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HISTORY OP ENGLAND.

chap, and of St. Winifred might be turned into a curse. * This was■ J(| . 8T -- a danger against which nothing but an Act of Parliament couldFeeiin" be a security; and to obtain such an Act was not easy. Every-th tiie° thing seemed to indicate that, if the Houses were convoked,tueiu'bo- they would come up to Westminster animated by the spirit ofonhe alld 1640. The event of the county elections could hardly bePeers, doubted. The whole body of freeholders, high and low,clerical and lay, was strongly excited against the government.In the great majority of those towns where the right of votingdepended on the payment of local taxes, or on the occupationof a tenement, no courtly candidate could dare to show hisface. A very large part of the House of Commons was re-turned by members of municipal corporations. These cor-porations had recently been remodelled for the purpose ofdestroying the influence of the Whigs and Dissenters. Morethan a hundred constituent bodies had been deprived of theircharters by tribunals devoted to the crown, or had been in-duced to avert compulsory disfranchisement by voluntary sur-render. Every Mayor, every Alderman, every Town Clerk,from Berwick to Helstone, was a Tory and a Churchman: butTories and Churchmen were now no longer devoted to thesovereign. The new municipalities were more unmanageablethan the old municipalities had ever been, and would un-doubtedly return representatives whose first act would be toimpeach all the Popish Privy Councillors, and all the mem-bers of the High Commission.

In the Lords the prospect was scarcely less gloomy than inthe Commons. Among the temporal peers it was certain thatan immense majority would be against the King’s measures:and on that episcopal bench, which seven years before hadunanimously supported him against those who had attemptedto deprive him of his birthright, he could now look forsup-

* The king's uneasiness on this subject is strongly described byRonquillo, Dec. 1688. “Un Principe de Vales y un Duque de Yorky otro di Locbaosterna (Lancaster, I suppose,) no bastan h reducir lagente; porque el Rey tiene 54 afios, y vendra a morir, dejando los hijospequenos, y que entonces el reyno se apoderara dellos, y los nombraratutor, y los edueara en la religion prolestante, contra la disposicion quedejare el Rey, y la autoridad de la Reyna.”