the penalties imposed by these laws,
and also for the purpose of giving them civil and military offices,
from which the Test Act excluded them (S477). James also established
a new High Commission Court[2] (S488), and made the infamous Judge
Jeffreys the head of this despotic tribunal. This court had the
supervision of all churches and institutions of education. Its main
object was to further the spread of Catholicism, and to silence those
clergymen who preached against that faith. The King appointed a
Catholic president of Magdalen College, Oxford, and expelled from the
college all who opposed the appointment. Later, he issued two
Declarations of Indulgence, 1687, 1688, in which he proclaimed
universal religious toleration (S488). It was generally believed that
under cover of these Declarations the King intended to favor the
ascendancy of Catholicism. Seven bishops, who petitioned for the
privilege of declining to read the Declarations from their pulpits,
were imprisoned, but on their trial were acquitted by a jury in full
sympathy with them (S489).

[2] New High Commission Court: see S19 of this Summary.

These acts by the King, together with the fact that he had greatly
increased the standing army, and had stationed it just outside of
London, caused great alarm throughout England (S488). The majority of
the people of both political parties (S489) believed that James was
plotting to "subverty and extirpate the Protestant religion and the
laws and liberties of the kingdom."

[3] See the language of the Bill of Rights (Constitutional Documents),
p. xxxi.

Still, so long as the King remained childless, the nation was
encouraged by the hope that James's daughter Mary might succeed him.
She was known to be a decided Protestant, and she had married William,
Prince of Orange, the head of the Protestant Republic of Holland. But
the birth of a son to James (1688) put an end to that hope.
Immediately a number of leading Whigs and Tories (SS479, 490) united
in sending an invitation to the Prince of Orange to come over to
England with an army to protect Parliament against the King backed by
his standing army.

24. William and Mary; Declaration of Right; Results of the Revolution.

William came; James fled to France. A Convention Parliament[4] drew
up a Declaration of Right which declared that the King had vacated the
throne, and the crown was therefore offered to William and Mary
(S494). They accepted. Thus by