The violence of Shaftesbury and his adherents went on increasing; it passed the bounds of the national temperament. The sentiments of passionate loyalty which had hailed the Restoration were not completely extinguished, and when the leader of the Whigs, arriving armed at Oxford, affixed to the hats of his domestics the motto from one of his speeches, "No Popery! no slavery!" the echo which it occasioned in the hearts of the people was not powerful enough to sustain him in his audacious designs. The nation rejected, as he did, Popery and slavery; but it was not yet disposed to attribute to its king all the sinister views which Shaftesbury laid to his account. In the last Parliament Shaftesbury had proposed to deprive the Duke of York, upon his accession to the throne, of the power to treat with foreign governments, and to nominate civil and military functionaries. At Oxford he offered to leave to the heir-apparent the empty title of king, while entrusting the power to the Prince of Orange as the representative of the Princess Mary. These various expedients, more specious and ingenious than practicable, were insufficient to satisfy the violent passions excited in the House of Commons. The proposition of Halifax was rejected. On the 26th of March, a new Exclusion Bill was presented and carried. "On the 28th," says Burnet, "very suddenly and not very decently, the king came to the House of Lords, the crown being carried between his feet in a sedan. And he put on his robes in haste, without any previous notice, and called up the Commons, and dissolved Parliament." This was the fifth Parliament dissolved by King Charles II. The Parliament of Oxford was the last which was convoked during his reign. {383}