The Project Gutenberg eBook of Characters from the Histories & Memoirs of the Seventeenth Century, by David Nichol Smith

   I. The Beginnings
  II. The Literary Models
III. Clarendon
  IV. Other Character Writers

CHARACTERS

1. JAMES I. By Arthur Wilson 2. " By Sir Anthony Weldon 3. THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM (George Villiers, first Duke). By Clarendon 4. SIR THOMAS COVENTRY. By Clarendon 5. SIR RICHARD WESTON. By Clarendon 6. THE EARL OF ARUNDEL (Thomas Howard, fourteenth Earl). By Clarendon 7. THE EARL OF PEMBROKE (William Herbert, third Earl). By Clarendon 8. SIR FRANCIS BACON. By Ben Jonson 9. " " " By Arthur Wilson 10. " " " By Thomas Fuller 11. " " " By William Rawley 12. BEN JONSON. By Clarendon 13. " " By James Howell 14. HENRY HASTINGS. By Shaftesbury 15. CHARLES I. By Clarendon 16. " By Sir Philip Warwick 17. THE EARL OF STRAFFORD (Thomas Wentworth, first Earl). By Clarendon 18. THE EARL OF STRAFFORD (Thomas Wentworth, first Earl). By Sir Philip Warwick 19. THE EARL OF NORTHAMPTON (Spencer Compton, second Earl). By Clarendon 20. THE EARL OF CARNARVON (Robert Dormer, first Earl). By Clarendon 21. LORD FALKLAND (Lucius Cary, second Viscount). By Clarendon 22. LORD FALKLAND (Lucius Cary, second Viscount). By Clarendon 23. SIDNEY GODOLPHIN. By Clarendon 24. WILLIAM LAUD. By Clarendon 25. " " By Thomas Fuller 26. " " By Sir Philip Warwick 27. WILLIAM JUXON. By Sir Philip Warwick 28. THE MARQUIS OF HERTFORD (William Seymour, first Marquis). By Clarendon 29. THE MARQUIS OF NEWCASTLE (William Cavendish, first Marquis, and Duke). By Clarendon 30. THE LORD DIGBY (George Digby, second Earl of Bristol). By Clarendon 31. THE LORD CAPEL (Arthur Capel, first Baron). By Clarendon 32. ROYALIST GENERALS: PATRICK RETHVEN, EARL OF BRENTFORD; PRINCE RUPERT; GEORGE, LORD GORING; HENRY WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER. By Clarendon 33. JOHN HAMPDEN. By Clarendon 34. JOHN PYM. By Clarendon 35. OLIVER CROMWELL. By Clarendon 36. OLIVER CROMWELL. By Clarendon 37. " " By Sir Philip Warwick 38. " " By John Maidston 39. " " By Richard Baxter 40. SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX. By Richard Baxter 41. SIR HENRY VANE, the younger. By Clarendon 42. " " " " " By Clarendon 43. COLONEL JOHN HUTCHINSON. By Lucy Hutchinson 44. THE EARL OF ESSEX (Robert Devereux, third Earl). By Clarendon 45. THE EARL OF SALISBURY (William Cecil, second Earl). By Clarendon 46. THE EARL OF WARWICK (Robert Rich, second Earl). By Clarendon 47. THE EARL OF MANCHESTER (Edward Montagu, second Earl). By Clarendon 48. THE LORD SAY (William Fiennes, first Viscount Say and Sele). By Clarendon 49. JOHN SELDEN. By Clarendon 50. JOHN EARLE. By Clarendon 51. JOHN HALES. By Clarendon 52. WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH. By Clarendon 53. EDMUND WALLER. By Clarendon 54. THOMAS HOBBES. By Clarendon 55. " " Notes by John Aubrey 56. THOMAS FULLER. Anonymous 57. JOHN MILTON. Notes by John Aubrey 58. " " Note by Edward Phillips 59. " " Notes by Jonathan Richardson 60. ABRAHAM COWLEY. By himself 61. " " By Thomas Sprat 62. CHARLES II. By Halifax 63. CHARLES II. By Burnet 64. CHARLES II. By Burnet 65. THE EARL OF CLARENDON (Edward Hyde, first Earl), By Burnet 66. THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE (John Maitland, second Earl, created Duke 1672). By Clarendon. 67. THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE (John Maitland, second Earl, created Duke 1672). By Burnet 68. THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY (Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl). By Burnet 69. THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY (Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl). By Dryden 70. THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM (George Villiers, second Duke). By Burnet 71. THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM (George Villiers, second Duke). By Dryden 72. THE MARQUIS OF HALIFAX (George Savile, first Marquis). By Burnet 73. SIR EDMUND SAUNDERS. By Roger North 74. TWO GROUPS OF DIVINES: (1. Benjamin Whitchcot, Ralph Cudworth, John Wilkins, Henry More, John Worthington; 2. John Tillotson, Edward Stillingfleet, Simon Patrick, William Lloyd, Thomas Tenison). By Burnet 75. JAMES II. By Burnet 76. JAMES II. By Burnet

THE CHARACTER

The seventeenth century is rich in short studies or characters of its great men. Its rulers and statesmen, its soldiers and politicians, its lawyers and divines, all who played a prominent part in the public life, have with few notable exceptions been described for us by their contemporaries. There are earlier characters in English literature; but as a definite and established form of literary composition the character dates from the seventeenth century. Even Sir Robert Naunton's Fragmenta Regalia, or Observations on the late Queen Elizabeth her Times and Favourites, a series of studies of the great men of Elizabeth's court, and the first book of its kind, is an old man's recollection of his early life, and belongs to the Stuart period in everything but its theme. Nor at any later period is there the same wealth of material for such a collection as is given in this volume. The eighteenth century devoted itself rather to biography. When the facts of a man's life, his works, and his opinions claimed detailed treatment, the fashion of the short character had passed.

Yet the seventeenth century did not know its richness. None of its best characters were then printed. The writers themselves could not have suspected how many others were similarly engaged, so far were they from belonging to a school. The characters in Clarendon's History of the Rebellion were too intimate and searching to be published at once, and they remained in manuscript till about thirty years after his death. In the interval Burnet was drawing the characters in his History of His Own Time. He, like Clarendon, was not aware of being indebted to any English model. Throughout the period which they cover there are the characters by Fuller, Sir Philip Warwick, Baxter, Halifax, Shaftesbury, and many others, the Latin characters by Milton, and the verse characters by Dryden. There is no sign that any of these writers copied another or tried to emulate him. Together, but with no sense of their community, they made the seventeenth century the great age of the character in England.

The art of literary portraiture in the seventeenth century developed with the effort to improve the writing of history. Its first and at all times its chief purpose in England was to show to later ages what kind of men had directed the affairs and shaped the fortunes of the nation. In France it was to be practised as a mere pastime; to sketch well-known figures in society, or to sketch oneself, was for some years the fashionable occupation of the salons. In England the character never wholly lost the qualities of its origin. It might be used on occasion as a record of affection, or as a weapon of political satire; but our chief character writers are our historians. At the beginning of the seventeenth century England was recognized to be deficient in historical writings. Poetry looked back to Chaucer as its father, was proud of its long tradition, and had proved its right to sing the glories of Elizabeth's reign. The drama, in the full vigour of its youth, challenged comparison with the drama of Greece and Rome. Prose was conscious of its power in exposition and controversy. But in every review of our literature's great achievement and greater promise there was one cause of serious misgivings. England could not yet rank with other countries in its histories. Many large volumes had been printed, some of them containing matter that is invaluable to the modern student, but there was no single work that was thought to be worthy of England's greatness. The prevailing type was still the chronicle. Even Camden, 'the glory and light of the kingdom', as Ben Jonson called him, was an antiquary, a collector, and an annalist. History had yet to be practised as one of the great literary arts.

Bacon pointed out the 'unworthiness' and 'deficiences' of English history in his Advancement of Learning.[1] 'Some few very worthy, but the greater part beneath mediocrity' was his verdict on modern histories in general. He was not the first to express these views. Sir Henry Savile had been more emphatic in his dedication to Queen Elizabeth of his collection of early chronicles, Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores post Bedam, published in 1596.[2] And after Bacon, somewhere about 1618, these views were again expressed by Edmund Bolton in his Hypercritica, or a Rule of Judgement for writing or reading our Histories.[3] 'The vast vulgar Tomes', he said, 'procured for the most part by the husbandry of Printers, and not by appointment of the Prince or Authority of the Common-weal, in their tumultuary and centonical Writings do seem to resemble some huge disproportionable Temple, whose Architect was not his Arts Master'. He repeated what he calls the common wish 'that the majesty of handling our history might once equal the majesty of the argument'. England had had all other honours, but only wanted a history.

But the most valuable statement on the conditions of English history at this time and the obstacles that hindered its progress was made by Sir John Hayward at the beginning of his Lives of the III Normans, Kings of England, published in 1613. Leaving aside the methods of the chroniclers, he had taken the classical historians as his model in his First Part of the Life and raigne of King Henrie the IIII. The interest of this work to the modern reader lies in its structure, its attempt at artistic unity, its recognition that English history must be written on a different plan, rather than in its historical matter. But it was no sooner published than Hayward was committed to the Tower because the account of the deposition of Richard II was held to be treasonable, the offence being aggravated by the dedication, in perfectly innocent terms, to the Earl of Essex. His work was thus checked till he met with encouragement from Henry, Prince of Wales, a patron of literature, of whom, though a mere youth, such men as Jonson, Chapman, and Raleigh, spoke with an enthusiasm that cannot be mistaken for flattery. Prince Henry saw the need of a worthy history of England. He therefore sent for Hayward to discuss the reasons with him:

Prince Henry … sent for mee, a few monethes before his death. And at my second comming to his presence, among some other speeches, hee complained much of our Histories of England; and that the English Nation, which is inferiour to none in Honourable actions, should be surpassed by all, in leauing the memorie of them to posteritie….

I answered, that I conceiued these causes hereof; One, that men of sufficiencie were otherwise employed; either in publicke affaires, or in wrestling with the world, for maintenance or encrease of their private estates. Another is, for that men might safely write of others in maner of a tale, but in maner of a History, safely they could not: because, albeit they should write of men long since dead, and whose posteritie is cleane worne out; yet some aliue, finding themselues foule in those vices, which they see obserued, reproued, condemned in others; their guiltinesse maketh them apt to conceiue, that whatsoeuer the words are, the finger pointeth onely at them. The last is, for that the Argument of our English historie hath been so foiled heretofore by some unworthie writers, that men of qualitie may esteeme themselues discredited by dealing in it….

Then he questioned, whether I had wrote any part of our English Historie, other then that which had been published; which at that time he had in his hands. I answered, that I had wrote of certaine of our English Kings, by way of a briefe description of their liues: but for historie, I did principally bend, and binde my selfe to the times wherein I should liue; in which my owne obseruations might somewhat direct me: but as well in the one as in the other I had at that time perfected nothing.

The result of the interview was that Hayward proceeded to 'perfect somewhat of both sorts'. The brief description of the lives of the three Norman kings was in due course ordered to be published, and would have been dedicated to its real patron but for his untimely death; in dedicating it instead to Prince Charles, Hayward fortunately took the opportunity to relate his conversation with Prince Henry. How far he carried the other work is not certain; it survives in the fragment called The Beginning of the Raigne of Queene Elizabeth,[4] published after his death with The Life and Raigne of King Edward the Sixt. He might have brought it down to the reign of James. Had he been at liberty to follow his own wishes, he would have been the first Englishman to write a 'History of his own time'. But when an author incurred imprisonment for writing about the deposition of a sovereign, and when modern applications were read into accounts of what had happened long ago, the complexity of his own time was a dangerous if not a forbidden subject.

There is a passage to the same effect in the preface to The Historie of the World by Sir Walter Raleigh, who, unlike Hayward, willingly chose to be silent on what he knew best:

I know that it will bee said by many, That I might have beene more pleasing to the Reader, if I had written the Story of mine owne times; having been permitted to draw water as neare the Well-head as another. To this I answer, that who-so-ever in writing a moderne Historie, shall follow truth too neare the heeles, it may happily strike out his teeth. There is no Mistresse or Guide, that hath led her followers and servants into greater miseries…. It is enough for me (being in that state I am) to write of the eldest times: wherein also why may it not be said, that in speaking of the past, I point at the present, and taxe the vices of those that are yet lyving, in their persons that are long since dead; and have it laid to my charge? But this I cannot helpe, though innocent.

He wrote of remote ages, and contributed nothing to historical knowledge. But he enriched English literature with a 'just history', as distinct from annals and chronicles.[5] 'I am not altogether ignorant', he said, 'in the Lawes of Historie, and of the Kindes.' When we read his lives and commendations of the great men of antiquity as he pictured them, we cannot but regret that the same talents, the same overmastering interest in the eternal human problems, had not been employed in depicting men whom he had actually known. The other Elizabethan work that ranks with Raleigh's in its conception of the historian's office and in its literary excellence, deals with another country. It is the History of the Turks by Richard Knolles.

The character was definitely introduced into English literature when the historians took as their subjects contemporary or recent events at home, and, abandoning the methods of the chronicle, fashioned their work on classical models. Its introduction had been further prepared to some extent by the growing interest in lives, which, unlike chronicles that recorded events, recognized the part played by men in the control of events. In his Advancement of Learning Bacon regretted that Englishmen gave so little thought to describing the deeds and characters of their great countrymen. 'I do find strange', he said, 'that these times have so little esteemed the virtues of the times, as that the writing of lives should be no more frequent.' He and Hayward both wrote lives with the consciousness that their methods were new in English, though largely borrowed from the classics.[6] Hayward tried to produce a picture of the period he dealt with, and his means for procuring harmoniousness of design was to centre attention on the person of the sovereign. It is a conception of history not as a register of facts but as a representation of the national drama. His Henry IV gives the impression, especially by its speeches, that he looked upon history as resolving itself ultimately into a study of men; and it thus explains how he wished to be free to describe the times wherein he lived. He is on the whole earlier than Bacon, who wrote his Historie of the Reigne of King Henry the Seventh late in life, during the leisure that was forced on him by his removal from all public offices. Written to display the controlling policy in days that were 'rough, and full of mutations, and rare accidents', it is a study of the statecraft and character of a king who had few personal gifts and small capacity for a brilliant part, yet won by his ready wisdom the best of all praises that 'what he minded he compassed'. How he compassed it, is what interested Bacon. 'I have not flattered him,' he says, 'but took him to the life as well as I could, sitting so far off, and having no better light.' Would that Bacon had felt at liberty to choose those who sat near at hand. Who better than the writer of the Essays could have painted a series of miniatures of the courts of Elizabeth and James?

When at last the political upheaval of this century compelled men to leave, whether in histories, or memoirs, or biographies, a record of what they had themselves experienced, the character attained to its full importance and excellence. 'That posterity may not be deceaved by the prosperous wickednesse of these tymes, into an opinyon, that lesse then a generall combination and universall apostacy in the whole Nacion from their religion and allegiaunce could in so shorte a tyme have produced such a totall and prodigious alteration and confusion over the whole kingdome, and so the memory of those few who out of duty and conscience have opposed and resisted that Torrent which hath overwhelmed them, may loose the recompence dew to ther virtue, and havinge undergone the injuryes and reproches of this, may not finde a vindication in a better Age'—in these words Clarendon began his History of the Rebellion. But he could not vindicate the memory of his political friends without describing the men who had overcome them. The history of these confused and difficult years would not be properly understood if the characters of all the chief actors in the tragic drama were not known. For to Clarendon history was the record of the struggle of personalities. When we are in the midst of a crisis, or view it from too near a distance, it is natural for us to think of it as a fight between the opposing leaders, and the historians of their own time are always liable to attribute to the personal force of a statesman what is due to general causes of which he is only the instrument. Of these general causes Clarendon took little account. 'Motives which influenced masses of men', it has been said, 'escape his appreciation, and the History of the Rebellion is accordingly an account of the Puritan Revolution which is unintelligible because the part played by Puritanism is misunderstood or omitted altogether'.[7] But the History of the Rebellion is a Stuart portrait gallery, and the greatest portrait gallery in the English language.

[Footnote 2: 'Historæ nostræ particulam quidam non male: sed qui totum corpus ea fide, eaque dignitate scriptis complexus sit, quam suscepti operis magnitudo postularet, hactenus plane neminem extitisse constat…. Nostri ex fæce plebis historici, dum maiestatem tanti operis ornare studuerunt, putidissimis ineptiis contaminarunt. Ita factum est nescio qua huiusce insulæ infoelicitate, ut maiores tui, (serenissima Regina) viri maximi, qui magnam huius orbis nostri partem imperio complexi, omnes sui temporis reges rerum gestarum gloria facile superarunt, magnorum ingeniorum quasi lumine destituti, iaceant ignoti, & delitescant.']

[Footnote 3: Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, ed.
Spingarn, vol. i, pp. 82-115.]

[Footnote 5: Roger Ascham in his Scholemaster divides History into
'Diaria', 'Annales', 'Commentaries', and 'Iustam Historiam'.]

[Footnote 6: Bacon told Queen Elizabeth that there was no treason in Hayward's Henry IV, but 'very much felony', because Hayward 'had stolen many of his sentences and conceits out of Cornelius Tacitus' (Apophthegms, 58). Hayward and Bacon had a precursor in the author of The History of King Richard the Thirde, generally attributed to Sir Thomas More, and printed in the collection of his works published in 1557. It was known to the chroniclers, but it did not affect the writing of history. Nor did George Cavendish's Life and Death of Thomas Wolsey, which they likewise used for its facts.]

[Footnote 7: C.H. Firth, 'Burnet as a Historian', in Clarke and
Foxcroft's Life of Gilbert Burnet, 1907, pp. xliv, xlv.]

The authentic models for historical composition were in Greek and Latin. Much as our literature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries owed to the classics, the debt was nowhere more obvious, and more fully acknowledged, than in our histories. The number of translations is in itself remarkable. Many of them, and notably the greatest of all, North's Plutarch, belong to the early part of Elizabeth's reign, but they became more frequent at the very time when the inferiority of our native works was engaging attention.[1] By the middle of the seventeenth century the great classical historians could all be read in English. It was not through translation, however, that their influence was chiefly exercised.

The classical historians who were best known were Thucydides, Polybius, and Plutarch among the Greeks, and Sallust, Livy, Tacitus, and Suetonius among the Latins; and the former group were not so well known as the latter. It was recognized that in Thucydides, to use Hobbes's words, 'the faculty of writing history is at the highest.'[2] But Thucydides was a difficult author, and neither he nor Polybius exerted the same direct influence as the Latin historians who had imitated them, or learned from them. Most of what can be traced ultimately to the Greeks came to England in the seventeenth century through Latin channels. Every educated man had been trained in Latin, and was as familiar with it for literary purposes as with his native tongue. Further, the main types of history—the history of a long period of years, the history of recent events, and the biographical history—were all so admirably represented in Latin that it was not necessary to go to Greek for a model. In one respect Latin could claim pre-eminence. It might possess no single passage greater than the character study of Pericles or of the Athenians by Thucydides, but it developed the character study into a recognized and clearly defined element in historical narrative. Livy provided a pattern of narrative on a grand scale. For 'exquisite eloquence' he was held not to have his equal.[3] But of all the Latin historians, Tacitus had the greatest influence. 'There is no learning so proper for the direction of the life of man as Historie; there is no historie so well worth the reading as Tacitus. Hee hath written the most matter with best conceit in fewest words of any Historiographer ancient or moderne.'[4] This had been said at the beginning of the first English translation of Tacitus, and it was the view generally held when he came to be better known. He appealed to Englishmen of the seventeenth century like no other historian. They felt the human interest of a narrative based on what the writer had experienced for himself; and they found that its political wisdom could be applied, or even applied itself spontaneously, to their own circumstances. They were widely read in the classics. They knew how Plutarch depicted character in his Lives, and Cicero in his Speeches. They knew all the Latin historians. But when they wrote their own characters their chief master was Tacitus.

Continental historians provided the incentive of rivalry. They too were the pupils of the Ancients, and taught nothing that might not be learned equally well or better from their masters, but they invited the question why England should be behind Italy, France, or the Low Countries in worthy records of its achievements. In their own century, Thuanus, Davila, Bentivoglio, Strada, and Grotius set the standard for modern historical composition. Jacques Auguste de Thou, or Thuanus, wrote in Latin a history of his own time in 138 books. He intended to complete it in 143 books with the assassination of Henri IV in 1610, but his labours were interrupted by his death in 1617. The collected edition of his monumental work was issued in 1620 under the title Iacobi Augusti Thuani Historiarum sui temporis ab anno 1543 usque ad annum 1607 Libri CXXXVIII. Enrico Caterino Davila dealt with the affairs of France from Francis II to Henri IV in his Historia delle guerre civili di Francia, published in 1630. Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio described the troubles in the Low Countries in his Della Guerra di Fiandra, published from 1632 to 1639. Famianus Strada wrote on the same subject in Latin; the first part of his De Bella Belgico, which was meant to cover the period from 1555 to 1590 but was not completed, appeared in 1632, and the second in 1647. Hugo Grotius, the great Dutch scholar, had long been engaged on his Annales et Historiæ de Rebus Belgicis when he died in 1640; it was brought out by his sons in 1657, and contained five books of Annals from 1566 to 1588, and eighteen books of Histories to 1609. These five historians were well known in England, and were studied for their method as well as their matter. Burnet took Thuanus as his model. 'I have made him ', he says, 'my pattern in writing.'[5] The others are discussed by Clarendon in a long passage of his essay 'On an Active and on a Contemplative Life'.[6] He there develops the view, not without reference to his own history, that 'there was never yet a good History written but by men conversant in business, and of the best and most liberal education'; and he illustrates it by comparing the histories of his four contemporaries:

Two of these are by so much preferable before the other Two, that the first may worthily stand by the Sides of the best of the Ancients, whilst both the others must be placed under them; and a Man, without knowing more of them, may by reading their Books find the Difference between their Extractions, their Educations, their Conversations, and their Judgment. The first Two are Henry D'Avila and Cardinal Bentivoglio, both Italians of illustrious Birth; … they often set forth and describe the same Actions with very pleasant and delightful Variety; and commonly the greatest Persons they have occasion to mention were very well known to them both, which makes their Characters always very lively. Both their Histories are excellent, and will instruct the ablest and wisest Men how to write, and terrify them from writing. The other Two were Hugo Grotius and Famianus Strada, who both wrote in Latin upon the same Argument, and of the same Time, of the Wars of Flanders, and of the Low-Countries.

He proceeds to show that Grotius, with all his learning and abilities, and with all his careful revisions, had not been able to give his narrative enough life and spirit; it was deficient in 'a lively Representation of Persons and Actions, which makes the Reader present at all they say or do'. The whole passage, which is too long to be quoted in full, is not more valuable as a criticism than as an indication of his own aims, and of his equipment to realize them. Some years earlier, when he was still thinking 'with much agony' about the method he was to employ in his own history, he had cited the methods of Davila, 'who', he added, 'I think hath written as ours should be written.'[7]

One of Clarendon's tests of a good history, it will be noted, is the 'lively representation of persons'; the better writers are distinguished by making 'their characters always very lively'. In his own hands, and in Burnet's, the character assumes even greater importance than the continental historians had given it. At every opportunity Clarendon leaves off his narrative of events to describe the actors in the great drama, and Burnet introduces his main subject with what is in effect an account of his dramatis personæ. They excel in the range and variety of their characters. But they had studied the continental historians, and the encouragement of example must not be forgotten.

The debt to French literature can easily be overstated. No French influence is discoverable in the origin and rise of the English character, nor in its form or manner; but its later development may have been hastened by French example, especially during the third quarter of the seventeenth century.

France was the home of the mémoire, the personal record in which the individual portrays himself as the centre of his world, and describes events and persons in the light of his own experience. It was established as a characteristic form of French literature in the sixteenth century,[8] and it reached its full vigour and variety in the century of Sully, Rohan, Richelieu, Tallemant des Réaux, Bassompierre, Madame de Motteville, Mlle de Montpensier, La Rochefoucauld, Villars, Cardinal de Retz, Bussy-Rabutin—to name but a few. This was the age of the mémoire, always interesting, often admirably written; and, as might be expected, sometimes exhibiting the art of portraiture at perfection. The English memoir is comparatively late. The word, in the sense of a narrative of personal recollections, was borrowed at the Restoration. The thing itself, under other names, is older. It is a branch of history that flourishes in stirring and difficult times when men believe themselves to have special information about hidden forces that directed the main current of events, and we date it in this country from the period of the Civil Wars. It is significant that when Shaftesbury in his old age composed his short and fragmentary autobiography he began by saying, 'I in this follow the French fashion, and write my own memoirs.' Even Swift, when publishing Temple's Memoirs, said that ''tis to the French (if I mistake not) we chiefly owe that manner of writing; and Sir William Temple is not only the first, but I think the only Englishman (at least of any consequence) who ever attempted it.' Few English memoirs were then in print, whereas French memoirs were to be numbered by dozens. But the French fashion is not to be regarded as an importation into English literature, supplying what had hitherto been lacking. At most it stimulated what already existed.

The mémoire was not the only setting for French portraits at this time. There were the French romances, and notably the Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus and the Clélie of Madeleine de Scudéry. The full significance of the Grand Cyrus has been recovered for modern readers by Victor Cousin, with great skill and charm, in his Société française au XVIIe siècle, where he has shown it to be, 'properly speaking, a history in portraits'. The characters were drawn from familiar figures in French society. 'Ainsi s'explique', says Cousin, 'l'immense succès du Cyrus dans le temps où il parut. C'était une galerie des portraits vrais et frappants, mais un peu embellis, où tout ce qu'il y avait de plus illustre en tout genre—princes, courtisans, militaires, beaux-esprits, et surtout jolies femmes—allaient se chercher et se reconnaissaient avec un plaisir inexprimable.'[9] It was easy to attack these romances. Boileau made fun of them because the classical names borne by the characters were so absurdly at variance with the matter of the stories.[10] But instead of giving, as he said, a French air and spirit to Greece and Rome, Madeleine de Scudéry only gave Greek and Roman names to France as she knew it. The names were a transparent disguise that was not meant to conceal the picture of fashionable society.

The next stage was the portrait by itself, without any setting. At the height of the popularity of the romances, Mlle de Montpensier hit upon a new kind of entertainment for the talented circle of which she was the brilliant centre. It was nothing more nor less than a paper game. They drew each other, or persons whom they knew, or themselves, and under their real names. And they played the game so well that what was written for amusement was worth printing. Divers Portraits, Imprimés en l'année M DC LIX was the simple title of the first collection, which was intended only for the contributors.[11] When it reached its final form in 1663, it contained over a hundred and fifty portraits, and was offered to the public as La Galerie des Peintures, ou Recueil des portraits et éloges en vers et en prose, contenant les portraits du Roy, de la Reyne, des princes, princesses, duchesses, marquises, comtesses, et autres seigneurs et dames les plus illustres de France; la plupart composés par eux-mêmes.[12] The introductory defence of the portrait cites Suetonius and Plutarch, and Horace and Montaigne, but also states frankly the true original of the new fashion—'il faut avouer que nous sommes très redevables au Cyrus et à la Clélie qui nous en ont fourni les modèles.' About the same time Antoine Baudeau, sieur de Somaize, brought out his Grand Dictionnaire des Précieuses,[13] in which there are many portraits in the accepted manner. The portrait was more than a fashion at this time in France; it was the rage. It therefore invited the satirists. Molière has a passing jest at them in his Précieuses Ridicules;[14] Charles Sorel published his Description de I'isle de la Portraiture et de la ville des Portraits; and Boileau wrote his Héros de Roman.

The effects of all this in England are certainly not obvious. It is quite a tenable view that the English characters would have been no less numerous, nor in any way different in quality, had every Englishman been ignorant of French. But the mémoires and romances were well known, and it was after 1660 that the art of the character attained its fullest excellence. The literary career of Clarendon poses the question in a simple form. Most of his characters, and the best as a whole, were written at Montpelier towards the close of his life. Did he find in French literature an incentive to indulge and perfect his natural bent? Yet there can be no conclusive answer to those who find a sufficient explanation in the leisure of these unhappy years, and in the solace that comes to chiefs out of war and statesmen out of place in ruminating on their experiences and impressions.

Something may have been learned also from the other kind of character that is found at its best in modern literature in the seventeenth century, the character derived from Theophrastus, and depicting not the individual but the type. In France, the one kind led on to the other. The romances of Scudéry prepared the way for the Caractères ou les Moeurs de ce Siècle of La Bruyère. When the fashionable portrait of particular persons fell out of favour, there arose in its place the description of dispositions and temperaments; and in the hands of La Bruyère 'the manners of the century' were the habits and varieties of human nature. In England the two kinds existed side by side. They correspond to the two methods of the drama. Begin with the individual, but draw him in such a way that we recognize in him our own or others' qualities; or begin with the qualities shared by classes of people, embody these in a person who stands for the greatest common measure of the class, and finally—and only then—let him take on his distinctive traits: these are methods which are not confined to the drama, and at all stages of our literature have lived in helpful rivalry. Long before France had her La Bruyère, England had her Hall, Overbury, and Earle.[15] The Theophrastan character was at its best in this country at the beginning of the seventeenth century when the historical character was still in its early stages; and it was declining when the historical character had attained its full excellence. They cannot always be clearly distinguished, and they are sometimes purposely blended, as in Butler's character of 'A Duke of Bucks,' where the satire on a man of pronounced individuality is heightened by describing his eccentricities as if they belonged to a recognized class.

The great lesson that the Theophrastan type of character could teach was the value of balance and unity. A haphazard statement of features and habits and peculiarities might suffice for a sketch, but perspective and harmony were necessary to a finished portrait. It taught that the surest method in depicting character was first to conceive the character as a whole, and then to introduce detail incidentally and in proper subordination. But the same lesson could have been learned elsewhere. It might have been learned from the English drama.

[Footnote 1: North's Plutarch went into five editions between 1579 and 1631; Thucydides was translated by Hobbes in 1629, and Polybius by Edward Grimeston in 1633; Xenophon's Anabasis was translated by John Bingham in 1623, and the Cyropædia by Philemon Holland in 1632; Arthur Golding's version of Cæsar's Gallic War was several times reprinted between 1565 and 1609; Philemon Holland, the translator-general of the age, as Fuller called him, brought out his Livy in 1600, and his Suetonius in 1606; Sallust was translated by Thomas Heywood in 1608, and by William Crosse in 1629; Velleius Paterculus was 'rendred English by Sir Robert Le Grys' in 1632; and by 1640 there had been six editions of Sir Henry Savile's Histories and Agricola of Tacitus, first published in 1591, and five editions of Richard Grenewey's Annals and Germany, first published in 1598. See H.R. Palmer's English Editions and Translations of Greek and Latin Classics printed before 1641, Bibliographical Society, 1911.]

[Footnote 2: 'Thucydides … in whom (I beleeve with many others) the Faculty of writing History is at the Highest.' Thucydides, 1629, 'To the Readers.']

[Footnote 6: In 'Reflections upon Several Christian Duties, Divine and Moral, by Way of Essays', printed in A Collection of several Tracts of Edward Earl of Clarendon, 1727, pp. 80-1.]

[Footnote 7: Letter to the Earl of Bristol, February 1, 1646 (State Papers, vol. ii, p. 334). Davila was very well known in England—better, it would appear, than the other three—and was credited with being more than a mere literary model. Clarendon says that from his account of the civil wars of France 'no question our Gamesters learned much of their play'. Sir Philip Warwick, after remarking that Hampden was well read in history, tells us that the first time he ever saw Davila's book it was lent to him 'under the title of Mr. Hambden's Vade Mecum' (Mémoires, 1701, p. 240). A translation was published by the authority of the Parliament in 1647-8. Translations of Strada, Bentivoglio, and Grotius followed in 1650, 1654, and 1665. Only parts of Thuanus were translated. The size of his history was against a complete version.]

[Footnote 8: See the Mémoires of Monluc, Brantôme, La Noue, &c. The fifty-two volumes in Petitot's incomplete series entitled Collection des Mémoires relatifs à l'histoire de France jusqu'au commencement du dix-septième siècle show at a glance the remarkable richness of French literature in the mémoire at an early date.]

[Footnote 9: La Socíété française au XVIIe siècle, 1858 vol. i, p. 7. The 'key' drawn up in 1657 is printed as an appendix.]

[Footnote 12: Edited by Edouard de Barthélemy in 1860 under the title La Galerie des Portraits de Mademoiselle de Montpensier.]

[Footnote 14: Sc. x, where Madelon says 'Je vous avoue que je suis furieusement pour les portraits: je ne vois rien de si galant que cela', and Mascarille replies, 'Les portraits sont difficiles, et demandent un esprit profond: vous en verrez de ma manière qui ne vous déplairont pas.']

[Footnote 15: Joseph Hall's Characters of Vertues and Vices appeared in 1608 Overbury's Characters 1614-22. For Earle, see pp. 168-70.]

Clarendon's History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England is made up of two works composed with different purposes and at a distance of twenty years. The first, which may be called the 'Manuscript History', belongs to 1646-8; the second, the 'Manuscript Life', to 1668-70. They were combined to form the History as we now read it in 1671, when new sections were added to give continuity and to complete the narrative. On Clarendon's death in 1674 the manuscripts passed to his two sons, Henry Hyde, second Earl of Clarendon, and Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester; and under the supervision of the latter a transcript of the History was made for the printers. The work was published at Oxford in three handsome folio volumes in 1702, 1703, and 1704, and became the property of the University. The portions of the 'Manuscript Life' which Clarendon had not incorporated in the History as being too personal, were published by the University in 1759, under the title The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon, and were likewise printed from a transcript.[1]

The original manuscripts, now also in the possession of the University of which Clarendon's family were such generous benefactors, enable us to fix the dates of composition. We know whether a part belongs originally to the 'Manuscript History' or the 'Manuscript Life', or whether it was pieced in later. More than this, Clarendon every now and again inserts the month and the day on which he began or ended a section. We can thus trace the stages by which his great work was built up, and learn how his art developed. We can also judge how closely the printed texts represent what Clarendon had written. The old controversy on the authenticity of the first edition has long been settled.[2] The original editors did their work faithfully according to the editorial standards of their day; and they were well within the latitude allowed them by the terms of Clarendon's instructions when they occasionally omitted a passage, or when they exercised their somewhat prim and cautious taste in altering and polishing phrases that Clarendon had dashed down as quickly as his pen could move.[3] Later editors have restored the omitted passages and scrupulously reproduced Clarendon's own words. But no edition has yet reproduced his spelling. In the characters printed in this volume the attempt is made, for the first time it is believed, to represent the original manuscripts accurately to the letter.[4]

On the defeat of the last Royalist army in Cornwall in February 1646 it was necessary to provide for the safety of Prince Charles, and Clarendon, in these days Sir Edward Hyde, accompanied him when on the night of March 2 he set sail for Scilly. They arrived in Scilly on March 4, and there they remained till April 16, when the danger of capture by the Parliamentary fleet compelled them to make good their escape to Jersey. It is a remarkable testimony to the vigour of Clarendon's mind that even in the midst of this crisis he should have been able to begin his History. He began it in Scilly on March 18, 1646—the date is at the head of his manuscript; and once he was settled in Jersey he immediately resumed it. But in writing his History he did not, in these days, think of himself only as an historian. He was a trusted adviser of the defeated party, and he planned his faithful narrative of what he knew so well not solely to vindicate the character and conduct of the King, but also with the immediate purpose of showing how the disasters had been brought out, and, by implication, how further disaster might be avoided. The proof of this is to be found not in the History itself, where he seems to have his eye only on 'posterity' and 'a better age', but in his correspondence. In a letter written to Sir Edward Nicholas, the King's secretary, on November 15, 1646, Clarendon spoke of his History at some length:

As soon as I found myself alone, I thought the best way to provide myself for new business against the time I should be called to it (for, Mr. Secretary, you and I must once again to business) was to look over the faults of the old; and so I resolved (which you know I threatned you with long ago) to write the history of these evil times, and of this most lovely Rebellion. Well; without any other help than a few diurnals I have wrote of longer paper than this, and in the same fine small hand, above threescore sheets of paper…. I write with all fidelity and freedom of all I know, of persons and things, and the oversights and omissions on both sides, in order to what they desired; so that you will believe it will make mad work among friends and foes, if it were published; but out of it enough may be chosen to make a perfect story, and the original kept for their perusal, who may be the wiser for knowing the most secret truths; and you know it will be an easier matter to blot out two sheets, than to write half an one. If I live to finish it (as on my conscience I shall, for I write apace), I intend to seal it up, and have it always with me. If I die, I appoint it to be delivered to you, to whose care (with a couple of good fellows more) I shall leave it; that either of you dying, you may so preserve it, that in due time somewhat by your care may be published, and the original be delivered to the King, who will not find himself flattered in it, nor irreverently handled: though, the truth will better suit a dead than a living man. Three hours a day I assign to this writing task; the rest to other study and books; so I doubt not after seven years time in this retirement, you will find me a pretty fellow.[5]

From this, as from other passages in his letters, Clarendon's first intentions are clear. The History was to be a repository of authentic information on 'this most lovely Rebellion', constructed with the specifically didactic purpose of showing the King and his advisers what lessons were to be learned from their errors; they would be 'the wiser for knowing the most secret truths'. At first he looked on his work as containing the materials of a 'perfect story', but as he proceeded his ambitions grew. He had begun to introduce characters; and when in the spring of 1647 he was about to write his first character of Lord Falkland, he had come to the view that 'the preservation of the fame and merit of persons, and deriving the same to posterity, is no less the business of history than the truth of things'.[6] He gave much thought to the character of Falkland, 'whom the next age shall be taught', he was determined, 'to value more than the present did.'[7] Concurrently with the introduction of characters he paid more attention to the literary, as distinct from the didactic, merits of his work. We find him comparing himself with other historians, and considering what Livy and Tacitus would have done in like circumstances. By the spring of 1648 he had brought down his narrative to the opening of the campaign of 1644. Earlier in the year he had been commanded by the King to be ready to rejoin Prince Charles, and shortly afterwards he received definite instructions from the Queen to attend on her and the Prince at Paris. He left Jersey in June, and with his re-entry into active politics his History was abruptly ended. The seven years of retirement which he had anticipated were cut down by the outbreak of the Second Civil War to two; and within a year the King for whose benefit he had begun this History was led to the scaffold. Not for twenty years was Clarendon again to have the leisure to be an historian. When in 1668 he once more took up his pen, it was not a continuation of the first work, but an entirely new work, that came in steady flow from the abundance of his knowledge.

