some few converts were made to the popish religion; but the country still remained essentially Protestant.

James was warned, even by Papists themselves, of the danger of his proceedings in attempting to re-establish popery; but he still persisted in his course. Monastic establishments were formed; attempts were made to set up Romish seminaries; Magdalen-college, Oxford, was ordered to elect a popish head; and when this was refused, most of the fellows were expelled, and Romanists put in their places: the adherents of popery were more than ever favoured at court. It was clear what the intentions of James were; and, while the nation was agitated from one end to the other by his senseless proceedings, he sent out a declaration ordering all the clergy to read it in their churches. Passive obedience

was now generally laid aside: it was determined at Lambeth that the declaration should not be read. Six bishops met the primate and some of the clergy and nobility, and resolved to petition the king not to insist upon their distribution and reading of the declaration; but this petition was vain: James declared the presentation of it to be an act of rebellion, and the seven bishops were charged with a misdemeanour, and conveyed as prisoners to the Tower. They were tried on the 29th of June; and though the king thought himself secure of the judges and a subservient jury, the verdict was "not guilty.' James was reviewing his troops at Hounslowheath when he first discovered this. The loud rejoicings of the metropolis on this occasion was responded to by a shout from the soldiers; and, on his inquiring the cause of the clamour, he was informed by Lord Feversham that it was nothing but the expression of joy at the acquittal of the bishops. "Call you that nothing?" was the reply of the angry monarch.

An important event brought affairs to a crisis. It had for some time been announced that it was possible there would be a male heir to the crown: people did not scruple to assert that this heir would be supposititious. At length, in June, 1688, a prince was born. There is little doubt of the fact; but the popular cry was that it was an imposture; the child, they said, had been conveyed to the queen's room in a warmingpan. In this emergency many of the nobility and gentry met and agreed to invite the prince of Orange to come over with an armed force to redress grievances, and to inquire as to the legitimacy of the infant. Admirals Russell and Her

bert promoted discontent against the king amongst the seamen; and the latter, with other noblemen and men of rank and influence, went over to Holland, and offered to aid William. Their offer was accepted: William embarked with a fleet of five hundred sail for England, avowing it to be his design to restore the church and state to their due rights. Upon his arrival he was joined not only by the whigs but by many whom James had considered his best friends: even his daughter, the princess Anne, and her husband, George, prince of Denmark, espoused the cause of the prince of Orange.

Alarmed by the general disaffection, James left London precipitately, throwing the great seal into the Thames, without any provision for the administration of the kingdom. This was subsequently found by a fisherman. James rode to Feversham; but he was stopped at that place and brought back to London: he escaped, however, the second time, and reached France on the 23rd of December, where he was received by Louis with open arms. This great revolution was effected without any bloodshed, with the exception of a few Hollanders, who fell in a skirmish. The conduct of James had arrayed the army, the navy, the universities-in a word, the whole nation against him, and he was dethroned.

The succession of the crown still remained to be settled. Some advised the prince of Orange to claim it by right of conquest: he adopted a safer course. Early in 1689 he convoked a national convention of the English at London, and of the Scotch at Edinburgh. The first, composed of a freely elected house of commons and the legitimate house of peers, declared that as king James had evidently designed to overthrow the constitution, and accordingly broken the original treaty between the regent and his people, and at last left the kingdom, the throne was vacant. The Scotch, with more openness, declared that James, by the abuse of his power, had forfeited the crown. Both these assemblies transferred the royal power to William and his consort. The English convention united with this hereditary transfer-according to which prince William was to administer the government alone during life; but after his death, and that of his consort, the princess Anne was to succeed to the crown; but at all times every Catholic prince was to be excluded from the throne of Great Britain and Ireland-a "declaration of the rights of the English nation;" a declaration which did not

alter, but renovate the free constitution of England, raising it from the abject state into which it had been brought by the despotism of the Stuarts. This was 66 an inestimable document of the final and glorious salvation of the national liberties, after a long and difficult contest; a positive acknowledgment of the most precious natural rights; a brilliant triumph of rational legitimacy over that of absurd haughtiness and audacious power. Thus was England freed from the rule of a persecuting bigot: thus ended the government of a race of monarchs whose leading principle had been to consider that their will was to be law to their subjects, and that the duty of their people was "passive obedience."

CHAPTER XVIII.

HISTORY OF THE RELIGION, GOVERNMENT, LITERATURE. ARTS, COMMERCE, MANNERS AND CUSTOMS, ETC., OF THIS PERIOD.

