ssities
might embolden the parliament to treat her despotic mandates with a
deference less profound than formerly, irritated her temper, and
prompted her to assume a more haughty and menacing style than her
habitual study of popularity had hitherto permitted her to employ. In
answer to the three customary requests made by the speaker, for liberty
of speech, freedom from arrests, and access to her person, she replied
by her lord keeper, That such liberty of speech as the commons were
justly entitled to,--liberty, namely, of aye and no,--she was willing to
grant; but by no means a liberty for every one to speak what he listed.
And if any idle heads should be found careless enough of their own
safety to attempt innovations in the state, or reforms in the church,
she laid her injunctions on the speaker to refuse the bills offered for
such purposes till they should have been examined by those who were
better qualified to judge of these matters. She promised that she would
not impeach the liberty of their persons, provided they did not permit
themselves to imagine that any neglect of duty would be allowed to pass
unpunished under shelter of this privilege; and she engaged not to deny
them access to her person on weighty affairs, and at convenient seasons,
when she should have leisure from other important business of state.

But threats alone were not found sufficient to restrain all attempts on
the part of the commons to exercise their known rights and fulfil their
duty to the country. Peter Wentworth, a member whose courageous and
independent spirit had already drawn upon him repeated manifestations of
royal displeasure, presented to the lord keeper a petition, praying that
the upper house would join with the lower in a supplication to the queen
for fixing the succession. Elizabeth, enraged at the bare mention of a
subject so offensive to her, instantly committed to the Fleet prison
Wentworth, sir Thomas Bromley who had seconded him, and two other
members to whom he had imparted the business; and when the house was
preparing to petition her for their release, some privy-councillors
dissuaded the step, as one which could only prove injurious to these
gentlemen by giving additional offence to her majesty.

Soon after, James Morice, an eminent lawyer, who was attorney of the
court of Wards and chancellor of the Duchy, made a motion for redress of
the abuses in the bishops' courts, and especially of the monstrous ones
committed