Clarendon returned to England as Lord Chancellor in 1660, and for seven years enjoyed the power which he had earned by ceaseless devotion to his two royal masters. The ill success of the war with the Dutch, jealousy of his place and influence, the spiteful opposition of the King's chief mistress, and the King's own resentment at an attitude that showed too little deference and imprudently suggested the old relations of tutor and pupil, all combined to bring about his fall. He fled from England on November 30, 1667, and was never to set foot in England again. Broken in health and spirit, he sought in vain for many months a resting-place in France, and not till July 1668 did he find a new home at Montpelier. Here his health improved, and here he remained till June 1671. These were busy years of writing, and by far the greater portion of his published work, if his letters and state papers be excluded, belongs to this time. First of all he answered the charge of high treason brought against him by the House of Commons in A Discourse, by Way of Vindication of my self, begun on July 24, 1668; he wrote most of his Reflections upon Several Christian Duties, Divine and Moral, a collection of twenty-five essays, some of considerable length, on subjects largely suggested by his own circumstances; and he completed between December 1668 and February 1671 his Contemplations and Reflections upon the Psalms of David, an elaborate exposition extending to well over four hundred folio pages of print, which he had begun at Jersey in 1647. But his great work at this time was his Life, begun on July 23, 1668, and brought down to 1660 by August 1, 1670. It is by far the most elaborate autobiography that had yet been attempted in English. The manuscript consists of over six hundred pages, and each page contains on an average about a thousand words. He wrote with perfect freedom, for this work, unlike the earlier History, was not intended for the eyes of the King, and the didactic days were over. He wrote too with remarkable ease. The very appearance of the manuscript, where page follows page with hardly an erasure, and the 'fine hand' becomes finer and finer, conveys even a sense of relief and pleasure. His pen seems to move of itself and the long and elaborate sentences to evolve of their own free will. The story of his life became a loose framework into which he could fit all that he wished to tell of his own times; and the more he told, his vindication would be the more complete. 'Even unawares', he admitted, 'many things are inserted not so immediately applicable to his own person, which possibly may hereafter, in some other method, be communicated to the world.'[8] He welcomed the opportunity to tell all that he knew. There was no reason for reticence. He wrote of men as of things frankly as he knew them. More than a history of the Rebellion, his Life is also a picture of the society in which he had moved. It is the work which contains most of his characters.[9]

His early History had been left behind in England on his sudden flight. For about four years he was debarred from all intercourse with his family, but in 1671 the royal displeasure so far relaxed that his second son, Laurence, was granted a pass to visit him, and he brought the manuscript that had been left untouched for twenty years. They met in June at Moulins, which was to be Clarendon's home till April 1674. Once the old and the new work were both in his hands, he cast his great History of the Rebellion in its final form, and thus 'finished the work which his heart was most set upon'. In June 1672 he turned to the 'Continuation of his Life', which deals with his Chancellorship and his fall, and was not intended 'ever for a public view, or for more than the information of his children'. As its conclusion shows, it was his last work to be completed, but while engaged on it he found time to write much else, including his reply to Hobbes's Leviathan. 'In all this retirement', he could well say, in a passage which reads like his obituary, 'he was very seldom vacant, and then only when he was under some sharp visitation of the gout, from reading excellent books, or writing some animadversions and exercitations of his own, as appears by the papers and notes which he left.' The activity of these years of banishment is remarkable in a man who had turned sixty and had passed through about thirty years of continuous storm. His intellectual vitality was unimpaired. The old English jollity that Evelyn had remarked in him in happier if more difficult days had gone, but the even temper from which it had sprung still remained. He was at his best as a writer then; writing was never an effort to him, but in his exile it was an exercise and recreation. He could have said with Dryden that 'what judgment I had increases rather than diminishes; and thoughts, such as they are, come crowding in so fast upon me, that my only difficulty is to choose or to reject'.

He was still in hopes that he would be allowed to return to England, to die in his own country and among his children. 'Seven years', he said, 'was a time prescribed and limited by God himself for the expiration of some of his greatest judgements.'[10] In the seventh year of his banishment he left Moulins for Rouen, so as to be nearer home. His hopes were vain. He died at Rouen on December 9, 1674.[11] His body was brought to England for burial in Westminster.

Clarendon had been interested in the study of character all his life. His earliest work was 'The Difference and Disparity between the Estates and Conditions of George Duke of Buckingham and Robert Earl of Essex'. Sir Henry Wotton had written observations on these statesmen 'by way of parallel', and Clarendon pointed out as a sequel wherein they differed. It is a somewhat laboured composition in comparison with his later work, a young man's careful essay that lacks the confidence that comes with experience, but it shows at an early stage the talents which knowledge and practice were to develop into mastery. The school in which he learned most was the circle of his friends. Few men can have owed more to their friends than he did, or have been more generous in acknowledging the debt. He tells us he was often heard to say that 'next the immediate blessing and providence of God Almighty, which had preserved him throughout the whole course of his life (less strict than it ought to have been) from many dangers and disadvantages, in which many other young men were lost, he owed all the little he knew, and the little good that was in him, to the friendships and conversation he had still been used to, of the most excellent men in their several kinds that lived in that age; by whose learning, and information, and instruction, he formed his studies, and mended his understanding, and by whose gentleness and sweetness of behaviour, and justice, and virtue, and example, he formed his manners, subdued that pride and suppressed that heat and passion he was naturally inclined to be transported with.' He used often to say, he continues, that 'he never was so proud, or thought himself so good a man, as when he was the worst man in the company'. He cultivated his friendships, it is true, with an eye to his advancement; but it is equally true that he had a nature which invited friendships. He enjoyed to the full the pleasure of living and seeing others live, and a great part of his pleasure consisted in observing how men differed in their habits and foibles. He tells how Ben Jonson did not understand why young Mr. Hyde should neglect the delights of his company at the call of business; how Selden, with all his stupendous learning, was never more studious of anything than his ease; how Earle gave a wrong impression by the negligence of his dress and mien, whereas no man was more wary and cultivated in his behaviour and discourse; how Chillingworth argued for the pleasure of arguing and thereby irritated his friends and at last grew confident of nothing; how Hales, great in scholarship but diminutive in stature, liked to be by himself but had a very open and pleasant conversation in congenial company; how Waller nursed his reputation for ready wit by seeming to speak on the sudden what he had thoroughly considered. In all his accounts of the friends of his youth Clarendon is in the background, but we picture him moving among them at ease, conscious of his inferiority in learning and brilliance and the gentler virtues, yet trusting to his own judgement, and convinced that every man worth knowing has a pronounced individuality. In these happy and irresponsible days, when he numbered poets among his friends, he himself wrote poetry. Little of it is preserved. He contributed introductory verses to Davenant's Albovine, and composed verses on the death of Donne. His poetry was well enough known for Dryden to allude to it during his Lord Chancellorship, in the address presented to him at the height of his power in 1662:

  The Muses, who your early Courtship boast,
  Though now your Flames are with their Beauty lost,
  Yet watch their Time, that if you have forgot
  They were your Mistresses, the world may not.

But first the law claimed him, and then politics, and then came the Civil War. As Privy Councillor and Chancellor of the Exchequer he was in the thick of the conflict. The men whom he had now to study were men of affairs. He had the clear and unimpassioned vision which often goes with a warm temperament, and could scrutinize his friends without endangering his affection for them. However deeply his feelings might be engaged, he had taken a pleasure in trying to see them exactly as they were. When he came to judge his political enemies he continued the same attitude of detachment, and studiously cultivated it. 'I am careful', he said in a private letter,[12] 'to do justice to every man who hath fallen in the quarrel, on which side soever.' 'I know myself', he said in the History,[13] 'to be very free from any of those passions which naturally transport men with prejudice towards the persons whom they are obliged to mention, and whose actions they are at liberty to censure.' It was beyond human nature for a man who had lived through what he did to be completely unprejudiced. He did not always scrupulously weigh what he knew would be to the discredit of the Parliamentary leaders, nor did he ignore mere Royalist rumour, as in the character of Pym. But his characters of them are often more favourable than might have been expected. He may show his personal dislike, or even his sense of their crime, but behind this he permits us to see the qualities which contributed to their success. There can be no reasonable objection to his characters of Hampden and Cromwell. Political partisans find them disappointing, and they are certainly not the final verdict. The worst that can be said of them is that they are drawn from a wrong point of view; but from that point of view their honesty is unquestionable. He does not distinguish men by their party. The folly of his own side is exhibited as relentlessly as the knavery of his opponents. Of no one did he write a more unfavourable character than the Earl of Arundel. He explains the failure of Laud, and he does not conceal the weakness of Charles.

There is a broad distinction between his earlier and later characters. While he was still in the midst of the conflict and hoped to influence it by stating what he knew, he depicted the individual in relation to events. When the conflict was over and he was at leisure to draw on his recollections, he made the individual to a greater degree the representative of the type. But the distinction is not clearly marked, and Clarendon may not have suspected it. His habitual detachment was assisted by his exile. The displeasure of his ungrateful master, from whom he had never been separated during seventeen difficult years, had proved the vanity of the little things of life. He looked at men from a distance that obscures what is insignificant, and shows only the essential.

All his characters are clearly defined. We never confound them; we never have any doubt of how he understood them. He sees men as a whole before he begins to describe them, and then his only difficulty, as his manuscripts show, is to make his pen move fast enough. He does not build up his characters. He does not, as many others do, start with the external features in the hope of arriving at the central facts. He starts from the centre and works outwards. This is the reason of the convincingness of his characters, their dramatic truth. The dramatic sense in him is stronger than the pictorial.

He troubles little about personal appearance, or any of the traits which would enable us to visualize his men. We understand them rather than see them. Hampden, he tells us, was 'of a most civil and affable deportment' and had 'a flowing courtesy to all men', a 'rare temper and modesty'; it is Sir Philip Warwick who speaks of the 'scurf commonly on his face'.[14] He says that the younger Vane 'had an unusual aspect', and leaves us wondering what was unusual. His Falkland is an exception, but he adopted a different scale when describing his greatest friend and only hero. Each of his two accounts of Falkland is in fact a brief biography rather than a character; the earliest of them, written shortly after Falkland's death, he once thought of making into a volume by itself. In his characters proper he confines himself more strictly than any other writer to matters of character. They are characters rather than portraits.

But portraiture was one of his passions, though he left its practice to the painters. He adorned his houses with the likenesses of his friends. It was fitting that our greatest character writer should have formed one of the great collections of pictures of 'wits, poets, philosophers, famous and learned Englishmen'.[15] To describe them on paper, and to contrive that they should look down on him from his walls, were different ways of indulging the same keen and tireless interest in the life amid which he moved.

[Footnote 1: For a detailed examination of the composition and value
of Clarendon's History see the three articles by Professor C.H.
Firth in The English Historical Review for 1904. No student of
Clarendon can ever afford to neglect them.]

[Footnote 4: Contractions have been expanded. The punctuation of the original is slight, and it has been found desirable occasionally to insert commas, where seventeenth century printers would have inserted them; but the run of the sentences has not been disturbed. In modernized versions Clarendon's long sentences are sometimes needlessly subdivided.]

[Footnote 7: Letter of January 8, 1647; T.H. Lister, Life of
Clarendon, 1837, vol. iii, p. 43.]

[Footnote 9: Of the thirty-seven characters by Clarendon in this volume, twenty-seven are from the 'Manuscript Life'.]

[Footnote 11: Clarendon's lifetime coincided almost exactly with Milton's. He was two months younger than Milton, and died one month later.]

[Footnote 15: Evelyn's Diary, December 20, 1668. See the account of 'The Clarendon Gallery' in Lady Theresa Lewis's Lives of the friends of Clarendon, 1852, vol. i, pp. 15* ff., and vol. iii, pp. 241 ff.]

When Clarendon's History was at last made public, no part of it was more frequently discussed, or more highly praised, than its characters—'so just', said Evelyn, 'and tempered without the least ingredient of passion or tincture of revenge, yet with such natural and lively touches as show his lordship well knew not only the persons' outsides, but their very interiors.'[1] About the same time, and probably as a consequence of the publication of Clarendon's work, Bishop Burnet proceeded to put into its final form the History on which he had been engaged since 1683. He gave special attention to his characters, some of which he entirely rewrote. They at once invited comparison with Clarendon's, and first impressions, then as now, were not in their favour. 'His characters are miserably wrought,' said Swift.[2]

Burnet was in close touch with the political movements of his time. 'For above thirty years,' he wrote, 'I have lived in such intimacy with all who have had the chief conduct of affairs, and have been so much trusted, and on so many important occasions employed by them, that I have been able to penetrate far into the true secrets of counsels and designs.'[3] He had a retentive memory, and a full share of worldly wisdom. But he was not an artist like Clarendon. His style has none of the sustained dignity, the leisurely evolution, which in Clarendon is so strangely at variance with the speed of composition. All is stated, nothing suggested. There is a succession of short sentences, each perfectly clear in itself, often unlinked to what precedes or follows, and always without any of the finer shades of meaning. It is rough work, and on the face of it hasty, and so it would have remained, no matter how often it had been revised. Again, Burnet does not always have perfect control of the impression he wishes to convey. It is as if he did not have the whole character in his mind before he began to write, but collected his thoughts from the stores of his memory in the process of composition. We are often uncertain how to understand a character before we have read it all. In some cases he seems to be content to present us with the material from which, once we have pieced it together ourselves, we can form our own judgement. But what he tells us has been vividly felt by him, and is vividly presented. The great merit of his characters lies in their realism. Of the Earl of Lauderdale he says that 'He made a very ill appearance: He was very big: His hair red, hanging oddly about him: His tongue was too big for his mouth, which made him bedew all that he talked to.' There is no hint of this in Clarendon's character of Lauderdale, nor could Clarendon have spoken with the same directness. Burnet has no circumlocutions, just as in private life he was not known to indulge in them. When he reports what was said in conversation he gives the very words. Lauderdale 'was a man, as the Duke of Buckingham called him to me, of a blundering understanding'. Halifax 'hoped that God would not lay it to his charge, if he could not digest iron, as an ostrich did, nor take into his belief things that must burst him'. It is the directness and actuality of such things as these, and above all his habit of describing men in relation to himself, that make his best characters so vivid. Burnet is seldom in the background. He allows us to suspect that it is not the man himself whom he presents to us but the man as he knew him, though he would not have admitted the distinction. He could not imitate the detachment of Clarendon, who is always deliberately impersonal, and writes as if he were pronouncing the impartial judgement of history from which there can be no appeal. Burnet views his men from a much nearer distance. His perspective may sometimes be at fault, but he gets the detail.

With all his shrewd observation, it must be admitted that his range of comprehension was limited. There were no types of character too subtle for Clarendon to understand. There were some which eluded Burnet's grasp. He is at his best in describing such a man as Lauderdale, where the roughness of the style is in perfect keeping with the subject. His character of Shaftesbury, whom he says he knew for many years in a very particular manner, is a valuable study and a remarkable companion piece to Dryden's Achitophel. But he did not understand Halifax. The surface levity misled him. He tells us unsuspectingly as much about himself as about Halifax. He tells us that the Trimmer could never be quite serious in the good bishop's company.

We learn more about Halifax from his own elaborate study of Charles II. It is a prolonged analysis by a man of clear vision, and perfect balance of judgement, and no prepossessions; who was, moreover, master of the easy pellucid style that tends to maxim and epigram. A more impartial and convincing estimate of any king need never be expected. In method and purpose, it stands by itself. It is indeed not so much a character in the accepted sense of the word as a scientific investigation of a personality. Others try to make us see and understand their men; Halifax anatomizes. Yet he occasionally permits us to discover his own feelings. Nothing disappointed him more in the merry monarch than the company he kept, and his comprehensive taste in wit. 'Of all men that ever liked those who had wit, he could the best endure those who had none': there is more here than is on the surface; we see at once Charles, and his court, and Halifax himself.

As a class, the statesmen and politicians more than hold their own with the other character writers of the seventeenth century. Shaftesbury's picture of Henry Hastings, a country gentleman of the old school, who carried well into the Stuart period the habits and life of Tudor times, shows a side of his varied accomplishments which has not won the general recognition that it deserves. It is a sketch exactly in the style of the eighteenth century essayists. It makes us regret that the fragmentary autobiography in which it is found did not come down to a time when it could have included sketches of his famous contemporaries. The literary skill of his grandson, the author of the Characteristicks, was evidently inherited.

Sir Philip Warwick has the misfortune to be overshadowed by Clarendon. As secretary to Charles I in the year before his execution, and as a minor government official under Charles II, he was well acquainted with men and affairs. Burnet describes him as 'an honest but a weak man', and adds that 'though he pretended to wit and politics, he was not cut out for that, and least of all for writing of history'. He could at least write characters. They do not bear the impress of a strong personality, but they have the fairmindedness and the calm outlook that spring from a gentle and unassertive nature. His Cromwell and his Laud are alike greatly to his credit; and the private view that he gives us of Charles has unmistakable value. His Mémoires remained in manuscript till 1701, the year before the publication of Clarendon's History. It was the first book to appear with notable characters of the men of the Civil Wars and the Protectorate.

The Histories and Memoirs of the seventeenth century contain by far the greatest number of its characters; but they are to be found also in scattered Lives, and in the collections of material that mark the rise of modern English biography. There are disappointingly few by Fuller. In his Worthies of England he is mainly concerned with the facts of a man's life, and though, in his own word, he fleshes the bare skeleton of time, place, and person with pleasant passages, and interlaces many delightful stories by way of illustrations, and everywhere holds us by the quaint turns of his fertile fancy, yet the scheme of the book did not involve the depicting of character, nor did it allow him to deal with many contemporaries whom he had known. In the present volume it has therefore been found best to represent him by the studies of Bacon and Laud in his Church-History. Bacon he must have described largely from hearsay, but what he says of Laud is an admirable specimen of his manner, and leaves us wishing that he had devoted himself in larger measure to the worthies of his own time.

There are no characters in Aubrey's Brief Lives, which are only a series of rough jottings by a prince of gossips, who collected what he could and put it all on paper 'tumultuarily'. But the extracts from what he says of Hobbes and Milton may be considered as notes for a character, details that awaited a greater artist than Aubrey was to work them into a picture; and if Hobbes and Milton are to be given a place, as somehow or other they must be, in a collection of the kind that this volume offers, there is no option but to be content with such notes, for there is no set character of either of them. The value of the facts which Aubrey has preserved is shown by the use made of them by all subsequent biographers, and notably by Anthony à Wood, whose Athenæ Oxonienses is our first great biographical dictionary.

Lives of English men of letters begin in the seventeenth century, and from Rawley's Life of Bacon, Sprat's Life of Cowley, and the anonymous Life of Fuller it is possible to extract passages which are in effect characters. But Walton's Lives, the best of all seventeenth century Lives, refuse to yield any section, for each of them is all of a piece; they are from beginning to end continuous character studies, revealing qualities of head and heart in their affectionate record of fact and circumstance. There is therefore nothing in this volume from his Life of Donne or his Life of Herbert. As a rule the characters that can be extracted from Lives are much inferior to the clearly defined characters that are inserted in Histories. The focus is not the same. When an author after dealing with a man's career sums up his mental and moral qualities in a section by itself, he does not trust to it alone to convey the total impression. He is too liable also to panegyric, like Rawley, who could see no fault in his master Bacon, or Sprat who, in Johnson's words, produced a funeral oration on Cowley. There are no characters of scholars or poets so good as Clarendon's Hales, or Earle, or Chillingworth, or Waller; and for this reason, that Clarendon envisages them, not as scholars or poets but as men, and gains a definite and complete effect within small compass.

Roger North made his life of his brother Lord Keeper Guilford an account of the bench and bar under Charles II and James II. Of its many sketches of lawyers whom he or his brother had known, none is so perfect in every way as the character of Chief Justice Saunders, a remarkable man in real life who still lives in North's pages with all his eccentricities. North writes at length about his brother, yet nowhere do we see and understand him so clearly as we see and understand Saunders. The truth is that a life and a character have different objects and methods and do not readily combine. It is only a small admixture of biography that a character will endure. And with the steady development of biography the character declined.

A character must be short; and it must be entire, the complete expression of a clear judgement. The perfect model is provided by Clarendon. He has more than formal excellence. 'Motives', said Johnson, 'are generally unknown. We cannot trust to the characters we find in history, unless when they are drawn by those who knew the persons; as those, for instance, by Sallust and by Lord Clarendon.'[4]

[Footnote 1: Letter to Pepys, January 20, 1703; Pepys's Diary, ed.
Braybrooke, 1825, vol. ii, p. 290.]

Sooner or later every one who deals with the history or literature of the seventeenth century has to own his obligations to Professor C.H. Firth. My debt is not confined to his writings, references to which will be found continually in the notes. At every stage of the preparation of this volume I have had the advantage of his most generous interest. And with his name it is a pleasure to associate in one compendious acknowledgement the names of Dr. Henry Bradley and Mr. Percy Simpson.

JAMES I.

He was born a King, and from that height, the less fitted to look into inferiour things; yet few escaped his knowledge, being, as it were, a Magazine to retain them. His Stature was of the Middle Size; rather tall than low, well set and somewhat plump, of a ruddy Complexion, his hair of a light brown, in his full perfection, had at last a Tincture of white. If he had any predominant Humor to Ballance his Choler, it was Sanguine, which made his Mirth Witty. His Beard was scattering on the Chin, and very thin; and though his Clothes were seldome fashioned to the Vulgar garb, yet in the whole man he was not uncomely. He was a King in understanding, and was content to have his Subjects ignorant in many things; As in curing the Kings Evil, which he knew a Device, to ingrandize the Vertue of Kings, when Miracles were in fashion; but he let the World believe it, though he smiled at it, in his own Reason, finding the strength of the Imagination a more powerfull Agent in the Cure, than the Plaisters his Chirurgions prescribed for the Sore. It was a hard Question, whether his Wisedome, and knowledge, exceeded his Choler, and Fear; certainly the last couple drew him with most violence, because they were not acquisititious, but Naturall; If he had not had that Allay, his high touring, and mastering Reason, had been of a Rare, and sublimed Excellency; but these earthy Dregs kept it down, making his Passions extend him as farre as Prophaness, that I may not say Blasphemy, and Policy superintendent of all his Actions; which will not last long (like the Violence of that Humor) for it often makes those that know well, to do ill, and not be able to prevent it.

He had pure Notions in Conception, but could bring few of them into Action, though they tended to his own Preservation: For this was one of his Apothegms, which he made no timely use of. Let that Prince, that would beware of Conspiracies, be rather jealous of such, whom his extraordinary favours have advanced, than of those whom his displeasure hath discontented. These want means to execute their Pleasures, but they have means at pleasure to execute their desires. Ambition to rule is more vehement than Malice to revenge. Though the last part of this Aphorism, he was thought to practice too soon, where there was no cause for prevention, and neglect too late, when time was full ripe to produce the effect.

Some Parallel'd him to Tiberius for Dissimulation, yet Peace was maintained by him as in the Time of Augustus; And Peace begot Plenty, and Plenty begot Ease and Wantonness, and Ease and Wantonnesse begot Poetry, and Poetry swelled to that bulk in his time, that it begot strange Monstrous Satyrs, against the King[s] own person, that haunted both Court, and Country, which exprest would be too bitter to leave a sweet perfume behind him. And though bitter ingredients are good to imbalm and preserve dead bodies, yet these were such as might indanger to kill a living name, if Malice be not brought in with an Antidote. And the tongues of those times, more fluent than my Pen, made every little miscarriage (being not able to discover their true operations, like smal seeds hid in earthy Darknesse) grow up, and spread into such exuberant branches, that evil Report did often pearch upon them. So dangerous it is for Princes, by a Remisse Comportment, to give growth to the least Error; for it often proves as fruitful as Malice can make it.

This Kings Character is much easier to take then his Picture, for he could never be brought to sit for the taking of that, which is the reason of so few good peeces of him; but his Character was obvious to every eye.

He was of a middle stature, more corpulent through his cloathes then in his body, yet fat enough, his cloathes ever being made large and easie, the Doublets quilted for steletto proofe, his Breeches in great pleites and full stuffed: Hee was naturally of a timorous disposition, which was the reason of his quilted Doublets: His eyes large, ever rowling after any stranger came in his presence, insomuch, as many for shame have left the roome, as being out of countenance: His Beard was very thin: His Tongue too large for his mouth, which ever made him speak full in the mouth, and made him drink very uncomely, as if eating his drink, which came out into the cup of each side of his mouth: His skin was as soft as Taffeta Sarsnet, which felt so, because hee never washt his hands, onely rubb'd his fingers ends slightly with the wet end of a Naptkin: His Legs were very weake, having had (as was thought) some foul play in his youth, or rather before he was born, that he was not able to stand at seven years of age, that weaknesse made him ever leaning on other mens shoulders, his walke was ever circular … He was very temperate in his exercises, and in his dyet, and not intemperate in his drinking; however in his old age, and Buckinghams joviall Suppers, when he had any turne to doe with him, made him sometimes overtaken, which he would the very next day remember, and repent with teares; it is true, he dranke very often, which was rather out of a custom then any delight, and his drinks were of that kind for strength, as Frontiniack, Canary, High Country wine, Tent Wine, and Scottish Ale, that had he not had a very strong brain, might have daily been overtaken, although he seldom drank at any one time above four spoonfulls, many times not above one or two; He was very constant in all things, his Favourites excepted, in which he loved change, yet never cast down any (he once raised) from the height of greatnesse, though from their wonted nearnesse, and privacy; unlesse by their own default, by opposing his change, as in Somersets case: yet had he not been in that foul poysoning busines, and so cast down himself, I do verily beleeve not him neither; for al his other Favorites he left great in Honour, great in Fortune; and did much love Mountgomery, and trusted him more at the very last gaspe, then at the first minute of his Favoriteship: In his Dyet, Apparrell, and Journeys, he was very constant; in his Apparrell so constant, as by his good wil he would never change his cloathes untill worn out to very ragges: His Fashion never: Insomuch as one bringing to him a Hat of a Spanish Block, he cast it from him, swearing he neither loved them nor their fashions. Another time, bringing him Roses on his Shooes, he asked, if they would make him a ruffe-footed-Dove? one yard of six penny Ribbond served that turne: His Dyet and Journies were so constant, that the best observing Courtier of our time was wont to say, were he asleep seven yeares, and then awakened, he would tell where the King every day had been, and every dish he had had at his Table.

Hee was not very uxorious, (though he had a very brave Queen that never crossed his designes, nor intermedled with State affaires, but ever complyed with him (even against the nature of any, but of a milde spirit) in the change of Favourites;) for he was ever best, when furthest from the Queene, and that was thought to be the first grounds of his often removes, which afterwards proved habituall. He was unfortunate in the marriage of his Daughter, and so was all Christendome besides; but sure the Daughter was more unfortunate in a Father, then he in a Daughter: He naturally loved not the sight of a Souldier, nor of any Valiant man; and it was an observation that Sir Robert Mansell was the only valiant man he ever loved, and him he loved so intirely, that for all Buckinghams greatnesse with the King, and his hatred of Sir Robert Mansell, yet could not that alienate the Kings affections from him; insomuch as when by the instigation of Cottington (then Embassadour in Spaine) by Buckinghams procurement, the Spanish Embassadour came with a great complaint against Sir Robert Mansell, then at Argiers, to suppresse the Pirats, That he did support them; having never a friend there, (though many) that durst speake in his defence, the King himselfe defended him in these words: My Lord Embassadour, I cannot beleeve this, for I made choyce my selfe of him, out of these reasons; I know him to be valiant, honest, and Nobly descended as most in my Kingdome, and will never beleeve a man thus qualified will doe so base an act. He naturally loved honest men, that were not over active, yet never loved any man heartily untill he had bound him unto him by giving him some suite, which he thought bound the others love to him againe; but that argued a poore disposition in him, to beleeve that any thing but a Noble minde, seasoned with vertue, could make any firme love or union, for mercinary mindes are carried away with a greater prize, but Noble mindes, alienated with nothing but publick disgraces.

He was very witty, and had as many ready witty jests as any man living, at which he would not smile himselfe, but deliver them in a grave and serious manner: He was very liberall, of what he had not in his owne gripe, and would rather part with 100.li. hee never had in his keeping, then one twenty shillings peece within his owne custody: He spent much, and had much use of his Subjects purses, which bred some clashings with them in Parliament, yet would alwayes come off, and end with a sweet and plausible close; and truly his bounty was not discommendable, for his raising Favourites was the worst: Rewarding old servants, and releiving his Native Country-men, was infinitely more to be commended in him, then condemned. His sending Embassadours, were no lesse chargeable then dishonourable and unprofitable to him and his whole Kingdome; for he was ever abused in all Negotiations, yet hee had rather spend 100000.li. on Embassies, to keep or procure peace with dishonour, then 10000.li. on an Army that would have forced peace with honour: He loved good Lawes, and had many made in his time, and in his last Parliament, for the good of his Subjects, and suppressing Promoters, and progging fellowes, gave way to that Nullum tempus, &c. to be confined to 60. yeares, which was more beneficiall to the Subjects in respect of their quiets, then all the Parliaments had given him during his whole Reign. By his frequenting Sermons he appeared Religious; yet his Tuesday Sermons (if you will beleeve his owne Country men, that lived in those times when they were erected, and well understood the cause of erecting them) were dedicated for a strange peece of devotion.

He would make a great deale too bold with God in his passion, both in cursing and swearing, and one straine higher vergeing on blasphemie; But would in his better temper say, he hoped God would not impute them as sins, and lay them to his charge, seeing they proceeded from passion: He had need of great assurance, rather then hopes, that would make daily so bold with God.

He was so crafty and cunning in petty things, as the circumventing any great man, the change of a Favourite, &c. insomuch as a very wise man was wont to say, he beleeved him the wisest foole in Christendome, meaning him wise in small things, but a foole in weighty affaires.

He ever desired to prefer meane men in great places, that when he turned them out again, they should have no friend to bandy with them: And besides, they were so hated by being raised from a meane estate, to over-top all men, that every one held it a pretty recreation to have them often turned out: There were living in this Kings time, at one instant, two Treasurers, three Secretaries, two Lord Keepers, two Admiralls, three Lord chief Justices, yet but one in play, therefore this King had a pretty faculty in putting out and in: By this you may perceive in what his wisdome consisted, but in great and weighty affaires even at his wits end.

He had a trick to cousen himselfe with bargains under hand, by taking 1000.li. or 10000.li. as a bribe, when his Counsell was treating with his Customers to raise them to so much more yearly, this went into his Privy purse, wherein hee thought hee had over-reached the Lords, but cousened himselfe; but would as easily breake the bargaine upon the next offer, saying, he was mistaken and deceived, and therefore no reason he should keep the bargaine; this was often the case with the Farmers of the Customes; He was infinitely inclined to peace, but more out of feare then conscience, and this was the greatest blemish this King had through all his Reign, otherwise might have been ranked with the very best of our Kings, yet sometimes would hee shew pretty flashes of valour which might easily be discerned to be forced, not naturall; and being forced, could have wished, rather, it would have recoiled backe into himselfe, then carryed to that King it had concerned, least he might have been put to the tryall, to maintaine his seeming valour.

In a word, he was (take him altogether and not in peeces) such a King,
I wish this Kingdom have never any worse, on the condition, not
any better; for he lived in peace, dyed in peace, and left all his
Kingdomes in a peaceable condition, with his owne Motto:

THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

George Villiers, created Viscount Villiers 1616, Earl of Buckingham 1617, Marquis 1618, and Duke 1623. Born 1592. Assassinated 1628.

The Duke was indeede a very extraordinary person, and never any man in any age, nor I believe in any country or nation, rose in so shorte a tyme to so much greatenesse of honour fame and fortune upon no other advantage or recommendation, then of the beauty and gracefulnesse and becommingnesse of his person; and I have not the least purpose of undervale[w]inge his good partes and qualityes (of which ther will be occasion shortly to give some testimony) when I say, that his first introduction into favour was purely from the handsomnesse of his person: He was the younger Sunn of S'r George Villyers of Brookesby in the County of Leicester, a family of an auncient extraction, even from the tyme of the conquest, and transported then with the conqueror out of Normandy, wher the family hath still remayned and still continues with lustre: After S'r Georges first marriage, in which he had 2 or 3 Sunnes and some daughters, who shared an ample inheritance from him, by a secounde marriage with a younge lady of the family of the Beaumonts, he had this gentleman, and two other Sunns, and a daughter, who all came afterwards to be raysed to greate titles and dignityes. George, the eldest Sunn of this secounde bedd, was after the death of his father, by the singular affection and care of his Mother, who injoyed a good joynture in the accounte of that age, well brought up, and for the improvment of his education, and givinge an ornament to his hopefull person, he was by her sent into France, wher he spent 2. or 3. yeeres in attayninge the language, and in learninge the exercises of rydinge and dauncinge, in the last of which he excelled most men; and returned into Englande by the tyme he was 21. yeeres old.

Kinge James raingned at that tyme, and though he was a Prince of more learninge and knowledge then any other of that age, and really delighted more in bookes, and in the conversation of learned men, yett of all wise men livinge, he was the most delighted and taken with handsome persons, and with fyne clothes; He begann to be weary of his Favorite the Earle of Somersett, who was the only Favorite who kept that post so longe without any publique reproch from the people, and by the instigation and wickednesse of his wife, he became at least privy to a horrible murther, that exposed him to the utmost severity of the law (the poysoninge of S'r Thomas Overbury) upon which both he and his wife were condemned to dy, after a tryall by ther Peeres, and many persons of quality were executed for the same: Whilst this was in agitation, and before the utmost discovery was made, Mr. Villiers appeared in Courte, and drew the Kings eyes upon him: Ther were enough in the Courte enough angry and incensed against Somersett, for beinge what themselves desyred to be, and especially for beinge a Scotchman, and ascendinge in so shorte a tyme from beinge a page, to the height he was then at, to contribute all they coulde, to promote the one, that they might throw out the other; which beinge easily brought to passe, by the proceedinge of the law upon his cryme aforesayd, the other founde very little difficulty in rendringe himselfe gracious to the Kinge, whose nature and disposition was very flowinge in affection towards persons so adorned, insomuch that in few dayes after his first appearance in Courte he was made Cup-bearer to the Kinge, by which he was naturally to be much in his presence, and so admitted to that conversation and discource, with which that Prince alwayes abounded at his meales; and his inclination to his new Cuppbearer disposed him to administer frequent occasions of discourcinge of the Courte of France, and the transactions ther, with which he had bene so lately acquainted, that he could pertinently inlarge upon that subjecte, to the Kings greate delight, and to the reconcilinge the esteeme and valew of all the Standers by likewise to him, which was a thinge the Kinge was well pleased with: He acted very few weekes upon this Stage, when he mounted higher, and beinge knighted, without any other qualification he was at the same tyme made Gentleman of the Bedd chamber, and Knight of the Order of the Gartar; and in a shorte tyme (very shorte for such a prodigious ascent,) he was made a Barron, a Viscount, an Earle, a Marquisse, and became L'd High Admirall of Englande, L'd Warden of the Cinque Ports, Master of the Horse, and intirely disposed of all the graces of the Kinge, in conferringe all the Honours and all the Offices of the three kingdomes without a ryvall; in dispencinge wherof, he was guyded more by the rules of appetite then of judgement, and so exalted almost all of his owne numerous family and dependants, who had no other virtue or meritt then ther allyance to him, which æqually offended the auncient nobility and the people of all conditions, who saw the Flowres of the Crowne every day fadinge and withered, whilst the Demeasnes and revennue therof was sacrificed to the inrichinge a private family (how well soever originally extracted) not heard of before ever to the nation, and the exspences of the Courte so vast, unlimited by the old good rules of Oeconomy, that they had a sadd prospecte of that poverty and necessity, which afterwards befell the Crowne, almost to the ruine of it.

