[2] Lord Wharton, a prominent English Whig (S479), was the author of
this satirical political ballad, which, it is said, was sung and
whistled from one end of England to the other, in derision of the
King’s policy.  It undoubtably had a powerful popular influence in
bringing on the Revolution of 1688. 
        The ballad began: 
                “Ho, Brother Teague, dost hear de decree? 
                   Lilli Burlero, bullen a-la,
                 Dat we shall have a new deputie,
                   Lilli Burlero, bullen a-la.” 
        The refrain, “Lilli Burlero,” etc. (also written
“Lillibullero"), is said to have been the watchword used by the Irish
Catholics when they rose against the Protestants of Ulster in 1641. 
See Wilkins’s “Political Songs,” Vol I.

Having got the courts completely under his control through the appointment of judges in sympathy with Jeffreys (S487) and with himself, the King issued a Declaration of Indulgence similar to that which his brother Charles II had issued (S477).[1] It suspended all penal laws against both the Roman Catholics on the one hand, and the Protestant Dissenters (S472) on the other.  The latter, however, suspecting that this apparently liberal measure was simply a trick to establish Catholicism, refused to avail themselves of it, and denounced it as an open violation of the Constitution.

[1] See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p. xxi, S23.

James next proceeded, by means of the tyrannical High Commission Court, which he had revived (S382), to bring Magdalen College, Oxford, under Catholic control.  The President of that college having died, the Fellows were considering the choice of a successor.  The King ordered them to elect a Catholic.  The Fellows refused to obey, and elected a Protestant.  James ejected the new President, and drove out the Fellows, leaving them to depend on the charity of neighboring country gentlemen for their support.

But the King, in attacking the rights of the college, had “run his head against a wall,"[2] as he soon discovered to his sorrow.  His temporary success, however, emboldened him to reissue the first Declaration of Indulgence (1688).  Its real object, like that of the first Declaration (S477), was to put Roman Catholics into still higher positions of trust and power.

[2] “What building is that?” asked the Duke of Wellington of his companion, Mr. Croker, pointing, as he spoke, to Magdalen College wall, just as they entered Oxford in 1834.  “That is the wall which James II ran his head against,” was the reply.

489.  The Petition of the Seven Bishops, 1688.