THE DAUGHTERS OF JAMES II OF ENGLAND. 355 written by James II to his eldest daughter Mary, giving her, in compliance with her request, the reasons why he had changed his religion. This letter was written Novem- ber 4, 1 687, about a year before William of Orange invaded England and seized the crown. " I must tell you first," wrote the King, " that I was brought up very strictly in the English Church by Dr. Stuart, to whom the King, my father, gave particular instructions to that end, and I was so zealous that when the Queen, my mother, tried to rear my brother, the Duke of Gloucester, in the Catholic religion, I did my utmost (preserving always the respect due her) to keep him firm in his first principles, and as young people often do, I thought it was a point of honor to be firmly attached to the sentiments in which I was reared." He proceeds to tell her that, after the dethronement of his father, Charles I, and all the time he lived an exile in foreign countries, no Catholic ever attempted to con- vert him ; and he assures her that his change of faith began within himself. The first thing that attracted his attention, he tells his daughter, was the great devotion that he remarked among Catholics of all ranks and con- ditions, and the frequent reformation of Catholic young men who had previously been dissolute. " I observed also," he says, " the becoming manner of their public worship, their churches so well adorned, and the great charities which they maintained ; all of which made me begin to have a better opinion of their religion, and compelled me to enquire into it more carefully." Having reached this point, he began to study the doc- trines in dispute, as they were presented in well-known books, and particularly in the New Testament, which, he says, plainly reveals " an infallible Church," against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. This was his main position, which he fortified by quoting the usual
