18 I. \TRODUCTORY. 



the assessment, as any one can see on examination, was 

 scandalously partial *, and was never revised when the distri- 

 bution of wealth in England had made it ludicrously unequal. 

 But an income tax levied on one kind of property at twenty 

 per cent, of its annual value, if it were equitably imposed, was 

 a very serious sacrifice. 



The other principal reform, already alluded to, was the 

 formal reversal of a doctrine which had been dominant since 

 the Reformation. It had been a universal tenet, acted on by 

 all European monarchs, that the subject should be of the 

 religion of his sovereign. The first people who repudiated 

 this doctrine were the Dutch, and they maintained a war, 

 nearly sixty years in duration, in order to give effect to it. 

 James II was no doubt very mistaken in his policy, and 

 utterly ignorant of how great the task was which he put on 

 himself, when he attempted by the force of his authority to 

 convert his people to his own faith. That he intended it, and 

 contemplated it, as a matter requiring only time and patience, 

 may be seen in the letters of his discomfited agents after his 

 rebuff at Magdalen College, Oxford 2 . But James was 

 entirely logical in his action. It was a principle which had 

 been constantly affirmed in England as elsewhere, that the 

 sovereign's religion should be his people's religion. The sec- 

 taries of the Parliamentary war disputed it, and the Presby- 

 terians who began the struggle made a compact with the 

 younger Charles under which they gave him their assistance 

 against that enemy, whom they measured so ill, on the 

 condition of his conformity. 



The Revolution affirmed the reverse, that the monarch 

 should be of his subjects' religion, that is should be a 

 * Protestant.' Parliament did not define his creed further, 

 indeed could not. William was a Dutch Calvinist ; Anne a 

 High Church woman; George was a German Lutheran. 



1 For example, the assessment of Oxford City and the Colleges cannot be fair 

 cither relatively, or in the case of the former to other towns. 

 3 See the publication of the Oxford Historical Society; Magdalen College. 



