Roman Catholics it soon 'melted away'. ¹ Many Tories, especially
in the west, welcomed William in the belief that he had come over
to bring his father-in-law to his senses, rather than to take the
crown. After the Revolution, most of them accepted him as king
de facto if not de jure, though driven into a false position by the
imposition of the oaths of abjuration by which the Whig Junto
endeavoured to drive them out of office. Although some leading
Tories engaged in plots with James and Louis XIV, and although
their belief in a foreign policy based on seapower rather than inter-
vention on the Continent conflicted with William's aims, he
resolutely refused to place himself in the power of one side only,
so that their party also enjoyed its share of Crown and Government
patronage at national and local level. Leading Tories in opposition
joined Whigs in opposition in the 1690s in an influential country
party, which secured the passing of the Triennial Act, of legislation
to reduce the number of placemen in Parliament, and secured the
disbandment of the army after the peace of Ryswick on the grounds
that the militia was the only constitutional force in peace time. The
whole Tory party rejoiced at the accession of Queen Anne, a devout
Anglican, whose heart, as she proclaimed was 'wholly English', but
she resolutely refused to make herself dependent on only one party,
and until just before her death resisted demands by Convocation
and by High Tories for an end to the practice of occasional con-
formity by which dissenters qualified for office by taking the
sacrament once in a while. They opposed bills to naturalise foreign
Protestants from 1709 to 1748 because, be they Dutch, German or
French, they were dissenters and invariably became Whigs once
they were in England. ²

The system of mixed ministries had worked well enough to carry
the country through its immense war effort during Marlborough's
wars, even though the court party tended on occasions to fragment
on party lines. For this latter reason, the ablest party managers
would have liked single-party governments. Thomas, Marquis of

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