Many were of opinion, that Kinge James before his death, grew weary of his Favorite, and that if he had lyved, he would have deprived him at least of his large and unlimited power; and this imagination prævayled with some men, as the L'd Keeper Lincolne, the Earle of Middlesex, L'd High Treasurer of England, and other gentlemen of name, though not in so high stations, that they had the courage, to withdraw from ther absolute dependance upon the Duke, and to make some other assayes, which prooved to the ruine of every on of them, ther appearinge no markes or evidence, that the Kinge did really lessen his affection to him, to the houre of his death; on the contrary, as he created him Duke of Buckingham, in his absence, whilst he was with the Prince in Spayne, so after his returne, he exequted the same authority in conferringe all favours and graces, and revenginge himselfe upon those who had manifested any unkindnesse towards him: And yett notwithstandinge all this, if that Kings nature had æqually disposed him, to pull downe, as to builde and erecte, and if his courage and severity in punishinge and reforminge had bene as greate, as his generosity and inclination was to obliege, it is not to be doubted, but that he would have withdrawne his affection from the Duke intirely before his death, which those persons who were admitted to any privacy with [him], and were not in the confidence of the other (for before those he knew well how to dissemble) had reason enough to exspecte….

This greate man was a person of a noble nature and generous disposition, and of such other indowments, as made him very capable of beinge a greate favorite to a greate Kinge; he understoode the Arts and artifices of a Courte, and all the learninge that is professed ther, exactly well; by longe practice in businesse, under a Master that discourced excellently, and surely knew all things wounderfully, and tooke much delight in indoctrinatinge his younge unexsperienced Favorite, who he knew would be alwayes looked upon as the workemanshipp of his owne handes, he had obtayned a quicke conception and apprehension of businesse, and had the habitt of speakinge very gracefully, and pertinently. He was of a most flowinge courtesy and affability to all men, who made any addresse to him, and so desyrous to obliege them, that he did not enough consider the valew of the obligation, or the meritt of the person he chose to obliege, from which much of his misfortune resulted. He was of a courage not to be daunted, which was manifested in all his actions, and his contests with particular persons of the greatest reputation, and especially in his whole demeanour at the Isle of Rees, both at the landinge and upon the retriete, in both which no man was more fearelesse, or more ready to expose himselfe to the brightest daungers. His kindnesse and affection to his frends was so vehement, that it was so many marriages, for better and worse, and so many leagues offensive and defensive, as if he thought himselfe oblieged to love all his frends, and to make warr upon all they were angry with, let the cause be what it would. And it cannot be denyed, that he was an enimy in the same excesse, and prosequted those he looked upon as his enimyes, with the utmost rigour and animosity, and was not easily induced to a reconciliation; and yett ther were some examples of his receadinge in that particular; and in highest passyon, he was so farr from stoopinge to any dissimulation, wherby his displeasure might be concealed and covered, till he had attayned his revenge, the low methode of Courts, that he never indeavoured to do any man an ill office, before he first told him what he was to exspecte from him, and reproched him with the injures he had done, with so much generosity, that the person found it in his pouer, to receave farther satisfaction in the way he would chuse for himselfe….

His single misfortune was (which indeede was productive of many greater) that he never made a noble and a worthy frendshipp with a man so neere his æquall, that he would frankely advize him, for his honour and true interest, against the current, or rather the torrent of his impetuous passyons: which was partly the vice of the tyme, when the Courte was not replenished with greate choyce of excellent men, and partly the vice of the persons, who were most worthy to be applyed to, and looked upon his youth, and his obscurity, as obligations upon him, to gayne ther frendshipps by extraordinary application; then his ascent was so quicke, that it seemed rather a flight, then a growth, and he was such a darlinge of fortune, that he was at the topp, before he was seene at the bottome, for the gradation of his titles, was the effecte, not cause of his first promotion, and as if he had bene borne a favorite, he was supreme the first moneth he came to courte, and it was wante of confidence, not of creditt, that he had not all at first, which he obtayned afterwards, never meetinge with the least obstruction, from his settinge out, till he was as greate as he could be, so that he wanted dependants, before he thought he could wante coadjutors; nor was he very fortunate in the election of those dependants, very few of his servants havinge bene ever qualifyed enough to assiste or advize him, and were intente only upon growinge rich under [him], not upon ther masters growinge good as well as greate, insomuch as he was throughout his fortune, a much wiser man, then any servant or frende he had: Lett the faulte or misfortune be what and whence it will, it may very reasonably be believed that if he had bene blessed with one faythfull frende, who had bene qualifyed with wisdome and integrity, that greate person would have committed as few faults, and done as transcendant worthy actions, as any man who shyned in such a sphere in that age, in Europe, for he was of an excellent nature, and of a capacity very capable of advice and councell; he was in his nature just and candid, liberall, generous, and bountifull, nor was it ever knowne that the temptation of money swayed him to do an unjust, or unkinde thinge, and though he left a very greate inheritance to his heyres, consideringe the vast fortune he inherited by his wife (the sole daughter and Heyre of Francis Earle of Rutlande,) he owed no parte of it to his owne industry or sollicitation, but to the impatient humour of two kings his masters, who would make his fortune æquall to his titles, and the one above other men, as the other was, and he considered it no otherwise then as thers, and left it at his death ingaged for the crowne, almost to the valew of it, as is touched upon before. If he had an immoderate ambition, with which he was charged, and is a weede (if it be a weede) apt to grow in the best soyles, it does not appeare that it was in his nature, or that he brought it with him to the Courte, but rather founde it ther, and was a garment necessary for that ayre; nor was it more in his power to be without promotion, and titles, and wealth, then for a healthy man to sitt in the sunn, in the brightest dogge dayes, and remayne without any warmth: he needed no ambition who was so seated in the hartes of two such masters.

SIR THOMAS COVENTRY.

Solicitor-General 1617. Attorney-General 1621. Lord Keeper 1625. Created Baron Coventry 1628. Born 1578. Died 1640.

S'r Thomas Coventry was then L'd Keeper of the Greate Seale of England, and newly made a Barron. He was a Sunn of the Robe, his father havinge bene a Judge in the courte of the Common pleas, who tooke greate care to breede his Sunn, though his first borne, in the Study of the common law, by which himselfe had bene promoted to that degree, and in which, in the society of the Inner Temple, his Sunn made a notable progresse, by an early eminence in practice and learninge, insomuch as he was Recorder of London, Sollicitor generall, and Kings Atturny before he was forty yeeres of age, a rare ascent, all which offices he discharged, with greate abilityes, and singular reputation of integrity: In the first yeere after the death of Kinge James, he was advanced to be Keeper of the Greate Scale of Englande, the naturall advancement from, the office of Atturny Generall, upon the remoovall of the Bishopp of Lincolne, who though a man of greate witt, and good scholastique learninge, was generally thought so very unæquall to the place that his remoove was the only recompence and satisfaction that could be made for his promotion, and yett it was enough knowne, that the disgrace proceeded only from the pri[v]ate displeasure of the Duke of Buckingham[1]: The L'd Coventry injoyed this place with a universall reputation (and sure justice was never better administred) for the space of aboute sixteen yeeres, even to his death, some months before he was sixty yeeres of age, which was another importante circumstance of his felicity: that greate office beinge so slippery, that no man had dyed in it before, for neere the space of forty yeeres, nor had his successors for some tyme after him much better fortune: and he himselfe had use of all his strenght and skill (as he was an excellent wrastler) to præserve himselfe from fallinge, in two shockes, the one given him by the Earle of Portlande, L'd High Treasurer of Englande, the other by the Marq's of Hambleton, who had the greatest power over the affections of the Kinge, of any man of that tyme.

He was a man of wounderfull gravity and wisdome, and understood not only the whole science and mistery of the Law, at least æqually with any man who had ever sate in that place, but had a cleere conception of the whole policy of the government both of Church and State, which by the unskilfulnesse of some well meaninge men, justled each the other to much. He knew the temper, and disposition and genius of the kingdome most exactly, saw ther spiritts grow every day more sturdy, and inquisitive, and impatient, and therfore naturally abhorred all innovations, which he foresaw would produce ruinous effects: yett many who stoode at a distance thought that he was not active and stoute enough in the opposinge those innovations, for though by his place he præsided in all publique councells, and was most sharpe sighted in the consequence of things, yett he was seldome knowne to speake in matters of state, which he well knew were for the most parte concluded, before they were brought to that publique agitation, never in forrainge affayres, which the vigour of his judgement could well comprehende, nor indeede freely in any thinge, but what immediately and playnely concerned the justice of the kingdome, and in that as much as he could, he procured references to the Judges. Though in his nature he had not only a firme gravity, but a severity, and even some morosity (which his children and domestiques had evidence enough of) [yet][2] it was so happily tempred, that his courtesy and affability towards all men was so transcended, so much without affectation, that it marvellously reconciled [him] to all men of all degrees, and he was looked upon as an excellent courtyer, without receadinge from the native simplicity of his owne manner. He had in the playne way of speakinge and delivery (without much ornament of eloqution) a strange power of makinge himselfe believed (the only justifiable designe of eloquence) so that though he used very frankely to deny, and would never suffer any man to departe from him, with an opinion that he was inclined to gratify when in truth he was not, (holdinge that dissimulation to be the worst of lyinge) yett the manner of it was so gentle and oblieginge, and his condescension such, to informe the persons, who[m] he could not satisfy, that few departed from him, with ill will and ill wishes; but then this happy temper, and these good facultyes, rather præserved him from havinge many enimyes, and supplyed him with some well-wishers, then furnished him with any fast and unshaken frends, who are alwayes procured in courtes by more ardour, and more vehement professions and applications, then he would suffer himselfe to be entangled with; so that he was a man rather exceedingly liked, then passionately loved, insomuch that it never appeared, that he had any one frende in the Courte, of quality enough to prævent or diverte any disadvantage he mighte be exposed to, and therfore it is no wonder, nor to be imputed to him, that he retyred within himselfe as much as he could, and stood upon his defence, without makinge desperate sallyes against growinge mischieves, which he knew well he had no power to hinder, and which might probably begin in his owne ruine: to conclude, his security consisted very much, in the little creditt he had with the Kinge, and he dyed in a season most opportune, and in which a wise man would have prayed to have finished his cource, and which in truth crowned his other signall prosperity in this worlde.

SIR RICHARD WESTON.

Chancellor of the Exchequer 1621. Lord Treasurer 1628. Baron Weston 1628, and Earl of Portland 1633.

S'r Richard Weston had bene advanced to the white staffe, to the office of L'd High Treasurer of England, some moneths before the death of the Duke of Buckingham, and had in that shorte tyme so much disoblieged him, at least disappointed his exspectation, that many who were privy to the Dukes most secrett purposes, did believe that if he had outlived that voyage, in which he was ingaged, he would have remooved him, and made another Treasurer: and it is very true that greate office to had bene very slippery, and not fast to those who had trusted themselves in it, insomuch as there were at that tyme five noble persons alive, who had all succeded on another immediately in that unsteady charge, without any other person interveninge, the Earle of Suffolke, the L'd Viscount Mandevill, afterwards Earle of Manchester, the Earle of Middlesex, and the Earle of Marleborough, who was remooved under prætence of his age, and disability for the work (which had bene a better reason against his promotion, so few yeeres before, that his infirmityes were very little increased) to make roome for the present Officer, who though advanced by the Duke, may properly be sayd to be establish'd by his death.

He was a gentleman of a very good and auncient extraction, by father and mother; his education had bene very good, amongst bookes and men. After some yeeres study of the law in the Middle temple, and at an age fitt to make observations and reflexions, out of which that which is commonly called exsperience is constituted, he travelled into forrainge partes, and was acquainted in forrainge partes;[1] he betooke himselfe to the courte, and lyved ther some yeeres at that distance, and with that awe, as[2] was agreable to the modesty of that age, when men were seene some tyme, before they were knowne, and well knowne before they were præferred, or durst prætende to be præferred. He spent the best parte of his fortune, a fayre on, that he inherited from his father, in his attendance at courte, and involved his frends in securityes with him, who were willinge to runn his hopefull fortune, before he receaved the least fruite from it, but the countenance of greate men, and those in authority, the most naturall, and most certayne stayres to ascende by: He was then sent Ambassadour to the Arch-Dukes Alberte and Isabella into Flanders, and to the Diett in Germany, to treate aboute the restitution of the Palatinat, in which negotiation he behaved himselfe with greate prudence, and with the concurrent testimony of a wise man, from all those with whome he treated, Princes and Ambassadours: and upon his returne was made a Privy Councellour, and Chauncelour of the Exchequer, in the place of the L'd Brooke, who was ether perswaded, or putt out of the place, which beinge an office of honour and trust, is likewise an excellent stage for men of parts to tread, and expose themselfes upon, and wher they have occasion of all natures to lay out and spredd all ther facultyes and qualifications most for ther advantage; He behaved himselfe very well in this function, and appeared æquall to it, and carryed himselfe so luckily in Parliament, that he did his master much service, and præserved himselfe in the good opinion and acceptation of the house, which is a blessinge not indulged to many by those high powers: He did swimme in those troubled and boysterous waters, in which the Duke of Buckingham rode as Admirall, with a good grace, when very many who were aboute him, were drowned or forced on shore, with shrewde hurtes and bruises, which shewed he knew well how and when to use his limbes and strenght to the best advantage, sometimes only to avoyde sinkinge, and sometymes to advance and gett grounde; and by this dexterity he kept his creditt with those who could do him good, and lost it not with others, who desyred the destruction of those upon whome he most depended.

He was made L'd Treasurer in the manner, and at the tyme mentioned before, upon the remoovall of the Earle of Marleborough, and few moneths before the death of the Duke; the former circumstance, which is often attended by compassion towards the degraded, and præjudice toward the promoted, brought him no disadvantage, for besydes the delight that season had in changes, there was little reverence towards the person remooved, and the extreme, visible poverty of the Exchequer sheltered that Provence from the envy it had frequently created, and opened a doore for much applause to be the portion of a wise and provident Minister: For the other of the Dukes death, though some who knew the Dukes passyons and præjudice (which often produced rather suddayne indisposition, then obstinate resolution) believed he would have bene shortly cashiered, as so many had lately bene, and so that the death of his founder, was a greater confirmation of him in the office, then the delivery of the white staffe had bene, many other wise men, who knew the Treasurers talent, in remoovinge præjudice and reconcilinge himselfe to waveringe and doubtfull affections, believed that the losse of the Duke was very unseasonable, and that the awe or apprehension of his power and displeasure, was a very necessary allay for the impetuosity of the new officers nature, which needed some restrainte and checque for some tyme to his immoderate prætences and appetite of power. He did indeede appeare on the suddayne wounderfully elated, and so farr threw off his olde affectation to please some very much, and to displease none, in which arte he had excelled, that in few moneths after the Dukes death, he founde himselfe to succeede him in the publique displeasure, and in the malice of his enimyes, without succeedinge him in his creditt at courte, or in the affection of any considerable dependants; and yett, though he was not superiour to all other men, in the affection, or rather resignation of the Kinge, so that he might dispence favours and disfavours accordinge to his owne election, he had a full share in his masters esteeme, who looked upon him as a wise and able servant and worthy of the trust he reposed in him, and receaved no other advice in the large businesse of his revennue, nor was any man so much his superiour, as to be able to lessen him in the Kings affection, by his power; so that he was in a post in which he might have founde much ease and delight, if he could have contayned himselfe within the verge of his owne Provence, which was large enough, and of such an extente, that he might at the same tyme have drawne a greate dependance upon him of very considerable men, and appeared a very usefull and profitable Minister to the Kinge, whose revennue had bene very loosely managed duringe the late yeeres, and might by industry and order have bene easily improoved, and no man better understoode what methode was necessary towards that good husbandry then he. But I know not by what frowardnesse in his starres, he tooke more paynes in examininge and enquiringe into other mens offices, then in the discharge of his owne, and not so much joy in what he had, as trouble and agony for what he had not. The truth is, he had so vehement a desyre to be the sole favorite, that he had no relish of the power he had, and in that contention he had many ryvalls, who had creditt enough to do him ill offices, though not enough to satisfy ther owne ambition, the Kinge himselfe beinge resolved to hold the raynes in his owne handes, and to putt no further trust in others, then was necessary for the capacity they served in: which resolution in his Majesty was no sooner believed, and the Treasurers prsetence taken notice,[3] then he founde the number of his enimyes exceedingly increased, and others to be lesse eager in the pursuite of his frendshipp; and every day discovered some infirmityes in him, which beinge before knowne to few, and not taken notice,[3] did now expose him both to publique reproch, and to private animosityes, and even his vices admitted those contradictions in them, that he could hardly injoy the pleasante fruite of any of them. That which first exposed him to the publique jealosy, which is alwayes attended with publique reproch, was the concurrent suspicion of his religion. His wife and all his daughters were declared of the Roman religion, and though himselfe and his Sunns sometimes went to church, he was never thought to have zeale for it, and his domestique conversation and dependants, with whome only he used intire freedome, were all knowne Catholiques, and were believed to be agents for the rest; and yett with all this disadvantage to himselfe, he never had reputation and creditt with that party, who were the only people of the kingdome, who did not believe him to be of ther profession, for the penall lawes (those only excepted, which were sanguinary, and even those sometimes lett loose) were never more rigidly executed, nor had the Crovme ever so greate a revennue from them, as in his tyme, nor did they ever pay so deere for the favours and indulgencyes of his office towards them.

No man had greater ambition to make his family greate, or stronger designes to leave a greate fortune to it, yett his exspences were so prodigiously greate, especially in his house, that all the wayes he used for supply, which were all that occurred, could not serve his turne, insomuch that he contracted so greate debts, (the anxiety wherof he prætended broke his minde, and restrayned that intentnesse and industry which was necessary for the dew execution of his office) that the Kinge was pleased twice to pay his debts, at least towards it, to disburse forty thousande pounde in ready mony out of his Exchequer; besydes his Majesty gave him a whole forrest, Chute forrest in Hampshyre, and much other lande belonginge to the Crowne, which was the more taken notice of, and murmured against, because beinge the chiefe Minister of the revennue, he was particularly oblieged as much as in him lay to prævent and even oppose such disinherison; and because under that obligation, he had avowedly and sowrely crossed the prætences of other men, and restrayned the Kings bounty from beinge exercised almost to any; and he had that advantage (if he had made the right use of it) that his creditt was ample enough (secounded by the Kings owne exsperience, and observation, and inclination) to retrench very much of the late unlimited exspences, and especially those of bountyes, which from the death of the Duke, rann in narrow channells, which never so much overflowed as towards himselfe; who stopped the current to other men.

He was of an imperious nature, and nothinge wary in disoblieginge and provokinge other men, and had to much courage in offendinge and incensinge them, but after havinge offended and incensed them, he was of so unhappy a feminine temper that he was always in a terrible fright and apprehension of them. He had not that application, and submissyon and reverence for the Queene as might have bene exspected from his wisdome and breedinge, and often crossed her prætences and desyres, with more rudenesse then was naturall to him; yett he was impertinently sollicitous to know what her Majesty sayd of him in private, and what resentments shee had towards him; and when by some confidents (who had ther ends upon him from those offices) he was informed of some bitter exspressions fallen from her Majesty, he was so exceedingly afflicted and tormented with the sense of it, that sometimes by passionate complaints and representations to the Kinge, sometimes by more dutifull addresses and expostulations with the Queene in bewaylinge his misfortunes, he frequently exposed himselfe, and left his condition worse then it was before: and the eclarcicement commonly ended in the discovery of the persons from whome he had received his most secrett intelligence. He quickly lost the character of a bold, stoute, and magnanimous man, which he had bene longe reputed to be, in worse tymes, and in his most prosperous season, fell under the reproch of beinge a man of bigg lookes, and of a meane and abjecte spiritt….

To conclude, all the honours the Kinge conferred upon him, as he made him a Barren, then an Earle, and Knight of the Gartar, and above this, gave a younge, beautifull Lady, neerely allyed to him and to the Crowne of Scotlande, in marriage to his eldest Sunn, could not make him thinke himselfe greate enough; nor could all the Kings bountyes nor his owne large accessions, rayse a fortune to his Heyre, but after six or eight yeeres spent in outward opulency, and inward murmur and trouble, that it was no greater, after vast summes of mony and greate wealth gotten and rather consumed then injoyed, without any sense or delight in so greate prosperity, with the agony that it was no greater, He dyed unlamented by any, bitterly mentioned by most, who never pretended to love him, and sevearely censured and complayned of, by those who exspected most from him, and deserved best of him, and left a numerous family, which was in a shorte tyme worne out, and yett outlyved the fortune he left behinde him.

[Footnote 1: In the MS. the words 'he travelled into forrainge parts' occur after 'Middle temple', as well as after 'constituted'. The whole sentence is faulty. 'After this' is inserted in the edition of 1702 before 'he betooke'.]

[Footnote 3: 'off' added in later hand in MS.; 'notice of', ll. 2, 6, ed. 1704.]

THE EARL OF ARUNDEL.

The Earle of Arrundell was the next to the officers of State, who in his owne right and quality, præceded the rest of the councell. He was a man supercilious and prowde, who lyved alwayes within himselfe, and to himselfe, conversinge little with any, who were in common conversation, so that he seemed to lyve as it were in another nation, his house beinge a place, to which all men resorted, who resorted to no other place, strangers, or such who affected to looke like strangers, and dressed themselves accordingly. He resorted sometimes to the Courte, because ther only was a greater man then himselfe, and went thither the seldomer, because ther was a greater man then himselfe. He lived toward all Favorites and greate officers without any kinde of condescention, and rather suffred himselfe to be ill treated by ther power and authority (for he was alwayes in disgrace, and once or twice prysoner in the tower) then to descende in makinge any application to them; and upon these occasyons, he spent a greate intervall of his tyme, in severall journyes into forrainge partes, and with his wife and family had lyved some yeeres in Italy, the humour and manners of which nation he seemed most to like and approve, and affected to imitate. He had a good fortune by descent, and a much greater from his wife, who was the sole daughter upon the matter (for nether of the two Sisters left any issue) of the greate house of Shrewsbury, but his exspences were without any measure, and alwayes exceeded very much his revennue. He was willinge to be thought a scholar, and to understande the most misterious partes of Antiquity, because he made a wounderfull and costly purchase of excellent statues whilst he was in Italy and in Rome (some wherof he could never obtayne permission to remoove from Rome, though he had payd for them) and had a rare collection of the most curious Medalls; wheras in truth he was only able to buy them, never to understande ihem, and as to all partes of learninge he was almost illiterate, and thought no other parte of history considerable, but what related to his owne family, in which no doubt ther had bene some very memorable persons.

It cannot be denyed, that he had in his person, in his aspecte and countenance, the appearance of a greate man, which he preserved in his gate and motion. He wore and affected a habitt very different from that of the tyme, such as men had only beheld in the pictures of the most considerable men, all which drew the eyes of most and the reverence of many towards him, as the image and representative of the primitive nobility, and natife gravity of the nobles, when they had bene most venerable. But this was only his outsyde, his nature and true humour beinge so much disposed to levity, and vulgar delights, which indeede were very despicable and childish: He was never suspected to love anybody, nor to have the least propensity to justice, charity, or compassion, so that, though he gott all he could, and by all the wayes he could, and spent much more then he gott or had, he was never knowne to give any thinge, nor in all his imployments (for he had imployments of greate profitt as well as honour, beinge sent Ambassadour extraordinary into Germany, for the treaty of that Generall peace, for which he had greate appointments, and in which he did nothinge of the least importance, and which is more wounderfull, he was afterwards made Generall of the Army raysed for Scotlande, and receaved full pay as such, and in his owne office of Earle Marshall, more money was drawne from the people by his authority and prætence of jurisdiction, then had ever bene extorted by all the officers præcedent) yett I say in all his offices and imployments, never man used, or imployed by him, ever gott any fortune under him, nor did ever any man acknowledge any obligation to him. He was rather thought to be without religion, then to inclyne to this or that party of any. He would have bene a proper instrument for any tyranny, if he could have a man tyrant enough to have bene advized by him, and had no other affection for the nation or the kingdome, then as he had a greate share in it, in which like the greate Leviathan he might sporte himselfe, from which he withdrew himselfe, as soone as he decerned the repose therof was like to be disturbed, and dyed in Italy, under the same doubtfull character of religion, in which he lyved.

THE EARL OF PEMBROKE.

Willyam Earle of Pembroke was next, a man of another molde and makinge, and of another fame and reputation with all men, beinge the most universally loved and esteemed, of any man of that age, and havinge a greate office in the courte, made the courte itselfe better esteemed and more reverenced in the country; and as he had a greate number of frends of the best men, so no man had ever wickednesse to avow himselfe to be his enimy. He was a man very well bredd, and of excellent partes, and a gracefull speaker upon any subjecte, havinge a good proportion of learninge, and a ready witt to apply it, and inlarge upon it, of a pleasant and facetious humour and a disposition affable, generous, and magnificent; he was master of a greate fortune from his auncestors, and had a greate addition by his wife (another daughter and heyre of the Earle of Shrewsbury) which he injoyed duringe his life, shee outlivinge him, but all served not his exspence, which was only limited by his greate minde, and occasions to use it nobly; he lyved many yeeres aboute the courte, before in it, and never by it, beinge rather regarded and esteemed by Kinge James then loved and favored, and after the fowle fall of the Earle of Somersett, he was made L'd Chamberlyne of the Kings house more for the Courtes sake, then his owne, and the Courte appeared with the more lustre, because he had the goverment of that Province. As he spente and lived upon his owne fortune, so he stoode upon his owne feete, without any other supporte then of his proper virtue and meritt, and lyved towards the favorites with that decency, as would not suffer them to censure or reproch his Masters judgement and election, but as with men of his owne ranke. He was exceedingly beloved in the Courte, because he never desyred to gett that for himselfe, which others labored for, but was still ready to promote the prætences of worthy men, and he was equally celebrated in the country, for havinge receaved no obligations from the courte, which might corrupt or sway his affections and judgement; so that all who were displeased and unsatisfyed in the courte or with the Courte, were alwayes inclined to putt themselves under his banner, if he would have admitted them, and yett he did not so rejecte them, as to make them choose another shelter, but so farr to depende on him, that he could restrayn them from breakinge out beyounde private resentments, and murmurs. He was a greate lover of his country, and of the religion and justice which he believed could only supporte it, and his frendshipps were only with men of those principles; and as his conversation was most with men of the most pregnant parts and understandinge, so towards any who needed supporte or encouragement, though unknowne, if fayrely recommended to him, he was very liberall; and sure never man was planted in a courte, that was fitter for that soyle, or brought better qualityes with him to purify that heyre.

Yett his memory must not be so flattered, that his virtues and good inclinations may be believed without some allay of vice, and without beinge clowded with greate infirmityes, which he had in to exorbitant a proportion: He indulged to himselfe the pleasures of all kindes, almost in all excesses; whether out of his naturall constitution, or for wante of his domestique content and delight (in which he was most unhappy, for he payed much to deere for his wife's fortune, by takinge her person into the bargayne) he was immoderately given up to women,[1] but therin he likewise retayned such a pouer and jurisdiction over his very appetite, that he was not so much transported with beauty and outwarde allurements, as with those advantages of the minde, as manifested an extraordinary witt, and spirit, and knowledge, and administred greate pleasure in the conversation; to these he sacrificed himselfe, his pretious tyme, and much of his fortune, and some who were neerest his trust and frendshipp, were not without apprehension that his naturall vivacity, and vigour of minde, begann to lessen and decline, by those excessive indulgences. Aboute the tyme of the death of Kinge James or presently after, he was made L'd Steward of his Majestys house, that the Staffe of Chamberlyne might be putt into the hands of his brother, the Earle of Mountgomery, upon a new contracte of frendshipp with the Duke of Buckingham, after whose death he had likewise such offices of his, as he most affected, of honour and commaunde, none of profitt, which he cared not for; and within two yeeres after he dyed himselfe, of an Apoplexy, after a full and cheerefull supper.

[Footnote 1: The words 'to women' occur twice in the MS., before 'whether out' and after 'given up'.]

SIR FRANCIS BACON.

Lord Keeper 1617. Lord Chancellor 1618. Baron Verulam 1618, and Viscount St. Albans 1621.

One, though hee be excellent, and the chiefe, is not to bee imitated alone. For never no Imitator, ever grew up to his Author; likenesse is alwayes on this side Truth: Yet there hapn'd, in my time, one noble Speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language, (where hee could spare, or passe by a jest) was nobly censorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more presly, more weightily, or suffer'd lesse emptinesse, lesse idlenesse, in what hee utter'd. No member of his speech, but consisted of the owne graces: His hearers could not cough, or looke aside from him, without losse. Hee commanded where hee spoke; and had his Judges angry, and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The feare of every man that heard him, was, lest hee should make an end.

Not long after comes the great Lord Chancellor Bacon to a Censure, for the most simple, and ridiculous follies, that ever entred into the heart of a Wise man. He was the true Emblem of humane frailty, being more than a man in some things, and less than a woman in others. His crime was Briberie, and Extortion (which the King hinted at in his Speech, when he facetiously sayd, He thought the Lords had bribed the Prince to speak well of them) and these he had often condemned others for as a Judge, which now he comes to suffer for as a Delinquent: And they were proved, & aggravated against him with so many circumstances, that they fell very fouly on him, both in relation to his Reception of them, and his expending of them: For that which he raked in, and scrued for one way, he scattered and threw abroad another; for his Servants, being young, prodigall and expensive Youths, which he kept about him, his Treasure was their common Store, which they took without stint, having free accesse to his most retired Privacies; and his indulgence to them, and familiarity with them, opened a gap to infamous Reports, which left an unsavoury Tincture on him; for where such Leeches are, there must be putrid bloud to fill their craving Appetites. His gettings were like a Prince, with a strong hand; his expences like a Prodigall, with a weak head; and 'tis a wonder a man of his Noble, and Gallant Parts, that could fly so high above Reason, should fall so far below it; unlesse that Spirit that acted the first, were too proud to stoop, to see the deformities of the last. And as he affected his men, so his Wife affected hers: Seldome doth the Husband deviate one way, but the Wife goeth another. These things came into the publique mouth, and the Genius of the Times (where malice is not corrivall) is the great Dictator of all Actions: For innocency it self is a crime, when calumny sets her mark upon it. How prudent therefore ought men to be, that not so much as their garments be defiled with the sour breath of the Times!

This poor Gentleman, mounted above pity, fell down below it: His Tongue, that was the glory of his time for Eloquence, (that tuned so many sweet Harrangues) was like a forsaken Harp, hung upon the Willows, whilst the waters of affliction overflowed the banks. And now his high-flying Orations are humbled to Supplications,…

He was of a middling stature, his countenance had in-dented with Age before he was old; his Presence grave and comely; of a high-flying and lively Wit, striving in some things to be rather admired than understood, yet so quick and easie where he would express himself, and his Memory so strong and active, that he appeared the Master of a large and plenteous store-house of Knowledge, being (as it were) Natures Midwife, stripping her Callou-brood, and clothing them in new Attire. His Wit was quick to the last; for Gondemar meeting him the Lent before his Censure, and hearing of his Miscarriages, thought to pay him with his Spanish Sarcasms and Scoffs, saying, My Lord, I wish you a good Easter; And you my Lord, replyed the Chancellor, a good Passeover: For he could neither close with his English Buffonerie, nor his Spanish Treaty (which Gondemar knew) though he was so wise as publiquely to oppose neither. In fine, he was a fit Jewel to have beautified, and adorned a flourishing Kingdom, if his flaws had not disgraced the lustre that should have set him off.

None can character him to the life, save himself. He was in parts, more than a Man, who in any Liberal profession, might be, whatsoever he would himself. A great Honourer of antient Authors, yet a great Deviser and Practiser of new waies in Learning. Privy Counsellor, as to King JAMES, so to Nature it self, diving into many of her abstruse Mysteries. New conclusions he would dig out with mattocks of gold & silver, not caring what his experience cost him, expending on the Trials of Nature, all and more than he got by the Trials at the Barre, Posterity being the better for his, though he the worse for his own, dear experiments. He and his Servants had all in common, the Men never wanting what their Master had, and thus what came flowing in unto him, was sent flying away from him, who, in giving of rewards knew no bounds, but the bottome of his own purse. Wherefore when King James heard that he had given Ten pounds to an under-keeper, by whom He had sent him a Buck, the King said merrily, I and He shall both die Beggars, which was condemnable Prodigality in a Subject. He lived many years after, and in his Books will ever survive, in the reading whereof, modest Men commend him, in what they doe, condemn themselves, in what they doe not understand, as believing the fault in their own eyes, and not in the object.

He was no Plodder upon Books; Though he read much; And that, with great Judgement, and Rejection of Impertinences, incident to many Authours: For he would ever interlace a Moderate Relaxation of His Minde, with his Studies; As Walking; Or Taking the Aire abroad in his Coach; or some other befitting Recreation: And yet he would loose no Time, In as much as upon his First and Immediate Return, he would fall to Reading again: And so suffer no Moment of Time to Slip from him, without some present Improvement.

His Meales were Refections, of the Eare, as well as of the Stomack: Like the Noctes Atticæ; or Convivia Deipno-Sophistarum; Wherein a Man might be refreshed, in his Minde, and understanding, no lesse then in his Body. And I have known some, of no mean Parts, that have professed to make use of their Note-Books, when they have risen from his Table. In which Conversations, and otherwise, he was no Dashing Man; As some Men are; But ever, a Countenancer, and Fosterer, of another Mans Parts. Neither was he one, that would appropriate the Speech, wholy to Himself; or delight to out-vie others; But leave a Liberty, to the Co-Assessours, to take their Turns, to Wherein he would draw a Man on, and allure him, to speak upon such a Subject, as wherein he was peculiarly Skilfull, and would delight to speak. And, for Himself, he condemned no Mans Observations; But would light his Torch at every Mans Candle.

His Opinions, and Assertions, were, for the most part, Binding; And not contradicted, by any; Rather like Oracles, then Discourses. Which may be imputed, either to the well weighing of his Sentence, by the Skales of Truth, and Reason; Or else, to the Reverence, and Estimation, wherein he was, commonly, had, that no Man would contest with him. So that, there was no Argumentation, or Pro and Con, (as they term it,) at his Table: Or if there chanced to be any, it was Carried with much Submission, and Moderation.

I have often observed; And so have other Men, of great Account; That if he had occasion to repeat another Mans Words, after him; he had an use, and Faculty, to dresse them in better Vestments, and Apparell, then they had before: So that, the Authour should finde his own Speech much amended; And yet the Substance of it still retained. As if it had been Naturall to him, to use good Forms; As Ovid spake, of his Faculty of Versifying;

When his Office called him, as he was of the Kings Counsell Learned, to charge any Offenders, either in Criminals, or Capitals; He was never of an Insulting, or Domineering Nature, over them; But alwayes tender Hearted, and carrying himself decently towards the Parties; (Though it was his Duty, to charge them home:) But yet, as one, that looked upon the Example, with the Eye of Severity; But upon the Person, with the Eye of Pitty, and Compassion. And in Civill Businesse, as he was Counseller of Estate, he had the best way of Advising; Not engaging his Master, in any Precipitate, or grievous, Courses; But in Moderate, and Fair, Proceedings: The King, whom he served, giving him this Testimony; That he ever dealt, in Businesse, Suavibus Modis; Which was the way, that was most according to his own Heart.

Neither was He, in his time, lesse Gracious with the Subject, then with his Soveraign: He was ever Acceptable to the House of Commons, when He was a Member thereof. Being the Kings Atturney, & chosen to a place, in Parliament, He was allowed, and dispensed with, to sit in the House; which was not permitted to other Atturneys.

