with his majesty not to transport an army of French Papists into his dominions, lest it should confirm the suspicions of the Protestants, that he designed the overthrow of their religion and liberties*.

The king, being at length convinced of the prince of Orange's design, ordered the fleet to be fitted out, and the army to be augmented; and dispatched orders to Tyrconnel to send hither several regiments from Ireland, which put the people under terrible apprehensions of an Irish massacre.

September 21, his majesty issued out his proclamation for the meeting of a new parliament, "intimating his royal purpose to endeavour a legal establishment of a universal toleration, and inviolably to preserve the church of England in possession of the several acts of uniformity, as far as they were consistent with such a tolerationt. And farther to quiet the minds of his Protestant subjects, he was content that the Roman Catholics should remain incapable of being members of the house of commons, that so the legislature might continue in the hands of the Protestants." September 23, the king was farther assured by letters from the marquis of Abbeville at the Hague, that pensionary Fagel had owned the design of the prince of Orange to invade England. Upon which the king turned pale and speechless for a while, and like a distracted man looked round every way for relief, but was resolute in nothing. He postponed the meeting of the parliament, and by advice of his council applied to the bishops then in town for advice what was necessary to be done to make the church easy. The bishops moved him to annul the ecclesiastical commission, and the dispensing power: to recall all licences and faculties for Papists to keep schools, to prohibit the four pretended vicars apostolical invading the ecclesiastical jurisdiction; to fill the vacant bishoprics; to restore the charters, and to call a free and regular parliament, by which the church of England might be secured according to the act of uniformity; and provision made for a due liberty of conscience. Pursuant to this advice the king and court began to tread backward, concluding, that if they could satisfy the bishops and recover the affection of the church, all would do well. The bishop of London's suspension was taken off, the ecclesiastical commission dissolved, the city charter and the fellows of Magdalen-college were restored, and other illegal practices renounced §; but upon the news of the prince of Orange's fleet being dispersed by a storm, and that they would hardly be able to put to sea again till next spring, his majesty withdrew his hand from any farther redress of grievances.

But the prince having repaired the damages of the storm, sailed a second time, November 1, and after a remarkable passage, in which the wind chopped about almost miraculously in his favour ||,

*Burnet, p. 217. Gazette, No. 2386.

+ Gazete, No. 2384.
§ Ibid. No. 2388. 2391.

Bishop Burnet, who minutely describes the circumstances of the prince of

landed at Torbay, November 5, with about fourteen thousand men, without meeting the king's fleet, which was at sea in order to intercept them. The prince brought over with him a declaration, dated October 10, divided into twenty-six articles, but reducible to three principal heads; 1. An enumeration of the public grievances, with regard to religion and civil government. 2. The fruitless attempts which had been made to redress those grievances: under which mention is made of the suspicious birth of the pretended prince of Wales. 3. A protestation that the present expedition was intended for no other purpose than to proeure a free and lawful parliament; to which the prince would refer the redress of all the grievances complained of; and for the obtaining such a parliament, his highness declares, he had been most earnestly solicited by a great many lords both spiritual* and temporal, and by many gentlemen, and other subjects of all ranks, to come over to England; and to encourage the Protestant dissenters his highness adds, that he would recommend to the parliament the making such new laws, as might establish a good agreement between the church of England and all Protestant Nonconformists, and in the meantime would suffer such as would live peaceably to enjoy all due freedom in their consciences.

The king, who had relied too much on the clergy's professions of unlimited obedience, being surprised at the expressions in the prince's declaration, that he had been invited by the lords spiritual, sent for the bishops then in town, and insisted not only upon their disowning the fact, but upon their signing a paper, expressing Orange's landing, says, that though he was never inclined to superstition, but rather to be philosophical on all occasions, yet, the strange ordering of the winds and seasons to change, just as their affairs required it, made a deep impression on himself, and on all who observed it. The famous verses of Claudian seemed to be more applicable to the prince, than to him on whom they were made:

"O nimium dilecte Deo, cui militat æther,

Et conjurati veniunt ad classica venti."
"Heaven's favourite, for whom the skies do fight,
And all the winds conspire to guide thee right."

