The Committee of the Commons appointed for considering the Ministers' Remonstrance of the 27th of January, had not been idle. They had made reports and submitted questions for discussion. The House consequently passed resolutions for reforming pluralities, removing bishops from the Peerage and Privy Council, and for excluding all clergymen from the commission of the peace. Orders were given to frame Bills accordingly.[161] One of these Bills, which was introduced on the 9th of March, provided that no minister should have more than one living; that if he absented himself from his cure for forty days, he should forfeit his preferment; and that no member of the University should hold a benefice ten miles distant from his College, without living in the parish.[162] [Sidenote: _Debates respecting Bishops._] Another Bill, founded on the resolutions excluding clergymen from secular offices, came before the House on the first of April, when it was read a second time, and committed.[163] The supporters of it argued:--"That there was so great a concurrence towards the passing this Bill, and so great a combination throughout the nation against the whole government of the Church, in which the Scots were so resolutely engaged, that it was impossible for a firm peace to be preserved between the nations, if bishops were not taken away, and that the army would never march out of the kingdom till that were brought to pass." Mr. Hyde, who afterwards, as Lord Clarendon, became his own reporter, replied that--"It was changing the whole frame and constitution of the kingdom, and of the Parliament itself; that, from the time that Parliaments began, there had never been one Parliament when the bishops were not part of it; that if they were taken out of the House there would be but two estates left, for that they, as the clergy, were the third estate, and being taken away, there was nobody left to represent the clergy, which would introduce another piece of injustice, which no other part of the kingdom could complain of, who were all represented in Parliament, and were, therefore, bound to submit to all that was enacted, because it was upon the matter with their own consent: whereas, if the bishops were taken from sitting in the House of Peers, there was nobody who could pretend to represent the clergy, and yet they must be bound by their determinations." Lord Falkland, who sat next to Hyde, then started up, and declared himself "to be of another opinion, and that, as he thought the thing itself to be absolutely necessary for the benefit of the Church, which was in so great danger, so he had never heard that the constitution of the kingdom would be violated by the passing that act, and that he had heard many of the clergy protest that they could not acknowledge that they were represented by the bishops. However, we might presume, that if they could make that appear, that they were a third estate, that the House