And as he was a good Servant, to his Master; Being never, in 19. years Service, (as himself averred,) rebuked by the King, for any Thing, relating to his Majesty; So he was a good Master, to his Servants; And rewarded their long Attendance, with good Places, freely, when they fell into his Power. Which was the Cause, that so many young Gentlemen, of Bloud, and Quality, sought to list themselves, in his Retinew. And if he were abused, by any of them, in their Places; It was onely the Errour of the Goodnesse of his Nature; But the Badges of their Indiscretions, and Intemperances.

BEN JONSON.

Ben Johnsons name can never be forgotten, havinge by his very good learninge, and the severity of his nature, and manners, very much reformed the Stage and indeede the English poetry it selfe; his naturall advantages were judgement to order and governe fancy, rather then excesse of fancy, his productions beinge slow and upon deliberation, yett then aboundinge with greate witt and fancy, and will lyve accordingly, and surely as he did exceedingly exalte the English language, in eloquence, propriety, and masculyne exspressions, so he was the best judge of, and fittest to prescribe rules to poetry and poetts, of any man who had lyved with or before him, or since, if M'r Cowly had not made a flight beyounde all men, with that modesty yett to own much of his to the example and learninge of Ben. Johnson: His conversation was very good and with the men of most note, and he had for many yeares an extraordinary kindnesse for M'r Hyde, till he founde he betooke himselfe to businesse, which he believed ought never to be preferred before his company: He lyved to be very old, and till the Palsy made a deepe impression upon his body and his minde.

I was invited yesternight to a solemne supper by B.I. wher you were deeply remembred, ther was good company, excellent chear, choice wines, and joviall welcom; one thing interven'd which almost spoyld the relish of the rest, that B. began to engross all the discourse, to vapour extremely of himself, and by villifying others to magnifie his owne muse; T. Ca. buz'd me in the eare, that though Ben had barreld up a great deal of knowledg, yet it seems he had not read the Ethiques, which among other precepts of morality forbid self-commendation, declaring it to be an ill favourd solecism in good manners; It made me think upon the Lady (not very young) who having a good while given her guests neat entertainment, a capon being brought upon the table, instead of a spoon she took a mouthfull of claret and spouted it into the poope of the hollow bird; such an accident happend in this entertainment you know—Proprio laus sordet in ore; be a mans breath never so sweet, yet it makes ones prayses stink, if he makes his owne mouth the conduit pipe of it; But for my part I am content to dispense with this Roman infirmity of B. now that time hath snowed upon his pericranium. You know Ovid, and (your) Horace were subject to this humour, the first bursting out into,

As also Cicero while he forc'd himself into this Exameter; O fortunatam natam me consule Romam. Ther is another reason that excuseth B. which is, that if one be allowed to love the naturall issue of his body, why not that of the brain, which is of a spirituall and more noble extraction; I preserve your manuscripts safe for you till your return to London, what newes the times afford this bearer will impart unto you. So I am,

Sir,
Your very humble and most faithfull Servitor, J.H.
Westmin. 5 Apr. 1636.

HENRY HASTINGS.

Mr. Hastings, by his quality, being the son, brother, and uncle to the Earls of Huntingdon, and his way of living, had the first place amongst us. He was peradventure an original in our age, or rather the copy of our nobility in ancient days in hunting and not warlike times; he was low, very strong and very active, of a reddish flaxen hair, his clothes always green cloth, and never all worth when new five pounds. His house was perfectly of the old fashion, in the midst of a large park well stocked with deer, and near the house rabbits to serve his kitchen, many fish-ponds, and great store of wood and timber; a bowling-green in it, long but narrow, full of high ridges, it being never levelled since it was ploughed; they used round sand bowls, and it had a banqueting-house like a stand, a large one built in a tree. He kept all manner of sport-hounds that ran buck, fox, hare, otter, and badger, and hawks long and short winged; he had all sorts of nets for fishing: he had a walk in the New Forest and the manor of Christ Church. This last supplied him with red deer, sea and river fish; and indeed all his neighbours' grounds and royalties were free to him, who bestowed all his time in such sports, but what he borrowed to caress his neighbours' wives and daughters, there being not a woman in all his walks of the degree of a yeoman's wife or under, and under the age of forty, but it was extremely her fault if he were not intimately acquainted with her. This made him very popular, always speaking kindly to the husband, brother, or father, who was to boot very welcome to his house whenever he came. There he found beef pudding and small beer in great plenty, a house not so neatly kept as to shame him or his dirty shoes, the great hall strewed with marrow bones, full of hawks' perches, hounds, spaniels, and terriers, the upper sides of the hall hung with the fox-skins of this and the last year's skinning, here and there a polecat intermixed, guns and keepers' and huntsmen's poles in abundance. The parlour was a large long room, as properly furnished; on a great hearth paved with brick lay some terriers and the choicest hounds and spaniels; seldom but two of the great chairs had litters of young cats in them, which were not to be disturbed, he having always three or four attending him at dinner, and a little white round stick of fourteen inches long lying by his trencher, that he might defend such meat as he had no mind to part with to them. The windows, which were very large, served for places to lay his arrows, crossbows, stonebows, and other such like accoutrements; the corners of the room full of the best chose hunting and hawking poles; an oyster-table at the lower end, which was of constant use twice a day all the year round, for he never failed to eat oysters before dinner and supper through all seasons: the neighbouring town of Poole supplied him with them. The upper part of this room had two small tables and a desk, on the one side of which was a church Bible, on the other the Book of Martyrs; on the tables were hawks' hoods, bells, and such like, two or three old green hats with their crowns thrust in so as to hold ten or a dozen eggs, which were of a pheasant kind of poultry he took much care of and fed himself; tables, dice, cards, and boxes were not wanting. In the hole of the desk were store of tobacco-pipes that had been used. On one side of this end of the room was the door of a closet, wherein stood the strong beer and the wine, which never came thence but in single glasses, that being the rule of the house exactly observed, for he never exceeded in drink or permitted it. On the other side was a door into an old chapel not used for devotion; the pulpit, as the safest place, was never wanting of a cold chine of beef, pasty of venison, gammon of bacon, or great apple-pie, with thick crust extremely baked. His table cost him not much, though it was very good to eat at, his sports supplying all but beef and mutton, except Friday, when he had the best sea-fish as well as other fish he could get, and was the day that his neighbours of best quality most visited him. He never wanted a London pudding, and always sung it in with 'my part lies therein-a.' He drank a glass of wine or two at meals, very often syrrup of gilliflower in his sack, and had always a tun glass without feet stood by him holding a pint of small beer, which he often stirred with a great sprig of rosemary. He was well natured, but soon angry, calling his servants bastard and cuckoldy knaves, in one of which he often spoke truth to his own knowledge, and sometimes in both, though of the same man. He lived to a hundred, never lost his eyesight, but always writ and read without spectacles, and got to horse without help. Until past fourscore he rode to the death of a stag as well as any.

CHARLES I.

The severall unhearde of insolencyes which this excellent Prince was forced to submitt to, at the other tymes he was brought before that odious judicatory, his Majesticke behaviour under so much insolence, and resolute insistinge upon his owne dignity, and defendinge it by manifest authorityes in the lawe, as well as by the cleerest deductions from reason, the pronouncinge that horrible sentence upon the most innocent person in the worlde, the execution of that sentence by the most execrable murther that ever was committed, since that of our blessed Savyour, and the circumstances therof, the application and interposition that was used by some noble persons to prævent that wofull murther, and the hypocrisy with which that interposition was deluded, the Saintlike behaviour of that blessed Martir, and his Christian courage and patience at his death, are all particulars so well knowne, and have bene so much inlarged upon in treatises peculiarly applyed to that purpose, that the farther mentioninge it in this place, would but afflicte and grieve the reader, and make the relation itselfe odious; and therfore no more shall be sayd heare of that lamentable Tragedy, so much to the dishonour of the Nation, and the religion professed by it; but it will not be unnecessary to add the shorte character of his person, that posterity may know the inestimable losse which the nation then underwent in beinge deprived of a Prince whose example would have had a greater influence upon the manners and piety of the nation, then the most stricte lawes can have.

To speake first of his private qualifications as a man, before the mention of his princely and royall virtues, He was, if ever any, the most worthy of the title of an honest man; so greate a lover of justice, that no temptation could dispose him to a wrongfull action, except it were so disguysed to him, that he believed it to be just; he had a tendernesse and compassion of nature, which restrayned him from ever doinge a hard hearted thinge, and therfore he was so apt to grant pardon to Malefactors, that his Judges represented to him the damage and insecurity to the publique that flowed from such his indulgence, and then he restrayned himselfe from pardoninge ether murthers or highway robberyes, and quickly decerned the fruits of his severity, by a wounderfull reformation of those enormityes. He was very punctuall and regular in his devotions, so that he was never knowne to enter upon his recreations or sportes, though never so early in the morninge, before he had bene at publique prayers, so that on huntinge dayes, his Chaplynes were bounde to a very early attendance, and he was likewise very stricte in observinge the howres of his private cabbinett devotions, and was so seveare an exactor of gravity and reverence in all mention of religion, that he could never indure any light or prophane worde in religion, with what sharpnesse of witt so ever it was cover'd; and though he was well pleased and delighted with readinge verses made upon any occasyon, no man durst bringe before him any thinge that was prophane or uncleane, that kinde of witt had never any countenance then. He was so greate an example of conjugall affection, that they who did not imitate him in that particular, did not bragge of ther liberty, and he did not only permitt but directe his Bishopps to prosequte those skandalous vices, in the Ecclesiasticall Courtes, against persons of eminence, and neere relation to his service.

His kingly virtues had some mixture and allay that hindred them from shyninge in full lustre, and from producinge those fruites they should have bene attended with; he was not in his nature bountifull, though he gave very much, which appeared more after the Duke of Buckinghams death, after which those showers fell very rarely, and he paused to longe in givinge, which made those to whome he gave lesse sensible of the benefitt. He kept state to the full, which made his Courte very orderly, no man prsesuminge to be seene in a place wher he had no pretence to be; he saw and observed men longe, before he receaved any about his person, and did not love strangers, nor very confident men. He was a patient hearer of causes, which he frequently accustomed himselfe to, at the Councell Board, and judged very well, and was dextrous in the mediatinge parte, so that he often putt an end to causes by perswasion, which the stubbornesse of mens humours made delatory in courts of justice. He was very fearelesse in his person, but not enterpryzinge, and had an excellent understandinge, but was not confident enough of it: which made him often tymes chaunge his owne opinion for a worse, and follow the advice of a man, that did not judge so well as himselfe: and this made him more irresolute, then the conjuncture of his affayres would admitt: If he had bene of a rougher and more imperious nature, he would have founde more respecte and duty, and his not applyinge some seveare cures, to approchinge evills, proceeded from the lenity of his nature, and the tendernesse of his conscience, which in all cases of bloode, made him choose the softer way, and not hearken to seveare councells how reasonably soever urged. This only restrayned him from pursuinge his advantage in the first Scotts expedition, when humanely speakinge, he might have reduced that Nation to the most slavish obedyence that could have bene wished, but no man can say, he had then many who advized him to it, but the contrary, by a wounderfull indisposition all his Councell had to fightinge, or any other fatigue. He was alwayes an immoderate lover of the Scottish nation, havinge not only bene borne ther, but educated by that people and besiedged by them alwayes, havinge few English aboute him till he was kinge, and the major number of his servants beinge still of those, who he thought could never fayle him, and then no man had such an ascendent over him, by the lowest and humblest insinuations, as Duke Hambleton had.

As he excelled in all other virtues, so in temperance he was so stricte that he abhorred all deboshry to that degree, that at a greate festivall solemnity wher he once was, when very many of the nobility of the English and Scotts were entertayned, he was[1] told by one who withdrew from thence, what vast draughts of wine they dranke, and that ther was one Earle who had dranke most of the rest downe and was not himselfe mooved or altred, the kinge sayd that he deserved to be hanged, and that Earle comminge shortly into the roome wher his Majesty was, in some gayty to shew how unhurte he was from that battle, the kinge sent one to bidd him withdraw from his Majestys presence, nor did he in some dayes after appeare before the kinge.

Ther were so many miraculous circumstances contributed to his ruine, that men might well thinke that heaven and earth conspired it, and that the starres designed it, though he was from the first declension of his power, so much betrayed by his owne servants, that there were very few who remayned faythfull to him; yett that trechery proceeded not from any treasonable purpose to do him any harme, but from particular and personall animosityes against other men; and afterwards the terrour all men were under of the Parliament and the guilte they were conscious of themselves, made them watch all opportunityes to make themselves gratious to those who could do them good, and so they became spyes upon ther master, and from one piece of knavery, were hardned and confirmed to undertake another, till at last they had no hope of præservation but by the destruction of ther master; And after all this, when a man might reasonably believe, that lesse then a universall defection of three nations, could not have reduced a greate kinge to so ugly a fate, it is most certayne that in that very howre when he was thus wickedly murthered in the sight of the sunn, he had as greate a share in the heartes and affections of his subjects in generall, was as much beloved, esteemed and longed for by the people in generall of the three nations, as any of his predecessors had ever bene. To conclude, he was the worthyest gentleman, the best master, the best frende, the best husbande, the best father, and the best Christian, that the Age in which he lyved had produced, and if he was not the best kinge, if he was without some parts and qualityes which have made some kings greate and happy, no other Prince was ever unhappy, who was possessed of half his virtues and indowments, and so much without any kinde of vice.

He was a person, tho' born sickly, yet who came thro' temperance and exercise, to have as firm and strong a body, as most persons I ever knew, and throughout all the fatigues of the warr, or during his imprisonment, never sick. His appetite was to plain meats, and tho' he took a good quantity thereof, yet it was suitable to an easy digestion. He seldom eat of above three dishes at most, nor drank above thrice: a glasse of small beer, another of claret wine, and the last of water; he eat suppers as well as dinners heartily; but betwixt meales, he never medled with any thing. Fruit he would eat plentifully, and with this regularity, he moved as steddily, as a star follows its course. His deportment was very majestick; for he would not let fall his dignity, no not to the greatest Forraigners, that came to visit him and his Court; for tho' he was farr from pride, yet he was carefull of majestie, and would be approacht with respect and reverence. His conversation was free, and the subject matter of it (on his own side of the Court) was most commonly rational; or if facetious, not light. With any Artist or good Mechanick, Traveller, or Scholar he would discourse freely; and as he was commonly improved by them, so he often gave light to them in their own art or knowledge. For there were few Gentlemen in the world, that knew more of useful or necessary learning, than this Prince did: and yet his proportion of books was but small, having like Francis the first of France, learnt more by the ear, than by study. His way of arguing was very civil and patient; for he seldom contradicted another by his authority, but by his reason: nor did he by any petulant dislike quash another's arguments; and he offered his exception by this civill introduction, By your favour, Sir, I think otherwise on this or that ground: yet he would discountenance any bold or forward addresse unto him. And in suits or discourse of busines he would give way to none abruptly to enter into them, but lookt, that the greatest Persons should in affairs of this nature addresse to him by his proper Ministers, or by some solemn desire of speaking to him in their own persons. His exercises were manly; for he rid the great horse very well; and on the little saddle he was not only adroit, but a laborious hunter or field-man: and they were wont to say of him, that he fail'd not to do any of his exercises artificially, but not very gracefully; like some well-proportion'd faces, which yet want a pleasant air of countenance. He had a great plainnes in his own nature, and yet he was thought even by his Friends to love too much a versatile man; but his experience had thorowly weaned him from this at last.

He kept up the dignity of his Court, limiting persons to places suitable to their qualities, unless he particularly call'd for them. Besides the women, who attended on his beloved Queen and Consort, he scarce admitted any great Officer to have his wife in the family. Sir Henry Vane was the first, that I knew in that kind, who having a good dyet as Comptroller of the Houshold, and a tenuity of fortune, was winkt at; so as the Court was fill'd, not cramm'd. His exercises of Religion were most exemplary; for every morning early, and evening not very late, singly and alone, in his own bed-chamber or closet he spent some time in private meditation: (for he durst reflect and be alone) and thro' the whole week, even when he went a hunting, he never failed, before he sat down to dinner, to have part of the Liturgy read unto him and his menial servants, came he never so hungry, or so late in: and on Sundays and Tuesdays he came (commonly at the beginning of Service) to the Chappell, well attended by his Court-Lords, and chief Attendants, and most usually waited on by many of the Nobility in town, who found those observances acceptably entertain'd by him. His greatest enemies can deny none of this; and a man of this moderation of mind could have no hungry appetite to prey upon his subjects, tho' he had a greatnes of mind not to live precariously by them. But when he fell into the sharpnes of his afflictions, (than which few men underwent sharper) I dare say, I know it, (I am sure conscientiously I say it) tho' God dealt with him, as he did with St. Paul, not remove the thorn, yet he made his grace sufficient to take away the pungency of it: for he made as sanctified an use of his afflictions, as most men ever did.

No Gentleman in his three nations, tho' there were many more learned, (for I have supposed him but competently learned, tho' eminently rational) better understood the foundations of his own Church, and the grounds of the Reformation, than he did: which made the Pope's Nuncio to the Queen, Signior Con, to say (both of him and Arch-Bishop Laud, when the King had forced the Archbishop to admit a visit from, and a conference with the Nuncio) That when he came first to Court, he hoped to have made great impressions there; but after he had conferr'd with Prince and Prelate, (who never denyed him any thing frowardly or ignorantly, but admitted all, which primitive and uncorrupted Rome for the first 500 years had exercised,) he declared he found, That they resolved to deal with his Master, the Pope, as wrestlers do with one another, take him up to fling him down. And therefore tho' I cannot say, I know, that he wrote his Icon Basilike, or Image, which goes under his own name; yet I can say, I have heard him, even unto my unworthy selfe, say many of those things it contains: and I have bin assur'd by Mr. Levett, (one of the Pages of his Bedchamber, and who was with him thro' all his imprisonments) that he hath not only seen the Manuscript of that book among his Majestie's papers at the Isle of Wight, but read many of the chapters himselfe: and Mr. Herbert, who by the appointment of Parliament attended him, says, he saw the Manuscript in the King's hand, as he believed; but it was in a running character, and not that which the King usually wrote. And whoever reads his private and cursory letters, which he wrote unto the Queen, and to some great men (especially in his Scotch affairs, set down by Mr. Burnet, when he stood single, as he did thro' all his imprisonments) the gravity and significancy of that style may assure a misbeliever, that he had head and hand enough to express the ejaculations of a good, pious, and afflicted heart; and Solomon says, that affliction gives understanding, or elevates thoughts: and we cannot wonder, that so royal a heart, sensible of such afflictions, should make such a description of them, as he hath done in that book.

And tho' he was of as slow a pen, as of speech; yet both were very significant: and he had that modest esteem of his own parts, that he would usually say, He would willingly make his own dispatches, but that he found it better to be a Cobler, than a Shoomaker. I have bin in company with very learned men, when I have brought them their own papers back from him, with his alterations, who ever contest his amendments to have bin very material. And I once by his commandment brought him a paper of my own to read, to see, whether it was suitable unto his directions, and he disallow'd it slightingly: I desir'd him, I might call Doctor Sanderson to aid me, and that the Doctor might understand his own meaning from himselfe; and with his Majestie's leave, I brought him, whilst he was walking, and taking the aire; whereupon wee two went back; but pleas'd him as little, when wee return'd it: for smilingly he said, A man might have as good ware out of a Chandler's shop: but afterwards he set it down with his own pen very plainly, and suitable unto his own intentions. The thing was of that nature, (being too great an owning of the Scots, when Duke Hamilton was in the heart of England so meanely defeated, and like the crafty fox lay out of countenance in the hands of his enemies,) that it chilled the Doctors ink; and when the matter came to be communicated, those honourable Persons, that then attended him, prevayl'd on him to decline the whole. And I remember, when his displeasure was a little off, telling him, how severely he had dealt in his charactering the best pen in England, Dr. Sanderson's; he told me, he had had two Secretaries, one a dull man in comparison of the other, and yet the first best pleas'd him: For, said he, my Lord Carleton ever brought me my own sense in my own words; but my Lord Faulkland most commonly brought me my instructions in so fine a dress, that I did not alwaies own them. Which put me in mind to tell him a story of my Lord Burleigh and his son Cecil: for Burleigh being at Councill, and Lord Treasurer, reading an order penn'd by a new Clerk of the Councill, who was a Wit and Scholar, he flung it downward to the lower end of the Table to his son, the Secretary, saying, Mr. Secretary, you bring in Clerks of the Councill, who will corrupt the gravity and dignity of the style of the Board: to which the Secretary replied, I pray, my Lord, pardon this, for this Gentleman is not warm in his place, and hath had so little to do, that he is wanton with his pen: but I will put so much busines upon him, that he shall be willing to observe your Lordship's directions. These are so little stories, that it may be justly thought, I am either vain, or at leasure to sett them down; but I derive my authority from an Author, the world hath ever reverenced, viz, Plutarch; who writing the lives of Alexander the great and Julius Cesar, runs into the actions, flowing from their particular natures, and into their private conversation, saying, These smaller things would discover the men, whilst their great actions only discover the power of their States.

One or two things more then I may warrantably observe: First, as an evidence of his natural probity, whenever any young Nobleman or Gentleman of quality, who was going to travell, came to kiss his hand, he cheerfully would give them some good counsel, leading to morall virtue, especially to good conversation; telling them, that If he heard they kept good company abroad, he should reasonably expect, they would return qualified to serve him and their Country well at home; and he was very carefull to keep the youth in his times uncorrupted. This I find in the Mémoires upon James Duke Hamilton, was his advice unto that noble and loyal Lord, William, afterwards, Duke Hamilton, who so well serv'd his Son, and never perfidiously disserv'd him, when in armes against him. Secondly, his forementioned intercepted letters to the Queen at Naisby had this passage in them, where mentioning religion, he said, This is the only thing, wherein we two differ; which even unto a miscreant Jew would have bin proofe enough of this King's sincerity in his religion; and had it not bin providence or inadvertence, surely those, who had in this kind defam'd him, would never themselves have publish'd in print this passage, which thus justified him.

This may be truly said, That he valued the Reformation of his own Church, before any in the world; and was as sensible and as knowing of, and severe against, the deviations of Rome from the primitive Church, as any Gentleman in Christendom; and beyond those errors, no way quarrelsom towards it: for he was willing to give it its due, that it might be brought to be willing to accept, at least to grant, such an union in the Church, as might have brought a free and friendly communion between Dissenters, without the one's totall quitting his errors, or the other's being necessitated to partake therein: and I truly believe this was the utmost both of his and his Archbishop's inclinations; and if I may not, yet both these Martyrs confessions on the scaffold (God avert the prophecy of the last, Venient Romani) surely may convince the world, that they both dyed true Assertors of the Reformation. And the great and learned light of this last age, Grotius, soon discern'd this inclination in him: for in his dedication of his immortal and scarce ever to be parallel'd book, De Jure Belli & Pacis, he recommends it to Lewis XIII, King of France, as the most Royall and Christian design imaginable for his Majestic to become a means to make an union amongst Christians in profession of religion; and therein he tells him, how well-knowing and well-disposed the King of England was thereunto. In a word, had he had as daring and active a courage to obviate danger; as he had a steddy and undaunted in all hazardous rencounters; or had his active courage equall'd his passive, the rebellious and tumultuous humor of those, who were disloyall to him, probably had been quash'd in their first rise: for thro'-out the English story it may be observed, that the souldier-like spirit in the Prince hath bin ever much more fortunate and esteem'd, than the pious: a Prince's awfull reputation being of much more defence to him, than his Regall (nay Legall) edicts.

THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.

Thomas Wentworth, knighted 1611, second baronet 1614, created Viscount Wentworth 1628, Earl of Strafford 1640.

All thinges beinge thus transacted, to conclude the fate of this greate person, he was on the 12. day of May brought from the Tower of London, wher he had bene a prysoner neere six moneths, to the Skaffold on Tower Hill, wher with a composed, undaunted courage, he told the people, he was come thither to satisfy them with his heade, but that he much feared, the reformation which was begunn in bloode, would not proove so fortunate to the kingdom as they exspected, and he wished, and after greate expressyons of his devotion to the Church of Englande, and the Protestant Religion established by Law and professed in that Church, of his loyalty to the Kinge, and affection to the peace and welfare of the Kingdome, with marvellous tranquillity of minde, he deliver'd his Heade to the blocke, wher it was sever'd from his body at a blow; many of the standers by, who had not bene over charitable to him in his life, beinge much affected with the courage and Christianity of his death. Thus fell the greatest subjecte in power (and little inferiour to any in fortune) that was at that tyme in ether of the three Kingdomes; who could well remember the tyme when he ledd those people, who then pursued him to his grave. He was a man of greate partes and extraordinary indowments of nature, not unadorned with some addicion of Arte and learninge, though that agayne was more improoved and illustrated by the other, for he had a readynesse of conception, and sharpnesse of expressyon, which made his learninge thought more, then in truth it was. His first inclinations and addresses to the Courte, were only to establish his Greatnesse in the Country, wher he apprehended some Actes of power from the[1] L'd Savill, who had bene his ryvall alwayes ther, and of late had strenghtened himselfe by beinge made a Privy Counsellour, and Officer at Courte, but his first attempts were so prosperous that he contented not himselfe with beinge secure from his power in the Country, but rested not till he had bereaved him of all power and place in Courte, and so sent him downe a most abject disconsolate old man to his Country, wher he was to have the superintendency over him too, by getting himselfe at that tyme made L'd President of the North. These successes, applyed to a nature too elate and arrogant of it selfe, and a quicker progresse into the greatest imployments and trust, made him more transported with disdayne of other men, and more contemninge the formes of businesse, then happily he would have bene, if he had mett with some interruptions in the beginning, and had passed in a more leasurely gradation to the office of a Statesman. He was no doubte of greate observation, and a piercinge judgement both into thinges and persons, but his too good skill in persons made him judge the worse of thinges, for it was his misfortune to be of a tyme, wherin very few wise men were æqually imployed with him, and scarce any (but the L'd Coventry, whose trust was more confined) whose facultyes and abilityes were æquall to his, so that upon the matter he wholy relyed upon himselfe, and decerninge many defects in most men, he too much neglected what they sayd or did. Of all his passyons his pryde was most prædominant, which a moderate exercise of ill fortune might have corrected and reformed, and which was by the hande of heaven strangely punished, by bringinge his destruction upon him, by two thinges, that he most despised, the people, and S'r Harry Vane; In a worde, the Epitaph which Plutarch recordes, that Silla wrote for himselfe, may not be unfitly applyed to him; That no man did ever passe him, ether in doinge good to his frends, or in doinge mischieve to his enimyes, for his Actes of both kindes were most exemplar and notorious.

The Lord Viscount Wentworth, Lord President of the North, whom the Lord Treasurer Portland had brought into his Majestie's affairs, from his ability and activity had wrought himselfe much into his Majestie's confidence; and about the year 1632 was appointed by the King to be Lord Deputy of Ireland, where the state of affairs was in no very good posture, the revenue of the crown not defraying the standing army there, nor the ordinary expences; and the deportment of the Romanists being there also very insolent, and the Scots plantations in the northern parts of that Realm looking upon themselves, as if they had been a distinct body. So as here was subject matter enough for this great man to work on; and considering his hardines, it may well be supposed, that the difficulties of his employment, being means to shew his abilities, were gratefull to him; for he was every way qualified for busines; his naturall faculties being very strong and pregnant, his understanding, aided by a good phansy, made him quick in discerning the nature of any busines; and thro' a cold brain he became deliberate and of a sound judgement. His memory was great, and he made it greater by confiding in it. His elocution was very fluent, and it was a great part of his talent readily to reply, or freely to harangue upon any subject. And all this was lodged in a sowre and haughty temper; so as it may probably be believed, he expected to have more observance paid to him, than he was willing to pay to others, tho' they were of his own quality; and then he was not like to conciliate the good will of men of the lesser station.

His acquired parts, both in University and Inns-of-Court Learning, as likewise his forreign-travells, made him an eminent man, before he was a conspicuous; so as when he came to shew himselfe first in publick affairs, which was in the House of Commons, he was soon a bell-weather in that flock. As he had these parts, he knew how to set a price on them, if not overvalue them: and he too soon discovered a roughnes in his nature, which a man no more obliged by him, than I was, would have called an injustice; tho' many of his Confidents, (who were my good friends, when I like a little worm, being trod on, would turn and laugh, and under that disguise say as piquant words, as my little wit would help me with) were wont to swear to me, that he endeavoured to be just to all, but was resolv'd to be gracious to none, but to those, whom he thought inwardly affected him: which never bowed me, till his broken fortune, and as I thought, very unjustifiable prosecution, made me one of the fifty six, who gave a negative to that fatall Bill, which cut the thread of his life.

He gave an early specimen of the roughnes of his nature, when in the eager pursuit of the House of Commons after the Duke of Buckingham, he advised or gave a counsel against another, which was afterwards taken up and pursued against himselfe. Thus pressing upon another man's case, he awakened his own fate. For when that House was in consultation, how to frame the particular charge against that great Duke, he advised to make a generall one, and to accuse him of treason, and to let him afterwards get off, as he could; which befell himselfe at last. I beleive he should make no irrational conjecture, who determined, that his very eminent parts to support a Crown, and his very rugged nature to contest disloyalty, or withstand change of government, made his enemies implacable to him. It was a great infirmity in him, that he seem'd to overlooke so many, as he did; since every where, much more in Court, the numerous or lesser sort of attendants can obstruct, create jealousies, spread ill reports, and do harme: for as 'tis impossible, that any power or deportment should satisfy all persons: so there a little friendlines and opennes of carriage begets hope, and lessens envy.

In his person he was of a tall stature, but stooped much in the neck. His countenance was cloudy, whilst he moved, or sat thinking; but when he spake, either seriously or facetiously, he had a lightsom and a very pleasant ayre: and indeed whatever he then did, he performed very gracefully. The greatnes of the envy, that attended him, made many in their prognosticks to bode him an ill end; and there went current a story of the dream of his Father, who being both by his wife, nighest friends, and Physicians, thought to be at the point of his death, fell suddenly into so profound a sleep, and lay quietly so long, that his Wife, uncertain of his condition, drew nigh his bed, to observe, whether she could hear him breath, and gently touching him, he awaked with great disturbance, and told her the reason was, she had interrupted him in a dream, which most passionately he desired to have known the end of. For, said he, I dream'd one appear'd to me, assuring me, that I should have a son, (for 'till then he had none) who should be a very great and eminent man: but—and in this instant thou didst awake me, whereby I am bereaved of the knowledge of the further fortune of the child. This I heard, when this Lord was but in the ascent of his greatnes, and long before his fall: and afterwards conferring with some of his nighest Relations, I found the tradition was not disown'd. Sure I am, that his station was like those turfs of earth or sea-banks, which by the storm swept away, left all the in-land to be drown'd by popular tumult.

THE EARL OF NORTHAMPTON.

In this fight, which was sharpe and shorte, there were killed and taken prysoners of the Parliament party above 200. and more then that number wounded, for the horse charginge amonge ther foote, more were hurte then killed; Eight pieces of ther Cannon and most of ther Ammunition was likewise taken. Of the Earles party were slayne but 25. wherof ther were two Captaynes, some inferiour officers, and the rest common men, but ther were as many hurte, and those of the chiefe officers. They who had all the Ensignes of victory (but ther Generall) thought themselves undone, whilst the other syde who had escaped in the night and made a hard shifte to carry his deade body with them, hardly believed they were loosers,

The truth is, a greater victory had bene an unæquall recompence for a lesse losse. He was a person of greate courage, honour, and fidelity, and not well knowne till his Eveninge, havinge in the ease, and plenty, and luxury of that too happy tyme indulged to himselfe with that licence, which was then thought necessary to greate fortunes, but from the beginninge of these distractions, as if he had bene awakened out of a lethargy, he never proceeded with a lukewarme temper. Before the Standard was sett up, he appeared in Warwickshyre against the L'd Brooke, and as much upon his owne reputation as the justice of the cause (which was not so well then understoode) discountenanced and drove him out of that County, Afterwardes tooke the Ordinance from Banbury Castle, and brought them to the Kinge; assoone as an Army was to be raysed he leavyed with the first upon his owne charge a troope of Horse and a Regiment of foote, and (not like other men, who warily distributed ther Family to both sydes, one Sunn to serve the Kinge, whilst the father, or another sunn engaged as farr for the Parliament) intirely dedicated all his Children to the quarrell, havinge fowre Sunns officers under him, wherof three charged that day in the Fielde; and from the tyme he submitted himselfe to the professyon of a souldyer, no man more punctuall upon commaunde, no man more diligent and vigilant in duty, all distresses he bore like a common man, and all wants and hardnesses as if he had never knowne plenty, or ease, most prodigall of his person to daunger, and would often say, that if he outlived these warres, he was certayne never to have so noble a death, so that it is not to be woundred, if upon such a stroke, the body that felte it, thought it had lost more then a Limbe.

THE EARL OF CARNARVON.

This day fell the Earle of Carnarvon, who after he had charged and rowted a body of the enimyes horse, cominge carelesly backe by some of the scattered troopers, was by one of them who knew him runn through the body with a sworde, of which he dyed within an howre. He was a person with whose greate partes and virtue the world was not enough acquainted. Before the warr, though his education was adorned by travell, and an exacte observation of the manners of more nations then our common travellers use to visitt, for he had after the view of Spayne, France, and most partes of Italy, spent some tyme in Turkey and those Easterne Countryes, he seemed to be wholly delighted with those looser exercises of pleasure, huntinge, hawkinge, and the like, in which the nobility of that tyme too much delighted to excell; After the troubles begann, havinge the commaunde of the first or secounde Regiment of Horse that was raysed for the Kinges service, he wholy gave himselfe up to the office and duty of a Souldyer, noe man more diligently obeyinge, or more dextrously commaundinge, for he was not only of a very keene courage in the exposinge his person, but an excellent discerner and pursuer of advantage upon his enimy, and had a minde and understandinge very present in the article of daunger, which is a rare benefitt in that profession. Those infirmityes and that licence which he had formerly indulged to himselfe, he putt off with severity, when others thought them excusable under the notion of a souldyer. He was a greate lover of justice, and practiced it then most deliberately, when he had power to do wronge, and so stricte in the observation of his worde and promise, as a Commander, that he could not be perswaded to stay in the west, when he founde it not in his power to performe the agreement he had made with Dorchester and Waymoth. If he had lived he would have proved a greate Ornament to that profession, and an excellent Souldyer, and by his death the Kinge founde a sensible weakenesse in his Army.

LORD FALKLAND.

But I must heare take leave a little longer to discontinue this narration, and if the celebratinge the memory of eminent and extraordinary persons, and transmittinge ther greate virtues for the imitation of posterity, be one of the principle endes and dutyes of History, it will not be thought impertinent in this place to remember a losse, which noe tyme will suffer to be forgotten, and no successe or good fortune could repayre; In this unhappy battell was slayne the L'd Viscounte Falkelande, a person of such prodigious partes of learninge and knowledge, of that inimitable sweetenesse and delight in conversation, of so flowinge and obliginge a humanity and goodnesse to mankinde, and of that primitive simplicity, and integrity of life, that if ther were no other brande upon this odious and accursed Civill war, then that single losse, it must be most infamous and execrable to all posterity:

Before this parliament his condition of life was so happy, that it was hardly capable of improovement; before he came to twenty yeeres of Age, he was master of a noble fortune, which descended to him by the gifte of a grandfather, without passinge through his father or mother, who were then both alive, and not well enough contented to finde themselves passed by in the descent: His education for some yeeres had bene in Ireland, wher his father was Lord Deputy, so that when he returned into Englande, to the possessyon of his fortune, he was unintangled with any acquaintance or frends, which usually grow up by the custome of conversation, and therfore was to make a pure election of his company; which he chose by other rules then were prescribed to the younge nobility of that tyme; And it cannot be denyed, though he admitted some few to his frendshipp for the agreablenesse of ther natures, and ther undoubted affection to him, that his familiarity and frendshipp for the most parte was with men of the most eminent and sublime partes, and of untouched reputations in pointe of integrity: and such men had a title to his bosome.