Burnet's History, vol. 3. p. 252. Edin. edit. 12mo.-ED.

* Dr. Grey, though he cannot deny that the prince of Orange averred, in his declaration, that he was invited over by lords spiritual, yet is not inclined to admit the fact. He quotes, with a view to invalidate it, some letters from sir Jonathan Trelawney, bishop of Winchester, written to Mr. Echard in the years 1716, and 1718-19, in which this concurrence of the bishops, and of themselves, in the invitation to the prince of Orange, is absolutely denied. To these assertions is added a memorandum, made by sir Jonathan Trelawney, of a conversation which he had with Mr. Francis Robarts, son to the earl of Radnor, shortly after the king's coronation, on this point: who said, that he had asked commissary William Harbord, that came over with the prince, whether it was true that the bishops had taken a part in that invitation? To which Harbord answered with a curse, " No, they were not so honest. But I caused it to be put in to raise a jealousy and hatred on both sides, that king James believing it, might never forgive them; and they, fearing he did believe it, might be provoked, for their own safety, to wish and help on his ruin." Against these authorities, it is to be observed that bishop Burnet asserts, that the earl of Danby drew in the bishop of London to join in the design of bringing over the prince of Orange: and that Trelawney, besides going into it, engaged also his brother, the bishop of Bristol, into it. Grey's Examination, vol. 3. p. 422; and Burnet, vol. 3. p. 214, 215.-ED.

their abhorrence of the intended invasion; but they excused themselves only with a general profession of their allegiance and duty. The church-party, says Burnet*, now shewed their approbation of the prince's expedition in such terms that many were surprised at it, both then and since that time; they spoke openly in favour of it; they expressed their grief to see the wind so cross, and wished for a Protestant wind that might bring the prince over. His majesty, therefore, finding himself deceived in the churchparty, and that he had no other reliance but his army, used all imaginable diligence to strengthen it. In obedience to the orders already given, two thousand five hundred men [chiefly Papists] were landed at Chester from Ireland. Commissions were given out for raising ten new regiments of horse and foot. Three thousand Scots were ordered from that country. All the militia were commanded to be in readiness to march on the first summons; and a proclamation was issued out, requiring all horses and cattle to be removed twenty miles from those parts of the sea-coast, where it was apprehended the prince would land; but so great was the people's disaffection that they paid little regard to his majesty's orders.

Soon after his highness's landing, the body of the nation discovered their inclinations so evidently, that the king lost both head and heart at once. The city of London was in confusion; reports were spread that the Irish would cut the throats of the Protestants throughout the nation in one and the same night, which awakened the people's fears, and kept them all night on their guard. When this fright was allayed, the mob rose and pulled down the mass-houses, and burnt the materials in the streets: father Petre, with the swarms of priests and Jesuits who had flocked about the court, disappeared, and retired into foreign parts and several of the king's arbitrary ministers, who had brought him under these difficulties, forsook him and absconded. Jefferies was taken in Wapping in a sailor's habit, and would have been torn in pieces by the mob if he had not been conducted by a strong guard to the Tower, where he died before he came to his trial. The unhappy king, being left in a manner alone, retired with a small retinue to his army at Salisbury.

The prince of Orange, having refreshed his forces, marched from Torbay to Exeter, where the nobility and gentry signed an association to support and assist his highness in pursuing the ends of his declaration, and that if any attempt was made on his person, it should be revenged on all by whom or from whom it should be made. Great numbers of common people came in to the prince at Exeter; and as soon as he marched forward towards London, prince George of Denmark, the dukes of Ormond, Grafton, lord Wharton, Churchill, and others of the first distinction, deserted the army at Salisbury, and joined the prince,

Burnet, p. 243, 241.

with a great many Protestant officers and soldiers: so that his majesty perceived, that even the army, which was his last refuge, was not to be relied on; and to complete his unhappiness, princess Anne, his younger daughter, withdrew privately from court, with the bishop of London, who put on his buff coat and sword, and commanded a little army for her highness's defence.

