When James II took the resolution of fleeing to France, he reckoned that the interruption of the exercise of the royal power, which was certainly interwoven with all business and indispensable for the administration, would occasion such confusion as must make people desire his return, and must facilitate it. And in fact the confusion produced in the three kingdoms, first by the tottering of the throne, and then by the news of the King's flight, was indescribable.

In Ireland the idea entertained by the natives and Catholics of emancipating themselves from England, which had never died out, and had been fostered by James II, awoke; the Protestants feared a massacre like that of 1641, and prepared themselves for resistance or for flight. In Scotland, on the other hand, the old feeling in favour of Presbyterianism rose up in energetic self-confidence. It directed itself, no doubt, against the Catholics, yet not less against the Episcopalians, whom the crown had favoured; at Glasgow the effigies of the Pope and of the Protestant archbishop were burned together. It seemed that the fall of James had recalled to life the old national party in both countries: the one and the other sought alike to rid themselves of all subordination imposed from England.

In England the confusion was connected from the beginning with an attempt at a remoulding of public relations, which we now follow step by step, as everything else depended upon it.