the Puritans, between those who invoked religion on the side of passive obedience, and those who held resistance to tyranny a Christian duty. If the whig aristocracy looked to the stadholder of aristocratic Holland as the protector of their liberties, Baxter and the Presbyterians saw in William the Calvinist their tolerant avenger.

Of the two great aristocratic parties of England, both respected the established British constitution. But the tory defended his privileges against the encroachments of advanc ing civilization, and asserted the indefeasible rights of the bishops, of the aristocracy, and of the king, against dissenters, republicans, and whigs.

The whigs were bent on the preservation of their privileges against the encroachments of the monarch. In an age that demanded liberty, they gathered up every liberty, feudal or popular, known to English law, and sanctioned by the fictitious compact of prescription. In a period of progress in the enfranchisement of classes, they extended political influence to the merchants and bankers; in an age of religious sects, they embraced the more moderate and liberal of the church of England, and those of the dissenters whose dissent was the least glaring; in an age of speculative inquiry, they favored freedom of the press. How vast was the party is evident, since it cherished among its numbers men so opposite as Shaftesbury and Sidney, as Locke and Baxter.

These two parties embraced almost all the wealth and learning of England. But there was a third party of those who were pledged to "seek and love and chuse the best things." They insisted that all penal statutes and tests should be abolished; that, for all classes of non-conformists, whether Roman Catholics or dissenters, for the plebeian sects, "the less noble and more clownish sort of people," "the unclean kind," room should equally be made in the English ark; that the church of England, satisfied with its estates, should give up jails, whips, halters, and gibbets, and cease to plough the deep furrows of persecution; that the concession of equal freedom would give strength to the state, security to the prince, content to the multitude, wealth to the country, and would fit England for its office of asserting European liberty

against the ambition of France; that reason, natural right, and public interest demanded a glorious magna charta for intellectual freedom, even though the grant should be followed by "a dissolution of the great corporation of conscience." These were the views which were advocated by William Penn against what he calls "the prejudices of his times;" and which overwhelmed his name with obloquy as a friend to tyranny and a Jesuit priest in disguise.

But the easy issue of the contest grew out of a division in the monarchical party itself. James II. could not comprehend the value of freedom or the obligation of law. The writ of habeas corpus he esteemed inconsistent with monarchy, and "a great misfortune to the people." A standing army, and the terrors of corrupt tribunals, were his dependence; he delighted in military parades; swayed by his confessor, he dispensed with the laws, multiplied Catholic chapels, rejoiced in the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and sought to intrust civil and military power to Roman Catholics.

The bishops had unanimously voted against his exclusion; and, as the badge of the church of England was obedience, he for a season courted the alliance of "the fairest of the spotted kind." To win her favor for Roman Catholics, he was willing to persecute Protestant dissenters. This is the period of the influence of Rochester.

The church of England refused the alliance. The king, from 1687, would put no confidence in any zealous Protestant; he applauded the bigotry of Louis XIV., from whom he solicited money. "I hope," said he, "the king of France will aid me, and that we together shall do great things for religion;" and the established church became the object of his implacable hatred. "Her day of grace was past." The royal favor was withheld, that she might silently waste and dissolve like snows in spring. To diminish her numbers, and apparently from no other motive, he granted-what Sunderland might have done from indifference, and Penn from love of justice-equal franchises to every sect; to the powerful Calvinist and to the "puny" Quaker, to Anabaptists and Independents, and "all the wild increase" which unsatisfied inquiry could generate. The declaration of indulgence was

esteemed a death-blow to the church, and a forerunner of the reconciliation of England to Rome. The franchises of Oxford were invaded, that Catholics might share in its endowments; the bishops were imprisoned, because they would not publish in their churches the declaration, of which the purpose was their overthrow; and, that the system of tyranny might be perpetuated, heaven, as the monarch believed, blessed his pious pilgrimage to St. Winifred's well by the pregnancy of his wife and the birth of a son. The party of prerogative was trampled under foot; and, in their despair, they looked abroad for the liberty which they themselves had assisted to exile. The obedient church of England set the example of rebellion. Thus are the divine counsels perfected. "What think you now of predestination?" demanded William, as he landed in England. Tories took the lead in inviting the prince of Orange to save the English church; the whigs joined to rescue the privileges of the nobility; the Presbyterians rushed eagerly into the only safe avenue to toleration; the people quietly acquiesced. On the fifth of November, 1688, William of Orange landed in England. King James was left alone in his palace. His terrified priests escaped to the continent; Sunderland was always false; his confidential friends betrayed him; his daughter Anne, pleading conscience, proved herself one of his worst enemies. "God help me," exclaimed the disconsolate father, bursting into tears, "my very children have forsaken me;" and his grief was increased by losing a piece of the true wood of the cross, that had belonged to Edward the Confessor. Paralyzed by the imbecility of doubt, and destitute of counsellors, he fled beyond the sea. Aided by falsehoods, the prince of Orange, without striking a blow, ascended the throne of his father-in-law; and Mary, by whose letters James was lulled into security, came over to occupy the throne, the palace, and the bed of her father, and sequester the inheritance of her brother.

