[145] If James had not been proof to all warning, these events would have sufficed to warn him.

A few months before this time the most obsequious of English Parliaments had refused to submit to his pleasure.

But the most obsequious of English Parliaments might be regarded as an independent and high spirited assembly when compared with any Parliament that had ever sate in Scotland; and the servile spirit of Scottish Parliaments was always to be found in the highest perfection, extracted and condensed, among the Lords of Articles.

Yet even the Lords of Articles had been refractory.

It was plain that all those classes, all those institutions, which, up to this year, had been considered as the strongest supports of monarchical power, must, if the King persisted in his insane policy, be reckoned as parts of the strength of the opposition.