He was a greate cherisher of witt, and fancy, and good partes in any man, and if he founde them clowded with poverty or wante, a most liberall and bountifull Patron towards them, even above his fortune, of which in those administrations he was such a dispenser, as if he had bene trusted with it to such uses, and if ther had bene the least of vice in his expence, he might have bene thought too prodigall: He was constant and pertinatious in whatsoever he resolved to doe, and not to be wearyed by any paynes that were necessary to that end, and therfore havinge once resolved not to see London (which he loved above all places) till he had perfectly learned the greeke tonge, he went to his owne house in the Country, and pursued it with that indefatigable industry, that it will not be believed, in how shorte a tyme he was master of it, and accurately reade all the Greeke Historyans. In this tyme, his house beinge within tenn myles of Oxford, he contracted familiarity and frendshipp with the most polite and accurate men of that University; who founde such an immensenesse of witt, and such a soliddity of judgement in him, so infinite a fancy bounde in by a most logicall ratiocination, such a vast knowledge, that he was not ignorant in any thinge, yet such an excessive humillity as if he had knowne nothinge, that they frequently resorted and dwelt with him, as in a Colledge scituated in a purer ayre, so that his house was a University bounde in a lesser volume, whither they came not so much for repose, as study: and to examyne and refyne those grosser propositions, which lazinesse and consent made currant in vulgar conversation.

Many attempts were made upon him, by the instigation of his mother (who was a Lady of another perswasion in religion, and of a most maskulyne understandinge, allayed with the passyon and infirmityes of her owne sex) to perverte him in his piety to the Church of Englande, and to reconcile him to that of Rome, which they prosequted with the more confidence, because he declined no opportunity or occasyon of conference with those of that religion, whether Priests or Laiques, havinge diligently studyed the controversyes, and exactly reade all or the choycest of the Greeke and Latine fathers, and havinge a memory so stupendious, that he remembred on all occasyons whatsoever he reade: And he was so greate an enimy to that passyon and uncharitablenesse which he saw produced by difference of opinion in matters of religion, that in all those disputations with Priests and others of the Roman Church, he affected to manifest all possible civillity to ther persons, and estimation of ther partes, which made them retayne still some hope of his reduction, even when they had given over offeringe farther reasons to him to that purpose: But this charity towards them was much lesned, and any correspondence with them quyte declined, when by sinister Artes they had corrupted his two younger brothers, beinge both children, and stolen them from his house, and transported them beyonde seas, and perverted his sisters, upon which occasyon he writt two large discources against the principle positions of that Religion, with that sharpnesse of Style, and full waight of reason, that the Church is deprived of greate jewells, in the concealment of them, and that they are not published to the world.

He was superiour to all those passyons and affections which attende vulgar mindes, and was guilty of no other ambition, then of knowledge, and to be reputed a lover of all good men, and that made him to much a contemner of those Artes which must be indulged to in the transaction of humane affayrs. In the last shorte Parliament he was a Burgesse in the house of Commons, and from the debates which were then managed with all imaginable gravity and sobriety, he contracted such a reverence to Parliaments that he thought it really impossible, that they could ever produce mischieve or inconvenience to the kingdome, or that the kingdome could be tolerably happy in the intermissyon of them; and from the unhappy, and unseasonable dissolution of that convention, he harboured it may be some jealousy and præjudice of the Courte, towards which he was not before immoderately inclined, his father havinge wasted a full fortune ther, in those offices and imployments, by which other men use to obtayne a greater. He was chosen agayne this Parliament to serve in the same place, and in the beginninge of it, declared himselfe very sharply and sevearely against those exorbitances which had bene most grievous to the State; for he was so rigidd an observer of established Lawes and rules, that he could not indure the least breach or deviation from them, and thought no mischieve so intollerable, as the præsumption of ministers of State, to breake positive rules for reason of State, or judges to transgresse knowne Lawes, upon the title of conveniency or necessity, which made him so seveare against the Earle of Straforde, and the L'd Finch, contrary to his naturall gentlenesse and temper; insomuch as they who did not know his composition to be as free from revenge as it was from pryde, thought that the sharpnesse to the former might proceede from the memory of some unkindnesses, not without a mixture of injustice from him towards his father; but without doubte he was free from those temptations, and was only misledd by the authority of those, who he believed understoode the Lawes perfectly, of which himselfe was utterly ignorant, and if the assumption, which was scarce controverted, had bene true, that an endeavour to overthrow the fundamentall Lawes of the kingdome had beene treason, a stricte understandinge might make reasonable conclusions to satisfy his owne judgement, from the exorbitant partes of ther severall charges.

The greate opinion he had of the uprightnesse and integrity of those persons, who appeared most active, especially of Mr. Hambden, kept him longer from suspectinge any designe against the peace of the kingdome, and though he differed commonly from them in conclusyons, he believed longe ther purposes were honest; When he grew better informed what was Law, and discerned a desyre to controle that Law, by a vote of one, or both houses, no man more opposed those attempts, and gave the adverse party more trouble, by reason and argumentation, insomuch as he was by degrees looked upon as an Advocate for the Courte, to which he contributed so little, that he declined those addresses, and even those invitations, which he was oblieged almost by civillity to entertayne: And he was so jealous of the least imagination that he should inclyne to præferment, that he affected even a morosity to the Courte, and to the Courtyers, and left nothinge undone which might prevent and deverte the Kings or Queenes favour towards him, but the deservinge it: for when the Kinge sent for him once or twice, to speake with him, and to give him thankes for his excellent comportment in those Councells, which his Majesty gratiously tearmed doinge him service, his answers were more negligent and lesse satisfactory than might be exspected, as if he cared only that his Actions should be just, not that they should be acceptable, and that his Majesty should thinke that they proceeded only from the impulsyon of conscience, without any sympathy in his affections, which from a Stoicall and sullen nature might not have bene misinterpreted, yet from a person of so perfecte a habitt of generous and obsequious complyance with all good men, might very well have bene interpreted by the Kinge as more then an ordinary aversenesse to his service, so that he tooke more paynes, and more forced his nature to actions unagreable and unpleasant to it, that he might not be thought to inclyne to the Courte, then any man hath done to procure an office ther; and if any thinge but not doinge his duty could have kept him from receavinge a testimony of the Kings grace and trust at that tyme, he had not bene called to his Councell: not that he was in truth averse to the Courte, or from receavinge publique imployment: for he had a greate devotion to the Kings person, and had before used some small endeavour to be recommended to him for a forrainge negotiation, and had once a desyre to be sent Ambassadour into France, but he abhorred an imagination or doubte should sinke into the thoughts of any man, that in the discharge of his trust and duty in Parliament he had any byas to the Court, or that the Kinge himselfe should apprehende that he looked for a rewarde for beinge honest.

For this reason when he heard it first whispered that the Kinge had a purpose to make him a Counsellour, for which in the beginninge ther was no other grounde, but because he was knowne sufficient, haud semper errat fama, aliquando et elegit, he resolved to declyne it, and at last suffred himselfe only to be overruled by the advice, and persuasions of his frends to submitt to it; afterwards when he founde that the Kinge intended to make him his Secretary of State, he was positive to refuse it, declaringe to his frends that he was most unfitt for it, and that he must ether doe that which would be greate disquyet to his owne nature, or leave that undone which was most necessary to be done by one that was honored with that place, for that the most just and honest men did every day that, which he could not give himselfe leave to doe. And indeede he was so exacte and stricte an observer of justice and truth ad amussim, that he believed those necessary condescensions and applications to the weaknesse of other men, and those artes and insinuations which are necessary for discoveryes and prevention of ill, would be in him a declension from the rule which he acknowledged fitt and absolutely necessary to be practiced in those imploiments, and was so precise in the practique principles he prescribed to himselfe (to all others he was as indulgent) as if he had lived in republica Platonis non in fæce Romuli.

Two reasons prævayled with him to receave the seales, and but for those he had resolutely avoyded them, the first, the consideration that it might bringe some blemish upon the Kings affayres, and that men would have believed that he had refused so greate an honour and trust, because he must have beene with it oblieged to doe somewhat elce, not justifiable; and this he made matter of conscience, since he knew the Kinge made choyce of him before other men, especially because he thought him more honest then other men; the other was, least he might be thought to avoyde it, out of feare to doe an ungratious thinge to the house of Commons, who were sorely troubled at the displacinge S'r Harry Vane, whome they looked upon as remooved for havinge done them those offices they stoode in neede of, and the disdayne of so popular an incumbrance wrought upon him next to the other, for as he had a full appetite of fame by just and generous Actions, so he had an æquall contempt of it by any servile expedients, and he so much the more consented to and approved the justice upon S'r H. Vane, in his owne private judgement, by how much he surpassed most men in the religious observation of a trust, the violation wherof he would not admitt of any excuse for.

For these reasons he submitted to the Kings commaunde, and became his Secretary, with as humble and devoute an acknowledgement of the greatenesse of the obligation, as could be expressed, and as true a sense of it in his hearte; yet two thinges he could never bringe himselfe to whilst he continued in that office, (that was to his death) for which he was contented to be reproched, as for omissyons in a most necessary parte of his place; the one imployinge of Spyes, or givinge any countenance or entertaynement to them, I doe not meane such emissaryes as with daunger will venture to view the enimyes Campe, and bringe intelligence of ther number or quartringe, or such generalls as such an observation can comprehende, but those who by communication of guilte, or dissimulation of manners, wounde themselves into such trust and secretts, as inabled them to make discoveryes for the benefitt of the State; the other, the liberty of openinge letters, upon a suspicion that they might contayne matter of daungerous consequence; for the first, he would say, such instruments must be voyd of all ingenuity and common honesty, before they could be of use, and afterwards they could never be fitt to be credited, and that no single preservation could be worth so generall a wounde and corruption of humane society, as the cherishinge such persons would carry with it: The last he thought such a violation of the Law of nature, that no qualification by office, could justify a single person in the trespasse, and though he was convinced by the necessity and iniquity of the tyme, that those advantages of information were not to be declined, and were necessarily to be practiced, he founde meanes to shifte it from himselfe, when he confessed he needed excuse and pardon for the omissyon, so unwillinge he was to resigne any thinge in his nature, to an obligation in his office. In all other particulars, he filled his place plentifully, beinge sufficiently versed in languages, to understande any that is used in businesse, and to make himselfe agayne understoode: To speake of his integrity, and his high disdayne of any bayte that might seeme to looke towards corruption, in tanto viro, injuria virtutum fuerit.

Some sharpe expressions he used against the Arch-Bishopp of Canterbury, and his concurringe in the first Bill to take away the Votes of Bishopps in the house of Peeres, gave occasyon to some to believe, and opportunity to others to conclude and publish that he was no frende to the Church, and the established goverment of it, and troubled his very frends much, who were more confident of the contrary, then præpared to answer the allegations. The truth is, he had unhappily contracted some præjudice to the Arch-Bishopp, and havinge only knowne him enough, to observe his passyon, when it may be multiplicity of businesse or other indisposition had possessed him, did wish him lesse intangled and ingaged in the businesse of the Courte or State, though, I speake it knowingly, he had a singular estimation and reverence of his greate learninge and confessed integrity, and really thought his lettinge himselfe to those expressyons which implyed a disesteeme of him, or at least an acknowledgement of his infirmityes, would inable him to shelter him from parte of the storme he saw raysed for his destruction, which he abominated with his soule. The givinge his consent to the first Bill for the displacinge the Bishopps, did proceede from two groundes, the first, his not understandinge the originall of ther right and suffrage ther, the other, an opinion that the combination against the whole goverment of the Church by Bishopps, was so violent and furious, that a lesse composition then the dispencinge with ther intermedlinge in sæcular affayres would not præserve the Order, and he was perswaded to this, by the profession of many persons of Honour, who declared they did desyre the one, and would then not presse the other, which in that particular misledd many men; but when his observation and experience made him discerne more of ther intencions then he before suspected, with greate frankenesse he opposed the secound Bill that was præferred for that purpose; and had without scruple the order it selfe in perfecte reverence, and thought too greate encouragement could not possibly be given to learninge, nor too greate rewardes to learned men, and was never in the least degree swayed or moved by the objections which were made against that goverment, holdinge them most ridiculous, or affected to the other which those men fancyed to themselves.

He had a courage of the most cleere and keene temper, and soe farr from feare, that he was not without appetite of daunger, and therfore upon any occasyon of action he alwayes engaged his person in those troopes which he thought by the forwardnesse of the Commanders to be most like to be farthest engaged, and in all such encounters he had aboute him a strange cheerefulnesse and companiablenesse, without at all affectinge the execution that was then principally to be attended, in which he tooke no delight, but tooke paynes to prevent it, wher it was not by resistance necessary, insomuch that at Edgehill, when the Enimy was rowted, he was like to have incurred greate perill by interposinge to save those who had throwne away ther armes, and against whome it may be others were more fierce for ther havinge throwne them away, insomuch as a man might thinke, he came into the Feild only out of curiosity to see the face of daunger, and charity to prævent the sheddinge of bloode; yet in his naturall inclination he acknowledged he was addicted to the professyon of a Souldyer, and shortly after he came to his fortune, and before he came to Age, he went into the Low Countryes with a resolution of procuringe commaunde, and to give himselfe up to it, from which he was converted by the compleate inactivity of that Summer; and so he returned into Englande, and shortly after entred upon that vehement course of study we mencioned before, till the first Alarum from the North, and then agayne he made ready for the feild, and though he receaved some repulse in the commande of a troope of Horse, of which he had a promise, he went a volunteere with the Earle of Essex.

From the entrance into this unnaturall warr, his naturall cheerefulnesse and vivacity grew clowded, and a kinde of sadnesse and dejection of spiritt stole upon him, which he had never bene used to, yet, beinge one of those who believed that one battell would end all differences, and that ther would be so greate a victory on one syde, that the other would be compelled to submitt to any conditions from the victor (which supposition and conclusion generally sunke into the mindes of most men, prævented the lookinge after many advantages which might then have bene layd hold of) he resisted those indispositions, et in luctu bellum inter remedia erat: but after the Kings returne from Brayneforde, and the furious resolution of the two houses, not to admitt any treaty for peace, those indispositions which had before touched him, grew into a perfecte habitt of uncheerefulnesse, and he who had bene so exactly unreserved and affable to all men, that his face and countenance was alwayes present and vacant to his company, and held any clowdinesse, and lesse pleasantnesse of the visage, a kinde of rudenesse or incivillity, became on a suddayne lesse communicable, and thence very sadd, pale, and exceedingly affected with the spleene. In his clothes and habitt, which he had intended before alwayes with more neatenesse, and industry, and exspence, then is usuall to so greate a minde, he was not now only incurious, but too negligent, and in his reception of suitors and the necessary or casuall addresses to his place so quicke, and sharpe, and seveare, that ther wanted not some men (who were strangers to his nature and disposition) who believed him prowde and imperious, from which no mortall man was ever more free. The truth is, as he was of a most incomparable gentlenesse, application, and even a demisnesse and submissyon to good, and worthy, and intire men, so he was naturally (which could not but be more evident in his place which objected him to another conversation, and intermixture, then his owne election had done) adversus males injucundus, and was so ill a dissembler of his dislike, and disinclination to ill men, that it was not possible for such not to discerne it; ther was once in the house of Commons such a declared acceptation of the good service an eminent member had done to them, and as they sayd, to the whole kingdome, that it was mooved, he beinge present, that the Speaker might in the name of the whole house give him thankes, and then that every member might as a testimony of his particular acknowledgement stirr or moove his Hatt towards him, the which (though not ordred) when very many did, the L'd of Falkelande (who believed the service itselfe not to be of that moment, and that an Honourable and generous person could not have stooped to it, for any recompence) insteede of moovinge his Hatt, stretched both his Armes out, and clasped his hands togither upon the Crowne of his Hatt, and held it close downe to his heade, that all men might see how odious that flattery was to him, and the very approbation of the person, though at that tyme most popular.

When ther was any overture or hope of peace, he would be more erecte, and vigorous, and exceedingly sollicitous to presse any thinge which he thought might promote it, and sittinge amongst his frends often after a deepe silence, and frequent sighes, would with a shrill and sadd Accent ingeminate the word, Peace, Peace, and would passyonately professe that the very Agony of the Warr, and the view of the calamityes, and desolation the kingdome did and must indure, tooke his sleepe from him, and would shortly breake his hearte; This made some thinke, or prætende to thinke, that he was so much enamour'd on peace, that he would have bene gladd the Kinge should have bought it at any pryce, which was a most unreasonable calumny, as if a man, that was himselfe the most punctuall and præcise, in every circumstance that might reflecte upon conscience or Honour, could have wished the Kinge to have committed a trespasse against ether; and yet this senselesse skandall made some impression upon him, or at least he used it for an excuse of the daringnesse of his spiritt; for at the leaguer before Gloster, when his frends passionately reprehended him for exposinge his person, unnecessarily to daunger, (as he delighted to visitt the trenches, and neerest approches, and to discover what the enimy did) as beinge so much besyde the duty of his place, that it might be understoode against it, he would say, merrily, that his office could not take away the priviledges of his Age, and that a Secretary in warr might be present at the greatest secrett of daunger, but withall alleadged seriously that it concerned him to be more active in enterpryzes of hazarde, then other men, that all might see that his impatiency for peace, proceeded not from pusillanimity, or feare to adventure his owne person. In the morninge before the battell, as alwayes upon Action, he was very cheerefull, and putt himselfe into the first ranke of the L'd Byrons Regiment, who was then advancinge upon the enimy, who had lyned the Hedges on both sydes with Musqueteers, from whence he was shott with a Musquett on the lower parte of the belly, and in the instant fallinge from his horse, his body was not founde till the next morninge: till when ther was some hope he might have bene a prysoner, though his neerest frends who knew his temper, receaved small comforte from that imagination; thus fell, that incomparable younge man, in the fowre and thirteeth yeere of his Age, havinge so much dispatched the businesse of life, that the oldest rarely attayne to that immense knowledge, and the youngest enter not into the world with more innocence, and whosoever leads such a life, neede not care upon how shorte warninge it be taken from him.

With S'r Lucius Cary he had a most intire frendshipp without reserve from his age of twenty yeeres to the howre of his death, neere 20. yeeres after, upon which ther will be occasion to inlarge, when wee come to speake of that tyme, and often before, and therfore wee shall say no more of him in this place, then to shew his condition and qualifications, which were the first ingredients into that frendshipp, which was afterwards cultivated and improoved by a constant conversation and familiarity, and by many accidents which contributed therunto. He had the advantage of a noble extraction, and of beinge borne his fathers eldest Sunn, when ther was a greater fortune in prospecte to be inherited (besydes what he might reasonably exspecte by his Mother) then came afterwards to his possessyon: His education was æquall to his birth, at least in the care, if not in the Climate, for his father beinge Deputy of Irelande, before he was of Age fitt to be sent abroade, his breedinge was in the Courte and in the University of Dublin, but under the care, vigilance and derection of such governours and Tutors, that he learned all those exercizes and languages better then most men do in more celebrated places, insomuch as when he came into Englande, which was when he was aboute the age of 18 yeeres, he was not only master of the Latine tounge, and had reade all the Poetts and other of the best Authors with notable judgement for that age, but he understoode, and spake, and writt French, as if he had spente many yeeres in France. He had another advantage, which was a greate ornament to the rest, that was a good a plentifull estate, of which he had the early possession: His Mother was the sole daughter an[d] Heyre of the L'd Chief Barron Tanfeilde, who havinge given a fayre portion with his daughter in marriage, had kept himselfe free to dispose of his lande and his other estate, in such manner as he should thinke fitt: and he setled it in such manner upon his grandsunn S'r Lucius Cary, without takinge notice of his father or mother, that upon his Grandmothers death, which fell out aboute the tyme that he was 19. yeeres of age, all the lande with his very good houses, very well furnished (worth above 2000_l._ per annum) in a most pleasant country, and the two most pleasant places in that country, with a very plentifull personall estate, fell into his hands and possession, and to his intire disposall.

With these advantages, he had one greate disadvantage, which in the first entrance into the worlde, is attended with to much præjudice: in his person and presence which was in no degree attractive, or promisinge; his stature was low and smaller then most mens, his motion not gracefull, and his aspecte, so farr from invitinge, that it had somewhat in it of simplicity, and his voyce the worst of the three, and so untuned, that insteede of reconcilinge, it offended the eare, that no body would have exspected musique from that tounge, and sure no man was lesse behol[den] to nature, for its recommendation into the world. But then no man sooner or more disappointed this generall and customary præjudice; that little person and small stature was quickly founde to contayne a greate hearte, a courage so keene, and a nature so fearelesse, that no composition of the strongest limbes and most harmonious and proportioned presence and strenght, ever more disposed any man to the greatest enterpryze, it beinge his greatest weakenesse to be to solicitous for such adventures: and that untuned tounge and voyce easily discover'd itselfe to be supplyed and governed by a minde and understandinge so excellent, that the witt and waight of all he sayde, carryed another kinde of lustre and admiration in it, and even another kinde of acceptation from the persons present, then any ornament of delivery could reasonably promise itselfe, or is usually attended with: And his disposition and nature was so gentle and oblieginge, so much delighted in courtesy, kindnesse, and generosity, that all mankinde could not but admire and love him. In a shorte tyme after he had possession of the estate his grandfather had left him, and before he was of age, he committed a faulte against his father, in marryinge a younge Lady whome he passionately loved, without any considerable portion, which exceedingly offended him, and disappointed all his reasonable hopes and exspectation, of redeeminge and repayringe his owne broken fortune and desperate hopes in courte, by some advantagious marriage of his Sunn, aboute which he had then some probable treaty: S'r Lucius Cary was very conscious to himselfe of his offence and transgression, and the consequence of it, which though he could not repent, havinge marryed a lady of a most extraordinary witt and judgement, and of the most signall virtue and exemplary life, that the age produced, and who brought him many hopefull children, in which he tooke greate delight, yett he confessed it with the most sinceare and dutifull applications to his Father for his pardon, that could be made, and in order to the præjudice he had brought upon his fortune by bringinge no portion to him, he offred to repayre it by resigninge his whole estate to his disposall, and to rely wholy upon his kindnesse for his owne maintenance and supporte, and to that purpose he had caused convayances to be drawne by councell, which he brought ready ingrossed to his father, and was willinge to seale and execute them, that they might be valid: But his fathers passyon and indignation so farr transported him (though he was a gentleman of excellent parts) that he refused any reconciliation and rejected all the offers which were made of the estate, so that his Sunn remayned still in the possession of his estate against his will, of which he founde greate reason afterwards to rejoyce, but he was for the present so much afflicted with his fathers displeasure, that he transported himselfe and his wife into Hollande, resolvinge to buy some military commaunde, and to spende the remainder of his life in that profession, but beinge disappointed in the treaty he exspected, and findinge no opportunity to accommodate himselfe with such a commaunde, he returned agayne into Englande, resolvinge to retyre to a country life, and to his bookes, that since he was not like to improove himselfe in armes, he might advance in letters.

In this resolution he was so seveare (as he was alwayes naturally very intent upon what he was inclined to) that he declared he would not see London in many yeeres (which was the place he loved of all the world) and that in his studyes, he would first apply himselfe to the Greeke, and pursue it without intermission, till he should attayne to the full understandinge of that tounge, and it is hardly to be credited, what industry he used, and what successe attended that industry, for though his fathers death, by an unhappy accident, made his repayre to London absolutely necessary, in fewer yeeres then he had proposed for his absence, yett he had first made himselfe master of the Greeke tounge (in the Latine he was very well versed before) and had reade not only all the Greeke Historians, but Homer likewise and such of the Poetts, as were worthy to be perused: Though his fathers death brought no other convenience to him, but a title to redeeme an estate, morgaged for as much as it was worth, and for which he was compelled to sell a fyner seate of his owne, yett it imposed a burthen upon him of the title of a Viscount, and an increase of exspence, in which he was not in his nature to provident or restrayn'd, havinge naturally such a generosity and bounty in him, that he seemed to have his estate in trust, for all worthy persons who stoode in wante of supplyes and encouragement, as Ben. Johnson and[1] many others of that tyme, whose fortunes requyred, and whose spiritts made them superiour to ordinary obligations; which yett they were contented to receave from him, because his bountyes were so generously distributed, and so much without vanity and ostentation, that except from those few persons from whome he sometimes receaved the characters of fitt objectes for his benefitts, or whome he intrusted for the more secrett derivinge it to them, he did all he could that the persons themselves who receaved them, should not know from what fountayne they flow'd; and when that could not be concealed, he sustayned any acknowledgement from the persons oblieged, with so much trouble and bashfulnesse, that they might well perceave that he was even ashamed of the little he had given, and to receave so large a recompence for it.

As soone as he had finished all those transactions, which the death of his father had made necessary to be done, he retyred agayne to his country life, and to his seveare cource of study, which was very delightfull to him, as soone as he was ingaged in it, but he was wont to say, that he never founde reluctancy in any thinge he resolved to do, but in his quittinge London, and departinge from the conversation of those he injoyed ther, which was in some degree præserved and continued by frequent letters, and often visitts, which were made by his frends from thence, whilst he continued wedded to the country, and which were so gratefull to him, that duringe ther stay with him, he looked upon no booke, except ther very conversation made an appeale to some booke, and truly his whole conversation was one continued convivium philosophicum or convivium theologicum, inlivened and refreshed with all the facetiousnesse of witt and good humour, and pleasantnesse of discource, which made the gravity of the argument itselfe (whatever it was) very delectable. His house wher he usually resyded (Tew or Burforde in Oxfordshyre) beinge within tenn or 12 myles of the University, looked like the University itselfe, by the company that was alwayes founde there. Ther were D'r Sheldon, D'r Morly, D'r Hammon, D'r Earles, M'r Chillingworth, and indeede all men of eminent partes and facultyes in Oxforde, besydes those who resorted thither from London, who all founde ther lodgings ther as ready as in ther Colledges, nor did the L'd of the house know of ther comminge or goinge, nor who were in his house, till he came to dinner or supper, wher all still mett, otherwise ther was no troublesome ceremony or constrainte to forbidd men to come to the house, or to make them weary of stayinge ther; so that many came thither to study in a better ayre, findinge all the bookes they could desyre in his library, and all the persons togither, whose company they could wish, and not finde in any other society. Heare M'r Chillingworth wrote and formed and modelled his excellent booke against the learned Jesuitt, M'r Nott, after frequent debates, upon the most important particulars, in many of which he suffred himselfe to be overruled by the judgement of his frends, though in others he still adhered, to his owne fancy, which was scepticall enough even in the highest pointes. In this happy and delightfull conversation and restrainte he remayned in the country many yeeres, and untill he had made so prodigious a progresse in learninge, that ther were very few classique authors in the greeke or Latine tounge, that he had not reade with great exactnesse; He had reade all the greeke and Latine fathers, all the most allowed and authentique Ecclesiasticall writers, and all the Councells, with wounderfull care and observation, for in religion he thought to carefull and to curious an enquiry could not be made, amongst those whose purity was not questioned, and whose authority was constantly and confidently urged, by men who were furthest from beinge of on minde amongst themselves, and for the mutuall supporte of ther severall opinions, in which they most contradicted each other; and in all those contraversyes, he had so dispassioned a consideration, such a candor in his nature, and so profounde a charity in his conscience, that in those pointes in which he was in his owne judgement most cleere, he never thought the worse, or in any degree declined the familiarity of those who were of another minde, which without question is an excellent temper for the propagation and advancement of Christianity: With these greate advantages of industry, he had a memory retentive of all that he had ever reade, and an understandinge and judgement to apply it, seasonably and appositely, with the most dexterity and addresse, and the least pedantry and affectation, that ever man who knew so much, was possessed with, of what quality soever; it is not a triviall evidence, of his learninge, his witt, and his candour, that may be found in that discource of his, against the Infallabi[li]ty of the Church of Rome, published since his death, and from a copy under his owne hande, though not præpared and digested by him for the presse, and to which he would have given some castigations.

But all his parts, abilityes, and facultyes, by arte an[d] industry, were not to be valewed or mentioned in comparison of his most accomplished minde and manners; his gentlenesse and affability was so transcendant and oblieginge, that it drew reverence and some kinde of complyance from the roughest, and most unpolish'd and stubborne constitutions, and made them of another temper in debate in his presence, then they were in other places. He was in his nature so seueare a lover of justice, and so præcise a lover of truth, that he was superiour to all possible temptations for the violation of ether, indeede so rigid an exacter of perfection in all those things which seemed but to border upon ether of them, and by the common practice of men, were not thought to border upon ether, that many who knew him very well, and loved and admired his virtue (as all who did know him must love and admire it) did believe that he was of a temper and composition fitter to lyve in Republica Platonis then in fæce Romuli: but this rigidnesse was only exercised towards himselfe, towards his frends infirmityes no man was more indulgent: In his conversation, which was the most cheerefull and pleasant, that can be imagined, though he was younge (for all I have yett spoken of him, doth not exceede his age of 25. or 26. yeeres, what progresse he made afterwards will be mentioned in its proper season in this discource) and of greate gayty in his humour, with a flowinge delightfulnesse of language, he had so chast a tounge and eare, that ther was never knowne a prophane and loose worde to fall from him, nor in truth in his company, the integrity and cleanelinesse of the witt of that tyme, not exercisinge itselfe in that licence, before persons for whome they had any esteeme.

SIDNEY GODOLPHIN.

Sydney Godolphin, was a younger brother of Godolphin, but by the provision left by his father, and by the death of a younger brother, liberally supplyed for a very good education, and for a cheerefull subsistance in any cource of life he proposed to himselfe; Ther was never so great a minde and spirit contayned in so little roome, so large an understandinge and so unrestrayned a fancy in so very small a body, so that the L'd Falkelande used to say merrily, that he thought it was a greate ingredient into his frendshipp for M'r Godolphin, that he was pleased to be founde in his company, wher he was the properer man: and it may be the very remarkablenesse of his little person made the sharpnesse of his witt and the composed quicknesse of his judgement and understandinge, the more notable.[1] He had spent some yeeres in France, and the low countryes, and accompanyed the Earle of Leicester, in his Ambassage into Denmarke, before he resolved to be quyett, and attende some promotion in the Courte, wher his excellent disposition and manners, and extraordinary qualifications, made him very aceptable: Though every body loved his company very well, yett he loved very much to be alone, beinge in his constitution inclined somewhat to melancholique, and to retyrement amongst his bookes, and was so farr from beinge active, that he was contented to be reproched by his frendes with lazynesse, and was of so nice and tender a composition, that a little rayne or winde would disorder him, and deverte him from any shorte journy he had most willingly proposed to himselfe: insomuch as when he ridd abroade with those in whose company he most delighted, if the winde chanced to be in his face, he would (after a little pleasant murmuringe) suddaynely turne his horse, and goe home: yett the civill warr no sooner begann, (the first approches towards which he discovered as soone as any man, by the proceedings in Parliament, wher he was a member, and opposed with greate indignation) then he putt himselfe into the first troopes which were raysed in the West, for the Kinge, and bore the uneasinesse and fatigue of winter marches, with an exemplar courage and alacrity, untill by to brave a pursuite of the enimy, into an obscure village in Devonshyre, he was shutt with a musquett, with which (without sayinge any worde more, the[n] oh god I am hurte) he fell deade from his horse, to the excessive griefe of his frends, who were all that knew him, and the irreparable damage of the publique.

WILLIAM LAUD.

Born 1573. President of St. John's College Oxford 1611. Bishop of St. David's 1621, of Bath and Wells 1626, and of London 1628. Chancellor of the University of Oxford 1629. Archbishop of Canterbury 1633. Beheaded 1645.

It was within one weeke after the Kings returne from Scotlande that Abbott dyed at his house at Lambeth, and the Kinge tooke very little tyme to consider who should be his successour, but the very next tyme the Bishopp of London (who was longer upon his way home, then the Kinge had bene) came to him, his Majesty entertayned him very cheerefully, with this compellation, My L'ds Grace of Canterbury you are very wellcome, and gave order the same day for the dispatch of all the necessary formes for the translation, so that within a moneth, or therabouts, after the death of the other Arch-Bishopp, he was compleately invested in that high dignity, and setled in his Pallace at Lambeth: This Greate Prelate had bene before in greate favour with the Duke of Buckingham, whose greate confident he was, and by him recommended to the Kinge, as fittest to be trusted in the conferringe all Ecclesiasticall præferments, when he was but Bishopp of S't Davids, or newly præferred to Bath and Wells, and from that tyme he intirely governed that Province without a ryvall, so that his promotion to Canterbury was longe foreseene and exspected, nor was it attended with any encrease of envy, or dislike.

He was a man of greate parts and very exemplar virtues, allayed and discredited by some unpopular[1] naturall infirmityes, the greatest of which was (besydes a hasty sharpe way of exspressinge himselfe) that he believed innocence of hearte, and integrity of manners, was a guarde stronge enough to secure any man, in his voyage through this worlde, in what company soever he travelled, and through what wayes soever he was to passe, and sure never any man was better supplyed with that provisyon. He was borne of honest parents, who were well able to provyde for his education, in the schooles of learninge, from whence they sent him to St. Johns Colledge in Oxforde, the worst indowed at that tyme, of any in that famous university; from a scholar he became a fellow, and then the President of that Colledge, after he had receaved all the graces and degrees, the Proctorshipp and the Doctorshipp, could be obtained ther: He was alwayes maligned and persequted by those who were of the Calvinian faction, which was then very pouerfull, and who accordinge to ther usefull maxime and practice, call every man they do not love, Papist, and under this senselesse appellation they created him many troubles and vexations, and so farr suppressed him, that though he was the Kings Chaplyne, and taken notice of for an excellent preacher, and a scholer of the most sublime parts, he had not any præferment to invite him to leave his poore Colledge, which only gave him breade, till the vigour of his age was passed; and when he was promoted by Kinge James, it was but to a poore Bishopricke in Wales, which was not so good a supporte for a Bishopp as his Colledge was for a pri[v]ate scholler, though a Doctor. Parliaments in that tyme were frequent, and grew very busy, and the party under which he had suffer'd a continuall perseqution appeared very powerfull and full of designe, and they who had the courage to oppose them, begann to be taken notice of with approbation and countenance, and under this style he came to be first cherished by the Duke of Buckingham, after he had made some exsperiments of the temper and spiritt of the other people, nothinge to his satisfaction: from this tyme he prospered at the rate of his owne wishes, and beinge transplanted out of his cold barren Diocesse of S't Davids, into a warmer climate, he was left, as was sayd before, by that omnipotent Favorite, in that greate trust with the Kinge, who was sufficiently indisposed towards the persons or the principles of M'r Calvins disciples.

When he came into greate authority, it may be he retayned to keene a memory of those who had so unjustly and uncharitably persequted him before, and I doubte was so farr transported with the same passyons he had reason to complayne of in his ad[v]ersaryes, that, as they accused him of Popery, because he had some doctrinall opinions, which they liked not, though they were nothinge allyed to Popery, so he intertayned to much præjudice to some persons, as if they were enimyes to the disciplyne of the Church, because they concurred with Calvin in some doctrinall points, when they abhorred his disciplyne, and reverenced the goverment of the Church, and prayed for the peace of it, with as much zeale and fervency, as any in the kingdome, as they made manifest in ther lives, and in ther sufferings with it and for it. He had, from his first entrance into the worlde without any disguise or dissimulation declared his owne opinion of that Classis of men, and as soone as it was in his power, he did all he could to hinder the growth and encrease of that faction, and to restrayne those who were inclined to it, from doinge the mischieue they desyred to do: But his power at Courte could not enough qualify him, to goe through with that difficulte reformation, whilst he had a superiour in the Church, who havinge the raynes in his hande, could slacken them accordinge to his owne humour and indiscretion, and was thought to be the more remisse to irritate his cholirique disposition, but when he had now the Primacy in his owne hande, the Kinge beinge inspired with the same zeale, he thought he should be to blame, and have much to answer, if he did not make hast to apply remedyes, to those diseases, which he saw would grow apace….

The Arch-Bishopp had all his life eminently opposed Calvins doctryne in those contraversyes, before the name of Arminius was taken notice of or his opinions hearde of; and therupon for wante of another name they had called him a Papiste, which nobody believed him to be, and he had more manifested the contrary in his disputations and writings, then most men had done: and it may be the other founde the more seveare and rigourous usage from him, for ther propagatinge that calumny against him. He was a man of greate courage and resolution, and beinge most assured within himselfe that he proposed no end in all his actions or designes, then what was pyous and just (as sure no man had ever a hearte more intire, to the Kinge, the Church, or his country) he never studyed the best wayes to those ends; he thought it may be, that any arte or industry that way, would discreditt, at least make the integrity of the end suspected: let the cause be what it will, he did courte persons to little, nor cared to make his designes and purposes appeare as candid as they were, by shewinge them in any other dresse, then ther owne naturall beauty and roughnesse: and did not consider enough what men sayd, or were like to say of him. If the faultes and vices were fitt to be looked into and discover'd, let the persons be who they would that were guilty of them, they were sure to finde no connivence of favour from him. He intended the disciplyne of the Church should be felte, as well as spoken of, and that it should be applyed to the greatest and most splendid transgressors, as well as to the punishment of smaller offences, and meaner offenders; and therupon called for, or cherished the discovery of those who were not carefull to cover ther owne iniquitycs, thinkinge they were above the reach of other mens, or ther power, or will to chastice: Persons of honour and great quality, of the Courte, and of the Country, were every day cited into the High Commissyon Courte, upon the fame of ther incontinence, or other skandall in ther lyves; and were ther prosequted to ther shame and punishment, and as the shame, (which they called an insolent tryumph upon ther degree and quality, and levellinge them with the common people) was never forgotten, but watched for revenge, so the Fynes imposed ther were the more questioned and repyned against, because they wer assigned to the rebuildinge and repayringe St. Pauls Church, and thought therfore to be the more sevearely imposed, and the lesse compassionately reduced and excused, which likewise made the jurisdiction and rigour of the Starrchamber more felte and murmured against, which sharpened many mens humours against the Bishopps, before they had any ill intention toward the Church.

