hat answer,
and am so much assured that the answer is agreeable to what in justice
or reason you can ask, or I in honor grant, that I shall not alter it in
any point.

"For my residence near you, I wish it might be safe and honorable, and
that I had no cause to absent myself from Whitehall: ask yourselves
whether I have not.[*]

"What would you have? Have I violated your laws? Have I denied to pass
any bill for the ease and security of my subjects? I do not ask what you
have done for me.

"Have any of my people been transported with fears and apprehensions?
I offer as free and general a pardon as yourselves can devise. All this
considered, there is a judgment of Heaven upon this nation if these
distractions continue.

"God so deal with me and mine as all my thoughts and intentions are
upright for the maintenance of the true Protestant profession, and for
the observance and preservation of the laws; and I hope God will bless
and assist those laws for my preservation."[**]

No sooner did the commons despair of obtaining the king's consent
to their bill, than they instantly voted, that those who advised his
majesty's answer were enemies to the state, and mischievous projectors
against the safety of the nation; that this denial is of such dangerous
consequence, that, if his majesty persist in it, it will hazard the
peace and tranquillity of all his kingdoms, unless some speedy remedy be
applied by the wisdom and authority of both houses; and that such of
the subjects as have put themselves in a posture of defence against the
common danger, have done nothing but what is justifiable, and approved
by the house.[***]

Lest the people might be averse to the seconding of all these
usurpations, they were plied anew with rumors of danger, with the
terrors of invasion, with the dread of English and Irish Papists; and
the most unaccountable panics were spread throughout the nation. Lord
Digby having entered Kingston in a coach and six, attended by a few
livery servants, the intelligence was conveyed to London; and it was
immediately voted, that he had appeared in a hostile manner, to the
terror and affright of his majesty's subjects, and had levied war
against the king and kingdom.[****] Petitions from all quarters loudly
demanded of the parliament to put the nation in a posture of defence;
and the county of Stafford in particular expressed such dread of
an insurrection among the Papists, that every man, they said, was
const