On these principles, or maxims, James II. was proceeding in his zealous attempt to destroy the Church of England in five years. All the Lord Lieutenants and most of the judges were already Catholic, the Jesuits boasted, and in a short time all the magistrates in England would be Catholic. Trinity College, Dublin, was already promised to the Jesuits, and Oxford was not showing a very stern resistance to their advance. Soon all education and civil and military government would be in Catholic hands. The Queen had as yet given no heir to the throne, it was true, but they had ground to believe that, if he died childless, James would leave the English crown at the disposal of Louis XIV.
Then James, besides sending Judge Jeffreys to deal with insurgents in the provinces, made a bolder attack upon the Church. He ordered the bishops to direct the clergy to read from their pulpits his declaration of liberty of conscience. It is well known how seven of the bishops refused, were committed to the Tower, and acquitted by the jury, to the frenzied delight of the city. Just at this time the Queen was delivered of a son, and the announcement was greeted with derision. Another trick of the Jesuits, people said; but, genuine or not genuine, the child meant a continuance of the tyranny of the Catholic minority, and the Prince of Orange was invited to come and seize the crown. He set sail in four months; and before Christmas, William entered London, and James and his Jesuits were in exile. Six of them shared his luxurious retreat at St. Germains, and discussed with him the naughtiness of Sunderland and the appalling wreck of their hasty enterprise.
The English Province of the Society continued to exist, and had a large number of members, until the suppression. Although the penal laws were again enforced, and it was decreed that any Jesuit who was found in the kingdom after 25th March 1700 would be imprisoned for life, the fathers still exhibited the courage and devotion which do so much to redeem their errors. In 1701 there were 340 members of the Province, though most of these were in Belgium or with the Catholic colonists in Maryland. In 1708 we find 158 members of the Society in England, generally living in the houses of the Catholic nobility and gentry. Their work was now almost confined to a ministration to the depressed Catholics. They reported only 3000 conversions to the faith between 1700 and 1708, and many of these were soldiers quartered in Belgium. In 1711 they had 12,000 Catholics under their spiritual charge. But even in this restricted sphere they maintained the struggle against the secular clergy, and published many pamphlets against them. "Jansenism" was the latest heresy they had discovered, and they denounced the secular clergy to Rome as tainted with it. At last, as the eighteenth century wore on, they realised that all these old conflicts were yielding to a mighty struggle. The Society is fighting for its life against Catholic opponents. In 1759 it is suppressed, with great ignominy, in Portugal; in 1762 it is suppressed in France; in 1767 even Spain ruthlessly expels the body to which it had given birth.