having confounded the
designs of those regicides and exclusionists who, not content with
having murdered one blessed monarch, were bent on destroying the
foundations of monarchy. The city of Gloucester execrated the
bloodthirsty villains who had tried to deprive His Majesty of his just
inheritance. The burgesses of Wigan assured their sovereign that
they would defend him against all plotting Achitophels and rebellions
Absaloms. The grand jury of Suffolk expressed a hope that the Parliament
would proscribe all the exclusionists. Many corporations pledged
themselves never to return to the House of Commons any person who had
voted for taking away the birthright of James. Even the capital was
profoundly obsequious. The lawyers and the traders vied with each
other in servility. Inns of Court and Inns of Chancery sent up fervent
professions of attachment and submission. All the great commercial
societies, the East India Company, the African Company, the Turkey
Company, the Muscovy Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, the Maryland
Merchants, the Jamaica Merchants, the Merchant Adventurers, declared
that they most cheerfully complied with the royal edict which required
them still to pay custom. Bristol, the second city of the island, echoed
the voice of London. But nowhere was the spirit of loyalty stronger than
in the two Universities. Oxford declared that she would never swerve
from those religious principles which bound her to obey the King without
any restrictions or limitations. Cambridge condemned, in severe terms,
the violence and treachery of those turbulent men who had maliciously
endeavoured to turn the stream of succession out of the ancient channel.
[256]

Such addresses as these filled, during a considerable time, every number
of the London Gazette. But it was not only by addressing that the Tories
showed their zeal. The writs for the new Parliament had gone forth,
and the country was agitated by the tumult of a general election. No
election had ever taken place under circumstances so favourable to
the Court. Hundreds of thousands whom the Popish plot had scared into
Whiggism had been scared back by the Rye House plot into Toryism. In the
counties the government could depend on an overwhelming majority of the
gentlemen of three hundred a year and upwards, and on the clergy almost
to a man. Those boroughs which had once been the citadels of Whiggism
had recently been deprived of their charters by legal sentence, or
h