They might therefore have retracted with a good grace.

But their pride had been wounded by the severity with which their decision on Oates's writ of error had been censured in the Painted Chamber.

They had been plainly told across the table that they were unjust judges; and the imputation was not the less irritating because they were conscious that it was deserved.

They refused to make any concession; and the Bill of Rights was suffered to drop, [407] But the most exciting question of this long and stormy session was, what punishment should be inflicted on those men who had, during the interval between the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament and the Revolution, been the advisers or the tools of Charles and James.

It was happy for England that, at this crisis, a prince who belonged to neither of her factions, who loved neither, who hated neither, and who, for the accomplishment of a great design, wished to make use of both, was the moderator between them.
The two parties were now in a position closely resembling that in which they had been twenty-eight years before.