Both Houses, on the 31st of March, 1663, presented a Petition to the King, imploring him to command all Jesuits and Popish Priests, whether English, Irish, or Scotch, to quit the realm. To him such a Petition must have been annoying, and after delaying a while, to give any distinct answer, he replied, that he felt troubled on account of the resort to England of Jesuits and Priests, that it was so much ill-use made of his lenity towards many of the Popish persuasion,--that his feelings in this respect were the natural effects of his generosity and good disposition, after having lived so many years in the dominions of Catholic Princes,--that he would now endeavour to check the evil,--that as his affection for the Protestant religion and the Church of England had never been concealed, so he was less solicitous for the settling of his revenue than for the advancement and improvement of the ecclesiastical establishments, and for the using of all effectual remedies for hindering the growth of Popery.[422] The Commons passed Bills against Papists and Nonconformists, but these Bills were not sanctioned by the Upper House.[423] From the passing of the Act of Uniformity down to the repeal of the clause in 1865, touching the declaration of _assent and consent_, the meaning of those words was a constant subject of controversy, some even of the Bishops construing them in a very lax and indefinite manner. The words seem to many persons precise enough; and one might have thought that no room remained for controversy respecting them, after what took place in the House of Commons at the time now under review. A Bill passed in the month of July, to relieve those who by sickness or other impediment had been disabled from subscribing the required declaration. The Lords wished to sanction the latitudinarian interpretation, and adopted as an amendment this position, that "_assent and consent_" should "be understood only as to the practice and obedience to the said Act, and not otherwise." Against this construction the Duke of York and thirteen other Lords entered their protest. The Commons indignantly rejected the amendment, as having "neither justice nor prudence in it." Such conduct aroused the anger of the Lords, who resolved to take up the subject in the following session; but they allowed it to drop, and so virtually gave way to the Lower House, and left the strict grammatical meaning as the true construction of the law.[424] [Sidenote: PAPISTS AND NONCONFORMISTS.]