duke of Monmouth
to all his offices and commands, from which, it appears to the house,
he had been removed by the influence of the duke of York: and that it
is the opinion of the house, that the prosecution of the Protestant
dissenters upon the penal laws is at this time grievous to the subject,
a weakening of the Protestant interest, an encouragement of Popery, and
dangerous to the peace of the kingdom.

The king passed some laws of no great importance: but the bill for
repealing the thirty-fifth of Elizabeth, he privately ordered the clerk
of the crown not to present to him. By this artifice, which was equally
disobliging to the country party as if the bill had been rejected, and
at the same time implied some timidity in the king, that salutary act
was for the present eluded. The king had often of himself attempted, and
sometimes by irregular means, to give indulgence to nonconformists: but
besides that he had usually expected to comprehend the Catholics in this
liberty, the present refractory disposition of the sectaries had much
incensed him against them; and he was resolved, if possible, to keep
them still at mercy.

The last votes of the commons seemed to be an attempt of forming
indirectly an association against the crown, after they found that their
association bill could not pass: the dissenting interest, the city, and
the duke of Monmouth, they endeavored to connect with the country party.
A civil war indeed never appeared so likely as at present; and it was
high time for the king to dissolve a parliament which seemed to have
entertained such dangerous projects. Soon after, he summoned another.
Though he observed, that the country party had established their
interest so strongly in all the electing boroughs, that he could not
hope for any disposition more favorable in the new parliament, this
expedient was still a prosecution of his former project, of trying every
method by which he might form an accommodation with the commons; and if
all failed, he hoped that he could the better justify to his people, at
least to his party, a final breach with them.

It had always been much regretted by the royalists, during the civil
wars, that the long parliament had been assembled at Westminster, and
had thereby received force and encouragement from the vicinity of a
potent and factious city, which had zealously embraced their party.
Though the king was now possessed of guards, which in some measure
overawed the popula