When Prebendaries and Rectors were not ashamed to avow that they had equivocated, in the very act of kissing the New Testament, it was hardly to be expected that attorneys and taxgatherers would be more scrupulous.

The consequence was that every department swarmed with traitors; that men who ate the King's bread, men who were entrusted with the duty of collecting and disbursing his revenues, of victualling his ships, of clothing his soldiers, of making his artillery ready for the field, were in the habit of calling him an usurper, and of drinking to his speedy downfall.

Could any government be safe which was hated and betrayed by its own servants?
And was not the English government exposed to the dangers which, even if all its servants were true, might well excite serious apprehensions?
A disputed succession, war with France, war in Scotland, war in Ireland, was not all this enough without treachery in every arsenal and in every custom house?
There must be an oath drawn in language too precise to be explained away, in language which no Jacobite could repeat without the consciousness that he was perjuring himself.

Though the zealots of indefeasible hereditary right had in general no objection to swear allegiance to William, they would probably not choose to abjure James.

On such grounds as these, an Abjuration Bill of extreme severity was brought into the House of Commons.