the rejection of their remonstrance chose Hough,
one of their own number, as their President. The Ecclesiastical
Commission declared the election void; and James, shamed out of his
first candidate, recommended a second, Parker, Bishop of Oxford, a
Catholic in heart and the meanest of his courtiers. The Fellows however
pleaded that Hough was already chosen, and they held stubbornly to their
legal head. It was in vain that the king visited Oxford, summoned them
to his presence, and rated them as they knelt before him like
schoolboys. "I am King," he said; "I will be obeyed! Go to your chapel
this instant, and elect the Bishop! Let those who refuse look to it, for
they shall feel the whole weight of my hand!" It was seen that to give
Magdalen as well as Christ Church into Catholic hands was to turn
Oxford into a Catholic seminary, and the king's threats were
disregarded. But they were soon carried out. A special Commission
visited the University, pronounced Hough an intruder, set aside his
appeal to the law, burst open the door of his president's house to
install Parker in his place, and on their refusal to submit deprived the
Fellows of their fellowships. The expulsion of the Fellows was followed
on a like refusal by that of the Demies. Parker, who died immediately
after his installation, was succeeded by a Roman Catholic bishop _in
partibus_, named Bonaventure Gifford, and twelve Roman Catholics were
admitted to fellowships in a single day.

[Sidenote: James and William.]

With peers, gentry, and clergy in dogged opposition the scheme of
wresting a repeal of the Test Act from a new Parliament became
impracticable, and without this--as James well knew--his system of
Indulgence, even if he was able to maintain it so long, must end with
his death and the accession of a Protestant sovereign. It was to provide
against such a defeat of his designs that he stooped to ask the aid of
William of Orange. Ever since his accession William had followed his
father-in-law's course with a growing anxiety. For while England was
seething with the madness of the Popish Plot and of the royalist
reaction the great European struggle which occupied the whole mind of
the Prince had been drawing nearer and nearer. The patience of Germany
indeed was worn out by the ceaseless aggressions of Lewis, and in 1686
its princes had bound themselves at Augsburg to resist all further
encroachments on the part of France. From that moment war became
inevit