Dr. Finch, son to the earl of Winchelsea, and warden of AllSouls college in Oxford, was sent to the prince from some of the heads of colleges, to invite him to Oxford, and to assure him they were ready to declare for him, and that their plate should be at his service. The prince intended to have accepted their invitation, but all things being in a ferment at London, he was advised to make all the haste thither that he could*. So he sent to Oxford to excuse his visit, and to offer them the association, which was signed by almost all the heads and the chief men of the university; even by those who being disappointed in the preferments they aspired to, became afterward his most implacable enemies †. Archbishop Sancroft also sent his compliments to the prince, and with seven or eight other bishops, signed the association, having changed the word revenge into that of punishment. This was a sudden turn, says the bishop, from those principles which they had carried a few years before. The dissenters went cheerfully into all the prince's measures, and were ready to sign the "association:" there were few or no jacobites or nonjurors among them; and throughout the whole course of king William's reign, they were among his most loyal and zealous subjects.

In this critical juncture, the queen and the young prince of Wales were sent to France, December 9, the king himself following, the latter end of the month, having first caused the writs for calling a new parliament to be burnt, and the great seal to be thrown into the Thames. After his majesty's first attempt to leave the kingdom he was seized at Feversham §, and prevailed with to return back to London; but when the prince resolved to come to Whitehall, and sent his majesty a message, that he thought it not consistent with the peace of the city, and of the kingdom, for both of them to be there together; his majesty retired a second time to Rochester with the prince's consent, and after a week's stay in that place went away privately in a vessel to France, leaving a paper behind him, in which he declared, that though he was going to seek foreign assistance, he would not make use of it to overthrow the established religion or the laws of his country. Thus ended the short and unhappy reign of

Burnet, p. 260. 263.

§ He was seized by Mr. Hunt, at that time a custom-house officer, who died so lately as the 24th of July, 1752, at Feversham. He boarded the ship in which the king was, by virtue of his office; and taking his majesty for a suspicious person, brought him ashore without knowing his quality; but was greatly terrified when he found it was the king. Gentleman's Magazine for July 1752, p. 337.-ED.

James II., and with him the male line of the royal house of Stuarts, a race of princes raised up by Providence to be the scourge of these nations, for they were all chargeable with tyranny and oppression, favourers of Popery, and invaders of the legal constitution of their country in church and state. They enfeebled the nation by encouraging licentiousness of manners, and sunk a bold and brave people into contempt among foreign

powers.

Nothing could have been more fortunate for the prince of Orange, than the king's flight from Rochester to France, which furnished a plausible occasion for the convention parliament to pass vote, that the king had abdicated the crown, and that the throne was vacant; though it would have looked more like a voluntary desertion, if his majesty had gone off the first time from Feversham, and had not declared in the paper he left behind him, that he was going to seek for foreign assistance; it is certain the king was frightened away by his priests, who possessed him with an apprehension that he was already a prisoner; and by his queen, who prevailed with him to consult his own and family's safety, by leaving the kingdom for the present. Thus a great and powerful monarch was in a few weeks reduced to a condition little better than that of a wandering pilgrim *.

The prince of Orange arrived at St. James's December 18, and on the 21st following the bishop of London, with several of the clergy, and some dissenting ministers, waited upon his highness to congratulate him on the happy success of his glorious expedition; when his lordship acquainted his highness in the name of the clergy, that there were some of their dissenting brethren present, who were herein entirely of the same sentiments with themselves +. But on the 2d of January about ninety of the Nonconformist ministers attended the prince at St. James's in a distinct body, being introduced by the earl of Devonshire, and the lords Wharton and Wiltshire: when the reverend Mr. Howe, in the name of the rest, assured his highness" of their grateful sense of his hazardous and heroical expedition, which the favour of Heaven had made so surprisingly prosperous. That they esteemed it a common felicity, that the worthy patriots of the nobility and gentry of this kingdom had unanimously concurred with his highness's designs, by whose most prudent advice the administration of public affairs was devolved, in this difficult conjuncture, into hands which the nation and the world knew to be apt for the greatest undertakings, and so suitable to the present exigency of our case. They promised their utmost endeavours, in their several stations, to promote the excellent and most desirable ends for which his highness had declared. They added their continual fervent prayers to the Almighty, for the preservation of his highness's person, and the success of his + Calamy, p. 387.

Burnet, p. 274.