The prospect was very dark; but there were some rays of light, the resignations of Nottingham and Seymour, the most violent members of the Tory party, making it possible that the claims of Scotland to equal treatment with England might be acknowledged. But England was not in a mood to be trifled with. A week after the royal assent had been given to the Act of Security, the battle of Blenheim was fought. Marlborough was now at the summit of his power; and the alliance between him and Godolphin alone saved the latter from falling before the storm of indignation which greeted him for advising the Queen to allow the Act to become law. The Government had been successful both in England and abroad; and the Opposition fixed upon the one vulnerable point--their Scottish policy. The Act of Security was printed and circulated throughout the country. The nations, it was pointed out, were now separated by law; and for this Godolphin was responsible. Wharton boasted that he had the Lord Treasurer’s head in a halter, and swore that he would draw it tight. It was believed that large quantities of arms were arriving in Scotland from the Continent, and that the people were being drilled for the purpose of fighting against England. Godolphin himself, a man of few words and great experience, did not share in the general panic. ‘People,’ he told Queensberry afterwards at another crisis, ‘who mean to fight, do not talk so much about it.’ His invariable answer to all the abuse which was hurled at his head was that there would have been more danger in refusing the royal assent than in giving it; and he added that the danger was ‘not without a remedy.’