Amongst his humane frailties, choler and passion most discovered it self. In the Star-Chamber (where if the crime not extraordinary, it was fine enough for one to be sued in so chargable a Court) He was observed always to concur with the severest side, and to infuse more vinegar then oyle into all his censures, and also was much blamed for his severity to his Predecessor easing him against his will, and before his time, of his jurisdiction.

But he is most accused for over-medling in State-matters, more then was fitting, say many, then needful, say most, for one of his profession. But he never more overshot himself, then when he did impose the Scotch Liturgie, and was [Greek: allotrio-archiepis[ko]pos] over a free and forrain Church and Nation. At home, many grumbled at him for oft making the shallowest pretence of the Crown deep enough (by his powerfull digging therein) to drown the undoubted right of any private Patron to a Church-living. But Courtiers most complained, that he persecuted them, not in their proper places, but what in an ordinary way he should have taken from the hands of inferior officers, that He with a long and strong Arm reached to himself over all their heads. Yet others plead for him, that he abridg'd their bribes not fees, and it vexed them that He struck their fingers with the dead-palsie, so that they could not (as formerly) have a feeling for Church Preferments….

He was very plain in apparrel, and sharply checkt such Clergymen whom he saw goe in rich or gaudy cloaths, commonly calling them of the Church-Triumphant. Thus as Cardinal Woolsy is reported the first Prelate, who made Silks, and Sattens fashionable amongst clergy-men; so this Arch-Bishop first retrenched the usual wearing thereof. Once at a Visitation in Essex, one in Orders (of good estate and extraction) appeared before him very gallant in habit, whom D'r Laud (then Bishop of London) publickly reproved, shewing to him the plainness of his own apparrel. My Lord (said the Minister) you have better cloaths at home and I have worse, whereat the Bishop rested very well contented….

Covetousness He perfectly hated, being a single man and having no project to raise a name or Family, he was the better enabled for publick performances, having both a price in his hand, and an heart also to dispose thereof for the general good. S't Johns in Oxford, wherein he was bred, was so beautified, enlarged, and enriched by him, that strangers at the first sight knew it not, yea, it scarce knoweth it self, so altered to the better from its former condition. Insomuch that almost it deserveth the name of Canterbury-Colledge, as well as that which Simon Islip founded, and since hath lost its name, united to Christ-Church. More buildings he intended, (had not the stroke of one Axe hindred the working of many hammers) chiefly on Churches, whereof the following passage may not impertinently be inserted.

It happened that a Visitation was kept at S't Peters in Corn-hill, for the Clergy of London. The Preacher discoursing of the painfulness of the Ministerial Function, proved it from the Greek deduction of [Greek: Diakonos] or Deacon, so called from [Greek: konis] dust, because he must laborare in arena in pulvere, work in the dust, doe hard service in hot weather. Sermon ended, Bishop Laud proceeded to his charge to the Clergy, and observing the Church ill repaired without, and slovenly kept within, I am sorry (said He) to meet here with so true an Etymologie of Diaconus, for here is both dust and dirt too, for a Deacon (or Priest either) to work in. Yea it is dust of the worst kind, caused from the mines of this ancient house of God, so that it pittieth his[1] servants to see her in the dust. Hence he took occasion to press the repairing of that, and other decaied places of divine worship, so that from this day we may date the general mending, beautifying and adorning of all English Churches, some to decency, some to magnificence, and some (if all complaints were true) to superstition.

But the Church of S't Pauls, (the only Cathedral in Christendom dedicated to that Apostle) was the master: piece of his performances. We know what[2] one Satyrically said of him, that he pluckt down Puritans, and Property, to build up Pauls and Prerogative. But let unpartial Judges behold how he left, and remember how he found that ruinous fabrick, and they must conclude that (though intending more) he effected much in that great designe. He communicated his project to some private persons, of taking down the great Tower in the middle, to the Spurrs, and rebuild it in the same fashion, (but some yards higher) as before. He meant to hang as great and tuneable a ring of Bels, as any in the world, whose sound advantaged with their height and vicinity of the Thames, must needs be loud and melodious. But now he is turned to his dust, and all his thoughts have perished, yea that Church, formerly approached with due reverence, is now entred with just fear, of falling on those under it, and is so far from having its old decays repaired, that it is daily decayed in its new reparations.

He was low of Stature, little in bulk, chearful in countenance, (wherein gravity and quickness were well compounded) of a sharp and piercing eye, clear judgement, and (abating the influence of age) firme memory. He wore his hair very close, and though in the beginning of his greatness, many measured the length of mens stricktness by the shortness of their hair, yet some will say, that since out of Antipathy to conform to his example, his opposites have therein indulged more liberty to themselves. And thus we take our leave of him.

Archbishop Laud was a man of an upright heart and a pious soul, but of too warm blood and too positive a nature towards asserting what he beleived a truth, to be a good Courtier; and his education fitted him as little for it, as his nature: which having bin most in the University, and among books and scholars, where oft canvassing affairs, that are agitated in that province, and prevailing in it, rather gave him wrong than right measures of a Court. He was generally acknowledg'd a good scholar, and throughly verst in Ecclesiastical learning. He was a zealot in his heart both against Popery and Presbytery; but a great assertor of Church-authority, instituted by Christ and his Apostles, and as primitively practised; which notwithstanding, he really and freely acknowledged subject unto the secular authority. And therefore he carefully endeavored to preserve the jurisdiction, which the Church anciently exercised, before the secular authority own'd her; at least so much thereof, as the law of this our Realm had apply'd to our circumstances; which our common Lawyers dayly struck at; and thro' prohibitions and other appeals every day lessened; and this bred an unkindnes to him in many of the long robe, however some of them were very carefull of the Ecclesiasticall jurisdiction.

He was a man of great modesty in his own person and habit, and of regularity and devotion in his family: and as he was very kind to his Clergy, so he was very carefull to make them modest in their attire, and very diligent in their studies, in faithfully dispensing God's Word, reverently reading the Prayers, and administring the Sacraments, and in preserving their Churches in cleanlines and with plain and fitting ornament, that so voyd of superstition, GOD's House in this age, where every man bettered his own, might not lye alone neglected; and accordingly he sett upon that great work of St. Paul's Church, which his diligence perfected in a great measure: and his Master's piety made magnificent that most noble structure by a Portico: but not long after the carved work thereof was broken down with axes and hammers, and the whole sacred edifice made not only a den of thieves, but a stable of unclean beasts, as I can testifie, having once gone into it purposely to observe: from which contamination Providence some few years since cleansed it by fire.

He prevented likewise a very private and clandestine designe of introducing Nonconformists into too too many Churches; for that society of men (that they might have Teachers to please their itching ears) had a designe to buy in all the Lay-Impropriations, which the Parish-Churches in Henry the VIII's time were robb'd of, and lodging the Advowsons and Presentations in their own Feoffees, to have introduced men, who would have introduced doctrines suitable to their dependences, which the Court already felt too much the smart of, by being forced to admitt the Presentations of the Lay-Patrons, who too often dispose their benefices to men, rather suitable to their own opinions, than the Articles and Canons of the Church.

All this bred him more and more envy; but if it had pleas'd God to have given him an uninterrupted course, and if few of his Successors had walked in his stepps, wee might, without any tendency to Popery, or danger of superstition, have serv'd God reverently and uniformely, and according unto Primitive practice and purity, and not have bin, as we are now, like a shivered glass, scarse ever to be made whole again. Thus finding Providence had led him into authority, he very really and strongly opposed both Popery and Presbytery. He was sensible, how the first by additions had perverted the purity of Religion, and turned it into a policy; but resolving not to contest Rome's truths, tho' he spared not her errors, both Papist and Presbyter, with all their Lay-Party, were well contented, that it might be believed, he was Popishly affected. And being conscious likewise, how Presbytery or the Calvinisticall Reformation, which many here, and more in Scotland, affected, by substraction and novel interpretation, had forsaken the good old ways of the primitive Church, and was become dangerous to Monarchy, he sett himself against this, as well as that: but both their weights crusht him….

As this good Arch-Bishop I write of, had these great eminences, so he may be acknowledged to have failed in those prudences, which belong unto a great Minister of State, who like a wise Physician is to consider times and seasons, as well as persons and diseases, and to regard those complications, which usually are mixed in ill habits of body, and to use more alterative than purgative Physick. For popular bents and inclinations are cured more by a steddy than precipitate hand or counsel; multitudes being to be drawn over from their errors, rather by wayes they discerne not, than by those, which they are likely to contest; whilst upon single persons and great men courses of violence and authority may be exercised. But Ministers of State unwillingly run this course, because they would have the honour of perfecting the work they affect in their own time; and the multitude of this good man's busines, and the promptnes of his nature, made those ceremonies, which are necessary by great Persons to be paid unto men in his station, to be unwelcome unto him, and so he discharged himselfe of them, and thereby disobliged those persons, who thought their quality, tho' not their busines, required a patient and respectfull entertainment. This I reflect upon, because I heard from a good hand, that the Marquiss of Argile making him an insidious visit, and he, knowing he neither loved him nor the Church, entertaining him not with that franknes he should have done, but plainly telling him, he was at that time a little busy about the King's affairs, this great Lord took it so much in indignation, and esteem'd it such a Lordly Prelacy, that he declaimed against it, and became (if possible) more enemy both to him and the Church, than he was before. The rectitude of his nature therefore made him not a fitt instrument to struggle with the obliquity of those times; and he had this infirmity likewise, that he beleived those forward instruments, which he employed, followed the zeal of their own natures, when they did but observe that of his: for as soon as difficulty or danger appeared, his petty instruments shrunk to nothing, and shewed, from whom they borrowed their heat.

He weighed not well his Master's condition; for he saw him circled in by too many powerfull Scots, who mis-affected the Church, and had joyned with them too many English Counsellors and Courtiers, who were of the same leaven. If he had perceived an universall concurrence in his own Clergy, who were esteemed Canonicall men, his attempts might have seem'd more probable, than otherwise it could: but for him to think by a purgative Physick to evacuate all those cold slimy humors, which thus overflowed the body, was ill judged; for the good affections of the Prince, back'd only by a naked or paper-authority, sooner begets contumacy, than complyance in dissaffected Subjects….

And this shall suffice to be said of that well intentioned, but not truly considerative, great man, unles wee add this single thing further, that he who looks upon him thro' those Canons, which in Synod passed in his time, will find him a true Assertor of Religion, Royalty, and Property; and that his grand designe was no other, than that of our first Reformation; which was, that our Church might stand upon such a foot of Primitive and Ecclesiastick authority, as suited with God's word, and the best Interpreters of it, sound reason and Primitive practice. And untill this Nation is blest with such a spirit, it will lye in that darknes and confusion the Sects at this time have flung it into.

WILLIAM JUXON.

Born 1582. President of St. John's College Oxford, 1621. Bishop of London 1633-49. Lord Treasurer 1635-41. Archbishop of Canterbury 1660. Died 1663.

Having thus described one great Church-man, wee may the more fitly make mention of another, because they were so intimate and bosome Friends, and because this first is supposed to have introduced the last into that eminent employment of Lord Treasurer. Had nature mingled their tempers, and allayed the one by the prudence and foresight of the other, or inspirited the other by the zeal and activity of his Friend, nature had framed a better paist, than usually she doth, when she is most exact in her work about mankind: sincerity and integrity being eminent in them both. This reverend Prelate, Dr. Juxon, then Bishop of London, was of a meek spirit, and of a solid and steddy judgment; and having addicted his first studies to the Civil Law, (from which he took his title of Doctor, tho' he afterwards took on him the Ministry) this fitted him the more for Secular and State affairs. His temper and prudence wrought so upon all men, that tho' he had the two most invidious characters both in the Ecclesiasticall and Civil State; one of a Bishop, the other of a Lord Treasurer: yet neither drew envy on him; tho' the humor of the times tended to brand all great men in employment. About the year 1634 the Lord Portland dyed, and the Treasury was put into Commission; by which means the true state thereof became distinctly to be known: and in the year 1635, this good and judicious man had the white staff put into his hand: and tho' he found the revenue low and much anticipated, yet withall meeting with times peaceable and regular, and his Master enclined to be frugall, he held up the dignity and honor of his Majestie's Houshold, and the splendor of the Court, and all publick expences, and justice in all contracts; so as there were as few dissatisfactions in his time, as perchance in any, and yet he cleared off the anticipations on the revenue, and sett his Master beforehand. The choice of this good man shewed, how remote it was from this King's intentions, to be either tyrannicall or arbitrary; for so well he demeaned himselfe thro' his whole seaven years employment, that neither as Bishop or Treasurer, came there any one accusation against him in that last Parliament 1640, whose eares were opened, nay itching after such complaints. Nay even after the King's being driven from London, he remained at his house, belonging to his Bishoprick, in Fulham, and sometimes was visited by some of the Grandees, and found respect from all, and yet walked steddily in his old paths. And he retained so much of his Master's favour, that when the King was admitted to any Treaty with the two Houses Commissioners, he alwayes commanded his attendance on him: for he ever valued his advice. I remember, that the King, being busy in dispatching some letters with his own pen, commanded me to wait on the Bishop, and to bring him back his opinion in a certaine affaire: I humbly pray'd his Majestie, that I might rather bring him with me, least I should not expresse his Majestie's sense fully, nor bring back his so significantly, as he meant it; and because there might be need for him further to explain himselfe, and least he should not speake freely to me: to which the King replyed, Go, as I bid you, if he will speak freely to any body, he will speak freely to you: This (the King said) I will say of him, I never gott his opinion freely in my life, but when I had it, I was ever the better for it. This character of so judicious a Prince I could not omitt, because it carried in it the reason of that confidence, that called him to be his Majestie's Confessor before his death, and to be his Attendant on the scaffold at his death; so as all Persons concurring thus about this good Prelate, wee may modestly say, he was an eminent man.

THE MARQUIS OF HERTFORD.

William Seymour, second Earl of Hertford 1621, created Marquis of Hertford 1641, and Duke of Somerset 1660.

The Marquis of Hartforde was a man of greate honour, greate interest in fortune and estate, and of a universall esteeme over the kingdome; and though he had receaved many and continued disobligations from the Courte, from the tyme of this Kings comminge to the Crowne as well as duringe the rainge of Kinge James, in both which seasons more then ordinary care had bene taken to discountenance and lessen his interest, yett he had carryed himselfe with notable steddinesse from the beginninge of the Parliament in the supporte and defence of the Kings power and dignity, notwithstandinge all his Allyes, and those with whome he had the greatest familiarity and frendshipp were of the opposite party, and never concurred with them against the Earle of Straforde (whome he was knowne not to love) nor in any other extravagancy: and then he was not to be shaken in his affection to the goverment of the church, though it was enough knowne that he was in no degree byassed by any greate inclination to the person of any Church-man: and with all this, that party carryed themselves towards him with profounde respecte, not præsuminge to venture ther owne creditt in endeavoringe to lessen his.

It is very true, in many respects he wanted those qualityes, which might have bene wished to be in a person to be trusted in the education of a greate and a hopefull Prince, and in the forminge his minde and manners in so tender an age: he was of an age not fitt for much activity and fatigue, and loved and was even wedded so much to his ease, that he loved his booke above all exercizes, and had even contracted such a lazinesse of minde, that he had no delight in an open and liberall conversation, and cared not to discource and argue in those points which he understoode very well, only for the trouble of contendinge, and could never impose upon himselfe the payne that was necessary to be undergone in such a perpetuall attendance. But then those lesser dutyes might be otherwise provided for, and he could well supporte the dignity of a Governour, and exacte that diligence from others, which he could not exercize himselfe, and his honour was so unblemished, that none durst murmure against the designation, and therfore his Majesty thought him very worthy of the high trust, against which ther was no other exception, but that he was not ambitious of it, nor in truth willinge to receave and undergo the charge, so contrary to his naturall constitution; but [in] his pure zeale and affection for the Crowne, and the conscience that in this conjuncture his submission might ad[v]ance the Kings service, and that the refusinge it might proove disadvantagious to his Majesty, he very cheerefully undertooke the Province, to the generall satisfaction and publique joy of the whole kingdome, and to the no little honour and creditt of the Courte, that so important and beloved a person would attacque himselfe to it, under such a relation, when so many who had scarce ever eaten any breade, but the Kings, detached themselves from ther dependance, that they might without him, and against him, præserve and improove those fortunes which they had procured and gotten under him, and by his bounty.

THE MARQUIS OF NEWCASTLE.

William Cavendish, created Viscount Mansfield 1620, Earl of Newcastle 1628, Marquis 1643, and Duke 1665.

All that can be said for the Marquiss is, that he was so utterly tired with a condition and employment so contrary to his Humour, Nature, and Education, that he did not at all consider the means, or the way that would let him out of it, and free him for ever from having more to do with it. And it was a greater wonder, that he sustained the vexation and fatigue of it so long, than that he broke from it with so little circumspection. He was a very fine Gentleman, active, and full of Courage, and most accomplish'd in those Qualities of Horsemanship, Dancing, and Fencing, which accompany a good breeding; in which his delight was. Besides that he was amorous in Poetry, and Musick, to which he indulged the greatest part of his time; and nothing could have tempted him out of those paths of pleasure, which he enjoyed in a full and ample fortune, but honour and ambition to serve the King when he saw him in distress, and abandoned by most of those who were in the highest degree obliged to him, and by him. He loved Monarchy, as it was the foundation and support of his own greatness, and the Church, as it was well constituted for the splendour and security of the Crown, and Religion, as it cherished, and maintained that Order and Obedience that was necessary to both; without any other passion for the particular Opinions which were grown up in it, and distinguished it into Parties, than as he detested whatsoever was like to disturb the publick peace.

He had a particular Reverence for the Person of the King, and the more extraordinary Devotion for that of the Prince, as he had had the honour to be trusted with is Education as his Governour; for which office, as he excelled in some, so he wanted other Qualifications. Though he had retired from his great Trust, and from the Court, to decline the insupportable Envie which the powerfull Faction had contracted against him, yet the King was no sooner necessitated to possess himself of some place of strength, and to raise some force for his defence, but the Earl of Newcastle (he was made Marquiss afterwards) obeyed his first call, and, with great expedition and dexterity, seised upon that Town; when till then there was not one port town in England, that avowed their obedience to the King: and he then presently raised such Regiments of Horse and Foot, as were necessary for the present state of Affairs; all which was done purely by his own Interest, and the concurrence of his numerous Allies in those Northern parts; who with all alacrity obeyed his Commands, without any charge to the King, which he was not able to supply.

And after the Battle of Edge Hill, when the Rebells grew so strong in Yorkshire, by the influence their Garrison of Hull had upon both the East and West riding there, that it behoved the King presently to make a General, who might unite all those Northern Counties in his Service, he could not choose any Man so fit for it as the Earl of Newcastle, who was not only possessed of a present force, and of that important Town, but had a greater Reputation and Interest in Yorkshire itself, than at that present any other Man had: the Earl of Cumberland being at that time, though of entire affection to the King, much decayed in the vigour of his Body, and his mind, and unfit for that Activity which the Season required. And it cannot be denied, that the Earl of Newcastle, by his quick march with his Troops, as soon as he had received his Commission to be General, and in the depth of Winter, redeemed, or rescued the City of York from the Rebells, when they looked upon it as their own, and had it even within their grasp: and as soon as he was Master of it, he raised Men apace, and drew an Army together, with which he fought many Battles, in which he had always (this last only excepted) Success and Victory.

He liked the Pomp, and absolute Authority of a General well, and preserved the dignity of it to the full; and for the discharge of the outward State, and Circumstances of it, in acts of Courtesy, Affability, Bounty, and Generosity, he abounded; which in the infancie of a war became him, and made him, for some time, very acceptable to Men of all conditions. But the substantial part, and fatigue of a General, he did not in any degree understand (being utterly unacquainted with War) nor could submit to; but referred all matters of that Nature to the discretion of his Lieutenant General King, who, no doubt, was an officer of great experience and ability, yet being a Scotch Man was, in that conjuncture, upon more disadvantage than he would have been, if the General himself had been more intent upon his Command. In all Actions of the feild he was still present, and never absent in any Battle; in all which he gave Instances of an invincible courage and fearlessness in danger; in which the exposing himself notoriously did sometimes change the fortune of the day, when his Troops begun to give ground. Such Articles of action were no sooner over, than he retired to his delightfull Company, Musick, or his softer pleasures, to all which he was so indulgent, and to his ease, that he would not be interrupted upon what occasion soever; insomuch as he sometimes denied Admission to the Chiefest Officers of the Army, even to General King himself, for two days together; from whence many Inconveniencies fell out.

THE LORD DIGBY.

By what hath bene sayde before, it appeares that the L'd Digby was much trusted by the Kinge, and he was of greate familiarity and frendshipp with the other three, at least with two of them, for he was not a man of that exactnesse, as to be in the intire confidence of the L'd Falkeland, who looked upon his infirmityes with more severity, then the other two did, and he lived with more franknesse towards those two, then he did towards the other, yett betweene them two ther was a free conversation and kindnesse to each other. He was a man of very extraordinary parts, by nature and arte, and had surely as good and excellent an education as any man of that age in any country, a gracefull and beautifull person, of greate eloquence and becommingnesse in his discource (save that sometimes he seemed a little affected) and of so universall a knowledge, that he never wanted subjecte for a discource; he was æquall to a very good parte in the greatest affayre, but the unfittest man alive to conducte it, havinge an ambition and vanity superiour to all his other parts, and a confidence peculiar to himselfe, which sometimes intoxicated, and transported, and exposed him. He had from his youth, by the disobligations his family had undergone from the Duke of Buckingham and the greate men who succeeded him, and some sharpe reprehension himselfe had mett with, which oblieged him to a country life, contracted a præjudice and ill will to the Courte, and so had in the beginninge of the Parliament ingaged himselfe with that party which discover'd most aversion from it, with a passion and animosity æquall to ther owne, and therfore very acceptable to them. But when he was weary of ther violent councells, and withdrew himselfe from them, with some circumstances which enough provoked them, and made a reconciliation and mutuall confidence in each other for the future manifestly impossible, he made private and secrett offerrs of his service to the Kinge, to whome in so generall a defection of his servants it could not but be very agreable, and so his Majesty beinge satisfyed both in the discoveryes he made of what had passed, and in his professions for the future, remooved him from the house of Commons, wher he had rendred himselfe marvellously ungratious, and called him by writt to the house of Peeres, wher he did visibly advance the Kings service, and quickly rendred himselfe gratefull to all those, who had not thought to well of him before, when he deserved less, and men were not only pleased with the assistance he gave upon all debates, by his judgement and vivacity, but looked upon him as one who could deryve the Kings pleasure to them, and make a lively representation of ther good demeanour to the Kinge, which he was very luxuriant in promisinge to doe, and officious enough in doinge as much as was just. He had bene instrumentall in promotinge the three persons above mencioned to the Kings favour, and had himselfe in truth so greate an esteeme of them, that he did very frequently upon conference togither departe from his owne inclinations and opinions, and concurred in thers; and very few men of so greate parts are upon all occasyons more councellable then he, so that he would seldome be in daunger of runninge into greate errors, if he would communicate and expose all his owne thoughts and inclinations to such a disquicition, nor is he uninclinable in his nature to such an intire communication in all things which he conceaves to be difficulte; but his fatall infirmity is, that he to often thinkes difficulte things very easy, and doth not consider possible consequences, when the proposition administers somewhat that is delighfull to his fancy, and by pursuinge wherof he imagynes he shall reape some glory to himselfe, of which he is immoderately ambitious, so that if the consultation be upon any action to be done, no man more implicitely enters into that debate, or more cheerefully resignes his owne conceptions to a joynt determination, but when it is once affirmatively resolved, besydes that he may possibly reserve some impertinent circumstance as he thinkes, the impartinge wherof would change the nature of the thinge, if his fancy suggests to him any particular which himselfe might performe in that action, upon the imagination that every body would approove it, if it were proposed to them, he chooses rather to do it, then to communicate, that he may have some signall parte to himselfe in the transaction, in which no other person can clayme a share; and by this unhappy temper, he did often involve himselfe in very unprosperous attempts. The Kinge himselfe was the unfittest person alive to be served by such a Councellour, beinge to easily inclined to suddayne enterprizes, and as easily amazed when they were entred upon; and from this unhappy composition in the one and the other, a very unhappy councell was entred upon, and resolution taken, without the least communication with ether of the three, which had bene so lately admitted to an intire truste.

THE LORD CAPEL.

He was a man, in whome the malice of his enimyes could discover very few faultes, and whome his frends could not wish better accomplished, whome Crumwells owne character well described, and who indeede could never have bene contented to have lived under that government, whose memory all men loved and reverenced, though few followed his example. He had alwayes lyved in a state of greate plenty and generall estimation, havinge a very noble fortune of his owne by descent, and a fayre addition to it, by his marriage with an excellent wife, a Lady of a very worthy extraction, of greate virtue and beauty, by whome he had a numerous issue of both sexes, in which he tooke greate joy and comfort, so that no man was more happy in all his domestique affayres, and so much the more happy, in that he thought himselfe most blessed in them, and yett the Kings honour was no sooner violated and his just power invaded, then he threw all those blessings behinde him, and havinge no other obligations to the Crowne, then those which his owne honour and conscience suggested to him, he frankely engaged his person and his fortune from the beginninge of the troubles, as many others did, in all actions and enterpryzes of the greatest hazarde and daunger, and continewed to the end, without ever makinge one false stepp, as few others did, though he had once, by the iniquity of a faction that then prævayled, an indignity putt upon him, that might have excused him, for some remission of his former warmth, but it made no other impressyon upon him, then to be quyett and contented whilst they would lett him alone, and with the same cheerefulnesse to obey the first summons, when he was called out, which was quickly after: in a worde he was a man, that whoever shall after him deserve best in that nation, shall never thinke himselfe undervalewed, when he shall heare that his courage, virtue, and fidelity is layde in the balance with, and compared to that of the Lord Capell.

ROYALIST GENERALS.

PATRICK RUTHVEN, EARL OF BRENTFORD (1573-1651).

PRINCE RUPERT (1619-82).

GEORGE, LORD GORING (1608-57).

HENRY WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER (1612-58).

The Army was lesse united then ever; the old Generall was sett asyde and Prince Rupert putt into the commaunde, which was no popular chaunge, for the other was knowne to be an officer of greate exsperience, and had committed no oversights in his conducte, was willinge to heare every thinge debated, and alwayes concurred with the most reasonable opinion, and though he was not of many wordes, and was not quicke in hearinge, yett upon any action, he was sprightly and commaunded well; The Prince was rough, and passionate and loved not debate, liked what was proposed, as he liked the persons who proposed it, and was so greate an enimy to Digby and Culpeper, who were only present in debates of the Warr with the Officers, that he crossed all they proposed. The truth is, all the Army had bene disposed from the first raysinge it, to a neglecte and contempt of the Councell, and the Kinge himselfe had not bene sollicitous enough to præserve the respecte due to it, in which he lost of his owne dignity. Goringe who was now Generall of the Horse, was no more gratious to Prince Rupert then Wilmott had bene, and had all the others faults, and wanted his regularity and preservinge his respects with the officers; Wilmott loved deboshry, but shutt it out from his businesse, and never neglected that, and rarely miscarryed in it; Goringe had much a better understandinge, and a sharper witt, except in the very exercise of deboshry, and then the other was inspired, a much keener courage, and presentnesse of minde in daunger; Wilmott decerned it farther off, and because he could not behave himselfe so well in it, commonly prevented or warily declined it, and never dranke when he was within distance of an enimy; Goringe was not able to resist the temptation when he was in the middle of them, nor would declyne it to obtayne a victory, and in one of those fitts had suffer'd the Horse to escape out of Cornwall, and the most signall misfortunes of his life in warr, had ther ryse from that uncontrolable licence; nether of them valewed ther promises, professions or frendshipps, accordinge to any rules of honour or integrity, but Wilmott violated them the lesse willingly, and never but for some greate benefitt or convenience to himself, Goringe without scruple out of humour or for witt sake, and loved no man so well, but that he would cozen him, and then expose him to publicke mirth, for havinge bene cozened, and therfore he had always fewer frends then the other, but more company, for no man had a witt that pleased the company better: The ambitions of both were unlimited, and so æqually incapable of beinge contented, and both unrestrayned by any respecte to good nature or justice from pursuinge the satisfaction therof, yett Willmott had more scruples from religion to startle him, and would not have attayned his end, by any grosse or fowle acte of wickednesse; Goringe could have passed through those pleasantly, and would without hesitation have broken any trust, or done any acte of treachery, to have satisfyed an ordinary passion or appetite, and in truth wanted nothinge but industry, for he had witt, and courage and understandinge, and ambition uncontroled by any feare of god or man, to have bene as eminent and succesfull in the highest attempt in wickednesse of any man in the age he lyved in, or before, and of all his qualifications, dissimulation was his masterpiece, in which he so much excelled, that men were not ordinaryly ashamed or out of countenance with beinge deceaved but twice by him.

JOHN HAMPDEN.

Many men observed (as upon signall turnes of greate affayres, as this was, such observations are frequently made) that the Feild in which the late skirmish was, and upon which Mr. Hambden receaved his deaths-wounde, (Chalgrove Feilde) was the same place, in which he had first executed the Ordinance of the Militia, and engaged that County, in which his reputation was very greate, in this rebellion, and it was confessed by the prysoners that were taken that day, and acknowledged by all, that upon the Alarum that morninge, after ther quarters were beaten up, he was exceedingly sollicitous to draw forces togither to pursue the enimy, and beinge himselfe a Collonell of foote putt himselfe amongst those horse as a volunteere who were first ready, and that when the Prince made a stande, all the officers were of opinion to stay till ther body came up, and he alone (beinge secounde to none but the Generall himselfe in the observance and application of all men) perswaded and prævayled with them to advance, so violently did his fate carry him to pay the mulcte in the place, wher he had committed the transgressyon, aboute a yeere before.

He was a gentleman of a good family in Buckinghamshyre, and borne to a fayre fortune, and of a most civill and affable deportment. In his entrance into the world, he indulged to himselfe all the licence in sportes and exercises, and company, which was used by men of the most jolly conversation; afterwards he retired to a more reserved and melancholique society, yet prseservinge his owne naturall cheerefulnesse and vivacity, and above all a flowinge courtesy to all men; Though they who conversed neerely with him founde him growinge into a dislike of the Ecclesiasticall goverment of the church, yet most believed it rather a dislike of some Churchmen, and of some introducements of thers which he apprehended might disquyett the publique peace: He was rather of reputation in his owne Country, then of publique discource or fame in the Kingdome, before the businesse of Shippmony, but then he grew the argument of all tounges, every man enquyringe who and what he was, that durst at his owne charge supporte the liberty and property of the kingdome, and reskue his Country from beinge made a prey to the Courte; his carriage throughout that agitation was with that rare temper and modesty, that they who watched him narrowly to finde some advantage against his person to make him lesse resolute in his cause, were compelled to give him a just testimony: and the judgement that was given against him infinitely more advanced him, then the service for which it was given. When this Parliament begann (beinge returned Knight of the Shyre for the County wher he lived) the eyes of all men were fixed on him as their Patriæ Pater, and the Pilott that must steere ther vessell through the tempests and Rockes which threatned it: And I am perswaded his power and interest at that tyme was greater, to doe good or hurte, then any mans in the kingdome, or then any man of his ranke hath had in any tyme: for his reputation of honesty was universall, and his affections seemed so publiquely guyded, that no corrupte or pryvate ends could byasse them.

He was of that rare affability and temper in debate, and of that seeminge humillity and submissyon of judgement, as if he brought no opinyons with him, but a desyre of information and instruction, yet he had so subtle a way of interrogatinge, and under the notion of doubts, insinuatinge his objections, that he left his opinions with those, from whome he pretended to learne and receave them; and even with them, who were able to præserve themselves from his infusions, and decerned those opinions to be fixed in him, with which they could not comply, he alwayes left the character of an ingenious and conscientious person. He was indeede a very wise man, and of greate partes, and possessed with the most absolute spiritt of popularity, that is the most absolute facultyes to governe the people, of any man I ever knew. For the first yeere of the parliament he seemed rather to moderate and soften the violent and distempred humours, then to inflame them, but wise and dispassioned men playnely decerned, that that moderation proceeded from prudence, and observation that the season was not rype, [rather] then that he approoved of the moderation, and that he begatt many opinions and motions the education wherof he committed to other men, so farr disguisinge his owne designes that he seemed seldome to wish more then was concluded, and in many grosse conclutions which would heareafter contribute to designes not yet sett on foote, when he founde them sufficiently backed by majority of voyces, he would withdraw himselfe before the questyon, that he might seeme not to consent to so much visible unreasonablenesse, which produced as greate a doubte in some, as it did approbation in others of his integrity: What combination soever had bene originaly with the Scotts for the invasion of England, and what farther was enter'd into afterwards, in favour of them, and to advance any alteration in Parliament, no man doubles was at least with the privity of this gent[l]eman.

After he was amongst those members accused by the Kinge of High treason, he was much altred, his nature and carriage seeminge much feircer then it did before; and without question when he first drew his sworde, he threw away the scabberd, for he passionately opposed the overture made by the Kinge for a treaty from Nottingham, and as eminently any expedients that might have produced an accommodation in this that was at Oxforde, and was principally relyed on to prævent any infusions which might be made into the Earle of Essex towards peace, or to render them ineffectuall if they were made; and was indeede much more relyed on by that party, then the Generall himselfe. In the first entrance into the troubles he undertooke the commande of a Regiment of foote, and performed the duty of a Collonell on all occasyons most punctually: He was very temperate in dyett, and a supreme governour over all his passyons and affections, and had therby a greate power over other mens: He was of an industry and vigilance not to be tyred out, or wearyed by the most laborious, and of partes not to be imposed upon by the most subtle or sharpe, and of a personall courage æqual to his best partes, so that he was an enimy not to be wished wherever he might have bene made a frende, and as much to be apprehended wher he was so, as any man could deserve to be, and therfore his death was no lesse congratulated on the one party then it was condoled on the other. In a worde, what was sayd of Cinna, might well be applyed to him, Erat illi consilium ad facinus aptum, consilio autem neque lingua neque manus deerat, he had a heade to contryve, and a tounge to perswade, and a hande to exequte any mischieve; his death therfore seemed to be a greate deliverance to the nation.

JOHN PYM.

Aboute this tyme the Councells at Westminster lost a principle supporter, by the death of John Pimm, who dyed with greate torment and agony, of a disease unusuall, and therfore the more spoken of, morbus pediculosus, which rendred him an objecte very lothsome, to those who had bene most delighted with him. Noe man had more to answer for the miseryes of the Kingdome, or had his hande or heade deeper in ther contrivance, and yet I believe they grew much higher even in his life, then he designed. He was a man of a private quality and condition of life, his education in the office of the Exchequer, wher he had bene a Clerke, and his partes rather acquired by industry, then supplyed by nature, or adorned by Arte. He had bene well knowen in former Parliaments and was one of those few who had sate in many, the longe intermissyon of Parliaments havinge worne out most of those who had bene acquainted with the rules and orders observed in those conventions, and this gave him some reputation and reverence amongst those, who were but now introduced. He had bene most taken notice of, for beinge concerned and passyonate in the jealosyes of religion, and much troubled with the Countenance which had bene given to those opinions which had bene imputed to Arminius; and this gave him greate authority and interest with those, who were not pleased with the goverment of the Church, or the growinge power of the Clargy, yet himselfe industriously tooke care to be believed, and he professed to be, very intire to the doctryne and disciplyne of the Church of Englande. In the shorte Parliament before this, he spake much, and appeared to be the most leadinge man, for besydes the exacte knowledge of the formes and orders of that Councell, which few men had, he had a very comely and grave way of expressinge himselfe, with greate volubility of wordes, naturall and proper, and understoode the temper and affections of the kingdome as well as any man, and had observed the errors and mistakes in goverment, and knew well how to make them appeare greater then they were. After the unhappy dissolution of that Parliament he continued for the most parte about London, in conversation and greate repute amongst those Lords, who were most strangers, and believed most averse from the Courte, in whome he improoved all imaginable jealosyes and discontents towards the State, and as soone as this Parliament was resolved to be summoned, he was as diligent to procure such persons to be elected, as he knew to be most inclined to the way he meant to take.

