Peter Gunning, who was Bishop of Ely for eight years, from 1675 to 1683, had likewise faced imprisonment for the sake of his religion. As vicar of the church of St. Mary the Less at Cambridge, and later at Tunbridge, while on a visit to his mother, he preached sermons in support of King Charles the First and in defence of the Church of England, which excited against him the resentment of the prevailing faction and led to his imprisonment. But before long he regained his liberty and returned to Cambridge, where, on his refusing to subscribe the Covenant, he was deprived of the Fellowship he held at Clare Hall. He then sought refuge with the King at Oxford; and on the surrender of that city to the Parliamentary forces betook himself to London, where his use of the English Liturgy, and the sermons preached by him in the Exeter House Chapel, drew down upon him the censure of Cromwell in person. At the Restoration he was given posts of high responsibility. He was called upon to assist at the Savoy Conference in the remodelling of the Book of Common Prayer, in which the "Prayer for all sorts and conditions of men," compiled by him, took its place. At Cambridge he held successively within the next ten years the Masterships of St. John's and of Corpus Christi, and was also successively the Lady Margaret and the Regius Professor of Divinity; he was appointed to the See of Chichester in 1670, and in 1675 was translated to Ely, where, after eight years, he died. It is recorded of him that in 1678 he had the courage to raise in the House of Lords, where he sat as Bishop of Ely, a strong protest against the shameful Test Act, which imposed upon all civil servants of the Crown, all officers, both in army and navy, all professional men, lawyers, doctors, and teachers of every grade, that odious formula, the so-called Royal Declaration, an age-long source of bitterness, now, happily, at last, no longer Royal. Francis Turner likewise, who held the See from 1684 till 1691, was yet another Bishop of Ely who suffered for his principles. He was one of the famous seven bishops committed to the Tower in 1688 for refusing to promulgate James the Second's Declaration of Indulgence, which they regarded as an unjustifiable stretch of the royal prerogative; and later he was deprived of his bishopric for declining, as a non-juror, to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary, whom he considered to be usurpers of the royal dignity; showing thus (as Sir Walter Scott puts it) that while he could, in the interests of what he held to be justice, resist his sovereign, even in the plenitude of his power, like a free-born subject, so he would at all sacrifices maintain what he believed to be his king's legitimate rights, even in the depths of his adversity, like a loyal one. [Footnote 223: See page 274.] CHAPTER XVI