But to return. It is a striking coincidence, that about the time when Judge Jeffreys was holding his “bloody assizes” in the West of England, King Louis of France was revoking the tolerant edict of Nantes, and driving thousands of his Huguenot subjects to England and other lands of exile. Other curious and important events happened in James’s short reign, which our space permits to be only mentioned. For instance, Dryden, the greatest writer of the day, turned Catholic, perhaps to please the royal Papist sitting on the throne; but Jeffreys refused to do so, on the ground that, when he was in Africa, he promised the Emperor of Morocco that, if he ever changed his religion, he would become a Turk. Another pro-papistical act was this,—King James, asserting a repealing power over all laws and Acts of Parliament, took upon himself not only to dismiss Protestants from the highest civil and military offices, but to put Papists into their places. He likewise gave the revenues of the Church in Ireland, to a great extent, to popish bishops and priests, and not merely permitted, but commanded them to wear their canonicals in public. He cashiered four thousand Protestant soldiers, stripped them of their uniforms, and left them to wander hungry and half-naked through the land; their officers, for the most part, retiring into Holland, and rallying round the Prince of Orange there. All this excited anxiety, and, at length, the pulpits, even of High Churchmen, and despite the dogma of passive obedience, began to resound with warnings and denunciations. James now suspended Compton, Bishop of London; attempted to convert his daughter, the Princess Anne, to the popish religion; and tried to deprive his daughter Mary, the Princess of Orange, of her right to the succession. He endeavoured to obtain the control of the public seminaries, schools, and colleges; and to appoint Papists to be their officers. Four popish bishops were publicly consecrated in the Chapel Royal,—were sent to their dioceses with the titles of vicars apostolical; their pastoral letters being also licensed, printed, and dispersed throughout the kingdom. James likewise issued letters mandatory to the bishops of England, prohibiting the clergy to preach upon points of controversy, and establishing an ecclesiastical commission with more power than had been possessed by the abominable court over which Laud presided.