A motion was made to ask the Lords' concurrence in this address, which, according to the journals, was lost by 212 to 138. In the _Life of James_, ii. 55, it is said that it was carried against the motion by only four voices; and this I find confirmed by a manuscript account of the debates (Sloane MSS. 1470), which gives the numbers 212 to 208. The journal probably is mis-printed, as the court and country parties were very equal. It is said in this manuscript, that those who opposed the address, opposed also the motion for requesting the Lords' concurrence in it; but James represents it otherwise, as a device of the court to quash the proceeding. [94] Coke, 12 Rep. 18. [95] Vaughan's Reports; Thomas _v._ Sorrell, 333. [96] Burnet and others. This hardly appears by Northey's argument. [97] _State Trials_, xi. 1165-1280; 2 Shower's _Reports_, 475. [98] The dissentient judge was Street; and Powell doubted. The king had privately secured this opinion of the bench in his favour before the action was brought. _Life of James_, ii. 79. [99] _State Trials_, xi. 1132 _et seq._ The members of the commission were the primate Sancroft (who never sat), Crew and Sprat, Bishops of Durham and Rochester the chancellor Jefferies, the Earls of Rochester and Sunderland, and Chief-Justice Herbert. Three were to form a quorum, but the chancellor necessarily to be one. Ralph, 929. The Earl of Mulgrave was introduced afterwards. [100] Mazure, ii. 130. [101] Henry Earl of Clarendon's papers, ii. 278. In Gutch's _Collectanea Curiosa_, vol. i. p. 287, we find not only this license to Massey, but one to Obadiah Walker, master of University College, and to two fellows of the same, and one of Brazen-nose College, to absent themselves from church, and not to take the oaths of supremacy and allegiance, or do any other thing to which, by the laws and statutes of the realm, or those of the college, they are obliged. There is also, in the same book, a dispensation for one Sclater, curate of Putney, and rector of Esher, from using the common prayer, etc., etc. _Id._ p. 290. These are in May 1686, and subscribed by Powis, the solicitor-general. The attorney-general, Sawyer, had refused; as we learn from Reresby, p. 133, the only contemporary writer, perhaps, who mentions this very remarkable aggression on the established church.