When the parliament re-assembled iu November, the king told them that in the late crisis he had employed a great many Roman Catholio officers, and that he had, in their favour, by his own authority dispensed with the legal teat of conformity to the Established Church to be taken by every person appointed to any public office. This was too much to be borne without some expressions of dissatisfaction and alarm ; but the resistance of the House of Commons was exceedingly timid and feeble. A very respectful and submissive address having been answered by the king with great arrogance and violence, nothing further was done in the matter; the supplies were at once voted; and one of the members, who had ventured to observe, when the king's answer was read, that he hoped they were all Englishmen and trot to be frightened by a few hard words, was even sent by a vote to the Tower for his audacity. In the Lords a more formidable opposition seemed to be threatened, to get rid of which the parliament was prorogued after it had sat for little more than a week. One of the acts of this parliament was to extinguish completely the liberty of the press by the revival of an act originally passed for two years in 1662 (the 13 and 14 Car. II., c. 33), and afterwards extended for seven years in 1664 (by the 16 Car. II., c. 8).
James's persevering attempts however to establish the dispensing power, which in the particular inatnneo he chose to begin with was an attack upon the established religion as well as upon the law, eventually involved him in a dispute with the Church, which was productive of the most important consequence,. In the beginning of April 16S7, be published a declaration at once suspending and dispensing with all the penal laws against Dissenters, and all tests, including even the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, directed to be taken by persons appointed to offices civil or military. In Ireland all places of power under the crown were immediately put into the hands of Catholics. The Earl of Castlem ine was at the same time publicly sent as ambassador extraordinary to Rome, to express the kings obeisance to the pope, and to effect the reconcilement of the kingdom with the holy see. In return the pope sent a nuncio to England, who resided openly in London during the remainder of the reign, and was solemnly received at court, in face of the act of parliament declaring any com munication with the pope to be high treason. Four Roman Catholic bishops were consecrated in the king's chapel, and cent to exercise the episcopal function, each in his particular diocese. Even in Scotland and England, as well as in Ireland, offices of all kinds, both in the army and in the state, were now filled with Roman Catholics; even those of the ministers and others who had shown themselves disposed to go farthest along with the king were dismissed, or visibly lost his favour, if they refused to conform to the ancient religion. An attempt
had already been made to compel tho University of Cambridge to confer a degree of Master of Arts on a Benedictine monk. This was not persevered in ; but soon after a vacancy having happened in the presidency of Magdalen College, Oxford, the vice-president and fellows mere ordered by royal mandate to fill it up by the election of a person named Farmer, a late convert to popery (for whom was afterwards substituted Parker, bishop of Oxford, who avowed himself a Romanist at heart), and on their refusal were cited before fin ecclesiastical commission, and expelled. On the 27th of April 1688, the king pub lished a second declaration of indulgence to Dissenters from the Established church, and commanded it to be read by the clergy imme diately after divine service in nil the churches. On this Saucroft, archbishop of Canterbury, and aix bishops, Lloyd of St. Asaph, Ken of Bath and Wells, Turner of Ely, Lake of Chichester, White of Peterborough, and Trelawny of Bristol, met in the archbishop's palace at Lambeth, the 18th of May, and drew up a petition to the king, representing their aversion to obey the order, for many reasons, and especially because the declaration was founded upon such a dis pensing power as parliament had often declared illegal. For this they were all, on the 8th of June, sent to the Tower. and afterwards, on the 29th, brought to trial before the Court of King's Bench, on the charge of publishing a false, fictitious, malicious, pernicious, and seditious libel, when a verdict of Not Guilty was pronounced by the jury, which was received with acclamations by the whole kingdom as FA great natioual deliverance. This defeat however in no degree checked at the moment the infatuated king. To quote the summary of Hume, " He struck out two of the judges, Towel and Holloway, who had appeared to favour the bishop; ho issued orders to prose cute all those clergymen who had not read his declaration, that is, the whole Church of England, two hundred excepted ; be sent a mandate to the new Fellows whom he had obtruded on Magdalen College to elect for president, in the room of Parker lately deceased, one Gifford, a Doctor of the Sorbonne, and titular bishop of Madaura: and he is even said to have nominated the same person to the see of Oxford." It was in the midst of this great contest with the Church and the nation that, on the 10th of June, a son was announced to have been born to James, a piece of intelligence which was very gene rally received with a strong suspicion that the child was supposititious and that the queen bad never been delivered or pregnant at all. For this notion however it is now generally admitted that there was no good ground.