A bill was therefore brought in which empowered the King to detain in custody during a few weeks such persons as he should suspect of evil designs against his government.

This bill passed the two Houses with little or no opposition.

[49] But the malecontents out of doors did not fail to remark that, in the late reign, the Habeas Corpus Act had not been one day suspended.

It was the fashion to call James a tyrant, and William a deliverer.

Yet, before the deliverer had been a month on the throne, he had deprived Englishmen of a precious right which the tyrant had respected.