54.
About a fortnight after, a motion was made in the house to petition the queen for the release of these members; but it was answered by all the privy counsellors there present, that her majesty had committed them for causes best known to herself, and that to press her on that head would only tend to the prejudice of the gentlemen whom they meant to serve: she would release them whenever she thought proper, and would be better pleased to do it of her own proper motion, than from their suggestion.[*] The house willingly acquiesced in this reasoning.
So arbitrary an act, at the commencement of the session, might well repress all further attempts for freedom: but the religious zeal of the puritans was not so easily restrained; and it inspired a courage which no human motive was able to surmount.

Morrice, chancellor of the duchy, and attorney, of the court of wards, made a motion for redressing the abuses in the bishops' courts, but above all, in the high commission; where subscriptions, he said, were exacted to articles at the pleasure of the prelates; where oaths were imposed, obliging persons to answer to all questions without distinction, even though they should tend to their own condemnation; and where every one who refused entire satisfaction to the commissioners was imprisoned, without relief or remedy.[**] * D'Ewes, p.

497.
** D'Ewes, p.474.Townsend, p.

60.
This motion was seconded by some members; but the ministers and privy counsellors opposed it, and foretold the consequences which ensued.

The queen sent for the speaker, and after requiring him to deliver to her Morrice's bill, she told him, that it was in her power to call parliaments, in her power to dissolve them, in her power to give assent or dissent to any determination which they should form: that her purpose in summoning this parliament was twofold, to have laws enacted for the further enforcement of uniformity in religion, and to provide for the defence of the nation against the exorbitant power of Spain: that these two points ought, therefore, to be the object of their deliberations: she had enjoined them already, by the mouth of the lord keeper, to meddle neither with matters of state nor of religion; and she wondered how any one could be so assuming, as to attempt a subject so expressly contrary to her prohibition: that she was highly offended with this presumption; and took the present opportunity to reiterate the commands given by the keeper, and to require that no bill, regarding either state affairs or reformation in causes ecclesiastical, be exhibited in the house: and that in particular she charged the speaker upon his allegiance, if any such bills were offered, absolutely to refuse them a reading, and not so much as permit them to be debated by the members.[*] This command from the queen was submitted to without further question.
Morrice was seized in the house itself by a serjeant-at-arms, discharged from his office of chancellor of the duchy, incapacitated from any practice in his profession as a common lawyer, and kept some years prisoner in Tilbury Castle.[**] The queen having thus expressly pointed out both what the house should and should not do, the commons were as obsequious to the one as to the other of her injunctions.