20.
**** Hayward, p.

318.
A bill was introduced by the ministry into the house of lords, renewing those rigorous statutes of treason which had been abrogated in the beginning of this reign; and though the peers, by their high station, stood most exposed to these tempests of state, yet had they so little regard to public security, or even to their own true interest, that they passed the bill with only one dissenting voice.[*] But the commons rejected it, and prepared a new bill, that passed into a law, by which it was enacted, that whoever should call the king, or any of his heirs named in the statute of the thirty-fifth of the last reign, heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel, or usurper of the crown, should forfeit, for the first offence, their goods and chattels, and be imprisoned during pleasure; for the second, should incur a "praemunire;" for the third, should be attainted for treason.

But if any should unadvisedly utter such a slander in writing, printing, painting, carving, or graving, he was, for the first offence, to be held a traitor.[**] It may be worthy of notice, that the king and his next heir, the lady Mary, were professedly of different religions; and religions which threw on each other the imputation of heresy, schism, idolatry, profaneness, blasphemy, wickedness, and all the opprobrious epithets that religious zeal has invented.

It was almost impossible, therefore, for the people, if they spoke at all on these subjects, not to fall into the crime so severely punished by the statute; and the jealousy of the commons for liberty, though it led them to reject the bill of treasons sent to them by the lords, appears not to have been very active, vigilant, or clearsighted.
* Parl.Hist.

vol.iii.p.