At the first openinge of this Parliament he appeared passyonate and prepared against the Earle of Straforde, and though in private designinge he was much governed by M'r Hambden and M'r S't John, yet he seemed to all men to have the greatest influence upon the house of Commons of any man, and in truth I thinke he was at that tyme and for some moneths after the most popular man, and the most able to do hurte, that hath lived in any tyme. Upon the first designe of softninge and oblieginge the powerfull persons in both houses, when it was resolved to make the Earle of Bedford Lord High Treasurer of Englande, the Kinge likewise intended to make M'r Pimm Chancellour of the Exchequer, for which he receaved his Majestys promise, and made a returne of a suitable professyon of his service and devotion, and therupon, the other beinge no secrett, somewhat declyned from that sharpnesse in the house, which was more popular then any mans person, and made some overtures to provyde for the glory and splendor of the Crowne, in which he had so ill successe, that his interest and reputation ther visibly abated, and he founde that he was much better able to do hurte then good, which wrought very much upon him, to melancholique, and complainte of the violence and discomposure of the peoples affections and inclinations; in the end, whether upon the death of the Earle of Bedford he despayred of that præferment, or whether he was guilty of any thinge, which upon his conversyon to the Courte he thought might be discovered to his damage, or for pure want of courage, he suffred himselfe to be carryed by those who would not follow him, and so continued in the heade of those who made the most desperate propositions.

In the proseqution of the Earle of Straforde, his carriage and language was such, that expressed much personall animosity, and he was accused of havinge practiced some Artes in it, not worthy a good man, as an Irishman of very meane and low condition afterwards acknowledged, that beinge brought to him as an evidence of one parte of the charge against the Lord Lieuetenant in a particular of which a person of so vyle quality would not be reasonably thought a competent informer, M'r Pimm gave him mony to buy him a Sattyn Sute and Cloke, in which equipage he appeared at the tryall, and gave his evidence, which if true, may make many other thinges which were confidently reported afterwards of him, to be believed: As, that he receaved a greate Summ of mony from the French Ambassadour, to hinder the transportation of those Regiments of Irelande into Flanders, upon the disbandinge that Army ther, which had bene præpared by the Earle of Straforde for the businesse of Scotlande, in which if his Majestys derections and commands had not bene deverted and contradicted by the houses, many do believe the rebellyon in Irelande had not happend. Certayne it is, that his power of doinge shrewd turnes was extraordinary, and no lesse in doinge good offices for particular persons, and that he did præserve many from censure, who were under the seveare displeasure of the houses, and looked upon as eminent Delinquents, and the quality of many of them made it believed, that he had sold that protection for valewable consideration. From the tyme of his beinge accused of High Treason by the Kinge, with the Lord Kimbolton and the other Members, he never intertayned thoughts of moderation, but alwayes opposed all overtures of peace and accommodation, and when the Earle of Essex was disposed the last Summer by those Lords to an inclination towards a treaty as is before remembred, M'r Pymms power and dexterity wholy changed him, and wrought him to that temper which he afterwards swarved not from. He was wounderfully sollicitous for the Scotts comminge in to ther assistance, though his indisposition of body was so greate, that it might well have made another impressyon upon his minde. Duringe his sicknesse he was a very sadd spectacle, but none beinge admitted to him, who had not concurred with him, it is not knowne what his last thoughts and considerations were. He dyed towards the end of December, before the Scotts entred, and was buryed with wounderfull Pompe and Magnificence in that Place where the Bones of our English Kings and Princes are committed to ther rest.

OLIVER CROMWELL.

Crumwell (though the greatest Dissembler livinge) alwayes made his hypocrisy of singular use and benefitt to him, and never did any thinge, how ungratious or imprudent soever it seemed to be, but what was necessary to the designe; even his roughnesse and unpolishednesse which in the beginninge of the Parliament he affected, contrary to the smoothnesse and complacency which his Cozen and bosome frende M'r Hambden practiced towards all men, was necessary, and his first publique declaration in the beginninge of the Warr, to his troope when it was first mustered,—that he would not deceave or cozen them by the perplexed and involved exspressions in his Commissyon to fight for Kinge and Parliament, and therfore told them that if the Kinge chanced to be in the body of the enimy that he was to charge, he woulde as soone discharge his pistoll upon him, as at any other private person, and if ther conscience would not permitt them to do the like, he advized them not to list themselves in his troope or under his commaunde,—which was generally looked upon, as imprudent and malicious, and might by the professyons the Parliament then made, have prooved daungerous to him, yett served his turne, and severed and united all the furious and incensed men against the goverment, whether Ecclesiasticall or Civill, to looke upon him as a man for ther turne, and upon whome they might depende, as one who would go through his worke that he undertooke; and his stricte and unsociable humour in not keepinge company with the other officers of the Army in ther jollityes and excesses, to which most of the superiour officers under the Earle of Essex were inclined, and by which he often made himselfe ridiculous or contemptible, drew all those of the like sowre or reserved natures to his society and conversation, and gave him opportunity to forme ther understandings, inclinations, and resolutions to his owne modell; and by this he grew to have a wounderfull interest in the Common souldyers, out of which, as his authority increased, he made all his Officers, well instructed how to lyve in the same manner with ther Souldyers, that they might be able to apply them to ther owne purposes. Whilst he looked upon the Presbiterian humour as the best incentive to rebellion, no man more a Presbiterian, he sunge all Psalmes with them to ther tunes, and looved the longest sermons as much as they: but when he discover'd, that they would prescribe some limitts and bounds to ther rebellion, that it was not well breathed, and would expyre as soone as some few particulars were granted to them in religion which he cared not for, and then that the goverment must runn still in the same channell, it concerned him to make it believed, that the State had bene more Delinquent, then the Church, and that the people suffer'd more by the civill, then by the Ecclesiasticall power, and therfore that the change of one would give them little ease, if ther were not as greate an alteration in the other, and if the whole goverment in both were not reformed and altred; which though it made him generally odious and irreconciled many of his old frends to him, yett it made those who remayned more cordiall and firme to him, and he could better compute his owne strengtht, and upon whome he might depende; and this discovery made him contryve the Modell, which was the most unpopular acte, and disoblieged all those who first contryved the rebellyon, and who were the very soule of it; and yett if he had not brought that to passe and chaunged a Generall, who though not very sharpesighted would never be governed, nor applyed to any thinge he did not like, for another who had no eyes, and so would be willinge to be ledd, all his designes must have come to nothinge, and he remayned a private Collonell of horse, not considerable enough to be in any figure upon an advantagious composition.

He was one of those men, quos vituperare ne inimici quidem possunt, nisi ut simul laudent, for he could never have done halfe that mischieve, without greate partes of courage and industry and judgement, and he must have had a wounderfull understandinge in the natures and humours of men, and as greate a dexterity in the applyinge them, who from a private and obscure birth, (though of a good family) without interest of estate, allyance or frendshipps, could rayse himselfe to such a height, and compounde and kneade such opposite and contradictory tempers humour and interests, into a consistence, that contributed to his designes and to ther owne destruction, whilst himselfe grew insensibly powerfull enough, to cutt off those by whome he had climed, in the instant, that they projected to demolish ther owne buildinge. What Velleius Paterculus sayd of Cinna, may very justly be sayd of him, Ausum eum quæ nemo auderet bonus, perfecisse quæ a nullo nisi fortissimo perfici possunt. Without doubte, no man with more wickednesse ever attempted any thinge, or brought to passe what he desyred more wickedly, more in the face and contempt of religion and morall honesty, yet wickednesse as greate as his could never have accomplish'd those trophees without the assistance of a greate spiritt, an admirable circumspection and sagacity, and a most magnanimous resolution. When he appeared first in the Parliament he seemed to have a person in no degree gratious, no ornament of discource, none of those talents which use to reconcile the affections of the standers by, yett as he grew into place and authority, his partes seemed to be renew[d], as if he had concealed facultyes till he had occasion to use them; and when he was to acte the parte of a greate man, he did it without any indecensy through the wante of custome….

He was not a man of bloode, and totally declined Machiavells methode, which prescribes upon any alteration of a goverment, as a thinge absolutely necessary, to cutt of all the heades of those and extirpate ther familyes, who are frends to the old, and it was confidently reported that in the Councell of Officers, it was more then once proposed, that ther might be a generall massacre of all the royall party, as the only exspedient to secure the goverment, but Crumwell would never consent to it, it may be out of to much contempt of his enimyes; In a worde, as he had all the wickednesses against which damnation is denounced and for which Hell fyre is præpared, so he had some virtues, which have caused the memory of some men in all ages to be celebrated, and he will be looked upon by posterity, as a brave, badd man.

I have no mind to give an ill character of Cromwell; for in his conversation towards me he was ever friendly; tho' at the latter end of the day finding me ever incorrigible, and having some inducements to suspect me a tamperer, he was sufficiently rigid. The first time, that ever I took notice of him, was in the very beginning of the Parliament held in November 1640, when I vainly thought my selfe a courtly young Gentleman: (for we Courtiers valued our selves much upon our good cloaths.) I came one morning into the House well clad, and perceived a Gentleman speaking (whom I knew not) very ordinarily apparelled; for it was a plain cloth-sute, which seemed to have bin made by an ill country-taylor; his linen was plain, and not very clean; and I remember a speck or two of blood upon his little band, which was not much larger than his collar; his hatt was without a hatt-band: his stature was of a good size, his sword stuck close to his side, his countenance swoln and reddish, his voice sharp and untunable, and his eloquence full of fervor; for the subject matter would not bear much of reason; it being in behalfe of a servant of Mr. Prynn's, who had disperst libells against the Queen for her dancing and such like innocent and courtly sports; and he aggravated the imprisonment of this man by the Council-Table unto that height, that one would have beleived, the very Goverment it selfe had been in great danger by it. I sincerely professe it lessened much my reverence unto that great councill; for he was very much hearkened unto. And yet I liv'd to see this very Gentleman, whom out of no ill will to him I thus describe, by multiplied good successes, and by reall (but usurpt) power: (having had a better taylor, and more converse among good company) in my owne eye, when for six weeks together I was a prisoner in his serjeant's hands, and dayly waited at Whitehall, appeare of a great and majestick deportment and comely presence. Of him therefore I will say no more, but that verily I beleive, he was extraordinarily designed for those extraordinary things, which one while most wickedly and facinorously he acted, and at another as succesfully and greatly performed.

His body was wel compact and strong, his stature under 6 foote (I beleeve about two inches) his head so shaped, as you might see it a storehouse and shop both of a vast treasury of natural parts. His temper exceeding fyery, as I have known, but the flame of it kept downe, for the most part, or soon allayed with thos moral endowments he had. He was naturally compassionate towards objects in distresse, even to an effeminate measure; though God had made him a heart, wherein was left little roume for any fear, but what was due to himselfe, of which there was a large proportion, yet did he exceed in tendernesse towards sufferers. A larger soul, I thinke, hath seldome dwelt in a house of clay than his was. I do believe, if his story were impartialy transmitted, and the unprejudiced world wel possest with it, she would adde him to her nine worthies, and make up that number a decemviri. He lived and dyed in comfortable communion with God, as judicious persons neer him wel observed. He was that Mordecai that sought the welfare of his people, and spake peace to his seed, yet were his temptations such, as it appeared frequently, that he, that hath grace enough for many men, may have too little for himselfe; the treasure he had being but in an earthen vessel, and that equally defiled with original sin, as any other man's nature is.

Never man was highlier extolled, and never man was baselier reported of, and vilified than this man. No (meer) man was better and worse spoken of than he; according as mens Interests led their Judgments. The Soldiers and Sectaries most highly magnified him, till he began to seek the Crown and the Establishment of his Family: And then there were so many that would be Half-Kings themselves, that a King did seem intollerable to them. The Royalists abhorred him as a most perfidious Hypocrite; and the Presbyterians thought him little better, in his management of publick matters.

If after so many others I may speak my Opinion of him, I think, that, having been a Prodigal in his Youth, and afterward changed to a zealous Religiousness, he meant honestly in the main, and was pious and conscionable in the main course of his Life, till Prosperity and Success corrupted him: that, at his first entrance into the Wars, being but a Captain of Horse, he had a special care to get religious men into his Troop: These men were of greater understanding than common Soldiers, and therefore were more apprehensive of the Importance and Consequence of the War; and making not Money, but that which they took for the Publick Felicity, to be their End, they were the more engaged to be valiant; for he that maketh Money his End, doth esteem his Life above his Pay, and therefore is like enough to save it by flight when danger comes, if possibly he can: But he that maketh the Felicity of Church and State his End, esteemeth it above his Life, and therefore will the sooner lay down his Life for it. And men of Parts and Understanding know how to manage their business, and know that flying is the surest way to death, and that standing to it is the likeliest way to escape; there being many usually that fall in flight, for one that falls in valiant fight. These things it's probable Cromwell understood; and that none would be such engaged valiant men as the Religious: But yet I conjecture, that at his first choosing such men into his Troop, it was the very Esteem and Love of Religious men that principally moved him; and the avoiding of those Disorders, Mutinies, Plunderings, and Grievances of the Country, which deboist men in Armies are commonly guilty of: By this means he indeed sped better than he expected. Aires, Desborough, Berry, Evanson, and the rest of that Troop, did prove so valiant, that as far as I could learn, they never once ran away before an Enemy. Hereupon he got a Commission to take some care of the Associated Counties, where he brought his Troop into a double Regiment, of fourteen full Troops; and all these as full of religious men as he could get: These having more than ordinary Wit and Resolution, had more than ordinary Success; first in Lincolnshire, and afterward in the Earl of Manchester's Army at York Fight: With their Successes the Hearts both of Captain and Soldiers secretly rise both in Pride and Expectation: And the familiarity of many honest erroneous Men (Anabaptists, Antinomians, &c.) withal began quickly to corrupt their Judgments. Hereupon Cromwell's general Religious Zeal, giveth away to the power of that Ambition, which still increaseth as his Successes do increase: Both Piety and Ambition concurred in his countenancing of all that he thought Godly of what Sect soever: Piety pleadeth for them as Godly; and Charity as Men; and Ambition secretly telleth him what use he might make of them. He meaneth well in all this at the beginning, and thinketh he doth all for the Safety of the Godly, and the Publick Good, but not without an Eye to himself.

When Successes had broken down all considerable opposition, he was then in the face of his Strongest Temptations, which conquered him when he had conquered others: He thought that he had hitherto done well, both as to the End and Means, and God by the wonderful Blessing of his Providence had owned his endeavours, and it was none but God that had made him great: He thought that if the War was lawful, the Victory was lawful; and if it were lawful to fight against the King and conquer him, it was lawful to use him as a conquered Enemy, and a foolish thing to trust him when they had so provoked him, (whereas indeed the Parliament professed neither to fight against him, nor to conquer him). He thought that the Heart of the King was deep, and that he resolved upon Revenge, and that if he were King, he would easily at one time or other accomplish it; and that it was a dishonest thing of the Parliament to set men to fight for them against the King, and then to lay their Necks upon the block, and be at his Mercy; and that if that must be their Case, it was better to flatter or please him, than to fight against him. He saw that the Scots and the Presbyterians in the Parliament, did by the Covenant and the Oath of Allegiance, find themselves bound to the Person and Family of the King, and that there was no hope of changing their minds in this: Hereupon he joyned with that Party in the Parliament who were for the Cutting off the King, and trusting him no more. And consequently he joyned with them in raising the Independants to make a Fraction in the Synod at Westminster and in the City; and in strengthening the Sectaries in Army, City and Country, and in rendering the Scots and Ministers as odious as he could, to disable them from hindering the Change of Government. In the doing of all this, (which Distrust and Ambition had perswaded him was well done) he thought it lawful to use his Wits, to choose each Instrument, and suit each means, unto its end; and accordingly he daily imployed himself, and modelled the Army, and disbanded all other Garrisons and Forces and Committees, which were like to have hindered his design. And as he went on, though he yet resolved not what form the New Commonwealth should be molded into, yet he thought it but reasonable, that he should be the Chief Person who had been chief in their Deliverance; (For the Lord Fairfax he knew had but the Name). At last, as he thought it lawful to cut off the King, because he thought he was lawfully conquered, so he thought it lawful to fight against the Scots that would set him up, and to pull down the Presbyterian Majority in the Parliament, which would else by restoring him undo all which had cost them so much Blood and Treasure. And accordingly he conquereth Scotland, and pulleth down the Parliament: being the easilier perswaded that all this was lawful, because he had a secret Byas and Eye towards his own Exaltation: For he (and his Officers) thought, that when the King was gone a Government there must be; and that no Man was so fit for it as he himself; as best deserving it, and as having by his Wit and great Interest in the Army, the best sufficiency to manage it: Yea, they thought that God had called them by Successes to Govern and take Care of the Commonwealth, and of the Interest of all his People in the Land; and that if they stood by and suffered the Parliament to do that which they thought was dangerous, it would be required at their hands, whom they thought God had made the Guardians of the Land.

Having thus forced his Conscience to justifie all his Cause, (the Cutting off the King, the setting up himself and his Adherents, the pulling down the Parliament and the Scots,) he thinketh that the End being good and necessary, the necessary means cannot be bad: And accordingly he giveth his Interest and Cause leave to tell him, how far Sects shall be tollerated and commended, and how far not; and how far the Ministry shall be owned and supported, and how far not; yea, and how far Professions, Promises, and Vows shall be kept, or broken; and therefore the Covenant he could not away with; nor the Ministers, further than they yielded to his Ends, or did not openly resist them. He seemed exceeding open hearted, by a familiar Rustick affected Carriage, (especially to his Soldiers in sporting with them): but he thought Secrecy a Vertue, and Dissimulation no Vice, and Simulation, that is, in plain English a Lie, or Perfidiousness to be a tollerable Fault in a Case of Necessity: being of the same Opinion with the Lord Bacon, (who was not so Precise as Learned) That [the best Composition and Temperature is, to have openness in Fame and Opinion, Secrecy in habit, Dissimulation in seasonable use; and a power to feign if there be no remedy,] Essay 6. pag. 31. Therefore he kept fair with all, saving his open or unreconcileable Enemies. He carried it with such Dissimulation, that Anabaptists, Independants, and Antinomians did all think that he was one of them: But he never endeavoured to perswade the Presbyterians that he was one of them; but only that he would do them Justice, and Preserve them, and that he honoured their Worth and Piety; for he knew that they were not so easily deceived. In a word, he did as our Prelates have done, begin low and rise higher in his Resolutions as his Condition rose, and the Promises which he made in his lower Condition, he used as the interest of his higher following Condition did require, and kept up as much Honesty and Godliness in the main, as his Cause and Interest would allow.

SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX.

And these things made the new modelling of the Army to be resolved on. But all the Question was how to effect it, without stirring up the Forces against them which they intended to disband: And all this was notably dispatcht at once, by One Vote, which was called the Self-denying Vote, viz. That because Commands in the Army had much pay, and Parliament Men should keep to the Service of the House, therefore no Parliament Men should be Members of the Army….

When this was done, the next Question was, Who should be Lord General, and what new Officers should be put in, or old ones continued? And here the Policy of Vane and Cromwell did its best: For General they chose Sir Thomas Fairfax, Son of the Lord Ferdinando Fairfax, who had been in the Wars beyond Sea, and had fought valiantly in Yorkshire for the Parliament, though he was over-powered by the Earl of Newcastle's, Numbers. This Man was chosen because they supposed to find him a Man of no quickness of Parts, of no Elocution, of no suspicious plotting Wit, and therefore One that Cromwell could make use of at his pleasure. And he was acceptable to sober Men, because he was Religious, Faithful, Valiant, and of a grave, sober, resolved Disposition; very fit for Execution, and neither too Great nor too Cunning to be Commanded by the Parliament.

SIR HENRY VANE, THE YOUNGER.

The other, S'r H. Vane, was a man of greate naturall parts, and of very profounde dissimulation, of a quicke conception, and very ready sharpe and weighty exspression. He had an unusuall aspecte, which though it might naturally proceede both from his father and mother, nether of which were beautifull persons, yett made men thinke ther was somewhat in him of extraordinary, and his whole life made good that imagination. Within a very shorte tyme after he returned from his studyes in Magdalen Colledge in Oxforde, wher, though he was under the care of a very worthy Tutour, he lyved not with greate exactnesse, he spent some little tyme in France, and more in Geneva, and after his returne into Englande, contracted a full præjudice and bitternesse against the Church, both against the forme of the goverment and the lyturgy, which was generally in greate reverence, even with many of those, who were not frends to the other. In this giddinesse which then much displeased, or seemed to displease his father, who still appeared highly conformable, and exceedingly sharpe against those who were not, he transported himselfe into New Englande, a Colony within few yeeres before planted by a mixture of all religions, which disposed the professors to dislike the goverment of the church, who were qualifyed by the Kings Charter to chuse ther owne goverment and governors, under the obligation that every man should take the othes of Allegiance and Supremacy, which all the first planters did, when they receaved ther charter, before they transported themselves from hence, nor was ther in many yeeres after the least scruple amongst them of complyinge with those obligations, so farr men were in the infancy of ther schisme, from refusinge to take lawfull othes. He was no sooner landed ther, but his partes made him quickly taken notice of, and very probably his quality, beinge the eldest sunn of a Privy Councellour, might give him some advantage, insomuch that when the next season came for the election of ther Magistrates, he was chosen ther governour, in which place he had so ill fortune, his workinge and unquyett fancy raysinge and infusinge a thousande scruples of conscience which they had not brought over with them, nor hearde of before, that he unsatisfyed with them, and they with him, he retransported himselfe into Englande, havinge sowed such seede of dissention ther, as grew up to prosperously, and miserably devyded the poore Colony into severall factions and devisions and persequtions of each other, which still continue to the greate prejudice of that plantation, insomuch as some of them, upon the grounde of ther first exspedition, liberty of conscience, have withdrawne themselves from ther jurisdiction, and obtayned other Charters from the Kinge, by which in other formes of goverment they have inlarged ther plantations within new limitts, adjacent to the other. He was no sooner returned into Englande, then he seemed to be much reformed in those extravagancyes, and with his fathers approbation and direction marryed a Lady of a good family, and by his fathers creditt with the Earle of Northumberland, who was high Admirall of Englande, was joyned presently and joyntly with S'r William Russell in the office of Treasurer of the Navy, a place of greate trust, and profitt, which he æqually shared with the other, and seemed a man well satisfyed and composed to the goverment. When his father receaved the disobligation from the L'd Straforde, by his beinge created Baron of Raby, the house and lande of Vane, and which title he had promised himselfe, which was unluckily cast upon him, purely out of contempt, they sucked in all the thoughts of revenge imaginable, and from thence he betooke himselfe to the frendshipp of M'r Pimm and all other discontented or seditious persons, and contributed all that intelligence, which will be hereafter mentioned, as he himselfe will often be, that designed the ruine of the Earle, and which grafted him in the intire confidence of those, who promoted the same, so that nothinge was concealed from him, though it is believed that he communicated his owne thoughts to very few.

Ther hath bene scarce any thinge more wounderfull throughout the progresse of these distractions, then that this Covenant did with such extraordinary exspedition passe the two houses, when all the leadinge persons in those Councells were at the same tyme knowne to be as greate enimyes to Presbitery (the establishment wherof was the sole end of this Covenant) as they were to the Kinge or the Church, and he who contributed most to it, and who in truth was the Principle contriver of it, and the man by whome the Committee in Scotlande was intirely and stupidly governed, S'r Harry Vane, the younger, was not afterwards knowne to abhorr the Covenant and the Presbiterians [more] then he was at that very tyme knowne to do, and laughed at them then, as much as ever he did afterwards.

He[1] was indeede a man of extraordinary parts, a pleasant witt, a greate understandinge, which pierced into and decerned the purposes of other men with wounderfull sagacity, whilst he had himselfe vultum clausum, that no man could make a guesse of what he intended; he was of a temper not to be mooved, and of rare dissimulation, and could comply when it was not seasonable to contradicte without loosinge grounde by the condescention, and if he were not superiour to M'r Hambden, he was inferiour to no other man in all misterious artifices. Ther neede no more be sayd of his ability, then that he was chosen to cozen and deceave a whole nation, which excelled in craft and dissemblinge, which he did with notable pregnancy and dexterity, and prævayled with a people, which could not be otherwise prævayled upon, then by advancinge ther Idoll Presbitery, to sacrifice ther peace, ther interest, and ther fayth, to the erectinge a power and authority, that resolved to persequte presbitery to an extirpation, and very neere brought ther purpose to passe.

[Footnote 1: Before 'He was indeede' Clarendon had written 'S'r Harry Vane the yonger, was on of the Commissyoners, and therfore the other neede not be named, since he was All in any businesse wher others were joyned with him.' He cancelled this on adding the preceding paragraph.]

COLONEL JOHN HUTCHINSON,

He was of a middle stature, of a slender and exactly well-proportion'd shape in all parts, his complexion fair, his hayre of a light browne, very thick sett in his youth, softer then the finest silke, curling into loose greate rings att the ends, his eies of a lively grey, well-shaped and full of life and vigour, graced with many becoming motions, his visage thinne, his mouth well made, and his lipps very ruddy and gracefull, allthough the nether chap shut over the upper, yett it was in such a manner as was not unbecoming, his teeth were even and white as the purest ivory, his chin was something long, and the mold of his face, his forehead was not very high, his nose was rays'd and sharpe, but withall he had a most amiable countenance, which carried in it something of magnanimity and majesty mixt with sweetnesse, that at the same time bespoke love and awe in all that saw him; his skin was smooth and white, his legs and feete excellently well made, he was quick in his pace and turnes, nimble and active and gracefull in all his motions, he was apt for any bodily exercise, and any that he did became him, he could dance admirably well, but neither in youth nor riper yeares made any practise of it, he had skill in fencing such as became a gentleman, he had a greate love of musick, and often diverted himselfe with a violl, on which he play'd masterly, he had an exact eare and judgement in other musick, he shott excellently in bowes and gunns, and much us'd them for his exercise, he had greate judgment in paintings, graving, sculpture, and all liberal arts, and had many curiosities of vallue in all kinds, he took greate delight in perspective glasses, and for his other rarities was not so much affected with the antiquity as the merit of the worke—he took much pleasure in emproovement of grounds, in planting groves and walkes, and fruite-trees, in opening springs and making fish-ponds; of country recreations he lov'd none but hawking, and in that was very eager and much delighted for the time he us'd it, but soone left it off; he was wonderful neate, cleanly and gentile in his habitt, and had a very good fancy in it, but he left off very early the wearing of aniething that was costly, yett in his plainest negligent habitt appear'd very much a gentleman; he had more addresse than force of body, yet the courage of his soule so supplied his members that he never wanted strength when he found occasion to employ it; his conversation was very pleasant for he was naturally chearful, had a ready witt and apprehension; he was eager in every thing he did, earnest in dispute, but withall very rationall, so that he was seldome overcome, every thing that it was necessary for him to doe he did with delight, free and unconstrein'd, he hated cerimonious complement, but yett had a naturall civillity and complaisance to all people, he was of a tender constitution, but through the vivacity of his spiritt could undergo labours, watchings and journeyes, as well as any of stronger compositions; he was rheumatick, and had a long sicknesse and distemper occasion'd thereby two or three yeares after the warre ended, but elce for the latter halfe of his life was healthy tho' tender, in his youth and childhood he was sickly, much troubled with weaknesse and tooth akes, but then his spiritts carried him through them; he was very patient under sicknesse or payne or any common accidints, but yet upon occasions, though never without just ones, he would be very angrie, and had even in that such a grace as made him to be fear'd, yet he was never outragious in passion; he had a very good facultie in perswading, and would speake very well pertinently and effectually without premeditation upon the greatest occasions that could be offer'd, for indeed his judgment was so nice, that he could never frame any speech beforehand to please himselfe, but his invention was so ready and wisdome so habituall in all his speeches, that he never had reason to repent himselfe of speaking at any time without ranking the words beforehand, he was not talkative yett free of discourse, of a very spare diett, not much given to sleepe, an early riser when in health, he never was at any time idle, and hated to see any one elce soe, in all his naturall and ordinary inclinations and composure, there was somthing extraordinary and tending to vertue, beyond what I can describe, or can be gather'd from a bare dead description; there was a life of spiritt and power in him that is not to be found in any copie drawne from him: to summe up therefore all that can be sayd of his outward frame and disposition wee must truly conclude, that it was a very handsome and well furnisht lodging prepar'd for the reception of that prince, who in the administration of all excellent vertues reign'd there awhile, till he was called back to the pallace of the universall emperor.

THE EARL OF ESSEX.

The Earle of Essex hath bene enough mentioned before, his nature and his understandinge have bene described, his former disobligations from the Courte, and then his introduction into it, and afterwards his beinge displaced from the office he held in it, have bene sett forth, and ther will be occasion heareaffter to renew the discource of him, and therfore it shall suffice in this place to say, that a weake judgement, and a little vanity, and as much of pryde, will hurry a man into as unwarrantable and as violent attempts, as the greatest and most unlimited and insaciable ambition will doe. He had no ambition of title, or office, or præferment, but only to be kindly looked upon, and kindly spoken to, and quyetly to injoy his owne fortune, and without doubte, no man in his nature more abhorred rebellion then he did, nor could he have bene ledd into it by any open or transparent temptation, but by a thousand disguises and cozinages. His pryde supplyed his want of ambition, and he was angry to see any other man more respected then himselfe, because he thought he deserved it more, and did better requite it, for he was in his frendshipps just and constante, and would not have practiced fouly against those he tooke to be enimyes: no man had creditt enough with him to corrupt him in pointe of loyalty to the Kinge, whilst he thought himselfe wise enough to know what treason was. But the new doctrine and distinction of Allegiance, and of the Kings power in and out of Parliament, and the new notions of Ordinances, were to hard for him and did really intoxicate his understandinge, and made him quitt his owne, to follow thers, who he thought wish'd as well, and judged better then himselfe; His vanity disposed him to be his Excellence, and his weaknesse to believe that he should be the Generall in the Houses, as well as in the Feild, and be able to governe ther councells, and restrayne ther passyons, as well as to fight ther battles, and that by this meanes he should become the præserver and not the destroyer of the Kinge and Kingdome; and with this ill grounded confidence, he launched out into that Sea, wher he mett with nothinge but rockes, and shelves, and from whence he could never discover any safe Porte to harbour in.

THE EARL OF SALISBURY.

The Earle of Salisbury had bene borne and bredd in Courte and had the Advantage of a descent from a Father and a Grandfather, who had bene very wise men, and greate Ministers of State in the eyes of Christendome, whose wisdome and virtues dyed with them, and ther children only inherited ther titles. He had bene admitted of the Councell to Kinge James, from which tyme he continued so obsequious to the Courte, that he never fayled in overactinge all that he was requyred to do; no acte of power was ever proposed, which he did not advance, and execute his parte, with the utmost rigour, no man so greate a tyrant in his country, or was lesse swayed by any motives of justice or honour; he was a man of no words, except in huntinge and hawkinge in which he only knew how to behave himselfe, in matters of State and councell he alwayes concurred in what was proposed for the Kinge, and cancelled and repayred all those transgressions by concurringe in all that was proposed against him as soone as any such propositions were made; yett when the Kinge went to Yorke, he likewise attended upon his Majesty and at that distance seemed to have recover'd some courage, and concurred in all councells which were taken to undeceave the people, and to make the proceedings of the Parliament odious to all the world; but on a suddayne he caused his horses to attend him out of the towne, and havinge placed fresh ons at a distance, he fledd backe to London, with the exspedition such men use when they are most afrayde, and never after denyed to do any thinge that was requyred of him, and when the warr was ended, and Crumwell had putt downe the house of Peeres, he gott himselfe to be chosen a member of the house of Commons, and sate with them as of ther owne body, and was esteemed accordingly; in a worde he became so despicable to all men, that he will hardly ever in joy the ease which Seneca bequeathed to him: Hic egregiis majoribus ortus est, qualiscunque est, sub umbra suorum lateat; Ut loca sordida repercussu solis illustrantur, ita inertes majorum suorum luce resplendeant.

THE EARL OF WARWICK.

The Earle of Warwicke was of the Kings counsell to, but was not woundred at for leavinge the Kinge, whome he had never served, nor did he looke upon himselfe as oblieged by that honour, which he knew was conferred upon him in the crowde of those, whom his Majesty had no esteeme of, or ever purposed to trust, so his businesse was to joyne with those, to whome he owed his promotion; he was a man of a pleasant and companionable witt and conversation, of an universall jollity, and such a licence in his wordes and in his actions, that a man of lesse virtue could not be founde out, so that a man might reasonably have believed, that a man so qualifyed would not have bene able to have contributed much to the overthrow of a nation, and kingdome; but with all these faults, he had greate authority and creditt with that people who in the beginninge of the troubles did all the mischieve; and by openinge his doores, and makinge his house the Randevooze of all the silenced Ministers, in the tyme when ther was authority to silence them, and spendinge a good parte of his estate, of which he was very prodigall, upon them, and by beinge present with them at ther devotions, and makinge himselfe merry with them and at them, which they dispenced with, he became the heade of that party, and gott the style of a godly man. When the Kinge revoked the Earle of Northumberlands Commission of Admirall, he presently accepted the office from the Parliament and never quitted ther service; and when Crumwell disbanded that Parliament, he betooke himselfe to the Protection of the Protectour, marryed his Heyre to his daughter, and lived in so intire a confidence and frendshipp with him, that when he dyed he had the honour to be exceedingly lamented by him: and left his estate, which before was subject to a vast debt, more improved and repayred, then any man, who traffiqued in that desperate commodity of rebellion.

THE EARL OF MANCHESTER.

Edward Montagu, created Baron Montagu of Kimbolton 1626, second Earl of Manchester 1642.

The Earle of Manchester, of the whole Caball, was in a thousand respects most unfitt for the company he kept. He was of a gentle and a generous nature, civilly bredd, had reverence and affection for the person of the Kinge, upon whome he had attended in Spayne, loved his Country with to unskilfull a tendernesse, and was of so excellent a temper and disposition, that the barbarous tymes, and the rough partes he was forced to acte in them, did not wype out or much deface those markes, insomuch as he was never guilty of any rudenesse towards those, he was oblieged to oppresse, but performed always as good offices towards his old frendes, and all other persons, as the iniquity of the tyme, and the nature of the imployment he was in, would permitt him to doe, which kinde of humanity could be imputed to very few; and he was at last dismissed, and remooved from any trust, for no other reason, but because he was not wicked enough.

He marryed first into the family of the Duke of Buckingham, and by his favour and interest was called to the house of Peeres in the life of his father, and made Barron of Kymolton, though he was commonly treated and knowne by the name of the L'd Mandevill: And was as much addicted to the service of the Courte as he ought to be. But the death of his Lady, and the murther of that greate Favorite, his secounde marriage with the daughter of the Earle of Warwicke, and the very narrow and restrayned maintenance which he receaved from his father and which would in no degree defray the exspences of the Courte, forced him to soone to retyre to a Country life, and totally to abandon both the Courte and London, whither he came very seldome in many yeeres; And in this retirement, the discountenance which his father underwent at Courte, the conversation of that family into which he was now marryed, the bewitchinge popularity which flowed upon him with a wounderfull Torrent, with the want of those guardes which a good education should have supplyed him with, by the cleere notion of the foundation of the Ecclesiasticall as well as the Civill goverment, made a greate impression upon his understandinge (for his nature was never corrupted but remayned still in its integrity) and made him believe, that the Courte was inclined to hurte and even to destroy the country, and from particular instances to make generall and daungerous conclusions. They who had bene alwayes enimyes to the Church, prævayled with him to lessen his reverence for it, and havinge not bene well instructed to defende it, [he] yeilded to easily to those who confidently assaulted it, and thought it had greate errors which were necessary to be reformed, and that all meanes are lawfull to compasse that which is necessary, wheras the true Logique is, that the thinge desyred is not necessary, if the wayes are unlawfull which are proposed to bringe it to passe. No man was courted with more application by persons of all conditions and qualityes, and his person was not lesse acceptable to those of steddy and uncorrupted principles, then to those of depraved inclinations; and in the end, even his piety administred some excuse to him, for his fathers infirmityes and transgressions had so farr exposed him to the inquisition of justice, that he found it necessary to procure the assistance and protection of those, who were stronge enough to violate justice itselfe, and so he adhered to those, who were best able to defende his fathers honour, and therby to secure his owne fortune, and concurred with them in ther most violent designes, and gave reputation to them; and the Courte as unskilfully, tooke an occasion to soone to make him desperate, by accusinge him of high Treason, when (though he might be guilty enough,) he was without doubte in his intentions at least as innocent, as any of the leadinge men; and it is some evidence that God Almighty saw his hearte was not so malicious as the rest, that he præserved him to the end of the confusion, when he appeared as gladd of the Kings restoration, and had heartily wished it longe before, and very few who had a hand in the contrivance of the rebellion gave so manifest tokens of repentance as he did; and havinge for many yeeres undergone the jealosy and hatred of Crumwell, as one who abominated the murther of the Kinge, and all the barbarous proceedings against the life of men in cold bloode, the Kinge upon his returne receaved him into grace and favour, which he never forfeited by any undutifull behaviour.

