e less lenient. They were the much-feared
Dissenters, who invariably had the courage of their convictions. They
were led by several great noblemen who did not want to see a return of
the old days of absolute royal power.

For almost ten years, these two great parties, the Whigs (the middle
class element, called by this derisive name be-cause in the year 1640 a
lot of Scottish Whiggamores or horse-drovers headed by the Presbyterian
clergy, had marched to Edinburgh to oppose the King) and the Tories (an
epithet originally used against the Royalist Irish adherents but now
applied to the supporters of the King) opposed each other, but neither
wished to bring about a crisis. They allowed Charles to die peacefully
in his bed and permitted the Catholic James II to succeed his brother
in 1685. But when James, after threatening the country with the terrible
foreign invention of a "standing army" (which was to be commanded by
Catholic Frenchmen), issued a second Declaration of Indulgence in 1688,
and ordered it to be read in all Anglican churches, he went just a
trifle beyond that line of sensible demarcation which can only be
transgressed by the most popular of rulers under very exceptional
circumstances. Seven bishops refused to comply with the Royal Command.
They were accused of "seditious libel." They were brought before a
court. The jury which pronounced the verdict of "not guilty" reaped a
rich harvest of popular approval.

At this unfortunate moment, James (who in a second marriage had taken to
wife Maria of the Catholic house of Modena-Este) became the father of a
son. This meant that the throne was to go to a Catholic boy rather than
to his older sisters, Mary and Anne, who were Protestants. The man in
the street again grew suspicious. Maria of Modena was too old to have
children! It was all part of a plot! A strange baby had been brought
into the palace by some Jesuit priest that England might have a Catholic
monarch. And so on. It looked as if another civil war would break out.
Then seven well-known men, both Whigs and Tories, wrote a letter asking
the husband of James's oldest daughter Mary, William III the Stadtholder
or head of the Dutch Republic, to come to England and deliver the
country from its lawful but entirely undesirable sovereign.

On the fifth of November of the year 1688, William landed at Torbay. As
he did not wish to make a martyr out of his father-in-law, he helped him
to escape safely to France. On