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These arguments were convincing in themselves, and were heard with a favorable disposition by the audience. Even some of the judges, though their seats were held during pleasure, declared themselves in favor of the prisoners. The jury, however, from what cause is unknown, took several hours to deliberate, and kept, during so long a time, the people in the most anxious expectation. But when the wished-for verdict, not guilty, was at last pronounced, the intelligence was echoed through the hall, was conveyed to the crowds without, was carried into the city, and was propagated with infinite joy throughout the kingdom.

Ever since Monmouth’s rebellion, the king had every summer encamped his army on Hounslow Heath, that he might both improve their discipline, and by so unusual a spectacle overawe the mutinous people. A Popish chapel was openly erected in the midst of the camp; and great pains were taken, though in vain, to bring over the soldiers to that communion. The few converts whom the priests had made, were treated with such contempt and ignominy, as deterred every one from following the example. Even the Irish officers, whom the king introduced into the army, served rather, from the aversion borne them, to weaken his interest among them. It happened, that the very day on which the trial of the bishops was finished, James had reviewed the troops, and had retired into the tent of Lord Feversham, the general; when he was surprised to hear a great uproar in the camp, attended with the most extravagant symptoms of tumultuary joy. He suddenly inquired the cause, and was told by Feversham, “It was nothing but the rejoicing of the soldiers for the acquittal of the bishops.” “Do you call that nothing?” replied he: “but so much the worse for them.”

The king was still determined to rush forward in the same course in which he was already, by his precipitate career, so fatally advanced. Though he knew that every order of men, except a handful of Catholics, were enraged at his past measures, and still more terrified with the future prospect; though he saw that the same discontents had reached the army, his sole resource during the general disaffection; yet was he incapable of changing his measures, or even of remitting his violence in the prosecution of them. He struck out two of the judges, Powel and Holloway, who had appeared to favor the bishops: he issued orders to prosecute all those clergymen who had not read his declaration; that is, the whole church of England, two hundred excepted: he sent a mandate to the new fellows whom he had obtruded on Magdalen College, to elect for president, in the room of Parker, lately deceased, one Gifford, a doctor of the Sorbonne, and titular bishop of Madura: and he is even said to have nominated the same person to the see of Oxford. So great an infatuation is perhaps an object of compassion rather than of anger; and is really surprising in a man who, in other respects, was not wholly deficient in sense and accomplishments.

A few days before the acquittal of the bishops, an event happened which, in the king’s sentiments, much overbalanced all the mortifications received on that occasion. The queen was delivered of a son, who was baptized by the name of James. This blessing was impatiently longed for, not only by the king and queen, but by all the zealous Catholics both abroad and at home. They saw, that the king was past middle age; and that on his death the succession must devolve to the prince and princess of Orange, two zealous Protestants, who would soon replace every thing on ancient foundations. Vows, therefore, were offered at every shrine for a male successor: pilgrimages were undertaken, particularly one to Loretto, by the duchess of Modena; and success was chiefly attributed to that pious journey. But in proportion as this event was agreeable to the Catholics, it increased the disgust of the Protestants, by depriving them of that pleasing though somewhat distant prospect, in which at present they flattered themselves. Calumny even went so far as to ascribe to the king the design of imposing on the world a supposititious child, who might be educated in his principles, and after his death support the Catholic religion in his dominions. The nation almost universally believed him capable, from bigotry, of committing any crime; as they had seen that, from like motives, he was guilty of every imprudence: and the affections of nature, they thought, would be easily sacrificed to the superior motive of propagating a Catholic and orthodox faith. The present occasion was not the first when that calumny had been invented. In the year 1682, the queen, then duchess of York, had been pregnant; and rumors were spread that an imposture would at that time be obtruded upon the nation: but happily, the infant proved a female, and thereby spared the party all the trouble of supporting their improbable fiction.[*]

* This story is taken notice of in a weekly paper, the
Observator, published at that very time, 23d of August,
1682. Party zeal is capable of swallowing the most
incredible story; but it is surely singular, that the same
calumny, when once baffled, should yet be renewed with such
success.

CHAPTER LXXI.

JAMES II.

1688

While every motive, civil and religious, concurred to alienate from the king every rank and denomination of men, it might be expected that his throne would, without delay fall to pieces by its own weight: but such is the influence of established government, so averse are men from beginning hazardous enterprises, that, had not an attack been made from abroad, affairs might long have remained in their present delicate situation, and James might at last have prevailed in his rash and ill-concerted projects.

The prince of Orange, ever since his marriage with the lady Mary, had maintained a very prudent conduct; agreeably to that sound understanding with which he was so eminently endowed. He made it a maxim to concern himself little in English affairs, and never by any measure to disgust any of the factions, or give umbrage to the prince who filled the throne. His natural inclination, as well as his interest, led him to employ himself with assiduous industry in the transactions on the continent, and to oppose the grandeur of the French monarch, against whom he had long, both from personal and political considerations, conceived a violent animosity. By this conduct he gratified the prejudices of the whole English nation: but, as he crossed the inclinations of Charles, who sought peace by compliance with France, he had much declined in the favor and affections of that monarch.

James, on his accession, found it so much his interest to live on good terms with the heir apparent, that he showed the prince some demonstrations of friendship; and the prince, on his part, was not wanting in every instance of duty and regard towards the king. On Monmouth’s invasion, he immediately despatched over six regiments of British troops, which were in the Dutch service; and he offered to take the command of the king’s forces against the rebels. How little however he might approve of James’s administration, he always kept a total silence on the subject, and gave no countenance to those discontents which were propagated with such industry throughout the nation.

It was from the application of James himself that the prince first openly took any part in English affairs. Notwithstanding the lofty ideas which the king had entertained of his prerogative, he found that the edicts emitted from it still wanted much of the authority of laws, and that the continuance of them might in the issue become dangerous both to himself and to the Catholics, whom he desired to favor. An act of parliament alone could insure the indulgence or toleration which he had labored to establish; and he hoped that, if the prince would declare in favor of that scheme, the members who had hitherto resisted all his own applications, would at last be prevailed with to adopt it. The consent, therefore, of the prince to the repeal of the penal statutes and of the test was strongly solicited by the king; and in order to engage him to agree to that measure, hopes were given,[*] that England would second him in all those enterprises which his active and extensive genius had with such success planned on the continent. He was at this time the centre of all the negotiations of Christendom.