There yet remained the question of the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. It was acknowledged on all hands that all lay place-holders and all newly-appointed holders of ecclesiastical preferments should be obliged to take these oaths, slightly altered to suit existing circumstances. The case of the clergy already holding benefices was not so clear. Many were willing to accept the new Government peaceably, and it seemed hard that they should be required to take oaths which gave the lie to all their former political views. With regard to the Bishops too, the High Church Party advanced the doctrine that the Episcopal ordination was indelible, and that it was impossible for any Act either of King or Parliament to prevent a man who had once been a Bishop from being so always. Against the King's wish the party who were for the most stringent application of the oaths carried the day. All the clergy were required to take them by August 1689; if they had not been taken by February 1690, those clergy and Bishops who refused them were to be deprived. Between 300 and 400 refused the oath, and there thus sprang up that section of the clergy known as Nonjurors. The settlement of the country was completed by the Coronation Oath, which declared that the King would uphold the Protestant religion as settled by law. It was a foolish miscomprehension of these words, which obviously did not prevent a Parliamentary change in the arrangements of religion, which subsequently led George III. into his obstinate opposition to Catholic emancipation. When the oath had been arranged, the coronation took place (April 11), and some new titles were given; thus Danby became Lord Caermarthen, Churchill Earl of Marlborough, Bentinck Earl of Portland, and Mordaunt, First Lord of the Treasury, Earl of Monmouth. [Sidenote: The European war breaks out.] [Sidenote: Devastation of the Palatinate.]