[292] Sixteen lords, including two bishops, Compton and Sprat, protested against the bill containing the abjuration oath. The first reason of their votes was afterwards expunged from the Journals by order of the house. Lords' Journals, 24th Feb., 3rd March 1701-2. [293] Whiston mentions, that Mr. Baker, of St. John's, Cambridge, a worthy and learned man, as well as others of the college, had thoughts of taking the oath of allegiance on the death of King James; but the oath of abjuration coming out the next year, had such expressions as he still scrupled. Whiston's _Memoirs_; _Biog. Brit._ (Kippis's edition), art. Baker. CHAPTER XVI ON THE STATE OF THE CONSTITUTION IN THE REIGNS OF ANNE, GEORGE I., AND GEORGE II. The act of settlement was the seal of our constitutional laws, the complement of the revolution itself and the bill of rights, the last great statute which restrains the power of the Crown, and manifests, in any conspicuous degree, a jealousy of parliament in behalf of its own and the subject's privileges. The battle had been fought and gained; the statute-book, as it becomes more voluminous, is less interesting in the history of our constitution; the voice of petition, complaint, or remonstrance is seldom to be traced in the Journals; the Crown in return desists altogether, not merely from the threatening or objurgatory tone of the Stuarts, but from that dissatisfaction sometimes apparent in the language of William; and the vessel seems riding in smooth water, moved by other impulses, and liable perhaps to other dangers, than those of the ocean-wave and the tempest. The reigns, accordingly, of Anne, George I., and George II., afford rather materials for dissertation, than consecutive facts for such a work as the present; and may be sketched in a single chapter, though by no means the least important, which the reader's study and reflection must enable him to fill up. Changes of an essential nature were in operation during the sixty years of these three reigns, as well as in that beyond the limits of this undertaking, which in length measures them all; some of them greatly enhancing the authority of the Crown, or rather of the executive government, while others had so opposite a tendency, that philosophical speculators have not been uniform in determining on which side was the sway of the balance.