introduced the bill for liturgical reform, to appear no more in Parliament, and though she withdrew the order as soon as she perceived the House was bent on his restoration, she would hear nothing of the changes on which the Commons were set. [Sidenote: Elizabeth's resistance.] Her resistance showed the sagacity with which the Queen caught the general temper of her people. The Catholic pressure had made it needful to exclude Catholics from the Commons and from the council-board, but a Protestant Council and a Protestant Parliament were by no means fair representatives of the general drift of English opinion. Her religious indifference left Elizabeth a better judge of the timid and hesitating advance of religious sentiment, of the stubborn clinging to the past, of the fear of change, of the dread of revolution, which made the winning of the people as a whole to the Reformation a slow and tedious process. The Protestants were increasing in number, but they were still a minority of the nation. The zealous Catholics, who withdrew from church at the Pope's bidding, were a still smaller minority. The bulk of Englishmen were striving to cling to their religious prejudice and to loyalty as well, to obey their conscience and their Queen at once, and in such a temper of men's minds any sudden and decisive change would have fallen like a thunderbolt. Elizabeth had no will to follow in the track of Rome, and to help the Pope to drive every waverer into action. Weakened and broken as it was, she clung obstinately to her system of compromise; and the general opinion gave her a strength which enabled her to resist the pressure of her council and her Parliament. So difficult however was her position that a change might have been forced on her had she not been aided at this moment by a group of clerical bigots who gathered under the banner of Presbyterianism. [Sidenote: Cartwright.]