79, 1681 and 1684;
but after his ascension to the crown 1685, he threw off the mask, and
set himself might and main to advance popery, and exterminate the
protestant in-religion in these nations, and for that purpose set all
his engines at work to repeal the penal statutes against papists; but
that not speeding to his wish, he had recourse to his dispensing power
and to an almost boundless toleration; of which all had the benefit,
except the poor suffering remnant in Scotland who were still harrassed,
spoiled, hunted like partridges on the mountains and shot in the field.
Nay, such was his rage, that he said it would never be well, till all
the west of Scotland and south of Forth were made a hunting field; and
to recite the cruelties by his orders exercised in the west of England
by shooting, heading, hanging, and banishing ever seas those concerned
in Monmouth's affair, beggars all description. However matters go on; he
sends Castlemain to the pope; the pope's nuntio arrives in England; the
king declares himself a member of the royal society of jesuits,
imprisons the seven bishops in the tower, and threatens to convert
England to popery or die a martyr.--But the prince of Orange arriving
in England and his army forsaking him, he sets off in a yacht for
France, but is taken for a popish priest by some fishermen and brought
back. His affairs becoming desperate, he sets off again for France; from
thence, with 1800 French, he landed next year in Ireland being joined by
the bloody Irish papists. He, like his predecessors, had no small art in
dissimulation. Now he told them in plain terms, he would trust or give
commissions to no protestants; they stank in his nostrils; he had too
long caressed the damned church of England; but he would now do his
business without them. Accordingly a popish parliament was called,
wherein 3000 protestants were forfeited, and to be hanged and quartered
when taken, whereof many were plundered and killed, his cut-throats
boasting they would starve the one half and hang the other. In short,
they expected nothing but another general massacre. But being defeated
on the banks of the Boyn by king William, July 1, 1691. he set off to
France never to return. Here he continued till 1700, or by some 1701,
that he took a strange disease, which they were pleased to call a
lethargy, wherein he became quite stupid and senseless, and so died at
St. Germains in that situation, after he had lived ten years a fugi