autumn of 1699 till the 1st of November 1700, when the few and miserable days of Charles II. came to an end, the agents of France worked persistently, and in the end successfully, to overcome the Austrian leanings of the dying monarch, and to convince him that on grounds of patriotism, no less than of legal and moral obligation, he was bound to devise his dominions to his lawful French heir, and away from the Prince to whom Louis had solemnly agreed with William that they should pass. The final consummation of these intrigues, however, was still a year distant, and meanwhile an incident of extreme interest, and at the time of exceeding gravity, in English politics, has to be recorded. On the 19th of November Parliament met again, and in a mood which boded ill for the relations between the sovereign and the third estate of his realm. The session began with one of the numerous abortive attacks made upon Somers in the course of his distinguished career, and an equally unsuccessful attempt was made to procure the disgrace of that perpetual bugbear of the Tories, Bishop Burnet. But these were merely in the nature of preliminary skirmishes; it was not long before hostilities were opened upon William and his Ministers in a more serious way. It will be remembered that at the close of the last session the Commons tacked to the Land Tax Bill a clause appointing seven commissioners to inquire into the Irish forfeitures, and that the Lords, after some demur to the manner in which the proposal was being forced upon them, passed the measure. The report of these commissioners, who had been pursuing their inquiries in Ireland during the recess, was now ready, and early in the session it was presented to Parliament, signed by four of the commissioners, the other three dissenting. Disfigured by many exaggerations and some wilful misstatements, this important document contained, nevertheless, an amount of discreditable truth sufficient not only to excite considerable popular feeling against William at the time, but to inflict some permanent injury on his historical reputation.