permission was refused (1562).

Elizabeth's second Parliament (1563) met at a time when the downfall
of the Huguenots to whom England had furnished assistance, the failure
of a plot entered into by the nephews of Cardinal Pole for the
overthrow of Elizabeth's government, and the reports from the
ecclesiastical commissioners and the bishops, showing as they did that
contempt for the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity was still strong,
made it necessary to undertake more repressive measures against the
Catholics. An Act was passed entitled, "an Act for the assurance of
the queen's royal power" commanding that the oath of supremacy should
be administered to members of the House of Commons, schoolmasters,
tutors, attorneys, and all who had held any ecclesiastical office
during the reigns of Elizabeth, Mary, Edward VI. or Henry VIII., and
to all who manifested their hostility to the established religion by
celebrating Mass or assisting at its celebration. Refusal to take the
oath when first tendered was to be punished by forfeiture and life
imprisonment, and on the second refusal the penalty was to be a
traitor's death. Had such an Act been enforced strictly it would have
meant the complete extirpation of the Catholics of England, but
Elizabeth, having secured a weapon by which she might terrorise them,
took care to prevent her bishops from driving them to extremes by a
close investigation of their opinions regarding royal supremacy. Fines
and imprisonment were at this stage deemed more expedient than death.

Convocation met at the same time, but Convocation had changed much
since 1559 when it declared bravely in favour of the Real Presence,
Transubstantiation, the Mass, Papal supremacy, and the independence of
the Church. The effects of the deprivation of the bishops, deans,
archdeacons, canons, and clergy, and of the wholesale ordinations "of