They told him with one voice that they would send up no man to Parliament who would vote for taking away the safeguards of the Protestant religion.

[325] The same answer was given to the Chancellor in Buckinghamshire.

[326] The gentry of Shropshire, assembled at Ludlow, unanimously refused to fetter themselves by the pledge which the King demanded of them.

[327] The Earl of Yarmouth reported from Wiltshire that, of sixty magistrates and Deputy Lieutenants with whom he had conferred, only seven had given favourable answers, and that even those seven could not be trusted.

[328] The renegade Peterborough made no progress in Northamptonshire.