They passed a bill for easing the Protestant dissenters, and for repealing the persecuting statute of the thirty-fifth of Elizabeth: this laudable bill was likewise carried through the house of peers.

The chief justice was very obnoxious for dismissing the grand jury in an irregular manner, and thereby disappointing that bold measure of Shaftesbury and his friends, who had presented the duke as a recusant.

For this crime the commons sent up an impeachment against him; as also against Jones and Weston, two of the judges, who, in some speeches from the bench, had gone so far as to give to many of the first reformers the appellation of fanatics.
The king, in rejecting the exclusion bill, had sheltered himself securely behind the authority of the house of peers; and the commons had been deprived of the usual pretence, to attack the sovereign himself under color of attacking his ministers and counsellors.

In prosecution, however, of the scheme which he had formed, of throwing the blame on the commons in case of any rupture, he made them a new speech.

After warning them, that a neglect of this opportunity would never be retrieved, he added these words: "I did promise you the fullest satisfaction which your hearts could wish, for the security of the Protestant religion, and to concur with you in any remedies which might consist with preserving the succession of the crown in its due and legal course of descent.