The history of the chosen people was ransacked for precedents.

Was Eglon's a settled government when Ehud stabbed him?
Was Joram's a settled government when Jehe shot him?
But the leading case was that of Athaliah.

It was indeed a case which furnished the malecontents with many happy and pungent allusions; a kingdom treacherously seized by an usurper near in blood to the throne; the rightful prince long dispossessed; a part of the sacerdotal order true, through many disastrous years, to the Royal House; a counterrevolution at length effected by the High Priest at the head of the Levites.

Who, it was asked, would dare to blame the heroic pontiff who had restored the heir of David?
Yet was not the government of Athaliah as firmly settled as that of the Prince of Orange?
Hundreds of pages written at this time about the rights of Joash and the bold enterprise of Jehoiada are mouldering in the ancient bookcases of Oxford and Cambridge.

While Sherlock was thus fiercely attacked by his old friends, he was not left unmolested by his old enemies.