school hours or at the start or end of the day (i.e. to allow parents who objected to withdraw their children to attend religious instruction of their choice, as permitted under the 1870 Forster Act). Lloyd George appears to have been the dominant figure on the committee in its later stages, and insisted that the bill create a separate education committee for Wales. The Cabinet, hoping to bring an end to this long-standing matter of dispute, included many compromises to satisfy lobby groups, including Clause 4, which allowed any borough or urban district with population in excess of 5,000 to provide denominational teaching every day, provided at least 80% of parents demanded it – a condition likely to be met only in Catholic areas of Liverpool and perhaps other large cities. This satisfied neither Catholics, who preferred to keep control over their own schools, nor Anglicans, whose schools tended to be in rural areas where only the standard two days per week of denominational teaching was to be permitted, nor Nonconformists who tended to favour the existing system of non-denominational teaching in state schools. The bill was introduced in the Commons on 9 April 1906. Augustine Birrell proved a poor advocate, complaining privately that the bill owed more to Lloyd George and that he himself had had little say in its contents. The bill faced hundreds of protest meetings by Anglicans, who complained that non-denominational religious teaching was in breach of their consciences. There were also protest meetings by Nonconformists who objected to the proposed introduction of denominational teaching in state schools. For the rest of the year, Lloyd George made numerous public speeches attacking the House of Lords for mutilating the bill with wrecking amendments, accusing them of defying the Liberals' electoral mandate to reform the 1902 Act. Unexpectedly a prominent Anglican layman, G. K. Chesterton, became a leader of the opposition to the Birrell Bill. In the end, Balfour, now leader of the Conservative opposition, used his mastery of Parliamentary procedure to defeat any compromise and keep his 1902 Act intact. On 12 December 1906 the Commons rejected the Lords' amendments by 414 votes to 107. After the Lords, which until 1911 still had equal say with the Commons over legislation, voted to reinstate its amendments, the bill was abandoned. Further bills were introduced in 1907 and 1908, and also abandoned. As a result of Lloyd George's lobbying,