was commanded by WILLIAM, PRINCE OF ORANGE, then in his 22nd year. He retired into Amsterdam, and laid the surrounding country under water. The government, headed by the pensionary JOHN DE WITT, a great and virtuous statesman, but the firm opponent of the house of Nassau, shrunk from such extremities, and inclined to peace. This excited the fury of the populace; the great towns rose in tumult; the brothers De Witt were barbarously massacred; the prince of Orange was elected to the office of stadtholder, which had been vacant since his father's death in 1650; and under his guidance the people were again united in defence of their independence. There is one certain means," said the prince, "by which I can be sure never to see my country's ruin-I will die in the last ditch." In the following campaign a coalition between the empire, Spain, and Holland, forced Louis to act on the defensive; while Charles, though he continued the war at sea with doubtful success, had new difficulties to occupy him at home, in the increasing indignation of the people and the altered temper of the parliament.

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The people were thoroughly alarmed at the influence of France and the growth of Catholicism. Parliament, meeting on Feb. 4, 1673, complained of a Declaration of Indulgence by which the king had suspended the penal laws. Charles gave way, and the TEST ACT was passed, binding all persons holding any public office to receive the sacrament in the established church, and to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, with another, abjuring belief in transubstantiation. In consequence of this, lord Clifford and other Catholic noblemen resigned their offices; and the duke of York gave up the command of the fleet to prince Rupert. New offence was given by the duke of York's marriage to Mary of Modena, against which the commons in vain protested. The opposition now found an able leader in the versatile and unprincipled Anthony Ashley Cooper, already mentioned as lord Ashley, and now earl of Shaftesbury. He had been made lord Chancellor Nov. 17, 1672, but was deprived of the seals Nov. 9, 1673. The duke of Buckingham also joined the opposition, and the Cabal ministry was broken up. The office of lord treasurer was conferred on Thomas Osborne viscount Latimer, who was soon created earl of DANBY. After the Revolution he was made marquis of Carmarthen and duke of Leeds. He was an honest statesman, and opposed to the French policy, but of high monarchical principles.

Finding that he could obtain no supplies, Charles made a separate peace with Holland (Feb. 9, 1674), receiving 300,000l. from the States. He even affected to yield to the desire of the commons, that he would support the Dutch against France, at the very time when he secured the renewal of his pension from Louis as a bribe

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for his neutrality (Feb. 1676). By the advice of Danby and sir William Temple, he arranged a marriage between the prince of Orange and the princess Mary, daughter of the duke of York, who afterwards reigned as WILLIAM AND MARY (Nov. 4, 1677). Peace was concluded between France and Holland at Nimeguen (Aug. 10, 1678). During the last three years the opposition in parliament had constantly gained strength, and an event now occurred which made the No Popery" party for a time triumphant. This was the discovery of the pretended "POPISH PLOT" by TITUS OATES, a man of infamous character, who was first an Anabaptist, then a clergyman, next a convert to Romanism and a member of the English college of St. Omer, from which he had been expelled, but where he had obtained much information useful for his present purpose. He caused the king to be informed of a plot against his life, and himself laid an information before sir Edmondsbury Godfrey, an active justice of the peace, to the following effect:-The pope had delegated the sovereignty of Great Britain to the Jesuits; the king was to be assassinated as a heretic; London was to be fired, and the Protestants everywhere massacred; the crown was to be offered to James as a gift from the pope, on condition of the extirpation of Protestantism; and, in case of his refusal, he also was doomed to death. The chief agent in the plot was said to be Père la Chaise, the confessor of Louis XIV., but the duke of York's confessor was also implicated (Aug. 1678). When examined before the council, Oates contradicted both himself and well-known facts in the grossest Nevertheless he obtained credence from the people, and even from the ministers, while the opposition took up the "plot" as a party weapon. Coleman, the late queen's confessor, was arrested; and his papers furnished evidence, not indeed of the plot, but of a plot with France for converting the nation and bribing the king to popery. At this juncture the magistrate, sir Edmondsbury Godfrey, was found murdered in a ditch at Primrose Hill; and his death, the real manner of which is still a mystery, was universally ascribed to the Papists (Oct. 15). Charles treated the whole matter with characteristic levity, saying that "he was accused of being in a plot against his own life;" but the duke of York insisted on inquiry; while Danby, in a strong anti-Catholic spirit, laid the case before parliament at its meeting (Oct. 21). A solemn fast was appointed; addresses were voted; several Catholic peers were committed to the Tower; both houses declared their belief in the plot; and, amidst this excitement, an act was passed to exclude Catholics from either house of parliament. The commons proceeded to impeach Danby of high treason, on the evidence of a letter produced by Montagu, the ambassador at Paris, demanding money from Louis for the king

