progresses through the realm. He was escorted from
mansion to mansion by long cavalcades of armed gentlemen and yeomen.
Cities poured forth their whole population to receive him. Electors
thronged round him, to assure him that their votes were at his disposal.
To such a height were his pretensions carried, that he not only
exhibited on his escutcheon the lions of England and the lilies of
France without the baton sinister under which, according to the law of
heraldry, they should have been debruised in token of his illegitimate
birth, but ventured to touch for the king's evil. At the same time he
neglected no art of condescension by which the love of the multitude
could be conciliated. He stood godfather to the children of the
peasantry, mingled in every rustic sport, wrestled, played at
quarterstaff, and won footraces in his boots against fleet runners in
shoes.

It is a curious circumstance that, at two of the greatest conjunctures
in our history, the chiefs of the Protestant party should have committed
the same error, and should by that error have greatly endangered their
country and their religion. At the death of Edward the Sixth they set up
the Lady Jane, without any show of birthright, in opposition, not only
to their enemy Mary, but also to Elizabeth, the true hope of England
and of the Reformation. Thus the most respectable Protestants, with
Elizabeth at their head, were forced to make common cause with the
Papists. In the same manner, a hundred and thirty years later, a part
of the opposition, by setting up Monmouth as a claimant of the crown,
attacked the rights, not only of James, whom they justly regarded as
an implacable foe of their faith and their liberties, but also of the
Prince and Princess of Orange, who were eminently marked out, both
by situation and by personal qualities, as the defenders of all free
governments and of all reformed churches.

The folly of this course speedily became manifest. At present the
popularity of Monmouth constituted a great part of the strength of the
opposition. The elections went against the court: the day fixed for
the meeting of the Houses drew near; and it was necessary that the
King should determine on some line of conduct. Those who advised him
discerned the first faint signs of a change of public feeling, and hoped
that, by merely postponing the conflict, he would be able to secure the
victory. He therefore, without even asking the opinion of the Council of
the