unfavourable manner, and gave rise, in the presence of the whole court, to a scene very offensive to Charles. The son of the old duke, (the Earl of Ossory,) soon afterwards seeing the duke of Buckingham standing by the king, could not contain himself, and addressed him thus: My lord of Buckingham, I know well that you are at the bottom of this late attempt of Blood's upon my father; and therefore I give you fair warning, that if my father comes to a violent end, by sword or pistol; if he dies by the hand of a ruffian, or by the more secret way of poison, I shall not be at a loss to know the first author of it; I shall consider you as the assassin; I shall treat you as such; and wherever I meet you I shall pistol you, though you should stand behind the king's chair. And I tell it you now in his majesty's presence, that you may be sure I shall keep my word.' No one spoke a word; Buckingham and the king himself kept silence. It was impossible to brave either of them more daringly.'-pp. 96, 97.

A subtle policy was now attempted with a view of estranging the Protestant Dissenters from all sympathy with the Anglican Church. The king and his ministers affected to commiserate their condition, and to desire their relief from the intolerant laws under which they suffered. The advocates of persecution became loud in their professions of leniency, and reproached the hierarchy with resorting to measures alike inconsistent with social happiness and the benign spirit of the Christian faith. The real object was to serve the Papists, and the king's Declaration of Indulgence was, therefore, rejected by the nation, as a covert attack on the Reformation. The popular party in the Commons summoned all their strength to contest the prerogative on this point. Reading correctly the signs of the times they limited themselves to the exposure of its popish policy, and called upon the nation to assist them in defending the Protestant faith. In this effort they were successful, though their temporary triumph was purchased at an ultimate cost far beyond its value. The Test Act of 1673, compelled the Duke of York, and various other Catholic officers and functionaries to resign their posts, and led to the early breaking up of the Cabal Ministry. The court had vainly endeavoured to rally the Presbyterians to its aid, but no confidence was reposed in its professions, and Alderman Love, one of the members for London, and a zealous Presbyterian, declared on behalf of his co-religionists, that they were content to let the bill pass without the clause in favour of non-conforming Protestants, which the court had proposed in the hope of securing a rejection of the

measure.

'He said that before all things it was essential to combat popery; that the test would openly brand all those who secretly favoured that dangerous heresy; that several provisions of the bill were, in

deed, very vexatious to those who, like himself, were of the Presbyterian church, but that, pending the attainment of more favourable terms, he declared, in their name, that they would prefer remaining exposed to the severity of the laws of the church of England, than impede them in their operation against the papists.-p. 106.

The confidence thus expressed was misplaced, and a century and a half had to elapse before parliament could be induced to abolish the law which desecrated a religious ordinance, and deprived a large portion of the community, not originally contemplated, of their civil rights. The debate on this bill in the House of Lords was signalized by the defection of Shaftesbury from the court. He was too far-seeing not to recognise the danger which threatened the Cabal, and therefore hastened to make his peace with the popular party. As unprincipled as he was ambitious, he readily veered with every change, and having already betrayed the patriots, he now rendered the same service to the court.

The Cabal Ministry was succeeded in 1673 by that of the Earl of Danby, and the period of its existence, which continued to 1678, was full of dissimulation and chicanery on the part of the king, and of growing mistrust and boldness on that of the commons. It reverted, on some points, to the policy of Clarendon, and sought to make the king absolute, without aiding the restoration of popery.

'Let us see what the new administration under Danby did. Judging that the defeat of the court party had arisen from the unexpected reconciliation between the Presbyterians and the members of the church of England, in order to destroy this alliance, it conceived the idea of forming another between the church of England party and the old cavaliers, who since the restoration had been treated with a neglect amounting to ingratitude.

To ingratiate the churchmen, they prosecuted a number of papists; they undertook the reconstruction of the cathedral of Saint Paul, destroyed in the fire of London. Conferences were arranged between them and some English bishops, in reference to a scheme which was to destroy popery for the benefit of the kingdom and of the English church. In these conferences, it was proposed that all the sanguinary laws against the Nonconformists, without distinction of sect, should be again put in force, and that there should be drawn up a political test, to be presented to the two houses, as a complement of the religious test adopted in the last session.'-p. 113.

The instrument with which the minister worked, and on which he mainly relied, was money. This was liberally dispensed amongst the opposition, and even some of its leaders did not disdain to receive it as the price of softening particular votes. In the mean time one of those paroxysms occurred, to which all

popular communities are more or less subject. Universal distrust prevailed. All men attributed to Charles and his brother an intention of subverting the established religion, and in doing so, as clear evidence now proves, were not far wrong. The popular mind was therefore prepared, and Titus Oates and his companions, the heroes of the popish plot, found ready credence for their atrocious falsehoods. The nation was, in fact, frenzied. All classes partook of the delusion. The honest, as well as the base; the patriotic, equally with the trading politician; the churchof-England-man and the dissenter, the bishop and the presbyter, all sympathised with the common sentiment, and under the combined influence of fear and resentment, were deaf to the voice of reason and the appeals of justice. The Lords and Commons,' it was declared by the two houses, ' are of opinion that there is, and hath been, a damnable and hellish plot, contrived and carried on by popish recusants, for assassinating and murdering the king, for subverting the government, and uprooting and destroying the protestant religion.'

