ce, he was determined still further to obviate all
inconveniences; and he summoned the new parliament to meet at Oxford.
The city of London showed how just a judgment he had formed of their
dispositions. Besides reelecting the same members, they voted thanks to
them for their former behavior, in endeavoring to discover the depth of
the horrid and hellish Popish plot, and to exclude the duke of York,
the principal cause of the ruin and misery impending over the nation.
Monmouth with fifteen peers presented a petition against assembling the
parliament at Oxford, "where the two houses," they said, "could not be
in safety; but would be easily exposed to the swords of the Papists and
their adherents, of whom too many had crept into his majesty's guards."
These insinuations, which pointed so evidently at the king himself, were
not calculated to persuade him, but to inflame the people.

The exclusionists might have concluded, both from the king's dissolution
of the last parliament, and from his summoning of the present to meet
at Oxford, that he was determined to maintain his declared resolution of
rejecting their favorite bill; but they still flattered themselves, that
his urgent necessities would influence his easy temper, and finally gain
them the ascendant. The leaders came to parliament, attended not only by
their servants, but by numerous bands of their partisans. The four
city members in particular were followed by great multitudes, wearing
ribbons, in which were woven these words, "No Popery! No slavery!" The
king had his guards regularly mustered: his party likewise endeavored to
make a show of their strength; and on the whole, the assembly at Oxford
rather bore the appearance of a tumultuous Polish diet, than of a
regular English parliament.

The king, who had hitherto employed the most gracious expressions to all
his parliaments, particularly the two last, thought proper to address
himself to the present in a more authoritative manner. He complained of
the unwarrantable proceedings of the former house of commons; and said,
that, as he would never use arbitrary government himself, neither would
he ever suffer it in others. By calling, however, this parliament so
soon, he had sufficiently shown, that no past irregularities could
inspire him with a prejudice against those assemblies. He now afforded
them, he added, yet another opportunity of providing for the public
safety; and to all the world had given one evidence m