Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/500

486 an impeachment to the lord; the lords refused to entertain it, and voted that he should be tried as the king directed, by common law. The commons were exasperated, and declared that this was a denial of justice, a violation of the rights of parliament, and any inferior court interfering would be guilty of a high breach of the privileges of their house. They were going on with the reading of the exclusion bill, when suddenly the king summoned them to the house of lords, and dissolved parliament. He had, on hearing of their proceedings, privately put the crown and robes of state into a sedan chair, and hastened to the house. The astonishment and rage of the opposition were inconceivable. Shaftesbury called on the members not to leave the house, but it was in vain; they gradually withdrew: the king rode off, at. tended by a detachment of his guards, to Windsor, and thus, after the session of a week, ended his fifth and last parliament.

Charles II.

If the whigs had not been blinded by their passions and their fancied success, they might have seen the reaction that was taking place. The long series of pretended plot had gradually opened the eyes of the people: they began to wonder how they could have believed them, and have consented to the spilling of so much blood on the evidence of such despicable characters. At the execution of lord Stafford, instead of those yells of rage with which they had received some of the previous victims, they cried that they