The Tories were caught in their own snare.

For most of the grants of Charles and James had been made to Tories; and a resumption of those grants would have reduced some of the chiefs of the Tory party to poverty.

Yet it was impossible to draw a distinction between the grants of William and those of his two predecessors.

Nobody could pretend that the law had been altered since his accession.

If, therefore, the grants of the Stuarts were legal, so were his; if his grants were illegal, so were the grants of his uncles.