16. =Withdrawal of the Declaration of Indulgence. 1673.=--It was at the withdrawal of the Declaration of Indulgence that the House was aiming. In vain Charles simulated firmness, declaring himself to be resolved to stick to his declaration. The Commons bitterly resented his interference with the law. Forty statutes, it was said, had been violated by the Declaration, and the house passed a resolution that 'penal statutes in matters ecclesiastical cannot be suspended but by act of Parliament.' Both sides were anxious to limit the question to ecclesiastical statutes: Charles, because the powers over the Church conferred on the Tudor sovereigns were vague, and therefore more defensible than those exercised by them in political matters; the Commons, because they had precedents of Parliamentary resistance to dispensations granted to recusants, whereas former kings had usually been allowed without contradiction to suspend the law in commercial matters. Charles tried to evade the summons of the Commons, but the Lords having come on March 7 to the same conclusion as the other House, he gave way on the 8th and recalled his Declaration. As no new statute was passed on the subject, the legal question remained just where it was before. 17. =The Test Act. 1673.=--Charles had entered on a struggle with Parliament and had been defeated. The Royalist Parliament of =1661= was still Royalist so far as the maintenance of the throne was concerned, but it had entered on a course of opposition which had brought it into open collision with the king. From first to last the chief characteristic of this Parliament was its resolution to maintain the supremacy of the Church, and it was now obvious that the Church was in more danger from Roman Catholics than from Dissenters. Though Charles's conversion (see p. 600) was unknown, it was no secret that the Duke of York, the heir to the throne, was a Catholic, and, in spite of the veil thrown over the terms of the Treaty of Dover, the danger of an invasion by French troops in support of the English Catholics was obvious to all. For the first time since the Restoration a Bill was brought in to relieve Protestant Dissenters, and, though this proposal came to nothing, the very fact of its being made showed that a new state of feeling was growing up. Arlington, seeing how things stood, and wishing to oust the Catholic Clifford from the Treasury that he might be his successor, put up a member of the Commons to propose a Bill which soon became law under the name of the Test Act. By it, no one was to hold office who refused to take the test--that is to say, to make a declaration of his disbelief in the doctrine of Transubstantiation and to receive the Sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. It was only after Charles had given his assent to this Act on March 29 that the proposed grant of 1,260,000_l._ was actually made.