d this right of
altering and limiting the succession; a right which, we have seen, was
before exercised and asserted in the reigns of Henry IV, Henry VII,
Henry VIII, queen Mary, and queen Elizabeth.

THE first instance, in point of time, is the famous bill of exclusion,
which raised such a ferment in the latter end of the reign of king
Charles the second. It is well known, that the purport of this bill
was to have set aside the king's brother and presumptive heir, the
duke of York, from the succession, on the score of his being a papist;
that it passed the house of commons, but was rejected by the lords;
the king having also declared beforehand, that he never would be
brought to consent to it. And from this transaction we may collect two
things: 1. That the crown was universally acknowleged to be
hereditary; and the inheritance indefeasible unless by parliament:
else it had been needless to prefer such a bill. 2. That the
parliament had a power to have defeated the inheritance: else such a
bill had been ineffectual. The commons acknowleged the hereditary
right then subsisting; and the lords did not dispute the power, but
merely the propriety, of an exclusion. However, as the bill took no
effect, king James the second succeeded to the throne of his
ancestors; and might have enjoyed it during the remainder of his life,
but for his own infatuated conduct, which (with other concurring
circumstances) brought on the revolution in 1688.

THE true ground and principle, upon which that memorable event
proceeded, was an entirely new case in politics, which had never
before happened in our history; the abdication of the reigning
monarch, and the vacancy of the throne thereupon. It was not a
defeazance of the right of succession, and a new limitation of the
crown, by the king and both houses of parliament: it was the act of
the nation alone, upon an apprehension that there was no king in
being. For in a full assembly of the lords and commons, met in
convention upon this apprehended vacancy, both houses[y] came to this
resolution; "that king James the second, having endeavoured to subvert
the constitution of the kingdom, by breaking the original contract
between king and people; and, by the advice of jesuits and other
wicked persons, having violated the fundamental laws; and having
withdrawn himself out of this kingdom; has abdicated the government,
and that the throne is thereby vacant." Thus ended at once, by this
sudden and u