But simultaneously with the king's appeal letters of great import reached the Prince from the leading nobles. Some, like the Hydes, simply assured him of their friendship. The Bishop of London added assurances of support. Others, like Devonshire, Nottingham, and Shrewsbury, cautiously or openly warned the Prince against compliance with the king's demand. Lord Churchill announced the resolve of Mary's sister Anne to stand in any case by the cause of Protestantism. Danby, the leading representative of the great Tory party, told the Dutch ambassador plainly to warn William that if James was suffered to pursue his present course, and above all to gain control over the Parliament, he would leave the Catholic party strong enough at his death to threaten Mary's succession. The letters dictated William's answer. No one, he truly protested, loathed religious persecution more than he himself did, but in relaxing political disabilities James called on him to countenance an attack on his own religion. "I cannot," he ended, "concur in what your Majesty desires of me." William's refusal was justified, as we have seen, by the result of the efforts to assemble a Parliament favourable to the repeal of the Test. The wholesale dismissal of justices and Lord-Lieutenants through the summer of 1687 failed to shake the resolve of the counties. The "regulation" of their corporations by the displacing of their older members and the substitution of Nonconformists did little to gain the towns. The year 1688 indeed had hardly opened when it was found necessary to adjourn the elections which had been fixed for February, and to make a fresh attempt to win a warmer support from the dissidents and from the country. For James clung with a desperate tenacity to the hope of finding a compliant Parliament. He knew, what was as yet unknown to the world, the fact that his Queen was with child. The birth of an heir would meet the danger which he looked for from the succession of William and Mary. But James was past middle life, and his death would leave his boy at the mercy of a Regency which could hardly fail to be composed of men who would undo the king's work and even bring up the young sovereign as a Protestant. His own security, as he thought, against such a course lay in the building up a strong Catholic party, in placing Catholics in the high offices of State, and in providing against their expulsion from these at his death by a repeal of the Test. But such a repeal could only be won from Parliament, and hopeless as the effort seemed James pressed doggedly on in his attempt to secure Houses who would carry out his will. [Sidenote: The Trial of the Bishops.]