JAMES THE SECOND.

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long canvass, returned from the West with gloomy tidings,

He had been authorised to make the most tempting offers to 1688 ; 'the inhabitants of that region. In particular he had promisedthat, if proper respect were shown to the royal wishes, thetrade in tin should be freed from the oppressive restrictionsunder which it lay. But this lure, which at another timewould have proved irresistible, was now slighted. All theJustices and Deputy Lieutenants of Devonshire and Cornwall,without a single dissenting voice, declared that they wouldput life and property in jeopardy for the King, but that theProtestant religion was dearer to them than either life orproperty. “And, Sir,” said Bath, “if your Majesty shoulddismiss all these gentlemen, their successors would giveexactly the same answer.” * If there was any district in whichthe government might have hoped for success, that districtwas Lancashire. Considerable doubts had been felt as to theresult of what was passing there. In no part of the realm hadso many opulent and honourable families adhered to the oldreligion. The heads of many of those families had already,by virtue of the dispensing power, been made Justices of thePeace and entrusted with commands in the militia. Yet fromLancashire the new Lord Lieutenant, himself a Roman Ca-'tholic, reported that two thirds of his deputies and of themagistrates were opposed to the Court.** But the proceedingsin Hampshire wounded the King’s pride still more deeply.Arabella Churchill had, more than twenty years before, bornehim a son, widely renowned, at a later period, as one of themost skilful captains of Europe. The youth, named JamesFitzjames, had as yet given no promise of the eminence whichhe afterwards attained: but his manners were so gentle andinoffensive that he had no enemy except Mary of Modena,who had long hated the child of the concubine with the bitterhatred of a childless wife. A small part of the Jesuiticalfaction had, before the pregnancy of the Queen was an-

* Citters, April 4J. 1688.

** The anxiety about Lancashire is mentioned by Cillers, in a des-patch dated Nov. 4|. 1681; the result in a despatch dated four dayslater.