Note 142 — Chapter XIV · THE REIGN OF JAMES II.

Some short pamphlets, written at this juncture to excite sympathy for the king, and disapprobation of the course pursued with respect to him, are in the Somers Collection, vol. ix. But this force put upon their sovereign first wounded the consciences of Sancroft and the other bishops, who had hitherto done as much as in their station they well could to ruin the king's cause and paralyse his arms. Several modern writers have endeavoured to throw an interest about James at the moment of his fall, either from a lurking predilection for all legitimately crowned heads, or from a notion that it becomes a generous historian to excite compassion for the unfortunate. There can be no objection to pitying James, if this feeling is kept unmingled with any blame of those who were the instruments of this misfortune. It was highly expedient for the good of this country, because the revolution settlement could not otherwise be attained, to work on James's sense of his deserted state by intimidation; and for that purpose the order conveyed by three of his own subjects, perhaps with some rudeness of manner, to leave Whitehall was necessary. The drift of several accounts of the revolution that may be read is to hold forth Mulgrave, Craven, Arran, and Dundee to admiration, at the expense of William and of those who achieved the great consolidation of English liberty.