They introduced a bill for prohibiting all clergymen the exercise of any civil office.

As a consequence, the bishops were to be deprived of their seats in the house of peers; a measure not unacceptable to the zealous friends of liberty, who observed with regret the devoted attachment of that order to the will of the monarch.

But when this bill was presented to the peers, it was rejected by a great majority;[***] the first check which the commons had received in their popular career, and a prognostic of what they might afterwards expect from the upper house, whose inclinations and interests could never be totally separated from the throne.
* Clarendon, vol.i.p.

203.

Whitlocke, p.37.Nalson, vol.
i.p.