pressed a belief that
Stafford was a murdered man. When he with his last breath protested
his innocence, the cry was, "God bless you, my Lord! We believe you, my
Lord." A judicious observer might easily have predicted that the blood
then shed would shortly have blood.

The King determined to try once more the experiment of a dissolution. A
new Parliament was summoned to meet at Oxford, in March, 1681. Since the
days of the Plantagenets the Houses had constantly sat at Westminster,
except when the plague was raging in the capital: but so extraordinary
a conjuncture seemed to require extraordinary precautions. If the
Parliament were held in its usual place of assembling, the House of
Commons might declare itself permanent, and might call for aid on the
magistrates and citizens of London. The trainbands might rise to defend
Shaftesbury as they had risen forty years before to defend Pym and
Hampden. The Guards might be overpowered, the palace forced, the King a
prisoner in the hands of his mutinous subjects. At Oxford there was no
such danger. The University was devoted to the crown; and the gentry of
the neighbourhood were generally Tories. Here, therefore, the opposition
had more reason than the King to apprehend violence.

The elections were sharply contested. The Whigs still composed a
majority of the House of Commons: but it was plain that the Tory
spirit was fast rising throughout the country. It should seem that the
sagacious and versatile Shaftesbury ought to have foreseen the coming
change, and to have consented to the compromise which the court offered:
but he appears to have forgotten his old tactics. Instead of making
dispositions which, in the worst event, would have secured his retreat,
he took up a position in which it was necessary that he should either
conquer or perish. Perhaps his head, strong as it was, had been turned
by popularity, by success, and by the excitement of conflict. Perhaps
he had spurred his party till he could no longer curb it, and was really
hurried on headlong by those whom he seemed to guide.

The eventful day arrived. The meeting at Oxford resembled rather that of
a Polish Diet than that of an English Parliament. The Whig members were
escorted by great numbers of their armed and mounted tenants and
serving men, who exchanged looks of defiance with the royal Guards. The
slightest provocation might, under such circumstances, have produced
a civil war; but neither side dared to strike