Seven bishops refused to comply
with the Royal Command. They were accused of ``seditious
libel.'' They were brought before a court. The jury which
pronounced the verdict of ``not guilty'' reaped a rich harvest
of popular approval.
At this unfortunate moment, James (who in a second marriage
had taken to wife Maria of the Catholic house of Modena-
Este) became the father of a son. This meant that the throne
was to go to a Catholic boy rather than to his older sisters,
Mary and Anne, who were Protestants. The man in the street
again grew suspicious. Maria of Modena was too old to have
children! It was all part of a plot! A strange baby had been
brought into the palace by some Jesuit priest that England
might have a Catholic monarch. And so on. It looked as if
another civil war would break out. Then seven well-known
men, both Whigs and Tories, wrote a letter asking the husband
of James's oldest daughter Mary, William III the Stadtholder
or head of the Dutch Republic, to come to England and
deliver the country from its lawful but entirely undesirable
sovereign.
On the fifth of November of the year 1688, William landed
at Torbay. As he did not wish to make a martyr out of his
father-in-law, he helped him to escape safely to France. On
the 22nd of January of 1689 he summoned Parliament. On
the 13th of February of the same year he and his wife Mary
were proclaimed joint sovereigns of England and the country
was saved for the Protestant cause.
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