[111] Sunderland does not appear, by the extracts from Barillon's letters published by M. Mazure, to have been the adviser of the king's most injudicious measures. He was united with the queen, who had more moderation than her husband. It is said by Barillon that both he and Petre were against the prosecution of the bishops, ii. 448. The king himself ascribes this step to Jefferies, and seems to glance also at Sunderland as its adviser. _Life of James_, ii. 156. He speaks more explicitly as to Jefferies in Macpherson's _Extracts_, 151. Yet Lord Clarendon's _Diary_, ii. 49, tends to acquit Jefferies. Probably the king had nobody to blame but himself. One cause of Sunderland's continuance in the apparent support of a policy which he knew to be destructive was his poverty. He was in the pay of France, and even importunate for its money. Mazure, 372; Dalrymple, 270 _et post_. Louis only gave him half what he demanded. Without the blindest submission to the king, he was every moment falling; and this drove him in to a step as injudicious as it was unprincipled, his pretended change of religion, which was not publicly made till June 1688, though he had been privately reconciled, it is said (Mazure, ii. 463) more than a year before by Father Petre. [112] "This defection of those his majesty had hitherto put the greatest confidence in [Clarendon and Rochester], and the sullen disposition of the church of England party in general, made him think it necessary to reconcile another; and yet he hoped to do it in such a manner as not to disgust quite the church-man neither." _Life of James_, ii. 102. [113] _London Gazette_, March 18, 1687; Ralph, 945. [114] Ralph, 943; Mazure, ii. 207. [115] _London Gazette_, June 9, 1687. Shower had been knighted a little before, on presenting, as recorder of London, an address from the grand jury of Middlesex, thanking the king for his declaration. _Id._ May 12. [116] _London Gazette_ of 1687 and 1688, _passim_; Ralph, 946, 368. These addresses grew more ardent after the queen's pregnancy became known. They were renewed of course, after the birth of the Prince of Wales. But scarce any appear after the expected invasion was announced. The Tories (to whom add the dissenters) seem to have thrown off the mask at once, and deserted the king whom they had so grossly flattered, as instantaneously as parasites on the stage desert their patron on the first tidings of his ruin. The dissenters have been a little ashamed of their compliance with the declaration, and of their silence in the popish controversy during this reign. Neal, 755, 768; and see _Biogr. Brit._ art. Alsop. The best excuses are, that they had been so harassed that it was not in human nature to refuse a mitigation of suffering on almost any terms; that they were by no means unanimous in their transitory support of the court; and that they gladly embraced the first offers of an equal indulgence held out to them by the church.