he English coast
would have brought serious political danger; for the reaction of popular
feeling which had begun in favour of James had been increased by the
pressure of the war, by the taxation, by the expulsion of the Nonjurors
and the discontent of the clergy, by the panic of the Tories at the
spirit of vengeance which broke out among the triumphant Whigs, and
above all by the presence of James in Ireland. A new party, that of the
Jacobites or adherents of King James, was forming around the Nonjurors;
and it was feared that a Jacobite rising would follow the appearance of
a French fleet on the coast.

[Sidenote: Schomberg in Ireland.]

In such a state of affairs William judged rightly that to yield to the
Whig thirst for vengeance would have been to ruin his cause. He
dissolved the Parliament, which had refused to pass a Bill of Indemnity
for all political offences, and called a new one to meet in March. The
result of the elections proved that William had only expressed the
general temper of the nation. In the new Parliament the bulk of the
members proved Tories. The boroughs had been alienated from the Whigs by
their refusal to pass the Indemnity, and their desire to secure the
Corporations for their own party by driving from them all who had taken
part in the Tory misgovernment under Charles or James. In the counties
the discontent of the clergy told as heavily against the Whigs; and
parson after parson led his flock in a body to the poll. The change of
temper in the Parliament necessarily brought about a change among the
king's advisers. William accepted the resignation of the more violent
Whigs among his counsellors and placed Danby at the head of affairs; and
in May the Houses gave their assent to the Act of Grace. The king's aim
in his sudden change of front was not only to meet the change in the
national spirit, but to secure a momentary lull in English faction which
would suffer him to strike at the rebellion in Ireland. While James was
king in Dublin the attempt to crush treason at home was a hopeless one;
and so urgent was the danger, so precious every moment in the present
juncture of affairs, that William could trust no one to bring the work
as sharply to an end as was needful save himself. In the autumn of the
year 1689 the Duke of Schomberg, an exiled Huguenot who had followed
William in his expedition to England and was held to be one of the most
skilful captains of the time, had been sent with a sma