Aware of the blind obstinacy of the fugitive King, the peers of the realm presented their address to the prince on the 25th of December; some days later the Commons followed their example. "Your Highness, led by the hand of God and called by the voice of the people, has saved our dearest interests," said the addresses--"the Protestant religion, which is Christianity in its primitive purity, our laws, which are the ancient titles on which rest our lives, liberties and possessions, and without which this world would be only a desert in our eyes. This divine mission has been respected by the nobility, the people, and the brave soldiers of England. They have laid down their arms at your approach." The same thanks and same requests were presented by the Scotch lords who happened to be in London; the Earl of Arran alone, son of the Duke of Hamilton, had proposed to treat with King James. "All cry, Hosanna! to-day," said the Prince of Orange to Dykvelt and his Dutch friends, who brought him the congratulations of his native country, and were delighted at the enthusiasm shown everywhere in England; "but in a day or two perhaps they will repeat quite as loudly: 'Crucify him! crucify him!'" Resolved as he was to govern England, William caught a glimpse, though he did not foresee their extent, of the difficulties and obstacles which the great enterprise he was asked to attempt would meet with in England itself. Nevertheless he accepted his mission without wavering.
On the 22nd of January, 1689, a Convention, which soon declared itself Parliament, assembled at Westminster, elected arbitrarily on circular letters sent forth in the name of the Prince of Orange. The parties were already beginning to divide; the great national unanimity which had willed and accomplished the revolution was yielding to different passions and opinions. In this supreme crisis of the government of England, the Tories, numerous in the House of Lords, weak in the House of Commons, hesitated, according to their political and religious complexions, between negotiations with King James, the establishment of a regency, leaving to the fugitive monarch the vain title of king, or the declaration that the throne was vacant, and the calling of the Princess Mary to the crown as its natural heiress. No one dared to assert the legitimacy of the Prince of Wales. Some of the Whigs, a party which included in its ranks a number of dissenters, proposed that Parliament should proclaim the nation's right to depose a prince guilty of bad government; the others, less involved in revolutionary schemes, though just as firmly resolved to deliver England from the misgovernment of King James, sought to cover the national will with a legal form. "It is said that kings have a divine right of their own," cried Sir Robert Howard; "nations also have _their_ divine right."