he result of the efforts to assemble a Parliament
favourable to the repeal of the Test. The wholesale dismissal of
justices and Lord-Lieutenants through the summer of 1687 failed to
shake the resolve of the counties. The "regulation" of their
corporations by the displacing of their older members and the
substitution of Nonconformists did little to gain the towns. The year
1688 indeed had hardly opened when it was found necessary to adjourn the
elections which had been fixed for February, and to make a fresh attempt
to win a warmer support from the dissidents and from the country. For
James clung with a desperate tenacity to the hope of finding a compliant
Parliament. He knew, what was as yet unknown to the world, the fact that
his Queen was with child. The birth of an heir would meet the danger
which he looked for from the succession of William and Mary. But James
was past middle life, and his death would leave his boy at the mercy of
a Regency which could hardly fail to be composed of men who would undo
the king's work and even bring up the young sovereign as a Protestant.
His own security, as he thought, against such a course lay in the
building up a strong Catholic party, in placing Catholics in the high
offices of State, and in providing against their expulsion from these at
his death by a repeal of the Test. But such a repeal could only be won
from Parliament, and hopeless as the effort seemed James pressed
doggedly on in his attempt to secure Houses who would carry out his
will.

[Sidenote: The Trial of the Bishops.]

The renewed Declaration of Indulgence which he issued in 1688 was not
only intended to win the Nonconformists by fresh assurances of the
king's sincerity, it was an appeal to the nation at large. At its close
he promised to summon a Parliament in November, and he called on the
electors to choose such members as would bring to a successful end the
policy he had begun. His resolve, he said, was to make merit the one
qualification for office and to establish universal liberty of
conscience for all future time. It was in this character of a royal
appeal that he ordered every clergyman to read the Declaration during
divine service on two successive Sundays. Little time was given for
deliberation; but little time was needed. The clergy refused almost to a
man to be the instruments of their own humiliation. The Declaration was
read in only four of the London churches, and in these the congregation
flocked