“This same oath had been brought into the House of Commons in the plague year at Oxford, to have been imposed upon the nation, but there, by the assistance of those very same persons that now introduce it, ’twas thrown out, for fear of a general infection of the vitals of this kingdom; and though it passed then in a particular bill, known by the name of the Five Mile Act, because it only concerned the non-conformist preachers, yet even in that, it was thoroughly opposed by the late Earl of Southampton, whose judgement might well have been reckoned for the standard of prudence and loyalty."[204:1]

Of the proposed oath Marvell says, “No Conveyancer could ever in more compendious or binding terms have drawn a dissettlement of the whole birthright of England.”

This was no mere legal quibbling.

“These things are no niceties, or remote considerations (though in making of laws, and which must come afterwards under construction of judges, durante bene placito, all cases are to be put and imagined) but there being an act in Scotland for 20,000 men to march into England upon call, and so great a body of English soldiery in France, within summons, besides what foreigners may be obliged by treaty to furnish, and it being so fresh in memory, what sort of persons had lately been in commission among us, to which add the many books then printed by license, writ, some by men of the black, one of the green cloth, wherein the absoluteness of the English monarchy is against all law asserted.

   “All these considerations put together were sufficient to make any
   honest and well advised man to conceive indeed, that upon the passing
   of this oath and declaration, the whole sum of affairs depended.

“It grew therefore to the greatest contest, that has perhaps ever been in Parliament, wherein those Lords, that were against this oath, being assured of their own loyalty and merit, stood up now for the English liberties with the same genius, virtue, and courage, that their noble ancestors had formerly defended the great Charter of England, but with so much greater commendation, in that they had here a fairer field and a more civil way of decision; they fought it out under all the disadvantages imaginable; they were overlaid by numbers; the noise of the House, like the wind, was against them, and if not the sun, the fireside was always in their faces; nor being so few, could they, as their adversaries, withdraw to refresh themselves in a whole day’s ingagement:  yet never was there a clearer demonstration how dull a thing is humane eloquence, and greatness how little, when the bright truth discovers all things in their proper colours and dimensions, and shining, shoots its beams thorow all their fallacies.  It might be injurious, where all of them did so excellently well, to attribute more to any one of those Lords than another, unless because the Duke of Buckingham and