ABSTRACT
WHEN CHARLES II COLLAPSED with a stroke in February 1685, it looked as if he had achieved his main aim as king, to make sure that the monarch never again had to go on his travels. He went away with his Catholicism still a secret, shared only between him, one or two others, and the priest who gave him his last unction. His openly Catholic brother James could reign supreme because the English Whig opposition had overreached itself. In Scotland the government was still fighting the vestiges of the extremist party and looked like winning. The government’s power was greater than it had ever been. The Privy Council was still checking on several hundred people thought to have been at Bothwell Brig, or to have encouraged others to be there. The Test and the Oath of Allegiance were being imposed to distinguish the accommodating from the disloyal. It looked as if even James could not undo the tight lock of his position. If Scotland had been alone this might well have been true.
