far as he could all
means of government. For a few days there was a wild burst of panic and
outrage in London, but the orderly instinct of the people soon
reasserted itself. The Lords who were at the moment in the capital
provided on their own authority as Privy Councillors for the more
pressing needs of administration, and quietly resigned their authority
into William's hands on his arrival. The difficulty which arose from the
absence of any person legally authorized to call Parliament together was
got over by convoking the House of Peers, and forming a second body of
all members who had sat in the Commons in the reign of Charles the
Second together with the Aldermen and Common Councillors of London. Both
bodies requested William to take on himself the provisional government
of the kingdom, and to issue circular letters inviting the electors of
every town and county to send up representatives to a Convention which
met on the 22nd of January 1689. In the new Convention both Houses were
found equally resolved against any recall of or negotiation with the
fallen king. They were united in entrusting a provisional authority to
the Prince of Orange. But with this step their unanimity ended. The
Whigs, who formed a majority in the Commons, voted a resolution which,
illogical and inconsistent as it seemed, was well adapted to unite in
its favour every element of the opposition to James, the Churchman who
was simply scared by his bigotry, the Tory who doubted the right of a
nation to depose its king, the Whig who held the theory of a contract
between King and People. They voted that King James, "having endeavoured
to subvert the constitution of this kingdom by breaking the original
contract between King and People, and by the advice of Jesuits and other
wicked persons having violated the fundamental laws, and having
withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, has abdicated the Government, and
that the throne is thereby vacant." But in the Lords where the Tories
were still in the ascendant the resolution was fiercely debated.
Archbishop Sancroft with the high Tories held that no crime could bring
about a forfeiture of the crown and that James still remained king, but
that his tyranny had given the nation a right to withdraw from him the
actual exercise of government and to entrust his functions to a Regency.
The moderate Tories under Danby's guidance admitted that James had
ceased to be king but denied that the throne could be vacant,