most opportune for
the conspirators, these counsels were matured, and something further
to be contrived, that was yet wanting; the Parliament accordingly
meeting, and the House of Lords, as well as that of the Commons,
being in deliberation of several wholesome bills, such as the present
state of the nation required, the great design came out in a bill
unexpectedly offered one morning in the House of Lords, whereby all
such as injoyed any beneficial office, or imployment, ecclesiastical,
civil, or military, to which was added privy counsellors, justices of
the peace, and members of Parliament, were under a penalty to take
the oath, and make the declaration, and abhorrence, insuring:--

'I A.B. do declare, that it is not lawful upon any pretence
whatsoever to take up arms against the King, and that I do
abhor that traiterous position of taking arms by his authority
against his person, or against those that are commissioned by
him in pursuance of such commission. And I do swear, that I
will not at any time indeavour the alteration of the government
either in Church or State. So help me God.'

"This same oath had been brought into the House of Commons in the
plague year at Oxford, to have been imposed upon the nation, but
there, by the assistance of those very same persons that now
introduce it, 'twas thrown out, for fear of a general infection of
the vitals of this kingdom; and though it passed then in a particular
bill, known by the name of the Five Mile Act, because it only
concerned the non-conformist preachers, yet even in that, it was
thoroughly opposed by the late Earl of Southampton, whose judgement
might well have been reckoned for the standard of prudence and
loyalty."[204:1]

Of the proposed oath Marvell says, "No Conveyancer could ever in more
compendious or binding terms have drawn a dissettlement of the whole
birthright of England."

This was no mere legal quibbling.

"These things are no niceties, or remote considerations (though in
making of laws, and which must come afterwards under construction of
judges, _durante bene placito_, all cases are to be put and imagined)
but there being an act in Scotland for 20,000 men to march into
England upon call, and so great a body of English soldiery in France,
within summons, besides what foreigners may be obliged by treaty to