pounds, and become a popish recusant, and disabled to take a legacy, to hold any office or place of trust, to prosecute any suit, to be a guardian, executor, or administrator, but is made for ever incapable to sit and vote in either house of parliament. And consequently this can be no parliament, nor any who have sat in either house be capable of sitting in parliament hereafter.

5th. Because to leave room to doubt of the authority' of the last parliament is to shake the succession of the crown established by it, and the credit and authority of all treaties made with foreign princes and states by king' William, as the undoubted king of these realms. So that if the last was no parliament, and their acts no law, this is our case: The nation is engaged in a war without the consent of parliament, the old oaths of supremacy and allegiance remain in force, and the nation' forced, under colour of law, to swear fidelity to king William, though they can never act as a lawful parlia ment without taking the oaths of allegiance to king James. All judgments and decrees in the house of lords during the late parliament are of no force, great sums of money have been levied without consent of parliament, and men have been put to death not only without, but against law, which is the worst sort of murder.

Lastly, the king upon the throne, the peerage of England, and the commons, freely elected by the people, have been parties to all this. The peers and commons now assembled are under a perpetual disability; and the nation is involved in endless doubts and confusions, without any legal settlement or possibility to arrive at it, unless a parliament be summoned by king James's writ, and the oaths of allegiance taken to him.

In consequence of this seasonable and confounding protest, the clause in question was ultimately restored, the whole weight of the crown being exerted in favour of it. And the tories in their turn entered, on the third reading of the bill, their protest against it as follows:

1st. Because we conceive that saying "It is enacted by the authority of the present parliament that all and singular the acts made in the last parliament were laws," is neither good English nor good sense.

2d. Because if it were good sense to enact for the time past, it must be understood on this subject to be the declaring of laws to be good which were passed in a parliament not called by writ in due form of law, which is destructive of the legal constitution of this mouarchy, and may be of evil and pernicious consequence to our present government under this king and queen.

The house of peers were now fully awakened to a sense of the dangers which must flow from the admission of this principle, or even of a bare acquiescence in the speculative assertion of it. And after another long and fierce debate, the protest of the tory lords was ordered to be expunged from the journals of the house. This gave rise to a second protest of the same, or nearly the same lords, declaratory of their resentment at this extraordinary and unprecedented procedure; signed by the lords Nottingham, Jermyn, H. London, Thomas Menev. Ed. Wigorn, P. Winchester, H. Bangor, Westmoreland, Chandos, Abington, W. Asaph. To the first protest were also affixed the signatures of the duke of Somerset, the earls of Rochester, Huntingdon,

Feversham, and Dartmouth, with the lords Scarsdale and Weymouth, and six bishops.

The subject having been so thoroughly investigated in the house of peers, and the insidious cavils of the tories irrefragably exposed, the bill passed through the house of commons silently, or with very trifling opposition, in the short space of two days.

580

CONSPIRACY

AGAINST

THE GOVERNMENT.

A. D. 1691.

THE conspiracy discovered January 1691, in which lord Preston was the most distinguished actor, and of which Mr. Ashton was the sole unfortunate victim, remained, after all, like that of Montgomery in Scotland, to which it was a sort of counter-part, enveloped in a cloud of mystery. Either the government did not know, or which is more probable, did not chuse to disclose all the particulars of these dark and dangerous designs. The most interesting and important of the papers found in the possession of lord Preston, was indorsed "Heads of a remarkable conference said to have passed among certain lords and gentlemen, both whigs and tories, tending to shew that if the most christian king intended to impose king James upon the nation as a conqueror, he would find the bloodiest resistance imaginable; but that if he would be prevailed upon to assist him and his friends on the principles, and by the means therein specified, many lords and gentlemen would shew themselves to his satisfaction."

I. The Result of the Conference.

1st. F. (France) must either oblige or conquer us. If the last, he will find no helps here but a bloodier resistance than ever the Romans, Saxons or Normans

found, it being incredible how unanimous and obstinate that very thought renders the people; so that it may make us a heap of ruin, but no nation that can ever help or import any thing to F.

2d. If K. L. (King Louis) desires to oblige us, and make the work easy, that he may be at leisure to ply the empire or Italy, or to have an advantageous peace, he must take off the frightful character we have of him, and shew us he has no such design as returning our of fended K. a conqueror upon us, but that he can and I will be our friend and mediator, upon which terms he will find that many lords and gentlemen will speedily show themselves to his satisfaction, especially if he makes haste and loses no approaching opportunity.

3d. If he incline to this sort of sense, he must over-rule the bigotry of St. Germaine's, and dispose their minds to think of those methods that are more likely to gain the nation. For there is one silly thing or other daily done there that comes to our notice here, which prolongs what they so passionately desire.

The Methods thought upon are these:

First. To prevent dangerous and foolish intelligence, by forbidding all in that court to write any news hither, and that king James only have his corre spondents by whom to hear from, and speak to, people here; since letters so often miscarry, and are filled with nothing but what we should not hear, and what we have are arguments for the most part against the king's restoration.

Secondly. Since there is a great body of protestants that never defected, and that many thousands are re