William, in his opening speech, dwelt chiefly on the necessity of settling the revenue, to enable him to proceed to Ireland, and on passing the Bill of Indemnity; and he was very plain in expressing his sense of the truculent spirit of party, which, in endeavouring to wound one another, injured and embarrassed his Government still more. He informed them that he had drawn up an Act of Grace, constituting the Bill of Indemnity, and should send it to them for their acceptance; for it is the practice for all such Acts to proceed from the Crown, and then to be voted by the Peers, and finally by the Commons. He then informed them that he left the administration during his absence in Ireland in the hands of the Queen; and he desired that if any Act was necessary for the confirmation of that authority, they should pass it. The Commons at once passed a vote of thanks, and engaged to support the Government of their Majesties by every means in their power. On the 27th of March they passed unanimously the four following resolutions—namely, that all the hereditary revenues of King James, except the hearth-tax, were vested now in their present Majesties; that a Bill should be brought in to declare and perpetuate this investment; that the moiety of the excise granted to Charles and James should be secured by Bill to their present Majesties for life; and finally, that the customs which had been granted to Charles and James for their lives should be granted for four years from the next Christmas. William was much dissatisfied with the last proviso, and complained that the Commons should show less confidence in him, who had restored their liberties, than in Charles and James, who destroyed them. Sir John Lowther pressed this point on the Commons strongly, but in vain; and Burnet told King William that there was no disrespect meant towards him, but that the Commons wished to establish this as a general principle, protective of future subjects from the evils which the ill-judged liberality of past Parliaments had produced.

The next measure on which the Whigs and Tories tried their strength was a Bill brought in by the Whigs to do what was already sufficiently done in the Bill of Rights—to pronounce William and Mary the rightful and lawful sovereigns of this realm, and next to declare that all the acts of the late Convention should be held as valid as laws. The first part, already sufficiently recognised, was quietly passed over; but the Tories made a stout opposition to extending the Act beyond the year 1689, on the plea that nothing could convert the self-constituted Convention into a legal Parliament. But the distinction was a mere party distinction; for, if the Convention was not a legal body, nothing could render its acts so. The Earl of Nottingham, who headed this movement, entered a strong protest on the journal of the Lords against it, and this protest was signed by many peers, and amongst them the Whig peers, Bolton, Macclesfield, Stamford, Bedford, Newport, Monmouth, Herbert, Suffolk, Warrington, and Oxford. The Bill, however, was carried, and with still more ease in the Commons.

The Tories, mortified at the triumph of the Whigs, now brought in a Bill to change the military government of the City of London as the lieutenancy of the counties had been changed. They thanked the king for having by his measures brought in so many Churchmen and thrown out so many Nonconformists. This Bill the Whigs managed to impede till the session closed; but not so with another from the Tory party, ordering payment of the five hundred pounds fines incurred by all who had taken office or served as magistrates without taking the necessary Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy. This was carried, and the money ordered to be paid into the Exchequer, and a separate account of it to be kept.

The defeat of the Whigs only infused more fierceness in the party warfare. They hastened to bring in a Bill compelling every person in office, civil, ecclesiastical, or military, to take an oath to abjure King James and his right to the Crown, thence called the Abjuration Oath. This oath might, moreover, be tendered by any magistrate to any subject of their Majesties whatever, and whoever refused it was to be committed to prison, and kept there till he complied. It was hoped by the Whigs that this Bill would greatly embarrass the Tories who had taken office under the present monarchy, and accordingly it met with a decided opposition in the Commons, and was thrown out by a majority of one hundred and ninety-two to one hundred and seventy-eight. It was then, with some alteration, introduced as a fresh Bill into the Lords. William went down to the Lords to listen personally to the debate; and several of the peers made very free and pertinent remarks on the uselessness of so many oaths to bind any disloyal or unconscientious person.

The Bill was defeated in the Lords by being committed, but never reported, for on the 20th of May, after King William had given his consent to the Bill, which he had recommended, for conferring on the queen full powers to administer the government during his absence in Ireland, and also to that revising the quo warranto judgment against the City of London, the Marquis of Caermarthen appeared in the House with an Act of Grace ready drawn and signed by the king.

HENRY VII.'S CHAPEL, WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

[[See larger version]]

William had tried in vain to curb the deadly animosities of the contending parties by Bills of Indemnity. These could be discussed and rejected, not so an Act of Grace: it issued from the sovereign, and came already signed to Parliament. It must be at once accepted or rejected by each House, and in such a case as the present, where it was meant as a healing and pacifying act, it could not be rejected without a disloyal and ungracious air. Accordingly it was received with the deference which it deserved, and both Houses gave their sanction to it, standing bareheaded, and without one dissenting voice. From the benefit of this Act of Grace, pardoning all past offences, were, it is true, excepted thirty names, prominent amongst whom were the Marquis of Powis, the Lords Sunderland, Huntingdon, Dover, Melfort, and Castlemaine; the Bishops of Durham and St. Davids; the Judges Herbert, Jenner, Withers, and Holloway; Roger Lestrange; Lundy, the traitor governor of Londonderry; Father Petre; and Judge Jeffreys. This last monster of infamy was already deceased in the Tower, but it was well understood that if the others named only kept themselves at peace they would never be inquired after. Neither party, however, thanked William for the constrained peace. The Whigs were disappointed of the vengeance they burned to enjoy; the Tories, and even those who had the most narrowly escaped the intended mischief, ungenerously said that if William had really anything to avenge, he would not have pardoned it.