out of church at the first words of it. Nearly all the country
parsons refused to obey the royal orders, and the Bishops went with the
rest of the clergy. A few days before the appointed Sunday Archbishop
Sancroft called his suffragans together, and the six who were able to
appear at Lambeth signed a temperate protest to the king in which they
declined to publish an illegal Declaration. "It is a standard of
rebellion," James exclaimed, as the Primate presented the paper; and the
resistance of the clergy was no sooner announced to him than he
determined to wreak his vengeance on the prelates who had signed the
protest. He ordered the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to deprive them of
their sees; but in this matter even the Commissioners shrank from
obeying him. The Chancellor, Lord Jeffreys, advised a prosecution for
libel as an easier mode of punishment; and the Bishops, who refused to
give bail, were committed on this charge to the Tower. They passed to
their prison amidst the shouts of a great multitude; the sentinels knelt
for their blessing as they entered its gates, and the soldiers of the
garrison drank their healths. So threatening was the temper of the
nation that his ministers pressed James to give way. But his obstinacy
grew with the danger. "Indulgence," he said, "ruined my father"; and on
the 29th of June the Bishops appeared as criminals at the bar of the
King's Bench. The jury had been packed, the judges were mere tools of
the Crown, but judges and jury were alike overawed by the indignation of
the people at large. No sooner had the foreman of the jury uttered the
words "Not guilty" than a roar of applause burst from the crowd, and
horsemen spurred along every road to carry over the country the news of
the acquittal.

[Sidenote: The National discontent.]

James was at Hounslow when the news of the verdict reached him, and as
he rode from the camp he heard a great shout behind him. "What is that?"
he asked. "It is nothing," was the reply; "only the soldiers are glad
that the Bishops are acquitted!" "Do you call that nothing?" grumbled
the king. The shout told him that he stood utterly alone in his realm.
The peerage, the gentry, the bishops, the clergy, the universities,
every lawyer, every trader, every farmer, stood aloof from him. And now
his very soldiers forsook him. The most devoted Catholics pressed him to
give way. But to give way was to reverse every act he had done since his
accession and to change