submission in one case would be a stronger argument for continuing the practice than any such resolution would be against its repetition. The university accordingly remained firm in their original decision. The vice-chancellor was summoned before the ecclesiastical commission to answer for this act of contempt. Newton was among the number of those who resisted the wishes of the court, and he was consequently chosen one of the nine delegates who were appointed to defend the independence of the university. These delegates appeared before the High Court. They maintained that not a single precedent could be found to justify so extraordinary a measure; and they showed that Charles II. had, under similar circumstances, been pleased to withdraw his mandamus. This representation had its full weight, and the king was induced to abandon his design.[73] The part which Newton had taken in this affair, and the high character which he now held in the scientific world, induced his friends to propose him as member of parliament for the university. He was accordingly elected in 1688, though by a very narrow majority,[74] and he sat in the Convention Parliament till its dissolution. In the year 1688 and 1689, Newton was absent from Cambridge during the greater part of the year, owing, we presume, to his attendance in parliament; but it appears from the books of the University that from 1690 to 1695 he was seldom absent, and must therefore have renounced his parliamentary duties. During his stay in London he had no doubt experienced the unsuitableness of his income to the new circumstances in which he was placed, and it is probable that this was the cause of the limitation of his residence to Cambridge. His income was certainly very confined, and but little suited to the generosity of his disposition. Demands were doubtless made upon it by some of his less wealthy relatives; and there is reason to think that he himself, as well as his influential friends, had been looking forward to some act of liberality on the part of the government. An event however occurred which will ever form an epoch in his history; and it is a singular circumstance, that this incident has been for more than a century unknown to his own countrymen, and has been accidentally brought to light by the examination of the manuscripts of Huygens. This event has been magnified into a temporary aberration of mind, which is said to have arisen from a cause scarcely adequate to its production.