ced that the franchises of
the City of London were forfeited to the Crown. Flushed with this great
victory, the government proceeded to attack the constitutions of other
corporations which were governed by Whig officers, and which had been in
the habit of returning Whig members to Parliament. Borough after borough
was compelled to surrender its privileges; and new charters were granted
which gave the ascendency everywhere to the Tories.

These proceedings, however reprehensible, had yet the semblance of
legality. They were also accompanied by an act intended to quiet the
uneasiness with which many loyal men looked forward to the accession of
a Popish sovereign. The Lady Anne, younger daughter of the Duke of York
by his first wife, was married to George, a prince of the orthodox House
of Denmark. The Tory gentry and clergy might now flatter themselves that
the Church of England had been effectually secured without any violation
of the order of succession. The King and the heir presumptive were
nearly of the same age. Both were approaching the decline of life. The
King's health was good. It was therefore probable that James, if he came
to the throne, would have but a short reign. Beyond his reign there was
the gratifying prospect of a long series of Protestant sovereigns.

The liberty of unlicensed printing was of little or no use to the
vanquished party; for the temper of judges and juries was such that
no writer whom the government prosecuted for a libel had any chance of
escaping. The dread of punishment therefore did all that a censorship
could have done. Meanwhile, the pulpits resounded with harangues against
the sin of rebellion. The treatises in which Filmer maintained that
hereditary despotism was the form of government ordained by God, and
that limited monarchy was a pernicious absurdity, had recently appeared,
and had been favourably received by a large section of the Tory party.
The university of Oxford, on the very day on which Russell was put
to death, adopted by a solemn public act these strange doctrines,
and ordered the political works of Buchanan, Milton, and Baxter to be
publicly burned in the court of the Schools.

Thus emboldened, the King at length ventured to overstep the bounds
which he had during some years observed, and to violate the plain letter
of the law. The law was that not more than three years should pass
between the dissolving of one Parliament and the convoking of another.
But, when th