Another paper which he drew up about the same time shows, if possible, still more clearly, how little he had profited by a sharp experience.

In that paper he set forth the plan according to which he intended to govern when he should be restored.

He laid it down as a rule that one Commissioner of the Treasury, one of the two Secretaries of State, the Secretary at War, the majority of the Great Officers of the Household, the majority of the Lords of the Bedchamber, the majority of the officers of the army, should always be Roman Catholics.

[428] It was to no purpose that the most eminent Compounders sent from London letter after letter filled with judicious counsel and earnest supplication.

It was to no purpose that they demonstrated in the plainest manner the impossibility of establishing Popish ascendancy in a country where at least forty-nine fiftieths of the population and much more than forty-nine fiftieths of the wealth and the intelligence were Protestant.