James II
their habits undisturbed." "In this posture of affairs," continues our author, "was it not high time for the Protestants to look about them, to consult their safety, and by a timely removal to avoid those imminent dangers that threatened them?"57 A few months later the birth of a Prince of Wales precipitated a crisis which had long been palpably impending.
Grossly as James had outraged the feelings of his English subjects, the majority of Englishmen, from whose memories the misery produced by the last civil war had not yet faded, had been reluctant, so long as it seemed probable that the crown would in a short time descend to a Protestant, to seek a remedy by force. It was now evident that, unless some active steps were taken to resist the government, the day of deliverance and of retaliation would be indefinitely postponed. It should be added that it was the erroneous but perfectly sincere belief of great numbers that the so-called Prince was supposititious, and that James, with characteristic imbecility, had done his utmost to give plausibility to that belief.
It does not he within the limits which I have marked out for myself to trace the course of the Revolution in England; a single incident, significant of the general attitude of Englishmen
153
