9 were found to be too zealous in October, and
several of the clerical members were replaced by cooler laymen. The
great bulk of the clergy seem neither to have refused nor to have
consented to the oath, but to have left the Commissioners' summons
unheeded and to have stayed quietly at home. Of the nine thousand four
hundred beneficed clergy only a tenth presented themselves before the
Commissioners. Of those who attended and refused the oath a hundred and
eighty-nine were deprived, but many of the most prominent went unharmed.
At Winchester, though the dean and canons of the cathedral, the warden
and fellows of the college, and the master of St. Cross, refused the
oath, only four of these appear in the list of deprivations. Even the
few who suffered proved too many for the purpose of the Queen. In the
more remote parts of the kingdom the proceedings of the visitors
threatened to wake the religious strife which she was endeavouring to
lull to sleep. On the northern border, where the great nobles, Lord
Dacres and the Earls of Cumberland and Westmoreland, were zealous
Catholics, and refused to let the bishop "meddle with them," the clergy
held stubbornly aloof. At Durham a parson was able to protest without
danger that the Pope alone had power in spiritual matters. In Hereford
the town turned out to receive in triumph a party of priests from the
west who had refused the oath. The University of Oxford took refuge in
sullen opposition. In spite of pressure from the Protestant prelates,
who occupied the sees vacated by the deprived bishops, Elizabeth was
firm in her policy of patience, and in December she ordered the
Commissioners in both provinces to suspend their proceedings.

[Sidenote: The Religious Chaos.]

In part indeed of her effort she was foiled by the bitterness of the
reformers. The London mob tore down the crosses in the streets. Her
attempt to retain the crucifix, or to enforce the celibacy of the
priesthood, fell dead before the opposition of the Protestant clergy.
But to the mass of the nation the compromise of Elizabeth seems to have
been fairly acceptable. They saw but little change. Their old vicar or
rector in almost every case remained in his parsonage and ministered in
his church. The new Prayer-Book was for the most part an English
rendering of the old service. Even the more zealous adherents of
Catholicism held as yet that in complying with the order for attendance
at public worship "there could be n