This direct attack upon the sovereign, in matters relating to her public administration, seems no doubt unparliamentary; though neither the rules of parliament in this respect, nor even the constitutional principle, were so strictly understood as at present. But it was part of Elizabeth's character to render herself extremely prominent, and, as it were, responsible in public esteem, for every important measure of her government. It was difficult to consider a queen as acting merely by the advice of ministers, who protested in parliament that they had laboured in vain to bend her heart to their councils. The doctrine that some one must be responsible for every act of the Crown was yet perfectly unknown; and Elizabeth would have been the last to adopt a system so inglorious to monarchy. But Wentworth had gone to a length which alarmed the House of Commons. They judged it expedient to prevent an unpleasant interference by sequestering their member, and appointing a committee of all the privy counsellors in the house to examine him. Wentworth declined their authority, till they assured him that they sat as members of the Commons, and not as counsellors. After a long examination, in which he not only behaved with intrepidity, but, according to his own statement, reduced them to confess the truth of all he advanced, they made a report to the house, who committed him to the Tower. He had lain there a month when the queen sent word that she remitted her displeasure towards him, and referred his enlargement to the house, who released him upon a reprimand from the speaker, and an acknowledgment of his fault upon his knees.[418] In this commitment of Wentworth, it can hardly be said that there was anything, as to the main point, by which the house sacrificed its acknowledged privileges. In later instances, and even in the reign of George I., members have been committed for much less indecent reflections on the sovereign. The queen had no reason upon the whole to be ill-pleased with this parliament, nor was she in haste to dissolve it, though there was a long intermission of its sessions. The next was in 1581, when the chancellor, on confirming a new speaker, did not fail to admonish him that the House of Commons should not intermeddle in anything touching her majesty's person or estate, or church government. They were supposed to disobey this injunction and fell under the queen's displeasure, by appointing a public fast on their own authority, though to be enforced on none but themselves. This trifling resolution, which showed indeed a little of the puritan spirit, passed for an encroachment on the supremacy, and was only expiated by a humble apology.[419] It is not till the month of February 1587-8, that the zeal for ecclesiastical reformation overcame in some measure the terrors of power, but with no better success than before. A Mr. Cope offered to the house, we are informed, a bill and a book, the former