The great news of the invasion of England and the declaration of the prince of Orange reached Boston on the fourth day of April, 1689. The messenger was immediately imprisoned, but his message could not be suppressed; and "the preachers had already matured the evil design" of a revolution.

"There is a general buzzing among the people, great with expectation of their old charter or they know not what:" such was the ominous message of Andros to Brockholst, with orders that the soldiers should be ready for action.

About nine o'clock of the morning of the eighteenth, just as George, the commander of the Rose frigate, stepped on shore, Green and the Boston ship-carpenters gathered about him and made him a prisoner. The town took the alarm. The royalist sheriff endeavored to quiet the multitude; and they arrested him. They next hastened to the major of the regiment, and demanded colors and drums. He resisted; they threatened. The crowd increased; companies form under Nelson, Foster, Waterhouse, their old officers; and already at ten they seized Bullivant, Foxcroft, and Ravenscraft. Boys ran along the streets with clubs; the drums beat; the governor, with his creatures, meeting opposition in council, withdrew to the fort to desire a conference with the ministers and two or three more. The conference was declined. All the companies soon rallied at the town-house. Just then, the last governor of the colony, in office when the charter was abrogated, Simon Bradstreet, glorious with the dignity of fourscore years and seven, one of the early emigrants, a magistrate in 1630, whose experience connected the oldest generation with the new, drew near the town-house, and was received by a great shout from the freemen. The old magistrates were reinstated, as a council of safety; the town rose in arms, "with the most unanimous resolution that ever inspired a people;" and a declaration read from the balcony defended the insurrection as a duty to God and the country. "We commit our enterprise," it was added, "to Him who hears the cry of the oppressed, and advise all our neighbors, for whom we have thus ventured ourselves, to joyn with us in prayers and all just actions for the defence of the land."

On Charlestown side a thousand soldiers crowded together, and there would have been more of them if needed. The governor, vainly attempting to escape to the frigate, was, with his creatures, compelled to seek protection by submission; through the streets where he had first displayed his

scarlet coat and arbitrary commission, he and his fellows were marched to the town-house, and thence to prison.

On the next day the country people came swarming across the Charlestown and Chelsea ferries, headed by Shepherd, a school-master of Lynn. All the cry was against Andros and Randolph. The castle was taken; the frigate was mastered; the fortifications were occupied.

How should a new government be instituted? Townmeetings, before news had arrived of the proclamation of William and Mary, were held throughout the colony. Of fifty-four towns, forty certainly, probably more, voted to reassume the old charter. Representatives were chosen, and, on the twenty-second of May, Massachusetts once more assembled in general court.

Already, on the twenty-second of April, Nathaniel Clark, the agent of Andros at Plymouth, was in jail; Hinckley resumed the government, and the children of the pilgrims renewed the constitution which had been unanimously signed in the Mayflower.

The royalists had pretended that "the Quaker grandees" of Rhode Island had imbibed nothing of Quakerism but its indifference to forms, and did not even desire a restoration of the charter. On May-day, their usual election day, the inhabitants and freemen poured into Newport; and the "democracie" published to the world their gratitude "to the good providence of God, which had wonderfully supported their predecessors and themselves through more than ordinary difficulties and hardships." "We take it to be our duty,” thus they continue, "to lay hold of our former gracious privileges, in our charter contained." And, by a unanimous vote, the officers, whom Andros had displaced, were confirmed. But Walter Clarke wavered. For nine months there was no acknowledged chief magistrate. The assembly, accepting Clarke's disclaimer, elected Almy. Again excuse was made. All eyes turned to one of the old Antinomian exiles, the more than octogenarian, Henry Bull; and, in February, 1690, the fearless Quaker, true to the light within, employed the last glimmerings of life to restore the democratic charter of Rhode Island. Once more its free government is organ