4th century, had enabled
her to humble France and Spain, had ceased to exist. The Government was
no longer a limited monarchy after the fashion of the Middle Ages; it
had not yet become one after the modern fashion. The chief business of
the sovereign was to infringe the privileges of the legislature; that of
the legislature was to encroach on the prerogatives of the sovereign.

The king readily received foreign aid, which relieved him from the
misery of being dependent on a mutinous Parliament. The Parliament
refused to the king the means of supporting the national honour abroad,
from an apprehension, too well founded, that those means might be
employed in order to establish despotism at home. The effect of these
jealousies was that our country, with all her vast resources, was of as
little weight in Christendom as the duchy of Savoy or the duchy of
Lorraine, and certainly of far less weight than the small province of
Holland. France was deeply interested in prolonging this state of
things. All other powers were deeply interested in bringing it to a
close. The general wish of Europe was that James should govern in
conformity with law and with public opinion. From the Escurial itself
came letters expressing an earnest hope that the new King of England
would be on good terms with his Parliament and his people. From the
Vatican itself came cautions against immoderate zeal for the Catholic
faith.

The king early put the loyalty of his Protestant friends to the proof.
While he was a subject he had been in the habit of hearing mass with
closed doors in a small oratory which had been fitted up for his wife.
He now ordered the doors to be thrown open, in order that all who came
to pay him their duty might see the ceremony. Soon a new pulpit was
erected in the palace, and during Lent sermons were preached there by
Popish divines, to the great displeasure of zealous churchmen.

A more serious innovation followed. Passion week came, and the king
determined to hear mass with the same pomp with which his predecessors
had been surrounded. The rites of the Church of Rome were once more,
after an interval of 127 years, performed at Westminster on Easter
Sunday with regal splendour.

_Monmouth and his Fate_

The English exiles in Holland induced the Duke of Monmouth, a natural
son of Charles II., to attempt an invasion of England, and on June 11,
1685, he landed with about 80 men at Lyme, where he knelt on the shore,
thanked