As for Morice, he was seized by a serjeant at arms in the house itself, stripped of his offices, rendered incapable of practising as a lawyer, and committed to prison, whence he soon after addressed to Burleigh the following high-minded appeal:
"Right honorable my very good lord;
"That I am no more hardly handled, I impute next unto God to your honorable good will and favor; for although I am assured that the cause I took in hand is good and honest, yet I believe that, besides your lordship and that honorable person your son, I have never an honorable friend. But no matter; for the best causes seldom find the most friends, especially having many, and those mighty, enemies.
"I see no cause in my conscience to repent me of that I have done, nor to be dismayed, although grieved, by this my restraint of liberty; for I stand for the maintenance of the honor of God and of my prince, and for the preservation of public justice and the liberties of my country against wrong and oppression; being well content, at her majesty's good pleasure and commandment, (whom I beseech God long to preserve in all princely felicity,) to suffer and abide much more. But I had thought that the judges ecclesiastical, being charged in the great council of the realm to be dishonorers of God and of her majesty, perverters of law and public justice, and wrong-doers unto the liberties and freedoms of all her majesty's subjects, by their extorted oaths, wrongful imprisonments, lawless subscription, and unjust absolutions, would rather have sought means to be cleared of this weighty accusation, than to shrowd themselves under the suppressing of the complaint and shadow of mine imprisonment.
"There is fault found with me that I, as a private person, preferred not my complaint to her majesty. Surely, my lord, your wisdom can conceive what a proper piece of work I had then made of that: The worst prison had been I think too good for me, since now (sustaining the person of a public counsellor of the realm speaking for her majesty's prerogatives, which by oath I am bound to assist and maintain) I cannot escape displeasure and restraint of liberty. Another fault, or error, is objected; in that I preferred these causes before the matters delivered from her majesty were determined. My good lord, to have stayed so long, I verily think, had been to come too late. Bills of assize of bread, shipping of fish, pleadings, and such like, may be offered and received into the house, and no offence to her majesty's royal commandment (being but as the tything of mint); but the great causes of the law and public justice may not be touched without offence. Well, my good lord, be it so; yet I hope her majesty and you of her honorable privy-council will at length thoroughly consider of these things, lest, as heretofore we prayed, From the tyranny of the bishop of Rome, good Lord deliver us, we be compelled to say, From the tyranny of the clergy of England, good Lord deliver us.
"Pardon my plain speech, I humbly beseech your honor, for it proceedeth from an upright heart and sound conscience, although in a weak and sickly body: and by God's grace, while life doth last, which I hope now, after so many cracks and crazes, will not be long, I will not be ashamed in good and lawful sort to strive for the freedom of conscience, public justice, and the liberty of my country. And you, my good lord, to whose hand the stern of this commonwealth is chiefly committed, I humbly beseech, (as I doubt not but you do,) graciously respect both me and the causes I have preferred, and be a mean to pacify and appease her majesty's displeasure conceived against me her poor, yet faithful, servant and subject." &c.[113]
In October following, the earl of Essex ventured to mention to her majesty this persecuted patriot amongst lawyers qualified for the post of attorney-general, when "her majesty acknowledged his gifts, but said his speaking against her in such manner as he had done, should be a bar against any preferment at her hands." He is said to have been kept for some years a prisoner in Tilbury castle; and whether he ever recovered his liberty may seem doubtful, since he died in February 1596, aged 48.
The house of commons, unacquainted as yet with its own strength, submitted without further question to regard as law the will of an imperious mistress, and passed with little opposition "An act to retain her majesty's subjects in their due obedience," which vied in cruelty with the noted Six Articles of her tyrannical father.
By this law, any person above sixteen who should refuse during a month to attend the established worship was to be imprisoned; when, should he further persist in his refusal during three months longer, he must abjure the realm; but in case of his rejecting this alternative, or returning from banishment, his offence was declared felony without benefit of clergy.
The business of supplies was next taken into consideration, and the commons voted two subsidies and four fifteenths; but this not appearing to the ministry sufficient for the exigencies of the state, the peers were induced to request a conference with the lower house for the purpose of proposing the augmentation of the grant to four subsidies and six fifteenths. The commons resented at first this interference with their acknowledged privilege of originating all money bills; but dread of the well-known consequences of offending their superiors, prevailed at length over their indignation; and first the conference, then the additional supply, was acceded to. Some debate, however, arose on the time to be allowed for the payment of so heavy an imposition; and the illustrious Francis Bacon, then member for Middlesex, enlarged upon the distresses of the people, and the danger lest the house, by this grant, should be establishing a precedent against themselves and their posterity, in a speech to which his courtly kinsman sir Robert Cecil replied with much warmth, and of which her majesty showed a resentful remembrance on his appearing soon after as a candidate for the office of attorney-general. His cousin sir Edward Hobby also, whose speeches in the former parliament had been ill-received by certain great persons, took such a part in some of the questions now at issue between the crown and the commons, as procured him an imprisonment till the end of the sessions, when he was at length liberated; "but not," as Anthony Bacon wrote to his mother, "without a notable public disgrace laid upon him by her majesty's royal censure delivered amongst other things, by herself, after my lord keeper's speech[114]."