a few weeks after
he had publicly promised to take no step without the advice of his
new Council, went down to the House of Lords without mentioning his
intention in Council, and prorogued the Parliament.

The day of that prorogation, the twenty-sixth of May, 1679, is a great
era in our history. For on that day the Habeas Corpus Act received the
royal assent. From the time of the Great Charter the substantive law
respecting the personal liberty of Englishmen had been nearly the same
as at present: but it had been inefficacious for want of a stringent
system of procedure. What was needed was not a new light, but a prompt
and searching remedy; and such a remedy the Habeas Corpus Act supplied.
The King would gladly have refused his consent to that measure: but he
was about to appeal from his Parliament to his people on the question
of the succession, and he could not venture, at so critical a moment, to
reject a bill which was in the highest degree popular.

On the same day the press of England became for a short time free. In
old times printers had been strictly controlled by the Court of Star
Chamber. The Long Parliament had abolished the Star Chamber, but had,
in spite of the philosophical and eloquent expostulation of Milton,
established and maintained a censorship. Soon after the Restoration, an
Act had been passed which prohibited the printing of unlicensed books;
and it had been provided that this Act should continue in force till
the end of the first session of the next Parliament. That moment had
now arrived; and the King, in the very act of dismissing the House,
emancipated the Press.

Shortly after the prorogation came a dissolution and another general
election. The zeal and strength of the opposition were at the height.
The cry for the Exclusion Bill was louder than ever, and with this cry
was mingled another cry, which fired the blood of the multitude, but
which was heard with regret and alarm by all judicious friends of
freedom. Not only the rights of the Duke of York, an avowed Papist,
but those of his two daughters, sincere and zealous Protestants, were
assailed. It was confidently affirmed that the eldest natural son of the
King had been born in wedlock, and was lawful heir to the crown.

Charles, while a wanderer on the Continent, had fallen in at the
Hague with Lucy Walters, a Welsh girl of great beauty, but of weak
understanding and dissolute manners. She became his mistress, and
presented him with