On Friday 18 May 1688 six bishops presented a petition drawn up by themselves and William Sancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to James II, requesting that he withdraw his order to have the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience read in churches on the following Sunday. The petition illustrates the level of tension which had developed between James and the Church of England over his attempts to ease the burden on his Catholic co-religionists since his coronation three years earlier. Then the Anglican hierarchy had been loud in their support for their legitimate king and his coronation was seen as the final defeat of Exclusion and the Whig principles associated with that policy. Papist James may have been, but as long as he defended the Church of England, it would continue to uphold the principles of the Restoration settlement and teach the duties of non-resistance and passive obedience. What James, and many subsequent historians, failed to appreciate was that non-resistance and passive obedience did not mean that the king could do whatever he pleased; there were definite limits to the Anglican doctrine of obedience and submission, which James would have been well advised to heed.