"If he tried," he answered sombrely, "he would meet with the same reception—by Heaven, he would! No gentleman joined Monmouth, none would join the Prince." "’Tis certain," said Sunderland. "But what causeth Your Majesty to imagine His Highness would attempt so wild a design as an armed descent on England?" "He buildeth a great navy," remarked James. "To protect the States against France. Reason showeth that the suggestion of His Highness’ conduct that M. de Barillon hath made is folly. The Prince is the servant of the States; even if he wished, he could not use their forces to further his private ends, and is not the Princess daughter to Your Majesty, and would she help in an act of rebellion against you?" "No," replied the King, "no—I do not think it. If the Dutch do choose to build a few ships am I to be stopped? My Lord Halifax," he added, with eagerness, "advised the giving back of the city charters and the reinstatement of the Fellows of Magdalen—but I will not—I’ll break ’em, all the disloyal lot of ’em." A slight smile curved my lord’s fine lips. "Halifax is ever for timorous counsels." "A moderate man!" cried James. "I dislike your moderate men—they’ve damned many a cause and never made one. I’ll have none of their sober politics." "The best Your Majesty can do," said Sunderland, "is to gain the Dissenters, call a packed parliament of them and the Catholics in the autumn, pass the repeal of the Test Act, treat French interference firmly, strengthen the army, and bring the Irish to overawe London. There will be no murmurs against your authority this time a year hence." James gave my lord a pleased glance. "Your views suit with mine," he replied. "I’ll officer the army with Catholics—and look to those two judges who favoured these bishops. We will remove them from the bench." He was still alternating between ill-humour at the open display of feeling on the occasion of the public cross he had received in the matter of the bishops and the satisfaction my lord’s wholly congenial counsel gave his obstinate self-confidence. A certain faith in himself and in the office he held, a still greater trust in the religion to which he was so blindly devoted, a tyrannical belief in firm measures and in the innate loyalty of church and people made this son of Charles I, sitting in the very palace from which his father had stepped on to the scaffold at the command of a plain gentleman from Hampshire, revolve schemes for the subjugation of England more daring than Plantagenet, Tudor, and Stewart had ventured on yet; he desired openly and violently to put England into the somewhat reluctant hands of the Pope, and beside this desire every other consideration was as nothing to His Majesty. "Let ’em shout," he said. "I can afford it." And he thought of his young heir, whose birth secured the Romish succession in England; an event that took the sting even from the acquittal of the stubborn bishops.