m in foreign
countries, and whose restoration, if it ever happened, would again
reinstate them in power and authority. The general defection of the
Protestants made the king regard the Catholics as his only subjects on
whose counsel he could rely; and the fatal catastrophe of his father
afforded them a plausible reason for making him apprehend a like fate.
The great difference of circumstances was not, during men's present
distractions, sufficiently weighed. Even after the people were inflamed
by a long civil war, the execution of Charles I. could not be deemed
a national deed: it was perpetrated by a fanatical army pushed on by
a daring and enthusiastic leader; and the whole kingdom had ever
entertained, and did still entertain, a violent abhorrence against that
enormity. The situation of public affairs, therefore, no more resembled
what it was forty years before, than the prince of Orange, either in
birth, character, fortune, or connections, could be supposed a parallel
to Cromwell.

The emissaries of France, and among the rest Barillon, the French
ambassador, were busy about the king, and they had entertained a very
false notion, which they instilled into him, that nothing would more
certainly retard the public settlement, and beget universal confusion,
than his deserting the kingdom.

The prince of Orange had with good reason embraced a contrary opinion;
and he deemed it extremely difficult to find expedients for securing
the nation, so long as the king kept possession of the crown. Actuated,
therefore, by this public motive, and no less, we may well presume, by
private ambition, he was determined to use every expedient which might
intimidate the king, and make him quit that throne which he himself was
alone enabled to fill. He declined a personal conference with James's
commissioners, and sent the earls of Clarendon and Oxford to treat with
them: the terms which he proposed implied almost a present participation
of the sovereignty: and he stopped not a moment the march of his army
towards London.

The news which the king received from all quarters, served to continue
the panic into which he was fallen, and which his enemies expected to
improve to their advantage. Colonel Copel, deputy governor of Hull, made
himself master of that important fortress; and threw into prison Lord
Langdale, the governor, a Catholic; together with Lord Montgomery,
a nobleman of the same religion. The town of Newcastle received Lord
L