John Wesley says of him:—“He was in every respect a consummate hypocrite, equally void of piety, mercy, honesty, and gratitude. Under a cover of gentleness he was cruel and revengeful to a high degree. He was abandoned to all vices. A worse man never sat on the English throne.”—WESLEY’S _History of England_, vol. iii., p. 316. ----- The Duke of York succeeded his brother Charles II. to the throne, under the title of James II., in the spring of 1685. On the very first Sunday after his accession he went to mass with all the ensigns of royalty. While he was a subject, James was in the habit of hearing mass, with closed doors, in a small oratory which had been fitted up for his popish wife; but now that he was king, he ordered the doors to be thrown wide open, so that all who came to pay him homage might see the superstitious ceremonial. Soon, also, a new pulpit was erected in the palace, and, during Lent, sermons were preached there by popish divines, to the great disgust of zealous Protestants. One of the first acts of James was to throw open the prisons of England, and to set at liberty thousands of Dissenters and Papists, who had been enduring a horrible captivity for conscience’ sake. Two months after James’s coronation, the Earl of Argyle and the Duke of Monmouth, by previous concert, invaded Scotland and England with a small force from Holland; the former to re-establish the Covenant, and the latter to secure the Protestant religion, and to deliver the country from the tyranny of its enthroned monarch. Argyle sent the fiery cross from hill to hill in Scotland, and from clan to clan, until he got 2500 Highlanders to join him. In a few days he was betrayed by his guides, and was made a prisoner. His hands were tied behind him, and, with his head bare, and the headsman marching before him, he was carried to his old cell in Edinburgh Castle, and, on June 30, was beheaded. Monmouth, in England, met with a much more general welcome than Argyle found in Scotland. All classes of the people welcomed him as a deliverer sent from heaven. The poor rent the air with their joyful acclamations, and the rich opened their houses and supplied his army with meat and drink. His path was strewn with flowers; and windows, as he passed through towns, were crowded with ladies waving their handkerchiefs. On the 20th of June, at Taunton, he took the title of king; but, after marching through several parts of the West of England, his army was scattered, and he was ignominiously captured in a ditch, disguised as a peasant, with a few peas in his pocket, and himself half buried among ferns and nettles. With almost abject meanness, he implored pardon at the hands of James his uncle, but without effect, for, fifteen days after Argyle was beheaded in Edinburgh, Monmouth was decapitated on Tower Hill.