High-commission and the other despotic institutions of the Tudors combined to strengthen the sovereign against the people and seemed to give him a power nearly irresistible. But the love of liberty innate in the Anglo-Saxon race and the powerful influence of the reformed religion united to compose a check to it; the folly of the first Stuart in advancing claims of divine and indefeasible right to sovereignty, which he had not courage to put to the proof, and the still greater folly of the second in attempting to reduce the theory of his pedantic sire to practice, roused the nation to opposition. The result has been related. At the very outset of the national resistance, the oppressive courts of Star-chamber and High-commission were swept away; the exercise of the feudal rights ceased, and one of the first acts of the Restoration was their legislative abolition.

With the Restoration there was an end to arbitrary and illegal taxation; the revenue of the crown was fixed; no money could be raised but by act of parliament, and the house of commons claimed and maintained the exclusive right to originate all money-bills. A still more important principle was established in 1665, namely, that of appropriating the supplies, which has since been rarely departed from, and which of necessity drew after it the practice of laying estimates before the house of commons. Henceforth that branch of the legislature has had an effectual control over the public expenditure, and is thus become a sharer in the executive.

The Habeas-corpus act put an end to arbitrary imprisonment; its efficacy can only be suspended by an act of the legislature. Royal proclamations ceased to encroach on the supremacy of parliament and the rights of the people. Few infractions of positive law were committed by the two last Stuarts; their encroachments on liberty were effected by means of compliant parliaments and servile and dependent lawyers.

Many evils however still remained. Judges were re

moveable at pleasure, and could not therefore act independently; juries were still occasionally called to account for their verdicts. The press was not yet released from its shackles these had been originally imposed by the Tudors; the number of presses and of men employed at them was limited, and every publication had to be previously submitted to a licenser. This was too powerful an instrument of despotism to be given up by the Long Parliament, and at no time was the press more jealously watched than during the Commonwealth; at the Restoration Clarendon took care that it should not be emancipated. The act for restraining the liberty of the press, however, expired in 1679. From that date it has, with a brief interruption *, been free in England, and the unsightly imprimatur no longer disfigures our books.

The great check on oppression by those in authority at the present day is the public press, which gives publicity to every act of injustice and arouses the general indignation against it. But in consequence of the slowness of communication and the want of public journals, the press was of little force in the time of the Stuarts, and numerous victims perished in prisons unknown and unlamented. Imprisonment alone was in those days (and it certainly had not been better in the earlier periods) a most grievous punishment. The prisons were noisome and filthy beyond conception, and the power of the gaoler was uncontrolled. There was no classification of prisoners; the pious sufferer for conscience, the learned minister of the Gospel, was confounded with the robber and the murderer, obliged to lie on straw, and exposed to cold, hunger, and disease. The mortality in the prisons was enormous, and the gaolfever, as it was significantly named, which often rushed from them at the time of the assizes, has swept away the bench, the bar, and the jury.

*The act was revived in 1685 for seven years, but finally expired in 1693.

Such then was the condition of England at the time of the expulsion of the House of Stuart. It is plain that the constitution had been considerably advanced and improved, but that it was still short of perfection. The trade of the country had also made corresponding advances, and it was during this period that England became properly speaking a great maritime power.

HOUSE OF STUART.-PART II.

CHAPTER I.

WILLIAM III. AND MARY II.*

1689-1694.

Convention parliament.-Affairs of Scotland.-Battle of Killicrankie.—Affairs of Ireland.-Siege of Derry.—Irish parliament.—Battle of the Boyne.— English parliament.-Conspiracy.-Taking of Athlone.—Battle of Aghrim. -Siege of Limerick.-Massacre of Glenco.-Battle of La Hogue.-Plots to restore James.-Death of the queen.

THE new reign was commenced (Feb. 14.) with a proclamation confirming all protestants in the offices which they held. The king then nominated the privy-council and appointed to the offices of state; in both cases selecting from the ranks of whigs and tories, with a preponderance however of the former. Danby was made president of the council; Halifax, privy-seal; Nottingham and Shrewsbury, secretaries of state. The treasury, admiralty, and chancery, were put into commission.

Judging it inexpedient, under the present circumstances of the country, to risk the experiment of a new election, the king and council resolved to convert the convention into a parliament. This was effected by the simple expedient of the king's going in state to the house of peers (18th), and addressing both houses from the throne. A bill declaring the lords and commons assembled at Westminster to be the two houses of parliament was then passed,

* Authorities :-Burnet, Harris, Oldmixon, &c.

and the royal assent being given (23rd), the convention became a parliament. In this act a new oath to be taken on the first of March was substituted for the old ones of allegiance and supremacy. It was refused by the primate and seven of his suffragans*; and among the temporal peers, by the duke of Newcastle, the earls of Lichfield, Exeter, Yarmouth, and Stafford, and the lords Griffin and Stawell. Hence the party of which they were the heads derived the name of Nonjurors; their principle was a blind, stupid veneration for absolute power, and for the hereditary divine rights of princes-a principle, if followed out, utterly subversive of every kind of liberty†.

A Bill of Rights the same in substance with the Declaration of Rights was passed. One of its provisions was, that all persons holding communion with the church of Rome, or marrying a papist, should be excluded from the crown and government, and that in such cases the people should be absolved from their allegiance, and the crown should descend to the next heir being a protestant.

The settlement of the revenue was an important question. The courtiers maintained that the revenue settled on the late king for life came of course to the present king; but the commons could only be induced to grant it for one year. They readily granted a sum of 600,000l. to remunerate the States for the expense they had been at; and on information of king James having landed in Ireland, they voted funds for an army and navy.

The coronation took place on the 11th of April; the bishop of London officiating in place of the nonjuring primate. Several titles and honours had previously been conferred. The marquess of Winchester was made duke of Bolton; lords Mordaunt and Churchill, earls of Monmouth

* Namely, Turner of Ely, Ken of Bath, Lake of Chichester, White of Peterborough, Lloyd of Norwich, Thomas of Worcester, and Frampton of Glou

cester.

†The pernicious distinction between a king de jure and a king de facto, now first came into operation. It answers no purpose but to foster disloyalty and occasion rebellion.