manner.

(Dec. 21); but the lords refused to commit him, and Charles prorogued the parliament (Dec. 30), which was soon afterwards dissolved, having sat for 18 years (Jan. 24, 1679).

Meanwhile the "plot" went on bravely. When Oates was rewarded with a lodging in Whitehall, and a pension of 12001. a year, he naturally found imitators. A wretch, named William Bedloe, came forward with new evidence; and both the informers began to attack the queen. Executions became frequent. The first victim was Coleman (Dec. 3). He was followed to the scaffold by three priests (Jan. 24); and three of the queen's servants suffered for the murder of Godfrey on the sole evidence of Bedloe (Feb.). The new elections were decidedly in favour of the opposition, and it was thought prudent for the duke of York to retire to Brussels.

Parliament met on March 6, 1679, in a temper most hostile to the court. The impeachment of Danby was revived, and he was committed to the Tower, though he had received a pardon from the king (April 16 the privilege thus asserted was confirmed by the Act of Settlement in 1701). Charles consented to govern by the advice of a council of 30 persons, of which Shaftesbury was president; the earl of SUNDERLAND (Robert Spenser) being secretary of state. A sort of inner council, or cabinet, was formed by sir William Temple, Shaftesbury, Sunderland, and lord HALIFAX (George Savile). By the influence of Shaftesbury, a bill was brought into the commons to exclude the duke of York from the succession to the throne, and was carried by a majority of 79; but its progress was stopped by the dissolution of parliament (May, 1679).

To this parliament we owe the celebrated HABEAS CORPUS ACT, "for the better securing the liberty of the subject, and for prevention of imprisonments beyond the seas (31 Car. II. c. 2). It forbids the judges, under severe penalties, to refuse to any prisoner a writ of habeas corpus, directing the gaoler to produce the body of the prisoner in court, and to certify the cause of his imprisonment. It requires that every prisoner shall be indicted the first term after his commitment, and tried in the subsequent term. It secures a person, once set free by order of the court, from being again committed for the same offence. This statute forms a safeguard of our liberties only second to Magna Charta, of which it is the necessary complement.

Scotland had now been driven into open rebellion by the tyranny of Lauderdale and Sharp, archbishop of St. Andrews and a recreant Presbyterian. As early as 1666 an insurrection broke out in the west, where the strength of the Covenanters lay; but the insurgents were defeated at the Pentland Hills (Nov. 28), and many of them were executed. From this time the penal laws were enforced most

cruelly by the council of Scotland, their chief agent being colonel JOHN GRAHAM OF CLAVERHOUSE, afterwards VISCOUNT Dundee. Sharp was the chief object of popular hatred. One James Mitchell tried to assassinate him in 1668; and he was at length cruelly murdered by a party of Covenanters at Magus Muir in Fifeshire (May 3, 1679). The assassins retired towards Glasgow, gathered an armed force, and defeated a small body of cavalry under Claverhouse at Drumclog (June 1). They made themselves masters of Glasgow, and raised an army of 8000 men; but were totally defeated and dispersed at Bothwell Bridge, on the Clyde, by the duke of Monmouth, whom the king had sent on a special commission into Scotland (June 22, 1679).

