The Earl of Argyle sailed in May with a corresponding expedition, and landed in that part of the West Highlands which owned his authority. Unfortunately for him, the government had received warning, and seized all the gentlemen of his clan upon whom he had chiefly depended. He nevertheless raised between 2000 and 3000 men, and made a timid advance to Glasgow, in the expectation of being joined by the persecuted Presbyterians of that part of the country. Being surrounded on the march by various parties of troops, he dispersed his army, and sought to escape in disguise, but was taken, brought to Edinburg, and executed. Thus terminated the last effort made by the Whig party to ameliorate the despotic sway of the Stuarts. ARBITRARY MEASURES OF THE KING. Encouraged by his success, James conceived that he might safely begin the process of changing the established religion of the country. On the plea of his supremacy over the church, he took the liberty of dispensing with the test-oath in favor of some Catholic officers, and thus broke an act which was looked upon, under existing circumstances, as the chief safeguard of the Protestant faith. His Parliament, servile as it was in temporal matters, took the alarm at this spiritual danger, and gave the king so effectual a resistance that he resorted to a dissolution. Transactions precisely similar took place in Scotland. Heedless of these symptoms, he proclaimed a universal toleration, for the purpose of relieving the Catholics, and thus assumed the unconstitutional right of dispensing with acts of Parliament. The nation was thrown by this measure, and by the numerous promotions of Roman Catholics, into a state of great alarm; even the clergy, who had been so eager to preach an implicit obedience to the royal will, began to see that it might be productive of much danger. When James commanded that his proclamation of toleration should be read in every pulpit in the country, only two hundred of the clergy obeyed. Six of the bishops joined in a respectful petition against the order; but the king declared that document to be a seditious libel, and threw the petitioners into the Tower. In June 1688, they were tried in Westminster Hall, and to the infinite joy of the nation acquitted.