The wish to throw the resources of England into the balance against the overwhelming power of Louis XIV was undoubtedly the original cause of the attack which William of Orange made on the throne of James. Resistance to Louis XIV had now become a European necessity; but it never could have been successful without the adhesion of Great Britain. The English gentry and people chafed under the intimate connexion between James II and France; they were, above all, eager to secure their Protestant and Parliamentary constitution against the assaults of a prince who deemed his prerogative to be above all laws, civil or ecclesiastical. But these motives, closely connected before, were fused in one when James II fled to France and accepted her support. All that William and the Parliament carried out in Great Britain–the change of government, the overthrow of their opponents–alike expressed hostility to France. The wish to stem the tide of foreign influences, on which it principally depended, became still more general; for it produced a more sharp-cut antagonism between the Catholic monarchy, to which Louis XIV had given unparalleled unity and energy, and the Protestant and Parliamentary constitution of England, the most powerful of the Germanic kingdoms, which obtained a wider development in a new career. Matters had now gone so far that she could take an important part in the great European struggle. The clash of discordant and destructive elements, contending for the mastery at home and abroad, has more than once threatened ruin to the national life of England.