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 read a second time 22 Feb., revived in committee 21 May, and passed 27 May. On 29 May the king ordered the house to adjourn to 18 July, and when Seymour, the speaker, had declared the house adjourned, he fairly ran out of the house to avoid Cavendish's question, by what authority save the house's consent that could be done. When the house reassembled on 18 July, Cavendish moved to read the journals to show how the house came to have have been adjourned but the matter was disposed of by further adjournments to 8 Jan. 1617–8. After the disclosure of the popish plot Cavendish was active in the protestant interest. He was a member of committees, for privileges and elections, popish recusants, for inquiring into the matter of Sir Edmundsbury Godfrey, and for bringing in the lords to concert means for securing the king and the protestant religion. In October he was a member of a saga. committee to take the examination in Newgate of Coleman as to the plot, and to report on the plot to the House of Lords; and on 2 Dec. of another to urge the king to a stricter observance of the laws against popery. On the same day, 19 Dec., he was both chosen to attend the king with the votes relating to an information against Montagu, and to draw articles of impeachment against Danby. A new parliament met on 8 March 1678–9, and the king refusing the reappointment of Seymour as speaker, Cavendish was among the chief members who waited on the king with the vote on the election of a new one. On 16 April 1679 he was appointed a member of the committee to draw a bill against the growth of popery, and on 14 May he carried up an address against papists. So vigorous and popular were his speeches that they got abroad in an imperfect copy, and a pamphlet called 'A Speech of Lord Cavendish’ was even referred to a committee of the House of Commons.

The fall of Danby’s ministry was now inevitable, and the king determined to adopt the scheme, originated by Sir William Temple, of raising the privy oouncil into a counterpoise to the House of Commons. Shaftesbury was president, and Russell, Cavendish, Essex, and Halifax were sworn in as ordinary members. In April and May the king and the new government brought in resolutions for preserving the protestant religion without interfering with the hereditary succession, but the commons pressing their exclusion bill, in spite of a remonstrance from Cavendish in favour of first trying milder measures, they were hastily prorogued on 27 May 1679. In this session Cavendish had also been forward in procuring the passing of the Habeas Corpus Act. Parliament was shortly after dissolved, and before the new parliament met, on 17 Oct., the Duke of York had returned from Flanders and retired into Scotland. The new parliament was at once prorogued to prevent any legislation for his exclusion. Before it reassembled the king, falling ill, recalled the duke, 25 Jan. 1679–80, whereupon the coalition of the count and court parties into one government broke down, and Cavendish, Russell, Capel, and Powle praying leave to withdraw from the council, their prayer was very readily granted. Sunderland, Godolphin, and Lawrence Hyde remained in power. Parliament again met 21 Oct.. 1680, and Cavendish carried up articles of impeachment against Sir William Scroggs, chief justice to the king's bench. While the grand jury of Middlesex was sitting at Westminster Hall, Lord Shaftesbury induced Huntingdon, Russell, Cavendish, Thynne, and others to appear with him before them, to present reasons for indicting the Duke of York as a popish recusant. While the grand jury was deliberating on this, they were hastily discharged by the queen's bench. The committee of the commons which sat to consider the conduct of the queen’s bench resolved that the discharge was illegal, and the house directed Cavendish to prepare articles, but parliament being prorogued the matter dropped. He was also active in debates upon the exclusion of the duke, and promoted an address praying the king to remove his ministers. Parliament, however, was prorogued l0 Jan., and dissolved 18 Jan. 1680–1. In the new parliament, which met at Oxford on 21 March and was dissolved in a week, Cavendish showed his natural fairness, when Mr. Secretary Jenkins absolutely refused to obey the house's order to carry up articles of impeachment against Fitzharris, an Irish papist, then under arrest for a libel on the king. The house was crying ‘To the bar! to the bar!' when Cavendish interposed and induced Jenkins to submit himself to the house. A similar proof of his superiority to mere party spirit appears in his protest against the description of Monmouth, when in favour, in commissions as ‘the king's dear and entirely beloved son,' showing that his zeal for the exclusion of the Duke of York was not due to mere devotion to Monmouth. Afterwards, in 1681, in grand committee of the House of Commons, Mr. Powle in the chair, Cavendish renewed his efforts for the duke's exclusion by moving for leave to bring in a bill for the association of all protestant subjects, for the safety of the kings person and religion, and the exclusion of the duke from succession to the crown. But when, after the flight of Shaftesbury, Russell and