66

were the objects of his especial detestation, the Test Act and the Habeas Corpus Act. According to the view which he took of them, one was the destruction of the Catholic religion, and the other of the Royal authority." And it was absolutely necessary to his views to procure the repeal of them both. The Houses must continue to sit for a while, till he had bent them to his purpose by a combination of intimidation and persuasion. Persuasion he could indeed try with but few, the leaders of the two Houses, whom he might summon to personal interviews; but intimidation could be applied on a larger scale, to the whole Parliament, and even to the people out of Parliament, and especially to the citizens of London, a population rarely of late favourable to the Crown.

2

Full of this design, he regarded the invasion of Monmouth with complacency, as supplying him with a pretext for raising an army, and thus making himself master of the country. And, after the crisis was past, instead of disbanding the troops, he brought them up to the neighbourhood of the capital, and encamped them on Hounslow Heath, announcing to Barillon his resolution to keep them under arms, whether the Parliament granted him Supplies for the purpose, or refused them. And the determination which he thus expressed he acted up to. Parliament, which had

1 Charles II. had taken the same view of the Habeas Corpus Act. "Le fou Roy d'Angleterre et celui-cy m'ont souvent dit qu'un gouvernement ne peut subsistre avec une telle loy."-BARILLON in DALRYMPLE, P. 171.

2 "Il me paraît que le Roy d'Angleterre a été fort aise d'avoir une prétexte de lever des troupes, et qu'il croit que l'entreprise de M. le Duc de Monmouth ne servira qu'à le rendre plus maître de son pays."-BARILLON in DALRYMPLE, p. 169.

This was written in June. August 6th he writes, "Le R. d'A. m'a dit que, quoiqu'il arriveil conservera les troupes sur pied, quand même le parlement ne lui donnerait rien pour les entretenir."-Ib. p. 170.

Meeting of Parliament.

25

necessarily been adjourned on Monmouth's invasion, met again in the second week of November. In its previous session, both Houses, and especially the House of Commons, had shown themselves singularly complaisant. They

had conferred on him for life all the revenue which had been enjoyed by Charles; they had even exhibited a willingness to grant him a further Supply; and the only vote which seemed dictated by any feeling but a desire to give him entire satisfaction was one by which the Commons, while sitting in Committee, had requested him to enforce the penal laws against Nonconformists; even this vote having been subsequently reversed in the whole House, which resolved instead that, "they relied on his gracious promise to protect that Protestant religion which was dearer to them than life itself."

Such a concession on their part made it evident that nothing but the grossest provocation, or the strongest conviction of absolute necessity, would induce them to put themselves in steady opposition to his wishes; and equally evident that nothing but the most entire want, not only of political sagacity, but of common sense, could ever lead him to give them such provocation. Yet, in less than a fortnight after they had assembled for the second session, he quarrelled with both Houses so irreconcilably that he would never allow them to meet again : as if he were resolved to tread in his father's steps on the most dangerous road which that unfortunate Prince had ever taken.

The two Houses were not, indeed, quite so much disposed to be unsuspicious and complaisant as they had been at their first meeting. They had lately had a warning not only of the King's designs, but of the inflexible resolution with which he was prepared to carry them out, in his ungrateful

treatment of one of his most faithful and upright servants. In the last reign, the rejection of the Exclusion Bill by the House of Lords had been chiefly owing to the eloquence of the Marquis of Halifax, and James, on his accession, had expressed to the Marquis himself the warmest gratitude for the service which he had done him on that occasion. Halifax was President of the Council, and James, believing him to be attached to office, and certainly not unfriendly to himself, in more than one private conference tried to win him over to his own views respecting the two obnoxious laws. But Halifax could not be brought to abandon either the Test Act or the Habeas Corpus Act, and James, in high displeasure, struck his name out of the roll of the Privy Council, against the advice of the shrewdest of his courtiers, who warned him of the danger of driving a man so able and so popular into the ranks of the Opposition, and to the great discontent of the nation in general, who believed the expelled minister to be in some degree the victim of the enmity of Louis, because he had always opposed the influence of France, which a recent act of the French King in his own country caused most men now to regard with deeper distrust and abhorrence than ever.

Almost at the same time that the dismissal of Lord Halifax was made public, intelligence arrived that Louis had revoked the Edict of Nantes, by which Henry IV. had granted security for their religion to the French Huguenots;1 and one of the French prelates, in a speech which had been just published, had proclaimed the closeness of the alliance which subsisted between the two monarchs, affirming that James looked to Louis for support against his heretical

1 The Edict of Nantes was revoked Oct. 2nd, 1685. Halifax was dismissed from the Council Oct. 21st.

The King's Speech.

27

people. The deeds and the language alike filled all England with indignation and alarm; men could hardly doubt that nothing but a want of equal power restrained James from acting with the same bad faith and cruelty as Louis. And, while they were in this temper, the 9th of November arrived, the day that had been fixed for the reassembling of the Parliament, which had been adjourned on the news of Monmouth's invasion.

James opened it in person with a speech which he had himself composed. No Parliament had ever met under circumstances which rendered conciliatory language and conduct more needful; while their conduct in the previous session proved that the members were not inclined to misconstrue the King's words, nor to show any uncalled-for distrust of his designs. Yet no speech was ever delivered more full of provocation, and even of insult. He disparaged the value of the militia ; he demanded an additional Supply for the maintenance of an army of regular troops, larger than any former Sovereign had had at his command except in times of actual war; and he ended his harangue by announcing that many of the officers to whom he had given commissions were legally disqualified for them, as being Roman Catholics, and consequently not having taken the necessary tests; but that they were all men known to himself, "who had proved the loyalty of their principles by their practices, and," he added in conclusion, "I will deal plainly with you, that after having had the benefit of their service in such time of need and danger, I will neither expose them to disgrace, nor myself to the want of them in case any new rebellion should make them necessary for me." His disparagement of the militia seemed almost like a studied affront to the country gentlemen, from whom the officers

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