_Oaths_ (Vol. viii., p. 605.).--Archbishop Whitgift, in a sermon before
Queen Elizabeth, thus addresses her:
"As all your predecessors were at this coronation, so you also were
sworn before all the nobility and bishops then present, and in the
presence of God, and in His stead to him that anointed you, 'to
maintain the church lands and the rights belonging to it;' and this
_testified openly at the Holy Altar, by laying your hands on the Bible
then lying upon it_. (See Walton's _Lives_, Zouch's ed., p. 243.)"
I quote from the editor's introduction to Spelman's _History of Sacrilege_,
p. 75., no doubt correctly cited.