Protestant subjects. It had been respected by Richelieu even in his
victory over the Huguenots, and only lightly tampered with by Mazarin.
But from the beginning of his reign Lewis had resolved to set aside its
provisions, and his revocation of it at the end of 1685 was only the
natural close of a progressive system of persecution. The revocation was
followed by outrages more cruel than even the bloodshed of Alva.
Dragoons were quartered on Protestant families, women were flung from
their sick-beds into the streets, children were torn from their mothers'
arms to be brought up in Catholicism, ministers were sent to the
galleys. In spite of the royal edicts which forbade even flight to the
victims of these horrible atrocities a hundred thousand Protestants
fled over the borders, and Holland, Switzerland, the Palatinate, were
filled with French exiles. Thousands found refuge in England, and their
industry established in the fields east of London the silk trade of
Spitalfields.

[Sidenote: James and the Parliament.]

But while Englishmen were looking with horror on these events in France
James was taking advantage of the position in which as he believed they
placed him. The news of the revocation drew from James expressions of
delight. The rapid increase of the conversions to Catholicism which
followed on the "dragonnades" raised in him hopes of as general an
apostasy in his own dominions. His tone took a new haughtiness and
decision. He admitted more Catholic officers into his fresh regiments.
He dismissed Halifax from the Privy Council on his refusal to consent to
a plan for repealing the Test Act. He met the Parliament on its
reassembling in November with a haughty declaration that whether legal
or no his grant of commissions to Catholics must not be questioned, and
with a demand of supplies for his new troops. Loyal as was the temper of
the Houses, their alarm for the Church, their dread of a standing army,
was yet stronger than their loyalty. The Commons by the majority of a
single vote deferred the grant of supplies till grievances were
redressed, and demanded in their address the recall of the illegal
commissions on the ground that the continuance of the Catholic officers
in their posts "may be taken to be a dispensing with that law without
Act of Parliament." The Lords took a bolder tone; and the protest of the
bishops against any infringement of the Test Act expressed by Bishop
Compton of London was backed by th