All this looked suspicious to the man in the street
People began to fear some terrible Popish plot. A new spirit
of unrest entered the land. Most of the people wanted to prevent
another outbreak of civil war. To them Royal Oppression
and a Catholic King--yea, even Divine Right,--were
preferable to a new struggle between members of the same
race. Others however were less lenient. They were the much-
feared Dissenters, who invariably had the courage of their
convictions. They were led by several great noblemen who did
not want to see a return of the old days of absolute royal
power.
For almost ten years, these two great parties, the Whigs
(the middle class element, called by this derisive name be-
cause in the year 1640 a lot of Scottish Whiggamores or horse-
drovers headed by the Presbyterian clergy, had marched to
Edinburgh to oppose the King) and the Tories (an epithet
originally used against the Royalist Irish adherents but now
applied to the supporters of the King) opposed each other, but
neither wished to bring about a crisis. They allowed Charles to
die peacefully in his bed and permitted the Catholic James II
to succeed his brother in 1685. But when James, after threatening
the country with the terrible foreign invention of a ``standing
army'' (which was to be commanded by Catholic Frenchmen),
issued a second Declaration of Indulgence in 1688, and
ordered it to be read in all Anglican churches, he went just a
trifle beyond that line of sensible demarcation which can only be
transgressed by the most popular of rulers under very
exceptional circumstances.
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