7. =Breach between Parliament and King. 1685.=--When the Houses, which had adjourned when the king went into the West, met again on November 9, James informed them not only that he had appointed officers disqualified by law, but that he was determined not to part with them. The House of Commons, the most loyal House that had ever been chosen, remonstrated with him, and there were signs that the Lords intended to support the remonstrance. On November 20 James prorogued Parliament. 8. =The Dispensing Power. 1686.=--Like his father, James liked to think that, when he broke the laws, he was acting legally, and he remembered that the Crown had, in former days, exercised a power of dispensing with the execution of the laws (see p. 604). This power had, indeed, been questioned by the Parliament in =1673= (see p. 606), but there was no statute or legal judgment declaring it to be forbidden by law. James now wanted to get a decision from the judges that he possessed the dispensing power, and when he found that four of the judges disagreed with him, he replaced them by four judges who would decide in his favour. Having thus packed the Bench, he procured the bringing of a collusive action against Sir Edward Hales, who, having been appointed an officer in the army, had, as a Catholic, refused to take the test. Hales produced a dispensation from the king, and, on June 21, =1686=, the judges decided that such dispensations freed those who received them from the penalties imposed by any laws whatever.