ach other All was transition, conflict, and disorder.
The chief business of the sovereign was to infringe the privileges of
the legislature. The chief business of the legislature was to encroach
on the prerogatives of the sovereign. The King readily accepted foreign
aid, which relieved him from the misery of being dependent on a mutinous
Parliament. The Parliament refused to the King the means of supporting
the national honor abroad, from an apprehension, too well founded, that
those means might be employed in order to establish despotism at home.
The effect of these jealousies was that our country, with all her vast
resources, was of as little weight in Christendom as the duchy of Savoy
or the duchy of Lorraine, and certainly of far less weight than the
small province of Holland.

France was deeply interested in prolonging this state of things. [245]
All other powers were deeply interested in bringing it to a close. The
general wish of Europe was that James would govern in conformity with
law and with public opinion. From the Escurial itself came letters,
expressing an earnest hope that the new King of England would be on good
terms with his Parliament and his people. [246] From the Vatican itself
came cautions against immoderate zeal for the Roman Catholic faith.
Benedict Odescalchi, who filled the papal chair under the name of
Innocent the Eleventh, felt, in his character of temporal sovereign, all
those apprehensions with which other princes watched the progress of the
French power. He had also grounds of uneasiness which were peculiar to
himself. It was a happy circumstance for the Protestant religion that,
at the moment when the last Roman Catholic King of England mounted the
throne, the Roman Catholic Church was torn by dissension, and threatened
with a new schism. A quarrel similar to that which had raged in the
eleventh century between the Emperors and the Supreme Pontiffs had
arisen between Lewis and Innocent. Lewis, zealous even to bigotry
for the doctrines of the Church of Rome, but tenacious of his regal
authority, accused the Pope of encroaching on the secular rights of the
French Crown, and was in turn accused by the Pope of encroaching on the
spiritual power of the keys. The King, haughty as he was, encountered a
spirit even more determined than his own. Innocent was, in all private
relations, the meekest and gentlest of men: but when he spoke officially
from the chair of St. Peter, he spoke in the tones