e eloquence of Halifax. Their desire
for conciliation indeed was shown in an offer to confirm the existing
officers in their posts by Act of Parliament, and even to allow fresh
nominations of Catholics by the king under the same security. But James
had no wish for such a compromise, and the Houses were at once
prorogued.

[Sidenote: The Test set aside.]

The king resolved to obtain from the judges what he could not obtain
from Parliament. He remodelled the bench by dismissing four judges who
refused to lend themselves to his plans; and in the June of 1686 their
successors decided in the case of Sir Edward Hales, a Catholic officer
in the army, that a royal dispensation could be pleaded in bar of the
Test Act. The principle laid down by the judges "that it is a privilege
inseparably connected with the sovereignty of the King to dispense with
penal laws, and that according to his own judgment," was applied by
James with a reckless impatience of all decency and self-restraint.
Catholics were admitted into civil and military offices without stint,
and four Catholic peers were sworn as members of the Privy Council. The
laws which forbade the presence of Catholic priests in the realm or the
open exercise of Catholic worship were set at nought. A gorgeous chapel
was opened in the palace of St. James for the use of the king.
Carmelites, Benedictines, Franciscans, appeared in their religious garb
in the streets of London, and the Jesuits set up a crowded school in the
Savoy. The quick growth of discontent at these acts would have startled
a wiser man into prudence, but James prided himself on an obstinacy
which never gave way; and a riot which took place on the opening of a
Catholic chapel in the City was followed by the establishment of a camp
of thirteen thousand men at Hounslow to overawe the capital.

[Sidenote: Scotland and Ireland.]

The course which James intended to follow in England was shown indeed by
the course he was following in the sister kingdoms. In Scotland he acted
as a pure despot. At the close of Charles's reign the extreme
Covenanters or "wild Whigs" of the Western shires had formally renounced
their allegiance to a "prelatical" king. A smouldering revolt spread
over the country that was only held in check by the merciless cruelties
with which the royal troops avenged the "rabbling of priests" and the
outrages committed by the Whigs on the more prominent persecutors. Such
a revolt threw strength into the