Against the Act of Supremacy some objections were urged in the parliament, and some scruples out of it; both, no doubt, proceeding from the same quarter. It was a scandal to place a woman at the head of the church, whose voice was not to be heard in it; yet the principle (it was argued) was acknowledged in a degree by the Catholics themselves, who had no difficulty in recognising the authority of an abbess, though of a nature in many respects much more strictly ecclesiastical, than that with which it was proposed to invest the queen.[461] Neither was there any disposition in her Majesty to challenge an authority to minister in the church (as was maliciously given out,) or, indeed, any other authority than such as had been enjoyed by her father and brother of famous memory.”[462] By the Act of Uniformity, the exclusive use of the Book of Common Prayer in the public services was enjoined under pain of imprisonment, and eventually of deprivation; whilst a respect for it was further exacted by penalties against those who should teach or preach to the disparagement of the same; and (what was a measure of more questionable expediency, as well as right) against those who should refuse to resort to their parish churches to hear it.[463] Meanwhile, it should be added, some few alterations had been made in the liturgy, dictated by a wish not to give needless offence to the Roman Catholics, but to win them, if possible, still to remain in a church which ever professed to be the restoration rather than the rival of their own. In the end, all the parochial clergy, with the exception of eighty individuals, took the oath of supremacy, and conformed. Not so the bishops: they all, save one, were recusants, as were also many deans, heads of colleges, and prebendaries, and were consequently deprived. It is unfair to attribute an act apparently conscientious to an unworthy motive, but it was suspected that a recusancy so general amongst one order of ecclesiastics, and that the highest, was preconcerted, more especially as many or all of them had subscribed to the supremacy of Henry and Edward; and that it was not wholly independent of the notion that the Queen would find it difficult, in the actual condition of the church to fill up their places to her satisfaction, and would descend to a compromise.[464] The difficulty, too, whatever it was, was augmented, it might be thought, by the numerous vacancies which the sickness recently prevailing in the country had created amongst the upper ranks of the clergy. If such, however, were the speculations, they were fallacious. That great company of preachers was overlooked, who had been living in exile, and were now eager to return;--persons but ill qualified, by their long habits of necessary frugality and retirement, to succeed to the purple of their episcopal predecessors,[465] and not having that in their looks which men would willingly call master, yet scholars ripe and good, Christians, moreover, sobered