Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/63

 1563.] THE ENGLISH AT HAVRE. 43 by her with laws and lives and goods. There was no aelp elsewhere. The Germans used fine words, but they failed at the pinch. The Emperor had been gained over by the Pope. Their reliance must be on themselves and their own arms, and nowhere else. After Cecil, rose Sir Francis Knowles, who said that there had been enough of words : it was time to draw the sword. The Commons were generally Puritan. The opposition of the Lords had been neutralized by a special provision in their favour, and the Bill was car- ried. The obligation to take the oath was extended to the holder of every office, lay or spiritual, in the realm. The clergy were required to swear whenever their or- dinary might be pleased to tender them the oath ; the members of the House of Commons were required to swear when they took their seats ; members of the Upper House were alone exempt, the Act declaring, with perhaps designed irony, that the Queen was otherwise assured of the loyalty of the Peers. 1 Without this proviso de Quadra was assured that they would have refused to consent ; and even with it he clung to the hope that the Catholic noblemen would be true to themselves. But he was too sanguine, and Cecil carried his point. Heath, Bonner, Thirlby, Feckenham, and the other prisoners at once prepared to die. The Protestant ec- clesiastics would as little spare them as they had spared the Protestants. They would have shown no mere} themselves, and they looked for none. 5 Elizabeth^ cap. I.