He tried the same thing with the corporations,and also (though not so successfully)with the Lord Lieutenants of counties.To terrify the people into the endurance of all these measures,he kept an army of fifteen thousand men encamped on Hounslow Heath,where mass was openly performed in the General's tent,and where priests went among the soldiers endeavouring to persuade them to become Catholics.For circulating a paper among those men advising them to be true to their religion,a Protestant clergyman,named JOHNSON,the chaplain of the late Lord Russell,was actually sentenced to stand three times in the pillory,and was actually whipped from Newgate to Tyburn.He dismissed his own brother-in-law from his Council because he was a Protestant,and made a Privy Councillor of the before-mentioned Father Petre.He handed Ireland over to RICHARD TALBOT,EARL OF TYRCONNELL,a worthless,dissolute knave,who played the same game there for his master,and who played the deeper game for himself of one day putting it under the protection of the French King.In going to these extremities,every man of sense and judgment among the Catholics,from the Pope to a porter,knew that the King was a mere bigoted fool,who would undo himself and the cause he sought to advance;but he was deaf to all reason,and,happily for England ever afterwards,went tumbling off his throne in his own blind way.
A spirit began to arise in the country,which the besotted blunderer little expected.He first found it out in the University of Cambridge.Having made a Catholic a dean at Oxford without any opposition,he tried to make a monk a master of arts at Cambridge:
Which attempt the University resisted,and defeated him.He then went back to his favourite Oxford.On the death of the President of Magdalen College,he commanded that there should be elected to succeed him,one MR.ANTHONY FARMER,whose only recommendation was,that he was of the King's religion.The University plucked up courage at last,and refused.The King substituted another man,and it still refused,resolving to stand by its own election of a MR.HOUGH.The dull tyrant,upon this,punished Mr.Hough,and five-and-twenty more,by causing them to be expelled and declared incapable of holding any church preferment;then he proceeded to what he supposed to be his highest step,but to what was,in fact,his last plunge head-foremost in his tumble off his throne.
He had issued a declaration that there should be no religious tests or penal laws,in order to let in the Catholics more easily;but the Protestant dissenters,unmindful of themselves,had gallantly joined the regular church in opposing it tooth and nail.The King and Father Petre now resolved to have this read,on a certain Sunday,in all the churches,and to order it to be circulated for that purpose by the bishops.The latter took counsel with the Archbishop of Canterbury,who was in disgrace;and they resolved that the declaration should not be read,and that they would petition the King against it.The Archbishop himself wrote out the petition,and six bishops went into the King's bedchamber the same night to present it,to his infinite astonishment.Next day was the Sunday fixed for the reading,and it was only read by two hundred clergymen out of ten thousand.The King resolved against all advice to prosecute the bishops in the Court of King's Bench,and within three weeks they were summoned before the Privy Council,and committed to the Tower.As the six bishops were taken to that dismal place,by water,the people who were assembled in immense numbers fell upon their knees,and wept for them,and prayed for them.When they got to the Tower,the officers and soldiers on guard besought them for their blessing.While they were confined there,the soldiers every day drank to their release with loud shouts.When they were brought up to the Court of King's Bench for their trial,which the Attorney-General said was for the high offence of censuring the Government,and giving their opinion about affairs of state,they were attended by similar multitudes,and surrounded by a throng of noblemen and gentlemen.When the jury went out at seven o'clock at night to consider of their verdict,everybody (except the King)knew that they would rather starve than yield to the King's brewer,who was one of them,and wanted a verdict for his customer.When they came into court next morning,after resisting the brewer all night,and gave a verdict of not guilty,such a shout rose up in Westminster Hall as it had never heard before;and it was passed on among the people away to Temple Bar,and away again to the Tower.It did not pass only to the east,but passed to the west too,until it reached the camp at Hounslow,where the fifteen thousand soldiers took it up and echoed it.And still,when the dull King,who was then with Lord Feversham,heard the mighty roar,asked in alarm what it was,and was told that it was 'nothing but the acquittal of the bishops,'he said,in his dogged way,'Call you that nothing?It is so much the worse for them.'Between the petition and the trial,the Queen had given birth to a son,which Father Petre rather thought was owing to Saint Winifred.
But I doubt if Saint Winifred had much to do with it as the King's friend,inasmuch as the entirely new prospect of a Catholic successor (for both the King's daughters were Protestants)determined the EARLS OF SHREWSBURY,DANBY,and DEVONSHIRE,LORD
LUMLEY,the BISHOP OF LONDON,ADMIRAL RUSSELL,and COLONEL SIDNEY,to invite the Prince of Orange over to England.The Royal Mole,seeing his danger at last,made,in his fright,many great concessions,besides raising an army of forty thousand men;but the Prince of Orange was not a man for James the Second to cope with.
His preparations were extraordinarily vigorous,and his mind was resolved.
For a fortnight after the Prince was ready to sail for England,a great wind from the west prevented the departure of his fleet.