"And we do most humbly desire your highness to take upon you the administration of public affairs, and the disposal of the public revenue, for the preservation of our religion, rights, laws, liberties, and properties, and of the

66

peace of the nation." The phlegmatic William delayed giving any answer till the next day, and then he coldly and laconically said, " My lords and gentlemen, I am glad that what I have done hath pleased you; and since you desire me to continue the administration of affairs, I am willing to accept it." The two Houses then adjourned to the 28th, on which day the Commons, having reassembled, resolved themselves into a committee of the whole House to take into consideration the state of the nation. Mr. Hampden was in the chair. Dolben, son of the late Archbishop of York, was the bold man who first broke the ice, and made a long speech tending to prove that the king's deserting his kingdom without appointing any person to administer the government, amounted, in reason and judgment of law, to a demise." This opinion was taken up and defended by several other members. The Tories, including Sir Edward Seymour, who had been one of the first to join the Prince of Orange, made a vain effort to procure an adjournment; and the committee, after a stormy debate of many hours, voted the resolution-"That King James II., having endeavoured to subvert the constitution by breaking the original contract between king and people, and, by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons, having violated the fundamental laws, and withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, has abdicated the government, and that the throne is thereby become vacant." Mr. Hampden was ordered to carry up this resolution to the Lords, and to request their concurrence. On the morrow the Commons, still in committee, voted, "That it hath been found, by experience, to be inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant kingdom to be governed by a popish prince." The Whigs, in their anxiety to settle the Protestant William upon the throne, were too much disposed to overlook the restrictions proper to be put upon his power; and the Tories, in their eagerness

to keep the question open, stood forward in the new light of champions for the liberties of the people. When Mr. Hampden carried the resolution to the Upper House, their lordships subjected it to a long and critical examination. Lord Clarendon, uncle to the Princess of Orange, led the opposition, and proposed that the fugitive king should be nominally left on the throne, and a Protestant regent appointed during his life.* In the end the project of a regency was rejected, but only by a majority of two-fifty-one to forty-nine. A motion was made for an inquiry into the birth of the pretended Prince of Wales. It was rejected; but it seems to have been tacitly understood by both sides that that child was to be presumed spurious; and, without that deep-rooted belief in the minds of the people, this revolution would certainly not have been so easy of accomplishment. After long arguments about the propriety of substituting the word deserted for abdicated, and upholding the hereditary character of the succession, which would allow of no vacancy, the Lords took time to debate among themselves, and the Commons adjourned. The capital was in a ferment. Yielding to the force of circumstances, and the steadiness of the Commons, the Lords gave up their amendments; and then, by a majority of sixty-two to forty-seven, they resolved that the Prince and Princess of Orange should be declared King and Queen of England and all the dominions thereunto belonging. This vote, passed on the

* 66 Some," says Burnet, "intended to bring King James back; and went into this as the most probable way for laying the nation asleep, and for overcoming the present aversion that all people had to him. That being once done, they reckoned it would be no hard thing, with the help of some time, to compass the other."

"This, at least," says Mr. Hallam, "was a necessary supposition for the Tories, who sought in the idle rumours of the time an excuse for abandoning his right. As to the Whigs, though they were active in discrediting the unfortunate boy's legitimacy, their own broad principle of changing the line of succession rendered it, in point of argument, a superfluous inquiry."-Const. Hist.

6th of February, was sent down to the Commons on the 7th. The final resolution to which both Houses, after several conferences, came, on the 12th of February, was

"That William and Mary, Prince and Princess of Orange, be, and be declared, King and Queen of England, France, and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging, to hold the crown and dignity of the said kingdoms and dominions to them, the said prince and princess, during their lives, and the life of the survivor of them; and that the sole and full exercise of the regal power be only in and executed by the said Prince of Orange, in the names of the prince and princess, during their joint lives; and, after their decease, the said crown and royal dignity of the said kingdoms and dominions to be to the heirs of the body of the said princess; for default of such issue, to the Princess Anne of Denmark and the heirs of her body; and for default of such issue, to the heirs of the body of the said Prince of Orange."

WILLIAM AND MARY.

On the same busy day, Mary, the new Queen, arrived from Holland at Whitehall; and, on the morrow, the prince and she being seated in the Banqueting House, both Houses of the Convention waited upon them in a body, when the clerk of the crown read the declaration and resolution of the two houses, and the Marquess of Halifax, in their name, made a solemn tender of the crown to their highnesses. On the same day, being Ash Wednesday, William and Mary were proclaimed King and Queen of England, France, and Ireland, "with great acclamation and general good reception, with bonfires, bells, great guns, &c."

The Scottish Convention of Estates met on the 14th of March; and, through the ingenious management of Sir James Dalrymple (afterwards Lord Stair), hardly any were returned to it except Whigs and Presbyterians. The Duke of Hamilton was appointed president: the waverers were fixed by the success of the revolution in England, and everything proceeded with rapidity and spirit. The sheriffs were ordered to seize all persons found in arms without the authority of the Convention, and the Duke of Hamilton was invested with a dictatorial power of securing all suspected persons. The fiery Dundee did what he could to dissolve the Convention by cannon-balls. He urged the Duke of Gordon, who held out in Edinburgh Castle, to fire upon the city. Gordon refused, or hesitated, and then Dundee attempted to get

* "She seems," says Evelyn, "to be of a good nature, and that she takes nothing to heart; whilst her husband has a thoughtful countenance, is wonderful serious and silent, and seems to treat all persons alike gravely, and to be very intent on affairs: Holland, Ireland, and France calling for his care."

up a counter-convention at Stirling; but he was ill seconded by his friends, the Marquess of Athol and the Lords Balcarras and Mar. Dundee was eager to be in the field; but James had instructed him to remain quiet until assistance should be sent over from Ireland, where that wretched outcast had landed on the 12th of March, two days before the opening of the Scottish Convention. Urged on, however, by his natural impetuosity, or fearing for his life, which he said was threatened by some of the Covenanters, upon whom he had practised infamous severities "aforetime," he mounted his horse, and galloped through Edinburgh with a troop of cavalry, consisting of some fifty men, who had deserted to him from his regiment in England. In passing under the outer walls of the castle, on the road that leads to Dalkeith, he dismounted, scrambled up the precipice at a place where it is almost perpendicular, and held a conference with the Duke of Gordon, whom he vainly pressed to retire with him into the Highlands. While the conference lasted, a crowd collected at the foot of the precipice. A rumour reached the Convention, which was then sitting, that Dundee was at the gates with an army, and that Gordon was going to bombard the town. The Duke of Hamilton, who was better informed, turned the panic to the advantage of his party. He ordered the doors of the house to be shut, and the keys to be laid on the table-exclaiming, that there was danger within as well as without doors-that traitors must be held in confinement until the danger was over-but that the friends of liberty had nothing to fear, as thousands were ready to start up in their defence at the stamp of his foot. At his order, drums beat and trumpets sounded, and swarms of west-country Covenanters, who had been brought into Edinburgh by Hamilton and Sir John Dalrymple, started from their hiding-places in garrets and cellars and showed themselves in the streets with arms in their hands. When the doors of the Convention were thrown open for the members to retire, the few Tories present were assailed with threats and curses ; which had such an effect that some of the adherents of