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niSIOHY OP ENGLAND.

cnAP. It very soon appeared that James was fully resolved never tol6M ' — resign the Crown, or to suffer the Prince of "Wales to be bred aNew ne- heretic; and it long seemed doubtful whether any arguments orput forth entreaties would induce him to sign the Declaration which hislij James. f r i en( j s j n England had prepared. It was indeed a documentvery different from any that had yet appeared under his GreatSeal. He was made to promise that he would grant a freepardon to all his subjects who should not oppose him after heshould land in the island; that, as soon as he was restored, hewould call a Parliament; that he would confirm all such laws,passed during the usurpation, as the Houses should tender tohim for confirmation; that he would waive his right to thechimney money; that he would protect and defend the Estab-lished Church in the enjoyment of all her possessions and pri-vileges; that he would not again violate the Test Act; that hewould leave it to the legislature to define the extent of his dis-pensing power; and that he would maintain the Act of Settle-ment in Ireland.

He struggled long and hard. He pleaded his conscience.Could a son of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Churchbind himself to protect and defend heresy, and to enforce a lawwhich excluded true believers from office? Some of theecclesiastics who swarmed in his household told him that hecould not without sin give any such pledge as his undutifulsubjects demanded. On this point the opinion of Middleton,who was a Protestant, could be of no weight. But Middletonfound an ally in one whom he regarded as a rival and an enemy.Melfort, scared by the universal hatred of which he knew him-self to be the object, and afraid that he should be held account-able, both in England and in France, for his master’s wrong-headedness, submitted the case to several eminent Doctors ofthe Sorbonne. These learned casuists pronounced the Declara-tion unobjectionable in a religious point of view. The great