Read it through once

But the inefficacy of mere laws in favour of the subjects, in the case of the administration of them falling into the hands of persons hostile to the spirit in which they had been provided, had been so fatally evinced by the general history of England, ever since the grant of the Great Charter, and more especially by the transactions of the preceding reign, that the parliament justly deemed their work incomplete unless the Duke of York were excluded from the succession to the crown. A bill, therefore, for the purpose of excluding that prince was prepared, and passed the House of Commons; but being vigorously resisted by the court, by the church, and by the Tories, was lost in the House of Lords. The restrictions offered by the king to be put upon a popish successor are supposed to have been among the most powerful of those means to which he was indebted for his success.