For, five years before, George III.

had consulted the Chief-justice, Lord Kenyon, and the Attorney-general, Sir John Scott (afterward Lord Eldon), on the question whether some proposed concessions to Dissenters, Protestant as well as Roman Catholic, did not "militate against the coronation oath and many existing statutes;" and had received their legal opinion that the tests enacted in the reign of Charles II., "though wise laws, and in policy not to be departed from, might be repealed or altered without any breach of the coronation oath or Act of Union" (with Scotland).[150] Their opinions on the point were the more valuable, since they were notoriously opposed to their political convictions, and might be supposed to have carried sufficient conviction to the royal mind.

But his Majesty's scruples were now, unfortunately, revived by the Lord Chancellor, who, strange to say, was himself a Presbyterian; and who treacherously availed himself of his knowledge of what was in contemplation to anticipate the Prime-minister's intended explanations to the King.

He fully succeeded in his object of fixing the King's resolution to refuse his assent to the contemplated concessions (which, by a curious confusion of ideas, his Majesty even characterized as "Jacobinical"[151]), though not in the object which he had still more at heart, of inducing the King to regard him as the statesman in the whole kingdom the most deserving of his confidence.

The merits of the question will be more appropriately examined hereafter.