Since Elizabeth could not be executed, the court were the more anxious to carry the Succession Bill. Gardiner's first desire was that Elizabeth should be excluded by name; but Paget said that this was impossible.[313] As little could a measure be passed empowering the queen to leave the crown by will, for that would be but the same thing under another form. Following up his purpose, notwithstanding, Gardiner brought out in the House of Lords a pedigree, tracing Philip's descent from John of Gaunt; and he introduced a bill to make offences against his person high treason. But at the second reading the important words were introduced, "during the queen's lifetime;"[314] the bill was read a third time, and then disappeared; and Paget had been the loudest of its opponents.[315] [Footnote 313: He whom you wrote of comes to me with a sudden and strange proposal, that, since matters against Madame Elizabeth do not take the turn which was wished, there should be an Act brought into Parliament to disinherit her. I replied that I would give no consent to such a scheme.--Paget to Renard: Tytler, vol. ii. p. 382.] [Footnote 314: _Lords Journals._] [Footnote 315: Renard complains of Paget's conduct bitterly.--Renard to Charles V., May 1: Tytler, vol. ii.] Beaten on the succession, the chancellor, in spite of Renard's remonstrances, brought forward next his Religious Persecution Bills. The House of Commons went with him to some extent; and, to secure success in some form or other, he introduced three separate measures, either of which would answer his purpose--{p.133} a bill for the restoration of the Six Articles, a bill to re-enact the Lollard Statute of Henry IV., _De Haeretico Comburendo_, and a bill to restore (in more than its original vigour) the Episcopal Jurisdiction. The Six Articles had so bad a name that the first bill was read once only, and was dropped; the two others passed the Commons,[316] and, on the 26th of April, the Bishops' Authority Bill came before the Lords. Lord Paget was so far in advance of his time that he could not hope to appeal with a chance of success to his own principles of judicious latitudinarianism; but he determined, if possible, to prevent Gardiner's intended cruelties from taking effect, and he spread an alarm that, if the bishops were restored to their unrestricted powers, under one form or other the holders of the abbey lands would be at their mercy. To allay the suspicion, another bill was carried through the Commons, providing expressly for the safety of the holders of those lands; but the tyranny of the episcopal courts was so recent, and the ecclesiastics had shown themselves uniformly so little capable of distinguishing between right and wrong when the interests of