110

HISTORY OP ENGLAND.

cnAP.

VIII.

1687 .

before had eagerly volunteered to march against the Westerninsurgents should now be with difficulty kept down by swordand carbine, these were signs full of evil omen to the Houseof Stuart. The warning, however, was lost on the dull,stubborn, self-willed tyrant. He was resolved to transfer tohis own Church all the wealthiest and most splendid founda-tions of England. It was to no purpose that the best andwisest of his Roman Catholic counsellors remonstrated. Theyrepresented to him that he had it in his power to render agreat service to the cause of his religion without violating therights of property. A grant of two thousand pounds a yearfrom his privy purse would support a Jesuit college at Oxford.Such a sum he might easily spare. Such a college, providedwith able, learned, and zealous teachers, would be a formi-dable rival to the old academical institutions, which exhibitedbut too many symptoms of the languor almost inseparablefrom opulence and security. King James’s College wouldsoon be, by the confession even of Protestants, the first placeof education in the island, as respected both science andmoral discipline. This would be the most effectual and theleast invidious method by which the Church of England couldbe humbled and the Church of Rome exalted. The Earlof Ailesbury, one of the most devoted servants of the royalfamily, declared that, though a Protestant, and by no meansrich, he would himself contribute a thousand pounds towardsthis design, rather than that his master should violate therights of property, and break faith with the EstablishedChurch.* The scheme, however, found no favour in thesight of the King. It was indeed ill suited, in more ways thanone, to his ungentle nature. For to bend and break thespirits of men gave him pleasure; and to part with his money 7gave him pain. What he had not the generosity 7 to do at hisown expense he determined to do at the expense of others.When once he was engaged, pride and obstinacy preventedhim from receding; and he was at length led, step by step,to acts of Turkish tyranny, to acts which impressed the

* Burnet, i. 891.; Letter of Lord Ailesbury printed in the EuropeanMagazine for April 1195.