r, by depriving him of the assistance of Catholics in
office. His desire for arbitrary power was notorious, and the country
did not believe that his zeal for the liberty of conscience was
sincere. They believed, and they believed rightly, that he demanded
more than that which would satisfy the just and obvious necessities of
his Church in order to strengthen his prerogative, and that he was
tolerant in order that he might be absolute. He professed openly the
maxim that toleration was the necessary condition of absolutism. He
urged Lewis, secretly, to pursue the work of the revocation, and was
reluctant to allow collections to be made for the Huguenot fugitives.

Later, when he was himself an exile, and nothing could be more
inopportune than the profession of tolerant sympathies at the French
court, he seriously and consistently proclaimed them. And it is very
possible that he was then sincere, and that a change had taken
place. Another change took place when he became acquainted with the
famous Rance, who had made the abbey of La Trappe the most edifying
seat of religion in France, and a favourite retreat for men like
Bossuet and St. Simon. James also visited him and corresponded with
him, and sixty of their letters are extant. At Versailles people did
not understand how so much devotion could be combined with so much
tolerance in religion. The letters to Rance show that the religion of
James, when he was on the throne, was very near the surface. Whether
it was different afterwards, as they believed in France, is not quite
certain. And in this connection it will be convenient to mention the
assassination plot.

There was an Irish divine, Martin of Connemara, who suggested that, in
time of war, it would be well that a chosen band should devote
themselves to the task of falling upon the Prince of Orange and
putting him to death. It would, he said, be a legitimate act of
warfare. Lewis XIV required no such arguments, and sent a miscreant
named Grandval to rid him of the obnoxious prince. Berwick preferred
the advice of the theologian, and, at the battle of Landen, he led a
troop of 200 horsemen to the place where his kinsman stood, crying out
to them to kill him. Three years later, in 1696, he was in London,
communicating with the managers of the plot, who thought that it would
be no murder to shoot the king on the road to Hampton Court, when
surrounded by his guards. A beacon fire on Shakespeare's Cliff w