That it ended bloodlessly was largely due to the statesman who has rendered the word “Trimmer” illustrious. George Savile, Marquess of Halifax, was the opponent alike of Popery and of France. He was one of those rare beings in whom cool moderation and width of judgment are combined with resolute action. Halifax, who had been so hot against Danby, broke the Exclusion Bill in the House of Lords. His task was rendered easier by the difficulty of advancing an alternative successor to the Crown. Of those who were against James some were for his eldest daughter, Mary, wife of the renowned Prince of Orange, in whose veins the royal blood of England also flowed. Shaftesbury had played with this idea, but in the end decided for the bastard Monmouth. He procured his admission to the Privy Council. He wove him into the texture of his party. The Whigs propagated the fiction that he was legitimate after all. But this complaisant solution, which Charles would never tolerate, did not appeal to an assembly every man of which owned lands, wealth, and power through the strictest interpretations of hereditary right. The Anglican Church refused to resist Popery by crowning bastardy. By sixty-three votes to thirty the Peers rejected the Exclusion Bill.

Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Sp…, loc. 1225