r Triennial Parliaments receives the Royal Assent.....
Death of Archbishop Tillotson and of Queen Mary.....
Reconciliation between the King and the Princess of
Denmark._

{WILLIAM AND MARY, 1688--1701.}

THE EARL OF MARLBOROUGH, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER, &c, FALSELY ACCUSED.

While king William seemed wholly engrossed by the affairs of the
continent, England was distracted by domestic dissension, and overspread
with vice, corruption, and profaneness. Over and above the Jacobites,
there was a set of malcontents whose number daily increased. They
not only murmured at the grievances of the nation, but composed and
published elaborate dissertations upon the same subject. These made
such impressions upon the people, already irritated by heavy burdens,
distressed in their trade, and disappointed in their sanguine
expectations, that the queen thought it necessary to check the progress
of those writers by issuing out a proclamation offering a reward to such
as would discover seditious libellers. The earl of Marlborough had
been committed to the Tower on the information of one Robert Young, a
prisoner in Newgate, who had forged that nobleman's hand-writing, and
contrived the scheme of an association in favour of king James, to which
he affixed the names of the earls of Marlborough and Salisbury, Sprat,
bishop of Rochester, the lord Cornbury, and sir Basil Firebrace. One of
his emissaries had found means to conceal this paper in a certain part
of the bishop's house at Bromley in Kent, where it was found by the
king's messengers, who secured the prelate in consequence of Young's
information. But he vindicated himself to the satisfaction of the whole
council; and the forgery of the informer was detected by the confession
of his accomplice. The bishop obtained his release immediately and the
earl of Marlborough was admitted to bail in the court of king's bench.

SOURCES OF NATIONAL DISCONTENT.

So many persons of character and distinction had been imprisoned during
this reign upon the slightest suspicion, that the discontented part
of the nation had some reason to insinuate they had only exchanged
one tyrant for another. They affirmed that the _habeas-corpus_ act was
either insufficient to protect the subject from false imprisonment, or
had been shamefully misused. They expatiated upon the loss of ships,
which had lately fallen a prey to the enemy; the consumption of seamen;
the neglect of the fisheries; t