It was forbidden under the heaviest penalties to evade this operation of the writ as it had been evaded under Clarendon by sending a prisoner to any places or fortresses beyond the seas. [Sidenote: The Bill of Securities.] Great as was the value of the Habeas Corpus Act it passed almost unnoticed amidst the political storm which the ministry had to face. The question of the Succession threw all others into the shade. At the bottom of the national panic lay the dread of a Catholic king, a dread which the after history of James fully justified. Unluckily on the question of the succession the new ministers were themselves divided. Shaftesbury was earnest for the exclusion of James and he was followed in his plan of exclusion by Lord Russell. Against a change in the order of hereditary succession however Charles was firm; and he was supported in his resistance by a majority of the Council with Temple and Lord Essex, Lord Halifax, and Lord Sunderland at its head. It was with the assent of this party that Charles brought forward a plan for preserving the rights of the Duke of York while restraining his powers as sovereign. By this project the presentation to Church livings was to be taken out of his hands on his accession. The last Parliament of the preceding reign was to continue to sit; and the appointment of all Councillors, Judges, Lord-Lieutenants, and officers in the fleet, was vested in the two Houses so long as a Catholic sovereign was on the throne. The extent of these provisions showed the pressure which Charles felt, but Shaftesbury was undoubtedly right in setting the plan aside as at once insufficient and impracticable. The one real security for English freedom lay in a thorough understanding between King and Parliament; and the scheme of Charles set them against one another as rival powers in the realm. It was impossible in fact that such a harmony could exist between a Protestant Parliament and a Catholic sovereign. [Sidenote: The Exclusion Bill.]