In the autumn of 1688, the process was complete.

The highest offices in the state, in the army, and in the Courts of justice, were, with scarcely an exception, filled by Papists.

A pettifogger named Alexander Fitton, who had been detected in forgery, who had been fined for misconduct by the House of Lords at Westminster, who had been many years in prison, and who was equally deficient in legal knowledge and in the natural good sense and acuteness by which the want of legal knowledge has sometimes been supplied, was Lord Chancellor.

His single merit was that he had apostatized from the Protestant religion; and this merit was thought sufficient to wash out even the stain of his Saxon extraction.

He soon proved himself worthy of the confidence of his patrons.