med him with certainty, that he was soon to look for a
powerful invasion from Holland; and that Pensionary Fagel had at length
acknowledged, that the scope of all the Dutch naval preparations was to
transport forces into England. Though James could reasonably expect no
other intelligence, he was astonished at the news: he grew pale, and
the letter dropped from his hand: his eyes were now opened, and he found
himself on the brink of a frightful precipice, which his delusions had
hitherto concealed from him. His ministers and counsellors, equally
astonished, saw no resource but in a sudden and precipitate retraction
of all those fatal measures by which he had created to himself so many
enemies, foreign and domestic. He paid court to the Dutch, and offered
to enter into any alliance with them for common security: he replaced
in all the counties the deputy lieutenants and justices who had been
deprived of their commissions for their adherence to the test and
the penal laws: he restored the charters of London, and of all the
corporations: he annulled the court of ecclesiastical commission: he
took off the bishop of London's suspension: he reinstated the expelled
president and fellows of Magdalen College: and he was even reduced to
caress those bishops whom he had so lately prosecuted and insulted. All
these measures were regarded as symptoms of fear, not of repentance.
The bishops, instead of promising succor or suggesting comfort,
recapitulated to him all the instances of his maleadministration, and
advised him thenceforwards to follow more salutary counsel. And as
intelligence arrived of a great disaster which had befallen the Dutch
fleet, it is commonly believed, that the king recalled, for some time,
the concessions which he had made to Magdalen College; a bad sign of
his sincerity in his other concessions. Nay, so prevalent were his
unfortunate prepossessions, that amidst all his present distresses, he
could not forbear, at the baptism of the young prince, appointing the
pope to be one of the god-fathers.

The report that a supposititious child was to be imposed on the nation,
had been widely spread, and greedily received, before the birth of the
prince of Wales: but the king, who, without seeming to take notice of
the matter, might easily have quashed that ridiculous rumor, had, from
an ill-timed haughtiness, totally neglected it. He disdained, he said,
to satisfy those who could deem him capable of so base and villanou