And now commenced, before the courts of justice and the upper house, a sombre prosecution of the Catholic lords Arundel, PetreStafford, Powis, Bellasis, the Jesuits Coleman, Ireland, Grieve, Pickering, and, in succession, all who were implicated by the indefatigable denunciations of Titus Oates and Bedloe. Unhappily, these courts of justice, desiring, in common with the whole nation to condemn rather than to examine, wanted neither elements which might, if strictly acted upon, establish legal proof of conspiracy against some of the accused, nor terrible laws to destroy them when found guilty. And it was here that a spectacle, at first imposing, became horrible. No friendly voice arose to save those men who were guilty only of impracticable wishes, of extravagant conceptions. The king, the duke of York, the French Abassador, thoroughly acquainted as they were with the real nature of these imputed crimes, remained silent; they were thoroughly cowed. No generous remonstrance was made by the enlightened men, who saw in this accusation merely a specious but useful argument against popery. Many influential members of the two Houses regarded Oates and Bedloe, to use Lord Shaftesbury's expression, as men fallen from heaven expressly to save England from tyranny. They made it a fearful system with them not to combat, in minds weaker than their own, a credulity arising from fear and from a love of the marvellous. There were some, and among others Seymour, who seized this pretext of dangers incurred by the king, to pass over, with popular applause, to the Opposition; and hence that concurrence of men of all parties and of every opinion, in punishing utterly vague projects under the determinate form given them by the voice of the informers.'-p. 129.

We cannot dwell on this deplorable tragedy. It was honour

able to none, and the weapons which it sharpened, were speedily turned against their employers. It must, however, be borne in mind, as Mr. Hallam has justly remarked, that there was really and truly a popish plot in being, though not that which Titus Oates and his associates pretended to reveal. . . . In this plot the king, the duke of York, and the king of France, were chief conspirators; the Romish priests, and especially the Jesuits, were eager cooperators.' So much must be admitted to the truth of history, but it offers no justification of the measures which were adopted. The impeachment of Danby speedily followed, and marked another triumph of the popular power. The monarch endeavoured to save his minister, but the prerogative suffered in the contest. Parliament was prorogued, and afterwards dissolved, but its successor renewed the impeachment, and Danby was at length committed to the tower. For a time, Charles seemed to be subdued. None doubted his inclinations, but many were willing to believe that he had, at length, learned wisdom, and was prepared to demean himself as a constitutional monarch. He sought the advice, and appeared to lean on the character and ability of Sir William Temple. But all this was delusive—a mere bending before the storm, to resume, 'ere long, his natural position.' The coalition ministry which succeeded in the spring of 1679, endured but for a short time, and never enjoyed the confidence either of parliament or of the nation. Its members were endlessly divided in their views, and even those who had been selected from the opposition, were far from agreeing in their policy; some were more than suspected of a leaning towards republicanism; others favoured the pretensions of the duke of Monmouth; while a third party advocated extreme limitations to the prerogative, as the best means of guarding against the dangers arising from a popish successor. Wearied with the abortive effort, Lord Russell, and others, at length retired from the council: and the triumvirate Essex, Halifax, and Sunderland, soon found that their advice was disregarded by a faithless master. Parliament was prorogued indefinitely, and a serious illness, with which the king was attacked, aroused at once the sympathy and the fears of the nation. Shaftesbury was dismissed, Essex and Halifax resigned, and the return of the duke of York emboldened his brother to organize a new administration of more compliant and despotic temper. The attempted exclusion of the duke of York was mainly instrumental in producing this change, and the new ministry, of which Lord Radnor was the nominal head, was relied on to frustrate the efforts of the popular party to carry this measure through the upper house. Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, was a leading member of this administration, and

is described by an unscrupulous advocate of his party, in a manner not remarkably to his credit. His infirmities,' says North, were passion, in which he would swear like a cutter, and indulging in wine. But his party was that of the church of England, of whom he had the honour for many years to be counted the head.' It would lead us too far from our design, were we to sketch the proceedings of the two houses on the Exclusion Bill. It was carried again and again by the commons, but was as frequently rejected by the lords, where the bishops, true to their political subserviency, threw their whole weight into the scale of the court. In the meantime, a reaction was taking place. The leaders of opposition were outstripping the popular will; the timid and the wealthy began to fear that the times of 1640 were about to return, and a manœuvre of the court, by which a bill was introduced, exempting protestant nonconformists from the laws enacted against popery, reawoke the intolerance of the established church, and disengaged many of its adherents from opposition. In this state of the public feeling a new parliament was elected, which the king summoned to meet at Oxford on the 21st of March, 1681. He repaired thither with a strong body of guards, and many of the members were attended by large numbers of their constituents. Everything portended a crisis, and thoughtful men began to calculate the mischiefs of civil war. The Exclusion Bill was again carried by the commons, when the king, thoroughly alarmed, yet resolved on his course, suddenly dissolved the house, and returned to Windsor. Few had been prepared for so bold a step. It did not accord with the character of the king, but was evidently planned and arranged for by his brother. Its effect was marvellous, and had the nature of Englishmen permitted, it might have been improved to the permanent advantage of absolutism.

'The dissolution,' says our author, of the parliament of Oxford was promptly followed by a manifesto addressed to the nation by the king. Taking credit to himself for all the moderation, throwing all the fault upon the parliament, he gave an account to England of what had passed: We offered to concur in any remedies that could be proposed for the security of the Protestant religion, and to preserve the liberty and property of our subjects at home, and to supporting our neighbours and allies abroad, to all which we have met with most unsuitable returns from the house of commons. But for all this, we are resolved, by the blessing of God, to have frequent parliaments, and both in and out of parliament to use our utmost efforts to extirpate Popery, and to redress all the grievances of our good subjects, and in all things to govern according to the laws of the kingdom.' 'The effect produced by this manifesto is one of the gravest subjects for meditation presented by this history. The vio