That unfortunate nobleman now begins to play an important part in state affairs. He was Charles's favourite illegitimate son, by Lucy Waters, whom it was afterwards pretended that the king had married. He was of a mild and generous disposition, but utterly wanting in judgment and firmness: hence he easily became the tool of the opposition; and in the celebrated poem of Dryden he is Absalom, and Shaftesbury Achitophel. He was especially odious to the duke of York as a possible rival for the crown.

The first success of the anti-Catholic party was followed by some reaction. The accusations of Oates and Bedloe had hitherto insured conviction; but they now received a check in the acquittal of sir George Wakeman, the queen's physician, and three others (July 18). The duke of York returned from the continent, and superseded Monmouth as lord high commissioner in Scotland, where he renewed the cruelties of Lauderdale. Shaftesbury was dismissed (Nov. 17), and the council modified. But the flagging credit of the plot was revived by a fresh informer named Dangerfield, who accused the Presbyterians as well as the Papists. This new invention was called the "Meal-tub Plot," from the place where the papers were alleged to have been discovered. Meanwhile Shaftesbury was bent on revenging his disgrace. He procured many addresses praying for the speedy meeting of parliament; while the court party got up counter addresses, expressing abhorrence of such an interference with the king's prerogative. Hence the two great parties of country and court obtained the appellations of Addressers and Abhorrers, which were soon superseded by the nicknames of WHIG and TORY. To keep up the excitement, Shaftesbury made a formal presentment to the grand jury of Middlesex, with a view to indicting the duke of York as a Popish recusant (June 26, 1680); but the jury were dismissed by the chief justice Scroggs. This summer Monmouth made a progress through the west of England, and was received almost as a king (Aug. 1680).

At length the new parliament assembled (Oct. 21, 1680), and proved more violent than the last in their hostility. They renewed the vote of faith in the plot, and rewarded the principal informers. The Exclusion Bill passed the commons by a large majority (Nov. 15). In the lords it was supported by Shaftesbury, Sunderland, and Essex, but opposed by Halifax in a speech of surpassing ability, and thrown out by 63 to 33, after a debate of unprecedented length, during the whole of which the king was present. The commons gave vent to their disappointment by the impeachment of the Catholic lords who were prisoners in the Tower. The aged earl of Stafford was found guilty, after a trial of six days, and Charles had the weakness to consent to his death; but the shamelessness of the witnesses on his trial, and the sympathy which he excited on the scaffold, sealed the fate of the "plot," and his was the last blood shed for it (Dec. 29, 1680). An end was put to the violence of parliament by a dissolution (Jan. 10, 1681).

A new parliament, the last in Charles's reign, was convened at Oxford (March 21, 1681). The earl of Shaftesbury, the city members, and other leading exclusionists, came with numerous followers, many of them armed; and the king's guards were mustered. The parliament consisted nearly of the same members as the last; they showed the same spirit, and took up the same measures the impeachment of Danby, the Popish plot, and the Exclusion Bill. But they had over-estimated their strength; and when the king, who had just concluded another peusion-treaty with France, ventured on the decisive step of a dissolution in a week after their meeting (March 28), it became evident that he was backed by a strong national party. In fact, the counsels of "Achitophel" had been "turned into folly," or rather Shaftesbury's advice had been foolish from the first. No confidence could be reposed in his character; the exposure of the "plot" had recoiled on those who adopted it as a party weapon; and the native loyalty of the English revolted from the exclusion of the rightful heir, and still more from the mad scheme of setting a bastard on the throne. A reaction had set in, which the court followed up without even a pretence of mercy or moderation. While the clergy preached "passive obedience" and "non-resistance," servile judges and packed juries began those judicial murders which have handed down the names of SCROGGS and JEFFREYS to perpetual infamy. The first victim was Stephen College, a London joiner, who had been in arms at Oxford. He was condemned for conspiracy on the testimony of the very same wretches who had lately given evidence against the Catholics, and who were now taken into the pay of the court. Shaftesbury himself was next committed on a charge of high treason; but the grand