Religion. During the period of the commonwealth a system of almost universal toleration was adopted. There were a great variety of dissenters, called Sectaries: there were Independents, Brownists, Millenaries, Antinomians, Anabaptists, Arminians, Libertines, Familists, Enthusiasts, Seekers, Perfectists, Socinians, Arians, Anti-Trinitarians, Anti-Scripturists, and Sceptics; but so long as they refrained from disturbing the government or peace of the country, practical toleration was extended to all. The most persecuted sect in these times was that of the Quakers, whose indiscreet zeal frequently brought them into great trouble: so much had they suffered, indeed, under the republican government, while all other denominations of religionists remained unmolested, that they alone, of all the minor sects, were prepared to welcome or to acquiesce in the restoration of Charles II. to his throne. At the Restoration, liberty of conscience was promised and guaranteed but in the reign of Charles great rigour and severity were exercised against all nonconformists to episcopacy, which was again established with a high hand both in England and Scotland. James II. was more impru dent and arbitrary even than his predecessor. It has been

seen in the narrative of his reign, that he sought by all the means in his power to bring his subjects over to popery. Some, both of the clergy and laity, from his measures, changed their faith; but the community still remained essentially Protestant: it was, indeed, the encouragement which he gave to popery that deprived James of his crown. A witty courtier of Louis XIV., in whose court the dethroned monarch took refuge, said, no less truly than wittily :-"There goes a simpleton, who lost three kingdoms for a mass!"

Government. The character of the government in this period may be treated of in few words. Unwarned by the fate of his father, Charles II., on his restoration, was bent upon the recovery of the ancient powers of the crown; but the nation soon saw into his designs, and resolved to take away those remnants of despotism which still made a part of royal prerogative. The laws against heretics were repealed; a statute for holding triennial parliaments was enacted; and the Habeas-corpus Act, that great barrier of personal liberty, was established. The reign of James affords a most exemplary lesson both to kings and people. Hurried away by a spirit of despotism and popish zeal, he not only demanded unlimited obedience from his subjects, but sought to establish on the ruins of a religion held most dear to the nation, a faith which repeated acts of the legislature had proscribed. Seeing their liberty thus boldly attacked, even in its first principles, the people had recourse to that remedy which reason and nature dictated. They withdrew their allegiance from James, and considered themselves absolved from their oath to a monarch who himself disregarded the oath he had made to his subjects. The throne was declared_ vacant, and a new line of succession established, when an advantage was taken of the rare opportunity of entering into a compact between king and people. The Revolution of 1688, therefore, is the grand era of the English constitution. The Great Charter had marked out the limits within which the royal authority ought to be confined; some outworks were raised in the reign of Edward I.; but the circumvallation was not completed till the Revolution which seated the prince of Orange on the throne of England,

Literature. Few works of genius of the first class appeared in England during the commonwealth. There were men of rare talents living in that period; but for the most part it was a time when men wrote and thought as they

acted, merely for the passing moment, and not for posterity. At the Restoration, however, a change for the better came over the spirit of literature. Many celebrated productions were issued from the press during the reigns of Charles and James II. Among the poetical writers may be mentioned Cowley, Waller, Dryden, Butler, Denham, Davenant, Otway, Lee, Crowne, Etheridge, Wycherly, and last, and greatest of all, the immortal Milton, whose fine epic poem, Paradise Lost, has never been equalled in the whole range of ancient or modern literature. The most distinguished_prose writers were Baxter, Cudworth, Hobbes, Dr. Henry More, John Bunyan, sir William Temple, Izaak Walton, archbishop Leighton, Dr. Isaac Barrow, Dryden, and Clarendon. The productions of these authors are, for the most part, among the current literature of the present day; and some of them are of that undying nature that they will be familiar to the latest posterity.

and

Arts. The history of the fine arts during the present period may be dismissed with a very short notice: it was a period of general mediocrity-the age of the French school, the success of which was not equal to its ambition. Of Antonio Verrio, a Neapolitan by birth, whom Charles II. invited into England, and who was one of the best painters of his time, Walpole says that he was "an excellent painter for the sort of subjects on which he was employed; that is, without much invention, and with less taste, his exuberant pencil was ready at painting out gods, goddesses, kings, emperors, triumphs, over those public surfaces on which the eye never rests long enough to criticise, and where we should be sorry to place the works of a better master; I mean, ceilings and staircases. The New Testament and the Roman History cost him nothing but ultramarine: that, and marble columns and marble steps, he never spared." This was the general character of the historical paintings of this period. In portraitpainting, the reign of Charles II. was illustrated by the works of sir Peter Lely, a native of Westphalia: he was the most distinguished portrait-painter of his time; but his works are by no means equal to those of his predecessor in fame, Vandyke. "How came you, sir Peter," asked a nobleman, "to have so great a reputation? you know that I know you are no great painter." "My lord," replied Lely, "I know that I am not; but I am the best you have." The paintings of still life in this period were more remarkable than the por