It was hoped that this signal defeat would have discouraged the dissenters from any further attempts against a law, which had so unanimously passed both houses: But the contrary soon appeared. For, upon meeting of the Parliament, held by the Earl of Pembroke,[3] they quickly reassumed their wonted courage and confidence, and made no doubt, but they should either procure an absolute repeal thereof, or get it so far relaxed, as that they might be admitted to offices of military trust: To this, they apprehended themselves encouraged by a paragraph in his Excellency's speech to both Houses (which they applied to themselves) which was, "That the Queen would be glad of any expedient, for strengthening the interests of her Protestant subjects of Ireland." [Footnote 3: It will be remembered that the earl's viceroyalty commenced April 7th, 1707. It was in his train that Swift came to England in that year.[T.S.]] The advocates for the dissenters immediately took hold of this handle, and in order to prepare the way for this expedient, insisted boldly upon their merit and loyalty, charged the Church with persecution, and extolled their signal behaviour in the late Revolution, to that degree, as if by their signal prowess, they had saved the nation. But all this, was only to prepare the way for the grand engine, which was forming to beat down this law; and that was their expedient addresses. The first of this kind was, from a provincial synod of the northern dissenters, beginning with high encomiums upon themselves, and as high demands from the public, "for their untainted loyalty in all turns of government," which they said, was "the natural consequence of their known principles"; expressions, which, had they been applied to them by their adversaries, must have been understood as spoken ironically, and indeed to have been the greatest sarcasm imaginable upon them; especially, when we consider the insolent treatment given to her Majesty in the very same address; for immediately after they pass this compliment upon themselves, they tell her Majesty, they deeply regret the Sacramental Test; and frankly declared, that neither the gentlemen, nor people of their persuasion, could (they must mean _would_) serve her, whatever exigencies might arise, unless that law was repealed. The managers for the kirk, following this precedent, endeavoured to obtain addresses to the same purpose from the corporations, and though they proved unsuccessful in most, they procured them from several of our most considerable conforming corporations; and that too at a critical juncture, when numbers of Scotch Presbyterians, who had deserved well in the affair of the Union, and could not be rewarded in England (where the Test Act was in force) stood ready to overrun our preferments as soon as the Test should be repealed in Ireland. But after all when it came to a decisive trial in the House of Commons, the dissenters were defeated.