HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



JAMES II. EXPEDITION OF MONMOUTH. 



JAMES II. was sixty-eight years of age when he 

 ascended the throne. He was a much more re- 

 spectable and industrious man than his brother, 

 but utterly deficient in the tact and easy carriage 

 which made Charles so popular. He began his 

 reign by declaring before the privy-council his 

 intention to govern solely by the laws, and to 

 maintain the existing church ; and such was the 

 confidence in his sincerity, that he soon became 

 very popular. Addresses poured in upon him 

 from all quarters, professing the most abject 

 devotion to his person. The parliament called 

 y him voted an ample revenue, and expressed 

 e greatest servility towards him in all things. 

 The remains of the Whig party still existed, 

 ough in exile in Holland, and there were some 

 istricts of the country where they were supposed 

 :o have considerable influence. The Duke of 

 Monmouth and the Earl of Argyll met in Holland, 

 and projected two separate invasions, for the 

 purpose of expelling King James. Argyll landed 

 in Scotland in May, but finding he could make 

 little impression among the people, he gave up the 

 enterprise, and tried to escape he was captured, 

 however, and executed at Edinburgh. A few days 

 before Argyll's capture Monmouth landed in 

 Dorsetshire, and the peasantry flocked to his 

 standard. At Taunton, June 20, he caused him- 

 self to be proclaimed king. Having attacked 

 the king's troops at Sedgemoor, near Bridge- 

 water, July 6, his infantry fought with some spirit, 

 but being deserted by the cavalry and by the 

 duke himself, were obliged to give way. Mon- 

 mouth was taken and executed. Many of his 

 followers were hanged without form of trial by 

 the royal troops, under the Earl of Feversham, 

 and a brutal officer, Colonel Percy Kirke ; and 

 others were afterwards put to death, with hardly 

 any more formality, by the celebrated Chief-justice 

 Jeffreys, whom the king sent down with a com- 

 mission to try the offenders. The butchery of 

 several hundred men of low condition, who were 

 unable of themselves to do any harm to the govern- 

 ment, was looked upon as a most unjustifiable 

 piece of cruelty, even if it had been legally done ; 

 and the principal blame was properly ascribed to 

 the king. 



ARBITRARY MEASURES OF THE KING. 



Encouraged by his successes, James conceived 

 that he might safely begin the process of getting 

 rid of those portions of the constitution which 

 were obstacles in his way towards absolute power. 

 On the plea of his supremacy over the church, he 

 took the liberty of dispensing with the test-oath 

 in favour of some Catholic officers, and thus broke 

 an act which was looked upon, under existing cir- 

 cumstances, as the chief safeguard of the Prot- 

 estant faith. His parliament, servile as it was in 

 temporal matters, took the alarm at this spiritual 

 danger, and gave the king so effectual a resistance 

 that he resorted to a dissolution. 



Heedless of these symptoms, he proclaimed, 

 April 4, 1687, a Declaration of Indulgence, sus- 

 pending all penal laws against Nonconformists, 

 for the purpose of relieving the Catholics, and 

 thus assumed the unconstitutional right of dis- 



pensing with acts of parliament. The nation was 

 thrown by this measure into a state of great 

 alarm ; even the clergy, who had been so eager 

 to preach an implicit obedience to the royal 

 will, began to see that it might be productive of 

 much danger. When James commanded that his 

 proclamation of toleration should be read in every 

 pulpit in the country, only 200 of the clergy obeyed. 

 Six of the bishops, with William Sancroft, arch- 

 bishop of Canterbury, joined in a respectful 

 petition against the order ; but the king declared 

 that document to be a seditious libel, and threw 

 the seven petitioners into the Tower. In June 

 1688, they were tried in Westminster Hall, and 

 not one of the judges venturing to say that the 

 Declaration of Indulgence was legal, to the infinite 

 joy of the nation they were acquitted. 



Blinded by religious zeal, the king proceeded 

 on his fatal course. In defiance of the law, he 

 held open intercourse with the pope, for the resto- 

 ration of Britain to the bosom of the Romish 

 Church. A court of High Commission a cruel 

 instrument of power under Charles I. was erected, 

 and before this every clergyman who gave any 

 offence to the king was summoned. He also 

 excited great indignation by violently thrusting a 

 Catholic upon Magdalen College, at Oxford, as 

 its head, and expelling the members for their 

 resistance to his will. He intrusted the govern- 

 ment of Ireland to a Romanist, Richard Talbot, 

 Earl of Tyrconnel, who hated the Protestant 

 settlers. Public feeling was wound to the highest 

 pitch of excitement by the queen, James's second 

 wife, Mary of Modena, being delivered (June 10, 

 1688) of a son, who might be expected to perpetu- 

 ate the Catholic religion in the country, and whom 

 many believed to be a supposititious child, brought 

 forward solely for that purpose. 



The disaffection produced by these circum- 

 stances extended to every class of the king's sub- 

 jects, except the small body of Roman Catholics, 

 many of whom could not help regarding the royal 

 measures as imprudent. The Tories were enraged 

 at the ruin threatened to the Church of England, 

 which they regarded as the grand support of con- 

 servative principles in the empire. The Whigs, 

 who had already made many strenuous efforts to 

 exclude or expel the king, were now more inflamed 

 against him than ever. The clergy, a popular 

 and influential body, were indignant at the injuries 

 inflicted upon their church ; and even the Dis- 

 senters, though comprehended in the general 

 toleration, saw too clearly through its motive, and 

 were too well convinced of the illegality of its 

 manner, and of the danger of its object, as affect- 

 ing the Protestant faith, to be exempted from 

 the general sentiment. But for the birth of the 

 Prince of Wales, the people at large might have 

 been contented to wait for the relief which was 

 to be expected, after the death of the king, from 

 the succession of the Princess of Orange, who 

 was a Protestant, and united to the chief military 

 defender of that interest in Europe. But this 

 hope was now shut out, and it was necessary to 

 resolve upon some decisive measures for the safety 

 of the national religion. 



THE REVOLUTION. 



In this crisis, some of the principal nobility and 

 gentry, with a few clergymen, united in a secret 



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