with Lord Feversham, heard the mighty
roar, asked in alarm what it was, and was told that it was 'nothing but
the acquittal of the bishops,' he said, in his dogged way, 'Call you that
nothing? It is so much the worse for them.'

Between the petition and the trial, the Queen had given birth to a son,
which Father Petre rather thought was owing to Saint Winifred. But I
doubt if Saint Winifred had much to do with it as the King's friend,
inasmuch as the entirely new prospect of a Catholic successor (for both
the King's daughters were Protestants) determined the EARLS OF
SHREWSBURY, DANBY, and DEVONSHIRE, LORD LUMLEY, the BISHOP OF LONDON,
ADMIRAL RUSSELL, and COLONEL SIDNEY, to invite the Prince of Orange over
to England. The Royal Mole, seeing his danger at last, made, in his
fright, many great concessions, besides raising an army of forty thousand
men; but the Prince of Orange was not a man for James the Second to cope
with. His preparations were extraordinarily vigorous, and his mind was
resolved.

For a fortnight after the Prince was ready to sail for England, a great
wind from the west prevented the departure of his fleet. Even when the
wind lulled, and it did sail, it was dispersed by a storm, and was
obliged to put back to refit. At last, on the first of November, one
thousand six hundred and eighty-eight, the Protestant east wind, as it
was long called, began to blow; and on the third, the people of Dover and
the people of Calais saw a fleet twenty miles long sailing gallantly by,
between the two places. On Monday, the fifth, it anchored at Torbay in
Devonshire, and the Prince, with a splendid retinue of officers and men,
marched into Exeter. But the people in that western part of the country
had suffered so much in The Bloody Assize, that they had lost heart. Few
people joined him; and he began to think of returning, and publishing the
invitation he had received from those lords, as his justification for
having come at all. At this crisis, some of the gentry joined him; the
Royal army began to falter; an engagement was signed, by which all who
set their hand to it declared that they would support one another in
defence of the laws and liberties of the three Kingdoms, of the
Protestant religion, and of the Prince of Orange. From that time, the
cause received no check; the greatest towns in England began, one after
another, to declare for the Prince; and he knew that it was all safe with
him when the Uni