The Bill for "Restraining Bishops from intermeddling with Secular Affairs" came again under debate. It had been sent to the Upper House on the 1st of May, when Bishop Hall made a speech against it.[187] The Bill reached a second reading, and was committed on the 14th. Whatever idea of compromise by passing this measure might have existed among the Commons, no such idea was entertained by the Lords. They disputed the question with all the logic and eloquence they could master; evidently regarding the overthrow of this measure as of vital moment. The Right Reverend bench stood firm, and the Bishop of Lincoln--to shew that his committee of accommodation meant nothing prejudicial to the order--boldly defended it in a speech which was full of learning and rhetoric. Lord Viscount Newark also strenuously opposed the Bill; but it received earnest support from the Puritan Lord Say and Sele. Yet the latter wished their lordships not to regard it as introduced with any ulterior view,--telling them, it meant not the taking away of Episcopacy _root and branch_, but only the lopping off exuberant and superfluous boughs which now wasted the juices of the tree. The Lords feared the consequence of passing the bill, and deemed the episcopal status amongst them as of ancient and inalienable right. So they resolved, that Archbishops and Bishops should have "suffrage and voice as ever;" but to the other propositions they agreed, viz:--that prelates should have nothing to do with the Star Chamber Court or the Privy Council, and that no clergyman should be any longer a Justice of the Peace. These points a year before--had Strafford and Laud conceded them when they were in power--would have been counted an immense concession. But ecclesiastical as well as political matters had since passed through a whole heaven of change; therefore the three articles granted by the Lords were by the Commons deemed trifles unworthy of acceptance apart from the first. [Sidenote: 1641, May.] On the 24th of May, the resolution described passed the House of Lords. The impression which it made on the Commons is plain from what ensued. The patriots knitted their brows when the tidings reached them, and compressed their lips in firm determination to subdue the lordly prelates. We now reach an important crisis.