ng, both from personal and political considerations,
conceived a violent animosity. By this conduct he gratified the
prejudices of the whole English nation: but, as he crossed the
inclinations of Charles, who sought peace by compliance with France, he
had much declined in the favor and affections of that monarch.

James, on his accession, found it so much his interest to live on
good terms with the heir apparent, that he showed the prince some
demonstrations of friendship; and the prince, on his part, was not
wanting in every instance of duty and regard towards the king. On
Monmouth's invasion, he immediately despatched over six regiments of
British troops, which were in the Dutch service; and he offered to take
the command of the king's forces against the rebels. How little however
he might approve of James's administration, he always kept a total
silence on the subject, and gave no countenance to those discontents
which were propagated with such industry throughout the nation.

It was from the application of James himself that the prince first
openly took any part in English affairs. Notwithstanding the lofty ideas
which the king had entertained of his prerogative, he found that the
edicts emitted from it still wanted much of the authority of laws, and
that the continuance of them might in the issue become dangerous both
to himself and to the Catholics, whom he desired to favor. An act of
parliament alone could insure the indulgence or toleration which he had
labored to establish; and he hoped that, if the prince would declare in
favor of that scheme, the members who had hitherto resisted all his own
applications, would at last be prevailed with to adopt it. The consent,
therefore, of the prince to the repeal of the penal statutes and of the
test was strongly solicited by the king; and in order to engage him to
agree to that measure, hopes were given,[*] that England would second
him in all those enterprises which his active and extensive genius had
with such success planned on the continent. He was at this time the
centre of all the negotiations of Christendom.

* Bennet vol. i. p. 711. D'Avanx, April 15, 1688.

The emperor and the king of Spain, as the prince well knew, were enraged
by the repeated injuries which they had suffered from the ambition of
Lewis, and still more by the frequent insults which his pride had made
them undergo. He was apprised of the influence of these monarchs over
the Catholic princ