These, then, were the principal men among the Non-jurors; and these, with four hundred clergymen, forfeited their ecclesiastical benefices, and formed a sort of _non-juring_ church, avowedly Jacobite in its political predilections and principles, and, which for many years, waged a fierce controversy with the Establishment on the theological aspects of the question which divided them. The non-juring system had a few lay-adherents, but it extended beyond the clergy only to a very limited extent. The new sect was a sect of preachers without hearers. A few had independent means. Some lived by literature; one or two practised physic. Thomas Wagstaffe, for example, who had been chancellor of Lichfield, had many patients, and made himself conspicuous among them by always visiting them in full canonicals. But these were exceptions. Most of the Non-jurors found themselves thrown on the world with nothing to eat and nothing to do. They naturally degenerated into beggars and loungers, and many of them became domesticated as chaplains, tutors, and spiritual directors in the houses of opulent Jacobites.[80] The schism of the Non-jurors, however, led to great changes among the occupants of Church offices; and, before the end of the third year of King William’s reign, he had issued no fewer than eighteen _conges_ for the election of new bishops. During this brief period, sixteen new prelates, all indebted for their promotion to the existing government, and recommended by their attachment to the principles of the Revolution, were introduced into the House of Lords; and of the whole twenty-six sees then existing, only ten were left in the possession of persons who had been bishops in the reign of James.[81] ----- Footnote 80: Macaulay. Footnote 81: Knight’s _History of England_. -----