13. =The Expulsion of the Fellows of Magdalen. 1687.=--Scarcely was the Declaration issued when James showed how little he cared for law or custom. There was a vacancy in the President-ship of Magdalen College, Oxford, and James commanded the Fellows to choose one Farmer, a man of bad character, and a Roman Catholic. On April 15 the Fellows, as they had the undoubted right to do, chose Hough. In June they were summoned before the Ecclesiastical Commission, which declared Hough's election to be void, and ordered them to choose Parker, who, though at heart a Roman Catholic, was nominally the Protestant Bishop of Oxford (see p. 638). They answered simply that, as Hough had been lawfully elected, they had no right to choose another President in his lifetime. Jeffreys bullied them in vain. James insisted on their accepting Parker, and on acknowledging the legality of the proceedings of the Ecclesiastical Commission. All but two, having refused to submit, were turned out of the College and left to beg their bread. When the Commissioners attempted to install Parker in his office not a blacksmith in Oxford would consent to break open the lock of the President's lodgings. The servants of the Commissioners were at last employed to force the door, and it was in this way that Parker took possession of the residence to which Hough alone had a legal claim. The expelled Fellows were not left to starve, as there was scarcely a gentleman in England who would not have been proud to receive one of them into his house. 14. =An Attempt to pack a Parliament. 1687.=--James was anxious to obtain Parliamentary sanction for his Declaration of Indulgence. He dissolved the existing Parliament, hoping to find a new one more to his taste. As he had packed the Bench of Judges in =1686=, he tried to pack a Parliament in =1687=. A board of regulators was appointed, with Jeffreys at its head, to remodel the corporations once more, appointing Roman Catholics and Dissenters to sit in them. James expected that these new members would elect tolerationists to the next House of Commons. So strong, however, was public opinion against the king that even the new members chosen expressly to vote for the king's nominees could not be relied on. The design of calling a new Parliament was therefore abandoned for the time.