_Suspicions of the king's sincerity._--It may be thought rather surprising that, with a House of Commons so nearly balanced as they appeared on this vote, the king should have new demands that annihilated his authority made upon him, and have found a greater majority than had voted the Remonstrance ready to oppose him by arms; especially as that paper contained little but what was true, and might rather be censured as an ill-timed provocation than an encroachment on the constitutional prerogative. But there were circumstances, both of infelicity and misconduct, which aggravated that distrust whereon every measure hostile to him was grounded. His imprudent connivance at popery, and the far more reprehensible encouragement given to it by his court, had sunk deep in the hearts of his people. His ill-wishers knew how to irritate the characteristic sensibility of the English on this topic. The queen, unpopular on the score of her imputed arbitrary counsels, was odious as a maintainer of idolatry.[204] The lenity shown to convicted popish priests, who, though liable to capital punishment, had been suffered to escape with sometimes a very short imprisonment, was naturally (according to the maxims of those times) treated as a grievance by the Commons, who petitioned for the execution of one Goodman and others in similar circumstances, perhaps in the hope that the king would attempt to shelter them. But he dexterously left it to the house whether they should die or not; and none of them actually suffered.[205] Rumours of pretended conspiracies by the catholics were perpetually in circulation, and rather unworthily encouraged by the chiefs of the Commons. More substantial motives for alarm appeared to arise from the obscure transaction in Scotland, commonly called the Incident, which looked so like a concerted design against the two great leaders of the constitutional party, Hamilton and Argyle, that it was not unnatural to anticipate something similar in England.[206] In the midst of these apprehensions, as if to justify every suspicion and every severity, burst out the Irish rebellion with its attendant massacre. Though nothing could be more unlikely in itself, or less supported by proof, than the king's connivance at this calamity, from which every man of common understanding could only expect, what actually resulted from it, a terrible aggravation of his difficulties, yet, with that distrustful temper of the English, and their jealous dread of popery, he was never able to conquer their suspicions that he had either instigated the rebellion, or was very little solicitous to suppress it; suspicions indeed, to which, however ungrounded at this particular period, some circumstances that took place afterwards gave an apparent confirmation.[207]