The “loyal” Protestant majority had succeeded in placing the Catholic minority, their own fellow-countrymen, in a position of political nonentity, simply because they worshiped God according to their belief. Who could, then, have imagined that the England which refused equality in the holding of office to Catholic subjects would, about two hundred years later, have a Catholic for Lord Chief Justice and an Irish Catholic (Lord Russell of Killowen) at that? Five generations have done much toward a change of sentiment in England. But King James, we are told, on hearing the shouts of the people when the acquittal was announced, asked of Lord Feversham, who happened to be with him: “What do they shout for?” And Feversham replied, carelessly: “Oh, nothing—only the acquittal of the bishops!” “And you call that nothing?” cried the king. “So much the worse for them,” meaning the people. These latter were excited by the Protestant lords and gentry, who much feared a Catholic succession, now that the king had an heir-male to the throne. Both of his daughters—Mary, married to William, Prince of Orange, the king’s nephew, and Anne, who became the wife of the Prince of Denmark—were Protestants, their mother having brought them up in that belief. William, half a Stuart and half a Dutchman, brave, resolute, and wise withal, seemed to the English malcontents to be the “heaven-appointed” man to supplant his own uncle and father-in-law. William was nothing loth, and Mary, who was to share the throne with him, made no objection to this most unfilial proceeding. Neither did Anne, who, like the unnatural creature she was, fled from her father’s palace, guided and guarded by the Protestant Bishop of London, as soon as she heard of William’s almost unobstructed march on the capital. That personage had landed at Torbay, in Devonshire, on November 5—the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot of the days of James I—convoyed by an immense fleet, which carried to the shores of England a picked veteran army of 15,000 men. This army was commanded, under William, by the Marshal Duke of Schomberg, Count Solmes, General De Ginkel, and other officers of European renown. The principal plotters who invited William to seize the crown of England were the Earls of Danby, Shrewsbury, Devonshire, the Bishop of London, Lord Lumley, Admiral Russell, and Colonel Sidney. Just a little while before the coming of William, James took the alarm and attempted to make concessions to the Protestants. He also decreed the strengthening of the army, and the enlistment of Irish Catholics and Scotch Highlanders, most of whom had retained the old faith, was encouraged.