In vain had he, by virtue of his ecclesiastical supremacy, enjoined the clergy to abstain from discussing controverted points.

Every parish in the nation was warned every Sunday against the errors of Rome; and these warnings were only the more effective, because they were accompanied by professions of reverence for the Sovereign, and of a determination to endure with patience whatever it might be his pleasure to inflict.

The royalist knights and esquires who, through forty-five years of war and faction, had stood so manfully by the throne, now expressed, in no measured phrase, their resolution to stand as manfully by the Church.

Dull as was the intellect of James, despotic as was his temper, he felt that he must change his course.

He could not safely venture to outrage all his Protestant subjects at once.