re connected
with the government. The rigid Tories, with Nottingham at their head,
professed themselves willing to enact that every statute passed in 1689
should have the same force that it would have had if it had been passed
by a parliament convoked in a regular manner; but nothing would induce
them to acknowledge that an assembly of lords and gentlemen, who
had come together without authority from the Great Seal, was
constitutionally a Parliament. Few questions seem to have excited
stronger passions than the question, practically altogether unimportant,
whether the bill should or should not be declaratory. Nottingham, always
upright and honourable, but a bigot and a formalist, was on this subject
singularly obstinate and unreasonable. In one debate he lost his temper,
forgot the decorum which in general he strictly observed, and narrowly
escaped being committed to the custody of the Black Rod, [607] After
much wrangling, the Whigs carried their point by a majority of seven,
[608] Many peers signed a strong protest written by Nottingham. In
this protest the bill, which was indeed open to verbal criticism, was
impolitely described as being neither good English nor good sense. The
majority passed a resolution that the protest should be expunged; and
against this resolution Nottingham and his followers again protested,
[609] The King was displeased by the pertinacity of his Secretary of
State; so much displeased indeed that Nottingham declared his intention
of resigning the Seals; but the dispute was soon accommodated. William
was too wise not to know the value of an honest man in a dishonest age.
The very scrupulosity which made Nottingham a mutineer was a security
that he would never be a traitor, [610]

The bill went down to the Lower House; and it was full expected that the
contest there would be long and fierce; but a single speech settled the
question. Somers, with a force and eloquence which surprised even an
audience accustomed to hear him with pleasure, exposed the absurdity of
the doctrine held by the high Tories. "If the Convention,"--it was thus
that he argued,--"was not a Parliament, how can we be a Parliament? An
Act of Elizabeth provides that no person shall sit or vote in this House
till he has taken the old oath of supremacy. Not one of us has taken
that oath. Instead of it, we have all taken the new oath of supremacy
which the late Parliament substituted for the old oath. It is therefore
a contradiction