The Lower House had declared that the throne was vacant.

The Upper had not yet expressed any opinion.

It was therefore not easy to decide whether the prayers for the sovereign ought to be used.

Every officiating minister took his own course.

In most of the churches of the capital the petitions for James were omitted: but at Saint Margaret's, Sharp, Dean of Norwich, who had been requested to preach before the Commons, not only read to their faces the whole service as it stood in the book, but, before his sermon, implored, in his own words, a blessing on the King, and, towards the close of his discourse, declaimed against the Jesuitical doctrine that princes might lawfully be deposed by their subjects.