Doubt cannot exist as to the dangerous consequence of the correspondence carried on by Coleman. Under the most favourable interpretation it reveals a design to accomplish again by means of bribery what the English nation had already rejected as illegal and unconstitutional, a deed which was said to have broken forty acts of Parliament,[82] to give the sanction of authority to a religion which was banned and to priests who were under doom of high treason. And the most favourable interpretation is certainly not the most just. Those “great designs ... to the utter ruin of the Protestant party,” which should “drive away the Parliament and the Protestants ... and settle in their employments the Catholics,” refuse such a colouring.[83] At Coleman’s subsequent trial the Lord Chief Justice told him, “Your design was to bring in Popery into England and to promote the interest of the French king in this place.... Our religion was to be subverted, Popery established, and the three kingdoms to be converted”;[84] and what the Chief Justice said was true. Coleman and the party to which he belonged had designed “to extirpate the religion established in this country” by the assistance of money given by a foreign power. Such an endeavour could not be undertaken without the commission of high treason. By the theory of the constitution the king can do no wrong. Much less can he do wrong to himself. He cannot be persuaded to perform an act directed against his own person. Great persuasion or importunity addressed to the king, says Hale, cannot be held an act of treason, since an intention must be manifested to restrain or influence him by force.[85] But the king cannot be supposed of his free will to undertake measures having their end, according to the construction of the statute, in the compassing of his own death. Nor can he be supposed to be persuaded to such measures, for both cases involve a contradiction of himself. No king can be guilty of high treason. Except by Act of Parliament none in England can divest his office of any of the full authority pertaining thereto. Persuasion of the king to do so is by the nature of the case impossible, whether it be in the form of money or other. Any one who plans a fundamental change of the constitution, to be effected by money or other means except by the constitutional action of Parliament, falls under the penalty for treason none the less because he may hope for assistance from the man who is king, since the king cannot be considered to assist an unconstitutional change. Any one planning such a change, though he intends to obtain the king’s assistance, acts against the king’s authority as much as if he did not so intend, and is therefore guilty of high treason. Of such possible changes the overthrow of the Church of England is one, for the king cannot otherwise than constitutionally join in the subversion of the church of which he is head, and which he has sworn to maintain.