James II
extent than perhaps any other transactions in history, been made the subject of elaborate and unscrupulous misrepresentation. The reader will remember the means by which the Acts of Settlement and Explanation were passed, the widespread irritation which they had provoked, and the long agitation which had been carried on for their repeal. Under these circumstances it can scarcely be thought surprising that in a Parliament almost wholly composed of "the sons and descendants of the forfeiting persons" a bill for the repeal of those Acts should have been carried by large majorities and amidst tumultuous applause.89 Of the discussions in the two Houses we know very little. A contemporary writer tells us that the bill was sent up from the Commons in May, that it passed the House of Lords, but was much altered in committee, that it was the subject of more than one conference between the two Houses, and that it eventually passed with a protest from six bishops and four temporal lords.90 The opposition in the Upper House appears to have been carried on with great pertinacity, principally by the Earls of Granard and Longford and by the Bishop of Meath, and is said to have been secretly countenanced by James. The preamble of this bill, in the form in which it ultimately
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