have known that the enactment to which they attached so much value would be superfluous while the Parliament was disposed to maintain the order of succession, and would be repealed as soon as there was a Parliament bent on changing the order of succession.[1]
The bill, as amended, was passed and carried up to the Lords, but did not become law. The King had obtained from the Parliament all the pecuniary assistance that he could expect; and he conceived that, while rebellion was actually raging, the loyal nobility and gentry would be of more use in their counties than at Westminster. He therefore hurried their deliberations to a close, and, on the second of July, dismissed them. On the same day the royal assent was given to a law reviving that censorship of the press which had terminated in 1679. This object was affected by a few words at the end of a miscellaneous statute which continued several expiring acts. The courtiers did not think that they had gained a triumph. The Whigs did not utter a murmur. Neither in the Lords nor in the Commons was there any division, or even, as far as can now be learned, any debate on a question which would, in our age, convulse the whole frame of society. In truth, the change was slight and almost imperceptible; for, since the detection of the Rye House plot, the liberty of unlicensed printing had existed only in name. During many months scarcely one Whig pamphlet had been published except by stealth; and by stealth such pamphlets might be published still.[2]
The Houses then rose. They were not prorogued, but only adjourned, in order that, when they should reassemble, they might take up their business in the exact state in which they had left it.[3]
While the Parliament was devising sharp laws against Monmouth and his partisans, he found at Taunton a reception which
- ↑ Commons' Journals, June 19, 29, 1685; Lord Lonsdale's Memoirs, 8, 9, Burnet, i. 639. The bill, as amended by the committee, will be found in Mr. Fox's historical work. Appendix iii. If Burnet's account be correct, the offences which, by the amended bill, were made punishable only with civil incapacities were, by the original bill, made capital.
- ↑ 1 Jac. II. c. 7; Lords' Journals, July 2, 1685.
- ↑ Lords' and Commons' Journals, July 2, 1685.
