There was an Irish divine, Martin of Connemara, who suggested that, in time of war, it would be well that a chosen band should devote themselves to the task of falling upon the Prince of Orange and putting him to death. It would, he said, be a legitimate act of warfare. Lewis XIV required no such arguments, and sent a miscreant named Grandval to rid him of the obnoxious prince. Berwick preferred the advice of the theologian, and, at the battle of Landen, he led a troop of 200 horsemen to the place where his kinsman stood, crying out to them to kill him. Three years later, in 1696, he was in London, communicating with the managers of the plot, who thought that it would be no murder to shoot the king on the road to Hampton Court, when surrounded by his guards. A beacon fire on Shakespeare's Cliff was to send the news across the sea, and at that signal James was to come over, in French ships. When the plot thickened, Berwick made his escape, and met his father changing horses at Clermont. Having learnt how matters stood, James pursued his way to Calais, and there, while he watched the northern horizon for the desired signal, he wrote edifying letters to the Abbe de Rance. When the plot was betrayed he showed the deepest sympathy with the assassins, and never lamented their crime. The series of measures by which he lost the crown form a drama in three acts. First, he tried to obtain the co-operation of the Established Church. When that failed, he turned against the Church and worked through the Dissenters. And then he brought on that quarrel with the clergy which proved fatal to him. James did not believe in the reality of Protestant religion. Sunderland assured him that in two years not a Protestant would be left in England, if compulsion ceased, and his mind was bewildered by two very remarkable facts. One of these was the theology of recent Caroline divines. Archbishop Bramhall could hardly be distinguished from a Gallican. Archbishop Leighton was in close touch with Jansenists. One Roman doctrine was adopted by Montagu, another by Thomdike, a third by Isaac Barrow. Bull received the thanks of the French clergy for his vindication of the early fathers against the most learned of the Jesuits. To an ignorant and narrow-minded man all these things pointed to one conclusion, the instability and want of solidity in the Anglican system. Then there was the astounding collapse of the French Huguenots. Lewis boasted that, in a few months, without real violence, he had effected 800,000 conversions. And James was eager to believe it. He asked himself, says Barillon, why he could not do as much in England. He desired the Roman congregations to examine the question, whether the English bishops might retain their sees. Some said they would be better than the Catholic clergy, who were accused of Jansenism. One thing he considered absolutely certain. The Church would never resist his authority. The Bishop of Winchester entreated