matters to the point of extremity. When he was ordered from London to avoid the session he took northwards with him the intention to see to his own interest. Should the attack on him be pushed further, he thought to unite parties in Scotland in the royal cause and by exciting trouble there and in Ireland to bring the struggle to a head. Then he believed that a larger party than many imagined would be on his side in England.[397] On the success of the Duke of York depended all the hopes of Roman Catholics for the future of their religion in the English realm. He was their secular head and the turning-point of their plans. His movements were watched with the keenest interest by the authorities of the church. Patience, prudence, and persistence was the policy they advocated. Exhortations to obedience, expressions of attachment and submission passed continually between him and his spiritual patrons. The papal nuncio at Brussels informed him of the deep concern that the Catholic religion had in his cause, and received the gratifying assurance that he would make it his first care to propagate the true faith by every means at his disposal.[398] How James fulfilled that promise is well known. However much devotion he expressed to the wishes of the Holy Father, his heart was more at one with the Society of Jesus than with the court of Rome. He chose Jesuits for his confessors, begged emoluments for them, took their policy for his guide. While his course drew from the Jesuits inexhaustible and still unexhausted praise, it was met by a series of remonstrances waxing in indignation from the pontiff. In the year 1687 fifty candidates for orders in the society were being prepared for work in the English province. King James, it is said, informed Father John Keynes, the provincial, that double or treble that number would be necessary to accomplish what he destined for Jesuit hands.[399] The result declared his wisdom. The mystery of the Revolution was that William of Orange, a Protestant invading the realm of a Catholic monarch, had the support of the Catholic emperor at the instigation of the pope. From the fierce battle of the Popish Plot Charles II tore a prize to deliver to the man by whose ill-judged efforts he had most nearly been robbed of it. At his death he left a kingdom compact, loyal, prosperous, ready to carry on the traditions that had been built up with labour and in the teeth of disaster. When that day came James behaved in perfect accord with his character. Within four years he had thrown away the fruits of a struggle that had lasted for a quarter of a century, and paid the penalty of folly and invincible obstinacy by the dragging existence of a pretender, an exile, a dependent, and a criminal. CHAPTER III SHAFTESBURY AND CHARLES