ce which the laws insured to the princess; and the English
Protestants, on the other, from the prospect of her succession, still
entertained hopes of obtaining at last a peaceable and a safe redress
of all their grievances. But when a son was born to the king, both
the prince and the English nation were reduced to despair, and saw no
resource but in a confederacy for their mutual interests. And thus
the event which James had so long made the object of his most ardent
prayers, and from which he expected the firm establishment of his
throne, proved the immediate cause of his ruin and downfall.

Zuylestein, who had been sent over to congratulate the king on the birth
of his son, brought back to the prince invitations from most of the
great men in England, to assist them by his arms in the recovery of
their laws and liberties. The bishop of London, the earls of Danby,
Nottingham, Devonshire, Dorset, the duke of Norfolk, the lords Lovelace
Delamere, Paulet, Eland, Mr. Hambden, Powle, Lester, besides many
eminent citizens of London; all these persons, though of opposite
parties, concurred in their applications to the prince. The whigs,
suitably to their ancient principles of liberty, which had led them
to attempt the exclusion bill, easily agreed to oppose a king, whose
conduct had justified whatever his worst enemies had prognosticated
concerning his succession. The tories and the church party, finding
their past services forgotten, their rights invaded, their religion
threatened, agreed to drop for the present all overstrained doctrines of
submission, and attend to the great and powerful dictates of nature. The
nonconformists, dreading the caresses of known and inveterate enemies,
deemed the offers of toleration more secure from a prince educated in
those principles, and accustomed to that practice. And thus all faction
was for a time laid asleep in England; and rival parties, forgetting
their animosity, had secretly concurred in a design of resisting
their unhappy and misguided sovereign. The earl of Shrewsbury, who
had acquired great popularity by deserting, at this time, the Catholic
religion, in which he had been educated, left his regiment, mortgaged
his estate for forty thousand pounds, and made a tender of his sword and
purse to the prince of Orange. Lord Wharton, notwithstanding his age and
infirmities, had taken a journey for the same purpose. Lord Mordaunt
was at the Hague, and pushed on the enterprise with that ar