eloquently expressed by their Recorder,
Sir George Treby. Some princes of the House of Nassau, he said, had been
the chief officers of a great republic. Others had worn the imperial
crown. But the peculiar title of that illustrious line to the public
veneration was this, that God had set it apart and consecrated it to
the high office of defending truth and freedom against tyrants from
generation to generation. On the same day all the prelates who were in
town, Sancroft excepted, waited on the Prince in a body. Then came the
clergy of London, the foremost men of their profession in knowledge,
eloquence, and influence, with their bishop at their head. With them
were mingled some eminent dissenting ministers, whom Compton, much to
his honour, treated with marked courtesy. A few months earlier, or a few
months later, such courtesy would have been considered by many Churchmen
as treason to the Church. Even then it was but too plain to a discerning
eye that the armistice to which the Protestant sects had been forced
would not long outlast the danger from which it had sprung. About a
hundred Nonconformist divines, resident in the capital, presented a
separate address. They were introduced by Devonshire, and were received
with every mark of respect and kindness. The lawyers paid their homage,
headed by Maynard, who, at ninety years of age, was as alert and
clearheaded as when he stood up in Westminster Hall to accuse Strafford.
"Mr. Serjeant," said the Prince, "you must have survived all the lawyers
of your standing." "Yes, sir," said the old man, "and, but for your
Highness, I should have survived the laws too." [608]

But, though the addresses were numerous and full of eulogy, though the
acclamations were loud, though the illuminations were splendid, though
Saint James's Palace was too small for the crowd of courtiers, though
the theatres were every night, from the pit to the ceiling, one blaze
of orange ribands, William felt that the difficulties of his enterprise
were but beginning. He had pulled a government down. The far harder
task of reconstruction was now to be performed. From the moment of his
landing till he reached London he had exercised the authority which, by
the laws of war, acknowledged throughout the civilised world, belongs
to the commander of an army in the field. It was now necessary that he
should exchange the character of a general for that of a magistrate; and
this was no easy task. A single false step mi