“The imprisonment and trial of the seven bishops, (says an excellent historian, {851b}) were the last measures of infatuation that remained. When a second indulgence was issued, and ordained to be read in the church, the bishops petitioned against an order calculated to reduce the clergy, on their compliance, to the contempt and reproach of becoming accessary to their own destruction; or to subject the disobedient to the penalties recently inflicted by the high commission. The whole nation was agitated at the imprisonment of the fathers of the church. The same violent agitation was excited by their trial; but their acquittal resounded through the capital, and was received with tumultuous joy by the whole kingdom, as a religious and even a national triumph over the sovereign. From the public ferment, which was not likely to subside, that dangerous crisis had at length arrived, to which despotism and bigotry conducted James. “The eyes and expectations of men had been long fixed on his nephew, the prince of Orange, whose marriage with his eldest daughter had opened a near prospect of obtaining the crown. Religion, as well as interest, had connected William with the popular party, as alike adverse to the ambition of France, and impatient for a protestant successor to the English throne. The discontented found a secure asylum in Holland, and an honourable or secret reception at his court; and his connexion with every party was preserved and enlarged by their correspondence with their friends. “While the chance of a protestant succession remained, the prince was averse to a premature rupture, and the nation was desirous to await the natural course of events. But the birth of a son, during the ferment excited by the imprisonment of the bishops, consoled James with the prospect of a catholic heir, and accelerated every preparation for his ruin. The most injurious surmises had been entertained of the queen’s conception; and from some mysterious circumstances, the report of a supposititious child, however improbable at present, was eagerly propagated and implicitly believed. From the prospect of an hereditary religious despotism the invitation of the prince of Orange was no longer deferred. The whigs, who had urged the exclusion, were indifferent to the hereditary line of succession, from which the tories, who had no view beyond a parliament, were unwilling to deviate. But as every political and religious party deposited their animosities during the common danger, a secret conspiracy was formed by their coalition, the most extensive perhaps, and the best concerted which history has preserved.