The History of England from the Accession of James II, vol 2 | Page 5

of his objects was to obtain a repeal of the Habeas Corpus Act,
which he hated, as it was natural that a tyrant should hate the most
stringent curb that ever legislation imposed on tyranny. This feeling
remained deeply fixed in his mind to the last, and appears in the
instructions which he drew up, in exile, for the guidance of his son.2
But the Habeas Corpus Act, though passed during the ascendency of
the Whigs, was not more dear to the Whigs than to the Tories. It is
indeed not wonderful that this great law should be highly prized by all
Englishmen without distinction of party: for it is a law which, not by
circuitous, but by direct operation, adds to the security and happiness of

every inhabitant of the realm.3
James had yet another design, odious to the party which had set him on
the throne and which had upheld him there. He wished to form a great
standing army. He had taken advantage of the late insurrection to make
large additions to the military force which his brother had left. The
bodies now designated as the first six regiments of dragoon guards, the
third and fourth regiments of dragoons, and the nine regiments of
infantry of the line, from the seventh to the fifteenth inclusive, had just
been raised.4 The effect of these augmentations, and of the recall of the
garrison of Tangier, was that the number of regular troops in England
had, in a few months, been increased from six thousand to near twenty
thousand. No English King had ever, in time of peace, had such a force
at his command. Yet even with this force James was not content. He
often repeated that no confidence could be placed in the fidelity of the
train-bands, that they sympathized with all the passions of the class to
which they belonged, that, at Sedgemoor, there had been more militia
men in the rebel army than in the royal encampment, and that, if the
throne had been defended only by the array of the counties, Monmouth
would have marched in triumph from Lyme to London.
The revenue, large as it was when compared with that of former Kings,
barely sufficed to meet this new charge. A great part of the produce of
the new taxes was absorbed by the naval expenditure. At the close of
the late reign the whole cost of the army, the Tangier regiments
included, had been under three hundred thousand pounds a year. Six
hundred thousand pounds a year would not now suffice.5 If any further
augmentation were made, it would be necessary to demand a supply
from Parliament; and it was not likely that Parliament would be in a
complying mood. The very name of standing army was hateful to the
whole nation, and to no part of the nation more hateful than to the
Cavalier gentlemen who filled the Lower House. In their minds a
standing army was inseparably associated with the Rump, with the
Protector, with the spoliation of the Church, with the purgation of the
Universities, with the abolition of the peerage, with the murder of the
King, with the sullen reign of the Saints, with cant and asceticism, with
fines and sequestrations, with the insults which Major Generals, sprung

from the dregs of the people, had offered to the oldest and most
honourable families of the kingdom. There was, moreover, scarcely a
baronet or a squire in the Parliament who did not owe part of his
importance in his own county to his rank in the militia. If that national
force were set aside, the gentry of England must lose much of their
dignity and influence. It was therefore probable that the King would
find it more difficult to obtain funds for the support of his army than
even to obtain the repeal of the Habeas Corpus Act.
But both the designs which have been mentioned were subordinate to
one great design on which the King's whole soul was bent, but which
was abhorred by those Tory gentlemen who were ready to shed their
blood for his rights, abhorred by that Church which had never, during
three generations of civil discord, wavered in fidelity to his house,
abhorred even by that army on which, in the last extremity, he must
rely.
His religion was still under proscription. Many rigorous laws against
Roman Catholics appeared on the Statute Book, and had, within no
long time, been rigorously executed. The Test Act excluded from civil
and military office all who dissented from the Church of England; and,
by a subsequent Act, passed when the fictions of Oates had driven the
nation wild, it had been provided that no person should sit in either
House of Parliament without solemnly abjuring the doctrine of
transubstantiation. That