could not avoid summoning, from its very first meeting displayed a temper and purpose which he regarded as more dangerous than the worst acts of the last. They had the same dread of Popery as their predecessors; but they showed their fears in a manner which, whatever may be thought of its Constitutional character, had in it, at all events, more of statesmanlike foresight. They brought in a Bill to deprive the Duke of York of his right of succession to the throne, on account of his religion. Such a measure would of itself have been a revolution, and Charles was greatly alarmed. He prorogued the Parliament; he ruled without it for more than a year; and, when at last he found himself compelled to reassemble it, the Opposition instantly revived the Bill.

Charles was attached to his brother, and even more, in all probability, to the rights of his family and to the principle of hereditary succession. He exerted himself greatly; he condescended personally to canvass members of both Houses against the threatened measure. He offered to consent to a Bill which should limit the Duke's

authority after he should have become King (an enactment which, when the time came, could hardly have been carried out), and which should fence round the Protestant Church with fresh securities. But, though he by these means procured the rejection of the obnoxious Bill in one session, it was revived in the next, and he had no resource but to dissolve that Parliament also.

He never summoned another; but for the remainder of his reign dispensed with them altogether, and sought to chastise those who had thwarted him, and to throw an additional protection around his brother by encouraging prosecutions of the leaders of the Opposition, or Whig party, as it had recently been called. Some were alarmed and fled; others stood their ground and sought to defend themselves by conspiracies and plans for insurrection, one of which at least involved a plot for the assassination of the Duke and the King himself. They were betrayed, as such treasons almost always are betrayed. Stern vengeance was executed on the leading conspirators. Many even of the great towns which were believed to have sympathized with them, were condemned to forfeit their charters; and Charles, thinking that he had sufficiently crushed his own and his brother's enemies, and passing from his former fears to an excess of confidence, ventured even to dispense, in the Duke's favour, with the Test Act, to which he had recently consented, and to replace him in his office of Lord High Admiral, without requiring him to comply with its provisions.

So open a violation of the law did not strengthen the Government. The ministers themselves began to quarrel with one another, and Charles was more alarmed and more perplexed than ever. Each councillor gave him different

Death of Charles II.

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advice, and, as he listened to each, he agreed, or seemed to them and to himself to agree, with each; being steady to nothing but to his subservience to Louis, who, puzzled and irritated by his irresolution, treated him with daily-increasing disregard, and, while still bribing him, began at the same moment to bribe his chief advisers to counteract and constrain him. It was becoming daily more and more doubtful whether his affability and graciousness of demeanour would be able to avert a renewal of rebellion, when, at the beginning of 1685, he died of apoplexy, his last act being an avowal on his death-bed of his adherence to the Roman Catholic Church, to which he had for many years secretly belonged.

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CHAPTER II.

Popularity of James II. on his Accession-Easy Suppression of Monmouth's Rebellion-James begins to violate the Law-James becomes a Pensioner of Louis XIV.-Composition of the Ministry-He seeks to procure the Repeal of the Test Act and Habeas Corpus Act-He brings up the Army to Hounslow Heath-He quarrels with the Houses of Parliament-Dismisses Lord Halifax--Revocation of the Edict of Nantes-The Reassembling of Parliament - The King's SpeechFirmness of both Houses-James Prorogues the Parliament-The Pope and the High Tories remonstrate-Lord Castlemaine is sent as Ambassador to Rome.

SINCE Charles had left no legitimate children, the Duke of York, as a matter of course, succeeded to the throne as James II. And for a moment the whole aspect of affairs, and the feelings of the different parties in the State, seemed to have undergone a complete alteration; and that of the strangest character. While Charles was alive, a suspicion that James cherished a secret inclination to the Roman Catholic religion had been sufficient to provoke more than one conspiracy, and to encourage an open attempt in Parliament to effect such a revolution as would have been involved in a change of the order of succession to the throne. But, as if dangers when present were less to be feared than when only in prospect, with the accession of a Popish king all dread of Popery seemed for a moment to be extinguished. All memory that an Exclusion Bill had nearly been carried appeared to have passed away, and James not only ascended