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 of the Whig plotters, and their families did not forget the fact.

James II, however, was not merely the Catholic King of a strongly Protestant people; he was also the most obstinate man in England. If not, like Edward II, a crowned ass, he was at least a crowned mule. In three years he had wrecked his own throne, and very nearly pulled down the ancient monarchy of England on the top of himself. His Parliament was quite loyal and quite prepared to shut its eyes to his Catholic faith, if he would not flaunt it in every one’s face. But, from the very first, he set himself not only to do this, but to make the Catholics supreme in the State. He wished to give them all posts in Army, Navy and Civil Service, and even in the Church of England. He thought that by promising to abolish all laws against the Protestant Dissenters he might get them to help him to abolish the laws against the Catholics also. But the Dissenters, who certainly had never loved the Church of England, feared a Catholic King much more, and altogether refused to listen to James; they threw in their lot with those very churchmen and bishops who had bullied them. In Ireland, James appealed to the wildest passions of the Irish against the Protestant colonies of Englishmen which had been planted there by Elizabeth, by James I and by Cromwell, and confirmed in their lands by Charles Il. To the one person who could perhaps have helped him to put down England by the sword, namely King Louis of France, this crowned mule turned a deaf ear, and professed that he wanted no such help. In short he listened to nobody but a few Catholic priests in his own household.