purification a recurrence of the plague, and made possible the
rebuilding of the city with great sanitary and architectural
improvements.

Charles possessed some of the virtues of the Stuarts and most of their
faults. His arbitrary irresponsibility shook the confidence of the
nation in his sincerity. Two parties, the Whigs and the Tories, came
into being, and party spirit and party strife ran high. The question at
issue was chiefly one of religion. The rank and file of Protestant
England was determined against the revival of Romanism, which a
continuation of the Stuart line seemed to threaten. Charles was a
Protestant only from expediency, and on his deathbed accepted the Roman
Catholic faith; his brother James, Duke of York, the heir apparent, was
a professed Romanist.

Such an outlook incited the Whigs, under the leadership of Shaftesbury,
to support the claims of Charles' eldest illegitimate son, the Duke of
Monmouth, who, on the death of his father in 1685, landed in England;
but the promised uprising was scarcely more than a rabble of peasantry,
and was easily suppressed. Then came the vengeance of James, as foolish
as it was tyrannical. Judge Jeffries and his bloody assizes sent scores
of Protestants to the block or to the gallows, till England would endure
no more. William, Prince of Orange, who had married Mary, the eldest
daughter of James, was invited to accept the English crown. He landed at
Torbay, was joined by Churchill, the commander of the king's forces,
and, on the precipitate flight of James, mounted the throne of England.
This event stands in history as the Protestant Revolution of 1688.

During William's reign, which terminated in 1702, Stuart uprisings were
successfully suppressed, English liberties were guaranteed by the famous