On the 22nd of January, 1689, a Convention, which soon declared itself Parliament, assembled at Westminster, elected arbitrarily on circular letters sent forth in the name of the Prince of Orange. The parties were already beginning to divide; the great national unanimity which had willed and accomplished the revolution was yielding to different passions and opinions. In this supreme crisis of the government of England, the Tories, numerous in the House of Lords, weak in the House of Commons, hesitated, according to their political and religious complexions, between negotiations with King James, the establishment of a regency, leaving to the fugitive monarch the vain title of king, or the declaration that the throne was vacant, and the calling of the Princess Mary to the crown as its natural heiress. No one dared to assert the legitimacy of the Prince of Wales. Some of the Whigs, a party which included in its ranks a number of dissenters, proposed that Parliament should proclaim the nation's right to depose a prince guilty of bad government; the others, less involved in revolutionary schemes, though just as firmly resolved to deliver England from the misgovernment of King James, sought to cover the national will with a legal form. "It is said that kings have a divine right of their own," cried Sir Robert Howard; "nations also have _their_ divine right." On the 26th of January the House of Commons ended by passing a resolution couched as follows: "King James II., having undertaken to overthrow the Constitution of the realm by not fulfilling the original contract of King and people, has broken the fundamental laws of the Kingdom by the advice of Jesuits and other corrupt counsellors; by his voluntary retirement he has abdicated the government, in consequence of which the throne has become vacant." The form of the resolution was open to criticism; only its gist was important. The Commons soon added to their declaration of the vacancy of the throne a second equally grave resolution: "The reign of a Catholic monarch is incompatible with the security and welfare of this Protestant nation." The two resolutions were sent up to the Lords. {12}