January, a thing impossible without allowing them to steal and plunder. It was this struck so much terror into Protestants, and made them so jealous and apprehensive of danger that they fled into England in great numbers, especially when they found that the new raised men, as they surmised, began to make havoc of all things.'[172] [Sidenote: The Duke of Ormonde dies.] On July 21, less than a month after the acquittal of the seven bishops, the Duke of Ormonde died at Kingston Hall in Dorsetshire. It was the anniversary of his wife's death four years before, and the end of his life was clouded by many other losses. His eldest son Ossory, who had a reputation scarcely inferior to Philip Sidney's, had died in 1680, and his much less satisfactory brother Arran followed in 1685. As soon as the news reached Oxford, Convocation was hastily summoned, and the Duke's grandson and successor was chosen Chancellor. A royal mandate to stop the election came too late, and the University was saved the indelible disgrace of seeing Jeffreys at its head. In one respect Ormonde was happy in an opportune death, for he did not have to choose between the King and the law. It would have been a bitter thing for him to come under another sovereign when James was still alive, but he opposed his policy. Only a year before his death he signed a protest against admitting a pensioner to the Charterhouse without taking the oath of allegiance and supremacy as required by an express Act of Parliament. The governors who protested with him were Sancroft, a non-juror, Craven, whose loyalty was absolute, Halifax the cautious, Danby and Compton, who signed the invitation to William of Orange, and Nottingham, who was privy to it but shrank from signing. The King and Jeffreys were cowed by this powerful opposition. Besides his anxiety about public affairs, Ormonde was troubled by want of money, for Tyrconnel's proceedings had interfered with Irish rents, and he foresaw discomforts such as he never expected to feel 'during the reign of any of the race of King Charles the First.' His health was gradually failing, though he travelled much almost to the last, but he felt that the time for field sports was over, and that 'the steps downwards are very natural from a field to a garden, from a garden to a window, from thence to a bed, and so to a grave.'[173] [Sidenote: His character.]