The letter of reply as drafted by the Whig Bishops in the Upper House was a veiled defiance of the Queen and her new Ministers. The prominent feature of the Queen's letter had been her expression of dislike towards latitudinarianism. It contained no reference to the War, nor to the question of the succession. The burden of the Bishops' reply, on the other hand, was the good fortune of the English arms in the War (which it was already the avowed object of the Ministry to bring to a close), and the paramount necessity of maintaining the Protestant succession. When a short paragraph, directly referring to the topics of the Queen's letter, was introduced, it dealt with these topics in the most perfunctory way, and pointed specially to the dangers of superstition (= Roman Catholicism) instead of those arising from the ' loose principles' of which the Queen had expressed abhorrence.