The Church of England, the Duchess thought, could not be in any immediate danger with such a “_nursing_ mother” as the Queen, or, as the Tories called her, the illustrious ornament of the church; and the Tories, in bringing forward this famous measure, “by the heat and agitation with which they over-acted their part, exposed their monopolizing ambition, which ought to have been better concealed under the cloak of zeal for the church.”[467] The affection of her Majesty for the church, the Duchess considered, could not be doubted, since, for its better security, she had chosen “its renowned champions to be of her ministry and council. Nevertheless,” she adds, “in the very first new parliament after her Majesty’s accession, it was thought necessary, with all diligence, to provide new strength, new supports for this flourishing church, as if it had been in the most tottering and declining condition.”[468] The motives for such conduct were, in the Duchess’s estimation, interested and invidious. The bill did not, in her opinion, “aim at excluding the _occasional_ conformists only, but all those _constant_ conformists, too, who could not relish the high church nonsense of promoting religion by persecution.” The measure, if intended, as the Duchess further asserts, to distinguish in her Majesty’s estimation the friends, from the foes of the church, succeeded in producing that effect, as subsequent events fully proved. Those who contemplated by its enactments the immediate prevention of the scandal of non-conformity, were disappointed, for it was not finally successful. It was brought into the Commons and passed; its “hottest” panegyrists being, according to Cunningham, “the clergy, and a crowd of women of the lowest rank, inflamed, as it were, with a zeal for religion.” “These women,” he observes, “expressed as great an exultation at the supposed victory, as if they had taken more pleasure in such religious triumphs, than in the gratification of even their lusts and their appetites.”[469] The Peers, however, less carried away at this time by religious or political zeal than the Commons, threw out the bill, being of opinion, not only that it was the offspring of party and prejudice, but that it would be impolitic during the time of war to disgust so large a body of her Majesty’s subjects as the Protestant dissenters. They argued, also, that it was not then expedient to set about the reformation of religious controversies.