ertainly not intended by him, and which
could not have been made out to any jury that had been less prejudiced,
or under any other direction than that of Jeffreys. The real motive was,
the desire of punishing an eminent dissenting teacher, whose reputation
was high among his sect, and who was supposed to favour the political
opinions of the Whigs. He was found guilty, and Jeffreys, in passing
sentence upon him, loaded him with the coarsest reproaches and bitterest
taunts. He called him sometimes, by way of derision, a saint, sometimes,
in plainer terms, an old rogue; and classed this respectable divine, to
whom the only crime imputed was the having spoken disrespectfully of the
bishops of a communion to which he did not belong, with the infamous
Oates, who had been lately convicted of perjury. He finished with
declaring, that it was a matter of public notoriety that there was a
formed design to ruin the king and the nation, in which this old man was
the principal incendiary. Nor is it improbable that this declaration,
absurd as it was, might gain belief at a time when the credulity of the
triumphant party was at its height.

Of this credulity it seems to be no inconsiderable testimony, that some
affected nicety which James had shown with regard to the ceremonies to be
used towards the French ambassador, was highly magnified, and represented
to be an indication of the different tone that was to be taken by the
present king, in regard to foreign powers, and particularly to the court
of Versailles. The king was represented as a prince eminently jealous of
the national honour, and determined to preserve the balance of power in
Europe, by opposing the ambitious projects of France at the very time
when he was supplicating Louis to be his pensioner, and expressing the
most extravagant gratitude for having been accepted as such. From the
information which we now have, it appears that his applications to Louis
for money were incessant, and that the difficulties were all on the side
of the French court. Of the historians who wrote prior to the inspection
of the papers in the foreign office in France, Burnet is the only one who
seems to have known that James's pretensions of independency with respect
to the French king were (as he terms them) only a show; but there can now
be no reason to doubt the truth of the anecdote which he relates, that
Louis soon after told the Duke of Villeroy, that if James showed any
apparent unea