It had been announced that the Houses would be convoked before the end of the year.

The Lords would assuredly treat the sentence of deprivation as a nullity, would insist that Sancroft and his fellow petitioners should be summoned to Parliament, and would refuse to acknowledge a new Archbishop of Canterbury or a new Bishop of Bath and Wells.

Thus the session, which at best was likely to be sufficiently stormy, would commence with a deadly quarrel between the crown and the peers.

If therefore it were thought necessary to punish the Bishops, the punishment ought to be inflicted according to the known course of English law.

Sunderland had from the beginning objected, as far as he dared, to the Order in Council.