but returned to London on 21 April to protest the threatened attainder, and was sent to the Tower of London. In his written defence, he pleaded the King's pardon, but on 5 May 1679, this plea was pronounced illegal by the Commons. The declaration that a Royal Pardon was no defence to impeachment by the House of Commons was repeated by the Commons in 1689, and was finally embodied in the Act of Settlement 1701. The Commons now demanded judgment against the prisoner from the Lords. Further proceedings, however, were stopped by the dissolution of Parliament in July; but for nearly five years Danby remained in the Tower. A number of pamphlets asserting his complicity in the Popish Plot, and even accusing him of the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, were published in 1679 and 1680; they were answered by Danby's secretary, Edward Christian in Reflections. In May 1681 Danby was indicted by the Grand Jury of Middlesex for Godfrey's murder on the accusation of Edward Fitzharris. His petition to the king for a trial by his peers was refused, and an attempt to prosecute the publishers of the false evidence on the king's bench was unsuccessful. For some time all appeals to the king, to Parliament, and to the courts were unavailing; but on 12 February 1684 his application to Chief Justice Jeffreys was successful, and he was set at liberty on bail of £40,000, to appear in the House of Lords in the following session. He visited the king the same day, but took no part in public affairs for the rest of the reign. Return to court under William III, 1688–1702 Following the accession of James II, Danby was discharged from his bail by the Lords on 19 May 1685, and the order declaring dissolution of Parliament not to be abatement of impeachment was reversed. He took his seat in the Lords as a leader of the moderate Tory party. Though a supporter of the hereditary principle, he soon found himself more and more opposed to James, and in particular to James's attacks on Anglicanism. He was visited by Dykvelt, William of Orange's agent; and in June 1687 he wrote to William assuring him of his support. On 30 June 1688, he was one of the seven politicians in the Revolution who signed the Invitation to William. In November, he occupied York for William, returning to