terly as it condemned the Partition Treaties, it at once
supported William in his demand for a withdrawal of the French troops,
and authorized him to conclude a defensive alliance with Holland, which
would give that State courage to join in the demand. The disclosure of a
new Jacobite plot strengthened William's position. The hopes of the
Jacobites had been raised in the preceding year by the death of the
young Duke of Gloucester, the only living child of the Princess Anne,
and who as William was childless ranked, after his mother, as
heir-presumptive of the throne. William was dying, the health of Anne
herself was known to be precarious; and to the partisans of James it
seemed as if the succession of his son, the boy who was known in later
life as the Old Pretender, was all but secure. But Tory as the
Parliament was, it had no mind to undo the work of the Revolution. When
a new Act of Succession was laid before the Houses in 1701 not a voice
was raised for James or his son. By the ordinary rules of heritage the
descendants of the daughter of Charles the First, Henrietta of Orleans,
whose only child had married the Duke of Savoy, would come next as
claimants; but the house of Savoy was Catholic and its pretensions were
passed over in the same silence. No other descendants of Charles the
First remained, and the Parliament fell back on his father's line.
Elizabeth, the daughter of James the First, had married the Elector
Palatine; but of her twelve children all had died save one. This was
Sophia, the wife of the late and the mother of the present Elector of
Hanover. It was in Sophia and the heirs of her body, being Protestants,
that the Act of Settlement vested the Crown. But the jealousy of a
foreign ruler accompanied this settlement with remarkable provisions.
It was enacted that every English sovereign must be in communion with
the Church of England as by law established. All future kings were
forbidden to leave England without consent of Parliament, and foreigners
were excluded from all public posts, military or civil. The independence
of justice, which had been inadequately secured by the Bill of Rights,
was now established by a clause which provided that no judge should be
removed from office save on an address from Parliament to the Crown. The
two principles that the king acts only through his ministers and that
these ministers are responsible to Parliament were asserted by a
requirement that all public business shou