policy and in France hope that this
policy was near its climax of success. Though indolent and dissolute,
Charles yet possessed striking mental capacity and insight. He knew well
that to preserve his throne he must remain outwardly a Protestant and
must also respect the liberties of the English nation. He cherished,
however, the Roman Catholic faith and the despotic ideals of his
Bourbon mother. On his deathbed he avowed his real belief. With great
precautions for secrecy, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church
and comforted with the consolations which it offers to the dying. While
this secret was suspected by the English people, one further fact was
perfectly clear. Their new King, James II, was a zealous Roman Catholic,
who would use all his influence to bring England back to the Roman
communion. Suspicion of the King's designs soon became certainty and,
after four years of bitter conflict with James, the inevitable happened.
The Roman Catholic Stuart King was driven from his throne and his
daughter Mary and her Protestant husband, William of Orange, became the
sovereigns of England by choice of the English Parliament. Again had
the struggle between Roman Catholic and Protestant brought revolution in
England, and the politics of Europe dominated America. The revolution in
London was followed by revolution in Boston and New York. The authority
of James II was repudiated. His chief agent in New England, Sir Edmund
Andros, was seized and imprisoned, and William and Mary reigned over the
English colonies in America as they reigned over the motherland.

To the loyal Catholics of France the English, who had driven out a
Catholic king and dethroned an ancient line, were guilty of the double
sin of heresy and of treason. To the Jesuit enthusiast in Canada not
only were they infidel devils in human shape upon whose plans must rest
the curse of God; they were also rebels, republican successors of the
accursed Cromwell, who had sent an anointed king to the block. It would
be a holy thing to destroy this lawless power which ruled from London.
The Puritans of Boston were, in turn, not less convinced that theirs was
the cause of God, and that Satan, enthroned in the French dominance
at Quebec, must soon fall. The smaller the pit the fiercer the rats.
Passions raged in the petty colonial capitals more bitterly than even in
London and Paris. This intensity of religious differences embittered the
struggle for the mastery of the