The Tories, lately triumphant and secure, were exasperated and alarmed.

Both Whigs and Tories waited with intense anxiety for the decision of one momentous and pressing question.

Would there be a dissolution?
On the seventh of November the King propounded that question to his Privy Council.

It was rumoured, and is highly probable, that Jersey, Wright and Hedges advised him to keep the existing Parliament.

But they were not men whose opinion was likely to have much weight with him; and Rochester, whose opinion might have had some weight, had set out to take possession of his Viceroyalty just before the death of James, and was still at Dublin.