The severity with which he had been treated in the late reign had transformed him into a Latitudinarian and a rebel; and he had now, from jealousy of Tillotson, turned High Churchman and Tory again.

The Whigs complained that they were ungratefully proscribed by a government which owed its existence to them; that some of the best friends of King William had been dismissed with contumely to make room for some of his worst enemies, for men who were as unworthy of trust as any Irish Rapparee, for men who had delivered up to a tyrant the charter and the immemorial privileges of the City, for men who had made themselves notorious by the cruelty with which they had enforced the penal laws against Protestant dissenters, nay, for men who had sate on those juries which had found Russell and Cornish guilty, [590] The discontent was so great that it seemed, during a short time, likely to cause pecuniary embarrassment to the State.

The supplies voted by the late Parliament came in slowly.

The wants of the public service were pressing.

In such circumstances it was to the citizens of London that the government always looked for help; and the government of William had hitherto looked especially to those citizens who professed Whig opinions.