step, but to what was, in fact, the 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 bed-chamber 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 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 as 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. Even
when the wind lulled, and it did sail, it was
dispersed by a storm, and was obliged to put back
to refit. At last, on the first of November, one
thousand six hundred and eighty-eight, the
Protestant east wind, as it was long called,
began to blow; and on the third, the people
of Dover and the people of Calais saw a
fleet twenty miles long sailing gallantly by,
between the two places. On Monday, the
fifth, it anchored at Torbay, in Devonshire,
and the Prince, with a splendid retinue of
officers and men, marched into Exeter. But
the people in that western part of the country
had suffered so much in The Bloody Assize,
that they had lost heart. Few people joined
him, and he began to think of returning, and
publishing the invitation he had received
from those lords, as his justification for having
come at all. At this crisis, some of the gentry
joined him; the Royal army began to falter;
an engagement was signed, by which all who
set their hand to it, declared that they would
support one another in defence of the laws
and liberties of the three Kingdoms, of the
Protestant religion, and of the Prince of
Orange. From that time, the cause received
no check; the greatest towns in England
began, one after another, to declare for the
Prince; and he knew that it was all safe with
him when the University of Oxford offered to
melt down its plate if he wanted any money.

By this time the King was running about
in a pitiable way, touching people for the
King's evil in one place, reviewing his troops
in another, and bleeding from the nose in a
third. The young Prince was sent to
Portsmouth, Father Petre went off like a shot
to France, and there was a general and
swift dispersal of all the priests and friars.
One after another, the King's most important
officers and friends deserted him and
went over to the Prince. In the night,
his daughter Anne fled from Whitehall
Palace; and the Bishop of London, who had
once been a soldier, rode before her with a
drawn sword in his hand and pistols at his
saddle. "God help me," cried the miserable