Elizabeth should make her experiment. A few creations and restorations of peerages strengthened the Protestant element among the lords. The Earl of Bedford and Lord Clinton appeared as proxies for many absent peers, and, of all the lords, Bedford (Francis Russell) was the most decisively committed to radical reform. The Howards were for the Queen, their cousin; the young Duke of Norfolk, England's one duke, was at this time ardently Protestant, and in the next year was shocked at the sight of undestroyed altars.
Money was cheerfully voted. The Queen was asked to choose a husband, and professed her wish to die a maid. She may have meant what she said, but assuredly did not mean that it should béa believed. A prudently phrased statute announced that she was " lawfully descended and come of the blood royal"; another declared her capable of inheriting from her divorced and attainted mother; the painful past was veiled in general words. There was little difficulty about a resumption of those tenths and first-fruits which Mary had abandoned. Round the question of ecclesiastical supremacy the battle raged, and it raged for two months and more (February 9 to April 29). Seemingly the Queen's ministers carried through the Lower House a bill which went the full Henrican length in its Caesaro-papalism and its severity. Upon pain of a traitor's death, everyone was to swear that Elizabeth was the Supreme Head of the Church of England. In the Upper House, to which the bill came on the 27th of February, the Bishops had to oppose a measure which would leave the lives of all open Romanists at the mercy of the government. Few though they were, the dozen prelates could still do much in a House where there were rarely more than thirty temporal lords, and probably Cecil had asked for more than he wanted. On the 18th of March the project had taken a far milder form; forfeiture of office and benefice was to be the punishment of those who would not swear. Against this more lenient measure only two temporal lords protested; but a Catholic says that other " good Christians " were feigning to be ill. The bill went back to the Commons; then back with amendments to the Lords, who read it thrice on the 22nd. Easter fell on the 26th, and it had been hoped that by that time Parliament would have finished its work. Very little had been done; doctrine and worship had hardly been touched. Apparently an attempt to change the services of the Church had been made, had met with resistance, and had been abandoned.
Elizabeth was in advance of the law and beckoned the nation forward. During that Lent the Court sermon had been the only sermon, the preacher Scory or Sandys, Grindal or Cox. A papist's excited fancy saw a congregation of five thousand and heard extravagant blasphemy. On Easter day the Queen received the Communion in both kinds; the news ran over Europe; Antoine de Bourbon on the same day had done the like at Pau; Mary of Lorraine had marked that festival for the return of all Scots to the Catholic worship. The colloquy
