■WILLIAM AND MABY.

27

obtained his place by bullying the Lords of the Treasury, and ciiap.particularly by threatening that, if his just claims were dis——regarded, he would be the death of Hampden.*

Some weeks elapsed before all the arrangements which The con-

x . , mention

have been mentioned were publicly announced: and meanwhile turned

, J . , intoaPar-

many important events had taken place. As soon as the new nament.Privy Councillors had been sworn in, it was necessary to submitto them a grave and pressing question. Could the Conventionnow assembled be turned into a Parliament? The Whigs, whohad a decided majority in the Lower House, were all for theaffirmative. The Tories, who knew that, ivithin the last month,the public feeling had undergone a considerable change, andwho hoped that a general election would add to their strength,were for the negative. They maintained that to the existenceof a Parliament royal writs were indispensably necessary. TheConvention had not been summoned by such writs: theoriginal defect could not now be supplied: the Houses weretherefore mere clubs of private men, and ought instantly to,disperse.

It was answered that the royal writ was mere matter of form,and that to expose the substance of our laws and liberties toserious hazard for the sake of a form would be the most sense-less superstition. Wherever the Sovereign, the Peers spiritualand temporal, and the Representatives freely chosen by theconstituent bodies of the realm were met together, there wasthe essence of a Parliament. Such a Parliament was now inbeing; and what could be more absurd than to dissolve it at aconjuncture when every hour was precious, when numerousimportant subjects required immediate legislation, and whendangers, only to be averted by the combined efforts of King,

Lords, and Commons, menaced the State? A Jacobite indeed

* Sprat’s True Account; North’s Examen; Letter to Chief Justice Holt,

1694; Letter to Secretary Trenchard, 1694.