In this address we notice a recognition of the Royal Supremacy. Not only the civil, but, in some sense, the ecclesiastical Supremacy of the Crown must, under the circumstances, have been meant. Ecclesiastical Supremacy would be claimed and exercised by the restored sovereign as a matter of course. No new Act of Parliament was passed reconferring it on the Crown, and defining the limits.[98] Henry VIII. had been declared "_Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ et Hibernicæ Supremum Caput_." That title had been continued during the reign of Edward VI., but was repealed in the reign of Queen Mary. In the first year of Queen Elizabeth, Supremacy was restored to the Crown, the Queen being styled, not "Supreme _Head_ of the Church," but "Supreme _Governor_, as well in all spiritual and ecclesiastical causes as in others." Henry's and Edward's title had never been resumed, but that of Elizabeth, having belonged to the first two monarchs of the Stuart line, descended to Charles II.[99] Charles II., then, could not, in legal phrase, be "Head of the Church;" if he happened to be so designated, it would be in adulation or in ignorance. But he inherited the ecclesiastical powers possessed by Queen Elizabeth, except in relation to the High Commission Court, which had been abolished by Act of Parliament in the reign of his father. The canons--as well as Acts of Parliament unrepealed before the Civil Wars--were regarded by Churchmen as remaining in force, and the second canon required an oath to the effect that "the King's Majesty hath the same authority in causes ecclesiastical that the Godly kings had amongst the Jews, and Christian emperors of the primitive Church"--whatever might be meant by that vague appeal to ancient and obscure precedents. The Supremacy of the Crown, however, as asserted by Anglican lawyers, would be one thing; the Supremacy, as acknowledged by Puritans, especially any Nonconformist portion of them, would be quite another. The authority of the temporal ruler over the temporalities of the Church, all parties probably would be prepared to allow; those of them who approved of a State Church would not object to his being invested with ecclesiastical patronage; Presbyterians, who wished for the establishment of perfect parochial discipline by the magistrate's aid, could not consistently object to some kind of Royal Supremacy in reference to that matter; but High Church Puritans, if I may so term persons holding exalted ideas of the spiritual, as distinguished from the temporal powers, like High Church Anglicans, would entertain a reduced and modified conception of the legitimate interference of the Crown with Christ's Church; whilst Nonconformists, who embraced the voluntary principle, would (even if from loyal courtesy they conceded the title of Supreme Governor in causes ecclesiastical) extract from it almost all which constituted its signification in the eyes of others. [Sidenote: 1660.] [Sidenote: THE KING'S RETURN.]