advice had fallen on deaf ears.[5]

Though Blackwell, the official head of the Catholic body in England,
hastened to issue a letter urging his co-religionists to abstain from
all attempts against the government (7th Nov. 1605), Parliament,
without attempting to distinguish between the innocent and the guilty,
determined to punish Catholics generally. Recusants who had conformed
were commanded to receive the Sacrament at least once a year under
penalty of a heavy fine. In place of the £20 per month levied off
those Catholics who refused to attend Protestant service, the king was
empowered to seize two-thirds of their estates. Catholics were
forbidden to attend at court, to remain in London or within ten miles
of London unless they practised some trade and had no residence
elsewhere, or to move more than five miles from their homes unless
they got the permission of two magistrates, confirmed by the bishop or
deputy-lieutenant of the county. They could not practise as lawyers or
doctors, hold any commissions in the army or navy, act as executors,
guardians, or administrators, appoint to benefices or schools, or
appear as suitors before the courts. Fines of £10 per month were to be
paid by anyone who harboured a servant or visitor who did not attend
the English service. In order to test the loyalty of his Majesty's
subjects it was enacted that a bishop or two justices of the peace
might summon any person who was suspected of recusancy, and require
him to take a special oath of loyalty embodied in the Act. If any
persons not of noble birth refused to take the oath they should be
committed to prison till the next quarter sessions or assizes, and if
in these assemblies they persisted in their refusal they incurred
thereby the penalty of Praemunire.[6]

Both in its substance and particularly in its form the oath of