Elizabeth's second Parliament (1563) met at a time when the downfall of the Huguenots to whom England had furnished assistance, the failure of a plot entered into by the nephews of Cardinal Pole for the overthrow of Elizabeth's government, and the reports from the ecclesiastical commissioners and the bishops, showing as they did that contempt for the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity was still strong, made it necessary to undertake more repressive measures against the Catholics. An Act was passed entitled, "an Act for the assurance of the queen's royal power" commanding that the oath of supremacy should be administered to members of the House of Commons, schoolmasters, tutors, attorneys, and all who had held any ecclesiastical office during the reigns of Elizabeth, Mary, Edward VI. or Henry VIII., and to all who manifested their hostility to the established religion by celebrating Mass or assisting at its celebration. Refusal to take the oath when first tendered was to be punished by forfeiture and life imprisonment, and on the second refusal the penalty was to be a traitor's death. Had such an Act been enforced strictly it would have meant the complete extirpation of the Catholics of England, but Elizabeth, having secured a weapon by which she might terrorise them, took care to prevent her bishops from driving them to extremes by a close investigation of their opinions regarding royal supremacy. Fines and imprisonment were at this stage deemed more expedient than death. Convocation met at the same time, but Convocation had changed much since 1559 when it declared bravely in favour of the Real Presence, Transubstantiation, the Mass, Papal supremacy, and the independence of the Church. The effects of the deprivation of the bishops, deans, archdeacons, canons, and clergy, and of the wholesale ordinations "of artificers unlearned and some even of base occupations" by Parker and Grindal and others were plainly visible.[14] Convocation was no longer Catholic in tone. It was distinctly Puritan. A proposal was made that all holidays and feasts should be abolished except Sundays and "the principal feasts of Christ," that there should be no kneeling at Communion, no vestments in the celebration of Common Service except the surplice, no organs in the churches, no sign of the cross in baptism, and that the minister should be compelled to read divine service facing the people. The proposal was debated warmly and in the end was defeated only by one vote.[15] One of the principal objects for which Convocation had been called was to draft a new dogmatic creed for the Church "as by law established." This was a matter of supreme importance. But as it was necessary to affirm nothing that would offend the Huguenots of France and the theologians of Switzerland and Germany, or rouse the latent Catholic sentiments of the English people, it was also a work of supreme difficulty. In other words the creed of the established Church must be in the nature of a