THE LORD SAY.

The last of those Councillours, which were made after the faction prævayled in Parliament, who were all made to advance an accommodation, and who adhered to the Parliament, was the L'd Say, a man who had the deepest hande in the originall contrivance of all the calamityes which befell that unhappy kingdome, though he had not the least thought of dissolvinge the Monarchy, and lesse of levellinge the rankes and distinctions of men, for no man valewed himselfe more upon his title, or had more ambition to make it greater, and to rayse his fortune, which was but moderate for his title. He was of a prowde, morose, and sullen nature, conversed much with bookes, havinge bene bredd a scholar, and (though nobly borne) a fellow of New-Colledge in Oxforde, to which he claymed a right, by the Allyance he prætended to have from William of Wickam the Founder, which he made good by such an unreasonable Pedigre through so many hundred yeeres, halfe the tyme wherof extinguishes all relation of kinred, however upon that pretence that Colledge hath bene seldome without one of that L'ds family. His parts were not quicke, but so much above those of his owne ranke, that he had alwayes greate creditt and authority in Parliament, and the more for takinge all opportunityes to oppose the Courte, and had with his milke sucked in an implacable malice against the goverment of the Church. When the Duke of Buckingham proposed to himselfe after his returne with the Prince from Spayne, to make himselfe popular, by breakinge that match, and to be gratious with the Parliament, as for a shorte tyme he was, he resolved to imbrace the frendshipp of the L'd Say, who was as sollicitous to climbe by that ladder, but the Duke quickly founde him of to imperious and pedanticall a spiritt, and to affecte to daungerous mutations, and so cast him off; and from that tyme, he gave over any pursuite in Courte, and lived narrowly and sordidly in the country, havinge conversation with very few, but such who had greate malignity against the church and State, and fomented ther inclinations and gave them instructions how to behave themselfes with caution and to do ther businesse with most security, and was in truth the Pylott that steered all those vessells which were fraighted with sedition to destroy the goverment. He founde alwayes some way to make professions of duty to the Kinge and made severall undertakings to do greate services, which he could not, or would not make good, and made hast to possesse himselfe of any præferment he could compasse, whilst his frends were content to attende a more proper conjuncture, so he gott the Mastershipp of the Wards shortly after the beginninge of the Parliament, and was as sollicitous to be Treasurer, after the death of the Earle of Bedforde, and if he could have satisfyed his rancour in any degree against the Church, he would have bene ready to have carryed the Prærogative as high as ever it was. When he thought ther was mischieve enough done, he would have stopped the current and have deverted farther fury, but he then founde he had only authority and creditt to do hurte, none to heale the wounds he had given; and fell into as much contempt with those whome he had ledde, as he was with those whome he had undone.

JOHN SELDEN.

M'r Selden, was a person whome no character can flatter, or transmitt in any exspressions æquall to his meritt and virtue. He was of so stupendious learninge in all kindes, and in all languages, (as may appeare in his excellent and transcendent writings) that a man would have thought, he had bene intirely conversant amongst bookes, and had never spent an howre, but in readinge and writinge, yett his humanity, courtesy and affability was such, that he would have bene thought to have bene bredd in the best courtes, but that his good nature, charity, and delight in doinge good, and in communicatinge all he knew, exceeded that breedinge. His style in all his writings seemes harsh and sometymes obscure, which is not wholy to be imputed to the abstruse subjects, of which he commonly treated, out of the pathes trodd by other men, but to a little undervalewinge the beauty of a style, and to much propensity to the language of antiquity, but in his conversation the most cleere discourcer, and had the best faculty, in makinge hard things, easy, and præsentinge them to the understandinge, of any man, that hath bene knowne. M'r Hyde was wonte to say, that he valewed himselfe upon nothinge more, then upon havinge had M'r Seldence acquaintance, from the tyme he was very young, and held it with greate delight, as longe as they were suffred to continue togither in London, and he was very much troubled alwayes, when he hearde him blamed, censured and reproched, for stayinge in London, and in the Parliament after they were in rebellion, and in the worst tymes, which his age oblieged him to doe; and how wicked soever the actions were which were every day done, he was confident he had not given his consent to them, but would have hindred them if he could, with his owne safety, to which he was alwayes enough indulgent: if he had some infirmityes with other men, they were waighed downe with wounderfull and prodigious abilityes and excellencyes in the other skale.

JOHN EARLE.

Author of 'Micro-cosmographie' 1628. Bishop of Worcester 1662, and of Salisbury 1663.

D'r Earles was at that tyme Chaplyne in the house to the Earle of Pembroke, L'd Chamberlyne of his Majestys household, and had a lodginge in the courte under that relation. He was a person very notable for his elegance in the Greeke and Latine tounges, and beinge fellow of Merton Colledge in Oxforde, and havinge bene Proctour of the University, and some very witty and sharpe discourses beinge published in print without his consent, though knowne to be his, he grew suddaynely into a very generall esteem with all men, being a man of greate piety and devotion, a most eloquent and powerfull preacher, and of a conversation so pleasant and delightfull, so very innocent, and so very facetious, that no mans company was more desyred, and more loved. No man was more negligent in his dresse, and habitt, and meene, no man more wary and cultivated in his behaviour and discourse, insomuch as he had the greater advantage when he was knowne, by promisinge so little before he was knowen. He was an excellent Poett both in Latine, Greeke, and English, as appeares by many pieces yett abroade, though he suppressed many more himselfe, especially of English, incomparably good, out of an austerity to those sallyes of his youth. He was very deere to the L'd Falkelande, with whome he spent as much tyme as he could make his owne, and as that Lord would impute the speedy progresse he made in the Greeke tounge, to the information and assistance he had from M'r Earles, so M'r Earles would frequently professe that he had gott more usefull learninge by his conversation at Tew (the L'd Falkelands house) then he had at Oxforde. In the first setlinge of the Prince his family, he was made on of his Chaplynes, and attended on him when he was forced to leave the kingdome, and therfore we shall often have occasyon to mention him heareafter. He was amongst the few excellent men, who never had, nor ever could have an enimy, but such a one who was an enimy to all learninge and virtue, and therfore would never make himselfe knowne.

JOHN HALES.

M'r John Hales, had bene Greeke Professor in the University of Oxforde, and had borne all[1] the labour of that excellent edition and impressyon of S't Chrisostomes workes, sett out by S'r Harry Savill, who was then Warden of Merton Colledge, when the other was fellow of that house. He was Chaplyne in the house with S'r Dudly Carleton Ambassador at the Hague in Hollande, at the tyme when the Synod of Dorte was held, and so had liberty to be present at the consultations in that assembly, and hath left the best memoriall behinde him, of the ignorance and passyon and animosity and injustice of that Convention, of which he often made very pleasant relations, though at that tyme it receaved to much countenance from Englande. Beinge a person of the greatest eminency for learninge and other abilityes, from which he might have promised himselfe any preferment in the Church, he withdrew himselfe from all pursuites of that kinde into a private fellowshipp in the Colledge of Eton, wher his frende S'r Harry Savill was Provost, wher he lyved amongst his bookes, and the most separated from the worlde of any man then livinge, though he was not in the least degree inclined to melancholique, but on the contrary of a very open and pleasant conversation, and therfore was very well pleased with the resorte of his frends to him, who were such as he had chosen, and in whose company he delighted, and for whose sake he would sometymes, once in a yeere, resorte to London, only to injoy ther cheerefull conversation.

He would never take any cure of soules, and was so great a contemner of mony, that he was wonte to say that his fellowshipp, and the Bursers place (which for the good of the Colledge he held many yeeres) was worth him fifty poundes a yeere more then he could spende, and yett besydes his beinge very charitable to all poore people, even to liberality, he had made a greater and better collection of bookes, then were to be founde in any other private library, that I have seene, as he had sure reade more, and carryed more about him, in his excellent memory, then any man I ever knew, my L'd Falkelande only excepted, who I thinke syded him. He had, whether from his naturall temper and constitution, or from his longe retyrement from all Crowdes, or from his profounde judgement and decerninge spiritt, contracted some opinions, which were not receaved, nor by him published, except in private discources, and then rather upon occasion of dispute, than of positive opinion; and he would often say, his opinions he was sure did him no harme, but he was farr from beinge confident, that they might not do others harme, who entertained them, and might entertayne other resultes from them then he did, and therfore he was very reserved in communicatinge what he thought himselfe in those points, in which he differed from what was receaved.

Nothinge troubled him more, then the brawles which were growne from religion, and he therfore exceedingly detested the tyranny of the church of Rome, more for ther imposinge uncharitably upon the consciences of other men, then for ther errors in ther owne opinions, and would often say, that he would renounce the religion of the church of Englande tomorrow if it oblieged him to believe that any other Christians should be damned: and that no body would conclude another man to be damned, who did not wish him so: No man more stricte and seveare to himselfe, to other men so charitable as to ther opinions, that he thought that other men were more in faulte, for ther carriage towards them, then the men themselves were who erred: and he thought that pryde and passyon more then conscience were the cause of all separation from each others communion, and he frequently sayd, that that only kept the world from agreeinge upon such a Lyturgy, as might bringe them into one communion, all doctrinall points upon which men differed in ther opinions, beinge to have no place in any Liturgye. Upon an occasionall discource with a frende of the frequent and uncharitable reproches of Heretique and Schismatique to lightly throwne at each other amongst men who differr in ther judgement, he writt a little discource of Schisme, contayned in lesse then two sheetes of paper, which beinge transmitted from frende to frende in writing, was at last without any malice brought to the view of the Arch-Bishopp of Canterbury Dr. Lawde, who was a very rigid survayour of all thinges which never so little bordred upon Schisme, and thought the Church could not be to vigilant against, and jealous of such incursyons. He sent for M'r Hales, whome when they had both lived in the University of Oxforde he had knowne well, and told him that he had in truth believed him to be longe since dead, and chidd him very kindly, for havinge never come to him, havinge bene of his old acquaintance, then asked him whether he had lately writt a shorte discource of Schisme, and whether he was of that opinion which that discource implyed; he told him, that he had for the satisfaction of a private frende (who was not of his minde) a yeere or two before, writt such a small tracte, without any imagination that it would be communicated, and that he believed it did not contayne any thinge that was not agreable to the judgement of the primitive fathers; upon which the Arch-Bishopp debated with him upon some exspressions of Irenæus, and the most auntient fathers, and concluded with sayinge that the tyme was very apt to sett new doctrynes on foote, of which the witts of the Age were to susceptable, and that ther could not be to much care taken to præserve the peace and unity of the Church, and from thence asked him of his condition, and whether he wanted any thinge, and the other answeringe that he had enough, and wanted nor desyred no addition: and so dismissed him with greate courtesy, and shortly after sent for him agayne, when ther was a Præbendary of Windsor fallen, and told him the Kinge had given him that præferment because it lay so convenient to his fellowshipp of Eton, which (though indeede the most convenient præferment that could be thought of for him) the Arch-Bishopp could not without greate difficulty perswade him to accept, and he did accepte it rather to please him, then himselfe, because he really believed he had enough before. He was one of the least men in the kingdome, and one of the greatest schollers in Europe.

WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH.

M'r Chillingworth, was of a stature little superiour to M'r Hales (and it was an Age in which ther were many greate and wounderfull men of that size) and a man of so grea[te] a subtlety of understandinge, and so rare a temper in debate, that as it was impossible to provoke him into any passyon, so it was very difficulte to keepe a mans selfe from beinge a little discomposed by his sharpnesse and quicknesse of argument and instances, in which he had a rare facility, and a greate advantage over all the men I ever knew. He had spent all his younger tyme in disputation, and had arryved to so greate a mastery, as he was inferior to no man in those skirmishes: but he had with his notable perfection in this exercise, contracted such an irresolution and habit of doubtinge, that by degrees he grew confident of nothinge, and a schepticke at least in the greatest misteryes of fayth; This made him from first waveringe in religion and indulginge to scruples, to reconcile himselfe to soone and to easily to the Church of Rome, and carryinge still his owne inquisitivenesse aboute him, without any resignation to ther authority (which is the only temper can make that Church sure of its Proselites) havinge made a journy to S't Omers purely to perfecte his conversion by the conversation of those who had the greatest name, he founde as little satisfaction ther, and returned with as much hast from them, with a beliefe that an intire exemption from error was nether inherent in, nor necessary to, any Church; which occasioned that warr which was carryed on by the Jesuitts with so greate asperity and reproches against him, and in which he defended himselfe by such an admirable eloquence of language, and the cleere and incomparable power of reason, that he not only made them appeare unæquall adversaryes, but carryed the warr into ther owne quarters, and made the Popes infallibility to be as much shaken and declyned by ther owne Doctors, and as greate an acrimony amon[g]st themselves upon that subjecte, and to be at least as much doubted as in the schooles of the Reformed or Protestant, and forced them since to defende and maintayne those unhappy contraversyes in religion, with armes and weopons of another nature, then were used or knowne in the Church of Rome when Bellarmyne dyed: and which probably will in tyme undermyne the very foundation that supportes it.

Such a levity and propensity to change, is commonly attended with greate infirmityes in, and no lesse reproch and præjudice to the person, but the sincerity of his hearte was so conspicuous, and without the least temptation of any corrupt end, and the innocence and candour of his nature so evident and without any perversenesse, that all who knew him cleerely decerned, that all those restlesse motions and fluctuation proceeded only from the warmth and jealosy of his owne thoughts, in a to nice inquisition for truth: nether the bookes of the Adversary, nor any of ther persons, though he was acquainted with the best of both, had ever made greate impression upon him, all his doubles grew out of himselfe, when he assisted his scruples with all the strenght of his owne reason, and was then to hard for himselfe; but findinge as little quyett and repose in those victoryes, he quickly recover'd by a new appeale to his owne judgement, so that he was in truth upon the matter in all his Sallyes and retreits his owne converte, though he was not so totally devested of all thoughts of this worlde, but that when he was ready for it he admitted some greate and considerable Churchmen to be sharers with him, in his publique conversion. Whilst he was in perplexity, or rather some passionate disinclination to the religion he had bene educated in, he had the misfortune to have much acquaintance with one M'r Lugar a minister of that church, a man of a competency of learninge in those points most contravened with the Romanists, but of no acute parts of witt or judgement, and wrought so farr upon him, by weakeninge and enervating those arguments by which he founde he was governed (as he had all the logique and all the Rhetorique that was necessary to perswade very powerfully men of the greatest talents) that the poore man, not able to lyve longe in doubte, to hastily deserted his owne church, and betooke himselfe to the Roman, nor could all the arguments and reasons of M'r Chillingworth make him pawse in the exspedition he was usinge, or reduce him from that Church after he had given himselfe to it, but had alwayes a greate animosity against him, for havinge (as he sayd) unkindly betrayed him, and carryed him into another religion, and ther left him: So unfitt are some constitutions to be troubled with doubtes, after they are once fixed.

He did really believe all warr to be unlawfull, and did not thinke that the Parliament (whose proceedings he perfectly abhorred) did intruth intende to involve the nation in a civill warr, till after the battell of Edgehill, and then he thought any exspedient or stratagemm that was like to putt a speedy ende to it, to be the most commendable; and so havinge to mathematically conceaved an Engyne that should moove so lightly, as to be a brest-worke in all incounters and assaultes in the feilde, he carryed it to make the exsperiment into that parte of his Majestys army, which was only in that winter season in the Feilde, under the commaunde of the L'd Hopton in Hampshyre upon the borders of Sussex, wher he was shutt up in the Castle of Arrundell, which was forced after a shorte, sharpe seige, to yeild for want of victuall, and poore M'r Chillingworth with it fallinge into the Rebells hands, and beinge most barbarously treated by them, especially by that Clargy which followed them, and beinge broken with sicknesse contracted by the ill accommadation and wante of meate and fyre duringe the seige, which was in a terrible season of frost and snow, he dyed shortly after in pryson. He was a man of excellent parts, and of a cheerefull disposition, voyde of all kinde of vice, and indewed with many notable virtues, of a very publique hearte, and an indefatigable desyre to do good; his only unhappinesse proceeded from his sleepinge to little, and thinkinge to much, which sometymes threw him into violent feavers.

EDMUND WALLER.

Edmund Waller, was borne to a very fayre estate, by the parsimony or frugality of a wise father and mother, and he thought it so commendable an advantage, that he resolved to improove it with his utmost care, upon which in his nature he was to much intent; and in order to that he was so much reserved and retyred, that he was scarce ever hearde of, till by his addresse and dexterity, he had gotten a very rich wife in the Citty, against all the recommendation, and countenance, and authority of the Courte, which was throughly ingaged on the behalfe of M'r Crofts, and which used to be succesfull in that age, against any opposition. He had the good fortune to have an allyance and frendshipp with D'r Morly, who had assisted and instructed him in the readinge many good bookes, to which his naturall parts and promptitude inclined him, especially the poetts, and at the age when other men used to give over writinge verses (for he was neere thirty yeeres of age when he first ingaged himselfe in that exercize, at least that he was knowen to do soe) he surpryzed the towne with two or three pieces of that kinde, as if a tenth muse had bene newly borne, to cherish droopinge poetry: the Doctor at that tyme brought him into that company which was most celebrated for good conversation, wher he was receaved and esteemed with greate applause and respecte. He was a very pleasant discourcer in earnest and in jest, and therfore very gratefull to all kinde of company, wher he was not the lesse esteemed, for beinge very rich. He had bene even nurced in Parliaments, wher he sate when he was very young,[1] and so when they were resumed agayne (after a longe intermission,[2]) he appeared in those assemblyes with greate advantage, havinge a gracefull way of speakinge, and by thinkinge much upon severall arguments (which his temper and complexion that had much of melancholique inclined him to) he seemed often to speake upon the suddayne, when the occasyon had only administred the opportunity of sayinge what he had throughly considered, which gave a greate lustre to all he sayde; which yett was rather of delight, then wayte. Ther needes no more be sayd to extoll the excellence and power of his witt, and pleasantnesse of his conversation, then that it was of magnitude enough to cover a world of very greate faultes, that is so cover them, that they were not taken notice of to his reproch, a narrownesse in his nature to the louest degree, an abjectnesse and want of courage to supporte him in any virtuous undertakinge, an insinuation and servile flattery to the height the vaynest and most imperious nature could be contented with: that it præserved and woone his life from those who were most resolved to take it, and in an occasyon in which he ought to have bene ambitious to have lost it, and then præserved him agayne from the reproch and contempt that was dew to him for so præservinge it, and for vindicatinge it at such a pryce: that it had power to reconcile him to those whome he had most offended and provoked, and continued to his age with that rare felicity, that his company was acceptable, wher his spirit was odious, and he was at least pittyed, wher he was most detested.

THOMAS HOBBES.

I have proposed to my self, to make some Animadversions upon such particulars, as may in my judgment produce much mischief in the World, in a Book of great Name, and which is entertain'd and celebrated (at least enough) in the World; a Book which contains in it good learning of all kinds, politely extracted, and very wittily and cunningly disgested, in a very commendable method, and in a vigorous and pleasant Style: which hath prevailed over too many, to swallow many new tenets as maximes without chewing; which manner of diet for the indigestion M'r Hobbes himself doth much dislike. The thorough novelty (to which the present age, if ever any, is too much inclin'd) of the work receives great credit and authority from the known Name of the Author, a Man of excellent parts, of great wit, some reading, and somewhat more thinking; One who ha's spent many years in forreign parts and observation, understands the Learned as well as modern Languages, hath long had the reputation of a great Philosopher and Mathematician, and in his age hath had conversation with very many worthy and extraordinary Men, to which, it may be, if he had bin more indulgent in the more vigorous part of his life, it might have had a greater influence upon the temper of his mind, whereas age seldom submits to those questions, enquiries, and contradictions, which the Laws and liberty of conversation require: and it hath bin alwaies a lamentation amongst M'r Hobbes his Friends, that he spent too much time in thinking, and too little in exercising those thoughts in the company of other Men of the same, or of as good faculties; for want whereof his natural constitution, with age, contracted such a morosity, that doubting and contradicting Men were never grateful to him: In a word, M'r Hobbes is one of the most antient acquaintance I have in the World, and of whom I have alwaies had a great esteem, as a Man who besides his eminent parts of Learning and knowledg, hath bin alwaies looked upon as a Man of Probity, and a life free from scandal; and it may be there are few Men now alive, who have bin longer known to him then I have bin in a fair and friendly conversation and sociableness.

I have heard his brother Edm and M'r Wayte his schoole fellow &c, say that when he was a Boy he was playsome enough: but withall he had even then a contemplative Melancholinesse. he would gett him into a corner, and learne his Lesson by heart presently. His haire was black, & his schoolefellows[1] were wont to call him Crowe.

The Lord Chancellour Bacon loved to converse with him. He assisted his Lo'p: in translating severall of his Essayes into Latin, one I well remember is[1] that, of the Greatnes of Cities. the rest I have forgott. His Lo'p: was a very Contemplative person, and was wont to contemplate in his delicious walkes at Gorambery, and dictate to M'r Thomas Bushell or some other of his Gentlemen, that attended him with inke & paper ready, to sett downe presently his thoughts. His Lo'p: would often say that he better liked M'r Hobbes's taking his Notions[2], then any of the other, because he understood what he wrote; which the others not understanding my Lord would many times have a hard taske to make sense of what they writt.

It is to be remembred that about these times, M'r T.H. was much addicted to Musique, and practised on the Base-Violl.

… LEVIATHAN, the manner of writing of which Booke (he told me) was thus. He walked much and contemplated, and he had in the head of his staffe[1] a pen and inkehorne; carried alwayes a Note-booke in his pocket, and as soon as a though[t][2] darted, he presently entred it into his Booke, or otherwise[3] he might perhaps[4] have lost it. He had drawne the Designe of the Booke into Chapters &c; so he knew where about it would come in. Thus that Booke was made.

He was marvellous happy and ready in his replies; and Replies that without rancor, (except provoked). but now I speake of his readinesse in replies as to witt & drollery, he would say that, he did not care to give, neither was he adroit[1] at a present answer to a serious quaere; he had as lieve they should have expected a[n] extemporary solution[2] to an Arithmeticall probleme, for he turned and winded & compounded in philosophy, politiques &c. as if he had been at Analyticall[3] worke. he alwayes avoided as much as he could, to conclude hastily.

He sayd that he sometimes would sett his thoughts upon researching and contemplating, always with this Rule[2], that he very much & deeply considered one thing at a time. Sc. a weeke, or sometimes a fortnight.

In his old age he was very bald[1], which claymed a veneration; yet within dore he used to study, and sitt bare-headed: and sayd he never tooke cold in his head but that the greatest trouble was to keepe-off the Flies from pitching on the baldnes: his Head was … inches (I have the measure) in compasse, and of a mallet forme, approved by the Physiologers.

He had a good Eie, and that of a hazell colour, which was full of life & spirit, even to his last: when he was earnest, in discourse, there shone (as it were) a bright live-coale within it. he had two kind of Lookes: when he laught, was witty, & in a merry humour, one could scarce see his Eies: by and by when he was serious and earnest[1], he open'd his eies round (i.) his eielids. he had midling eies, not very big, nor very little.

He was six foote high and something better, and went indifferently erect; or, rather considering his great age, very erect.

His Sight & Witt continued to his last. He had a curious sharp sight, as he had a sharpe Witt; which was also so sure and steady, (and contrary to that men call Brodwittednes,) that I have heard him oftentimes say, that in Multiplying & Dividing he never mistooke a figure[1]: and so, in other things. He thought much & with excellent Method, & Stedinesse, which made him seldome make a false step.

[Footnote 1: 'never … figure' above 'was never out' ('out' corrected to 'mistooke').]

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his Contemplation was much more then his Reading. He was wont to say that, if he had read as much as other men, he should have knowne no more then[1] other men.

He had alwayes bookes of prick-song lyeing on his Table: e.g. of H. Lawes &c. Songs: which at night when he was a bed, & the dores made fast, & was sure no body heard him, he sang aloud, (not that he had a very good voice) but to cleare his pipes[1]: he did beleeve it did his Lunges good, & conduced much to prolong his life.

THOMAS FULLER.

He was of Stature somewhat Tall, exceeding the meane, with a proportionable bigness to become it, but no way inclining to Corpulency: of an exact Straightnesse of the whole Body, and a perfect Symmetry in every part thereof. He was of a Sanguine constitution, which beautified his Face with a pleasant Ruddinesse, but of so Grave and serious an aspect, that it Awed and Discountenanced the smiling Attracts of that complexion. His Head Adorned with a comely Light-Coloured Haire, which was so, by Nature exactly Curled (an Ornament enough of it self in this Age to Denominate a handsome person, and wherefore all Skill and Art is used) but not suffered to overgrow to any length unseeming his modesty and Profession.

His Gate and Walking was very upright and graceful, becoming his well shapen Bulke: approaching something near to that we terme Majesticall; but that the Doctor was so well known to be void of any affectation or pride. Nay so Regardlesse was he of himselfe in his Garb and Rayment, in which no doubt his Vanity would have appeared, as well as in his stately pace: that it was with some trouble to himselfe, to be either Neat or Decent; it matter'd not for the outside, while he thought himself never too Curious and Nice in the Dresses of his mind.

Very Carelesse also he was to seeming inurbanity in the modes of Courtship and demeanour, deporting himself much according to the old English Guise, which for its ease and simplicity suited very well with the Doctor, whose time was designed for more Elaborate businesse: and whose MOTTO might have been sincerity.

As inobservant he was of persons, unless businesse with them, or his concerns pointed them out and adverted him; seeing and discerning were two things: often in several places, hath he met with Gentlemen of his nearest and greatest Acquaintance, at a full rencounter and stop, whom he hath endeavoured to passe by, not knowing, that is to say, not minding of them, till rectifyed and recalled by their familiar compellations.

This will not (it may be presumed) and justly cannot be imputed unto any indisposednesse and unaptnesse of his Nature, which was so far from Rude and untractable, that it may be confidently averred, he was the most complacent person in the Nation, as his Converse and Writings, with such a freedome of Discourse and quick Jocundity of style, do sufficiently evince.

He was a perfect walking Library, and those that would finde delight in him must turn him; he was to be diverted from his present purpose with some urgency: and when once Unfixed and Unbent, his mind freed from the incumbency of his Study; no Man could be more agreeable to Civil and Serious mirth, which limits his most heightned Fancy never transgressed.

He had the happinesse of a very Honourable, and that very numerous acquaintance, so that he was noway undisciplined in the Arts of Civility; yet he continued semper idem, which constancy made him alwaies acceptable to them. At his Diet he was very sparing and temperate, but yet he allowed himself the repasts and refreshings of two Meals a day: but no lover of Danties, or the Inventions of Cookery: solid meats better fitting his strength of Constitution; but from drink very much abstemious, which questionlesse was the cause of that uninterrupted Health he enjoyed till this his First and Last sicknesse: of which Felicity as he himself was partly the cause of by his exactnesse in eating and drinking, so did he the more dread the sudden infliction of any Disease, or other violence of Nature, fearing this his care might amount to a presumption, in the Eyes of the great Disposer of all things, and so it pleased GOD it should happen.

But his great abstinence of all was from Sleep, and strange it was that one of such a Fleshly and sanguine composition, could overwatch so many heavy propense inclinations to Rest. For this in some sort he was beholden to his care in Diet aforesaid, (the full Vapours of a repletion in the Stomack ascending to the Brain, causing that usual Drowsinesse we see in many) but most especially to his continual custome, use, and practise, which had so subdued his Nature, that it was wholy Governed by his Active and Industrious mind.

And yet this is a further wonder: he did scarcely allow himself, from his First Degree in the University, any Recreation or Easie Exercise, no not so much as walking, but very Rare and Seldome; and that not upon his own choice, but as being compelled by friendly, yet, Forcible Invitations; till such time as the War posted him from place to place, and after that his constant attendance on the Presse in the Edition of his Books: when was a question, which went the fastest, his Head or his Feet: so that in effect he was a very stranger, if not an Enemy to all pleasure.

Riding was the most pleasant, because his necessary convenience; the Doctors occasions, especially his last work, requiring Travel, to which he had so accustomed himself: so that this Diversion, (like Princes Banquets only to be lookt upon by them, not tasted of) was rather made such then enjoyed by him.

So that if there were any Felicity or Delight, which he can be truly said to have had: it was either in his Relations or in his Works. As to his Relations, certainly, no man was more a tender, more indulgent a Husband and a Father: his Conjugal Love in both matches being equally blest with the same Issue, kept a constant Tenour in both Marriages, which he so improved, that the Harmony of his Affections still'd all Discord, and Charmed the noyse of passion.

Towards the Education of his Children, he was exceeding carefull, allowing them any thing conducing to that end, beyond the present measure of his estate; which its well hoped will be returned to the Memory of so good a Father, in their early imitation of him in all those good Qualities and Literature, to which they have now such an Hereditary clayme.

As to his Books, which we usually call the Issue of the Brain, he was more then Fond, totally abandoning and forsaking all things to follow them. And yet if Correction and Severity (so this may be allowed the gravity of the Subject) be also the signes of Love: a stricter and more carefull hand was never used. True it is they did not grow up without some errours, like the Tares: nor can the most refined pieces of any of his Antagonists boast of perfection. He that goes an unknown and beaten Track in a Dubious way, though he may have good directions, yet if in the journey he chance to stray, cannot well be blamed; they have perchance plowed with his Heifer, and been beholden to those Authorities (for their Exceptions) which he first gave light to.

To his Neighbours and Friends he behaved himselfe with that chearfulnesse and plainnesse of Affection and respect, as deservedly gained him their Highest esteeme: from the meanest to the highest he omitted nothing what to him belonged in his station, either in a familiar correspondency, or necessary Visits; never suffering intreaties of that which either was his Duty, or in his power to perform. The quickness of his apprehension helped by a Good Nature, presently suggested unto him (without putting them to the trouble of an innuendo) what their severall Affairs required, in which he would spare no paynes: insomuch that it was a piece of Absolute Prudence to rely upon his Advice and Assistance. In a word, to his Superiours he was Dutifully respectfull without Ceremony or Officiousnesse; to his equalls he was Discreetly respectful, without neglect or unsociableness; and to his Inferiours, (whom indeed he judged Christianly none to be) civilly respectfull without Pride or Disdain.

But all these so eminent vertues, and so sublimed in him, were but as foyles to those excellent gifts wherewith God had endued his intellectuals. He had a Memory of that vast comprehensiveness, that he is deservedly known for the first inventer of that Noble Art, whereof having left behind him no Rules, or directions, save, onely what fell from him in discours, no further account can be given, but a relation of some very rare experiments of it made by him.

He undertook once in passing to and fro from Templebar to the furthest Conduit in Cheapside, at his return again to tell every Signe as they stood in order on both sides of the way, repeating them either backward or forward, as they should chuse, which he exactly did, not missing or misplacing one, to the admiration of those that heard him.

The like also would he doe in words of different Languages, and of hard and difficult prolation, to any number whatsoever: but that which was most strange, and very rare in him, was his way of writing, which something like the Chineses, was from the top of the page to the bottom: the manner thus. He would write near the Margin the first words of every Line down to the Foot of the Paper, then would he begining at the head againe, fill up every one of these Lines, which without any interlineations or spaces but with the full and equal length, would so adjust the sense and matter, and so aptly Connex and Conjoyn the ends and beginnings of the said Lines, that he could not do it better, as he hath said, if he had writ all out in a Continuation.

JOHN MILTON.

He was of middle stature,[1] he had light abroun[2] hayre, his complexion exceeding[3] faire. he was so faire, that they called him the Lady of Christs college. ovall face. his eie a darke gray…. he was a Spare man.

[Footnote 1: Aubrey wrote first 'He was scarce so tall as I am'; then added above the last six words, 'q[uaere] quot feet I am high'; and then above this 'Resp: of middle stature'.]

He was an early riser: Sc: at 4 a clock manè. yea, after he lost his sight: He had a man read to him: The first thing he read was the Hebrew bible, and that was at 4'h. manè 1/2'h.+. Then he contemplated. At 7 his man came to him again & then read to him and wrote till dinner: the writing was as much as the reading. His daughter Deborah 2[1] could read to him Latin, Italian, & French, & Greeke; married in Dublin to one M'r Clarke [sells silke &c[2]] very like her father. The other sister is Mary 1[1], more like her mother. After dinner he usd to walke 3 or 4 houres at a time, he alwayes had a Garden where he lived: went to bed about 9. Temperate, rarely drank between meales. Extreme pleasant in his conversation, & at dinner, supper &c: but Satyricall. He pronounced the letter R very hard. a certaine signe of a Satyricall Witt. from Jo. Dreyden.

He had a delicate tuneable Voice & had good skill: his father instructed him: he had an Organ in his house: he played on that most. His exercise was chiefly walking.

He was mightily importuned to goe into France & Italie. Foraigners came much to see him, and much admired him, & offered to him great preferments to come over to them, & the only inducement of severall foreigners that came over into England, was chifly to see O. Protector & M'r J. Milton, and would see the house and chamber wher he was borne: he was much more admired abrode then at home.

His harmonicall, and ingeniose soule did lodge[1] in a beautifull and well proportioned body—In toto nusquam corpore menda fuit. Ovid.

He had a very good memory: but I believe that his excellent Method of thinking, & disposing did much helpe his memorie.

He was very healthy, & free from all diseases, seldome tooke any Physique, only sometimes he tooke Manna[1], and only towards his later end he was visited with the Gowte—Spring & Fall: he would be chearfull even in his Gowte-fitts: & sing.

He died of the gowt struck in the 9th or 10th of Novemb 1674, as appeares by his Apothecaryes Booke.

There is another very remarkable Passage in the Composure of this Poem [Paradise Lost], which I have a particular occasion to remember; for whereas I had the perusal of it from the very beginning; for some years as I went from time to time to Visit him, in a Parcel of Ten, Twenty, or Thirty Verses at a Time, which being Written by whatever hand came next, might possibly want Correction as to the Orthography and Pointing; having as the Summer came on, not been shewed any for a considerable while, and desiring the reason thereof, was answered, That his Veine never happily flow'd, but from the Autumnal Equinoctial to the Vernal, and that whatever he attempted was never to his satisfaction, though he courted his fancy never so much; so that in all the years he was about this Poem, he may be said to have spent but half his time therein.

One that had Often seen him, told me he us'd to come to a House where He Liv'd, and he has also Met him in the Street, Led by Millington, the same who was so Famous an Auctioneer of Books about the time of the Revolution, and Since. This Man was then a Seller of Old Books in Little Britain, and Milton lodg'd at his house. This was 3 or 4 Years before he Dy'd. he then wore no Sword that My Informer remembers, though Probably he did, at least 'twas his Custom not long before to wear one with a Small Silver-Hilt, and in Cold Weather a Grey Camblet Coat….

I have heard many Years Since that he Us'd to Sit in a Grey Coarse Cloth Coat at the Door of his House, near Bun-hill Fields Without Moor-gate, in Warm Sunny Weather to Enjoy the Fresh Air, and So, as well as in his Room, receiv'd the Visits of People of Distinguished Parts, as well as Quality, and very Lately I had the Good Fortune to have Another Picture of him from an Ancient Clergyman in Dorsetshire, Dr. Wright; He found him in a Small House, he thinks but One Room on a Floor; in That, up One pair of Stairs, which was hung with a Rusty Green, he found John Milton, Sitting in an Elbow Chair, Black Cloaths, and Neat enough, Pale, but not Cadaverous, his Hands and Fingers Gouty, and with Chalk Stones. among Other Discourse He exprest Himself to This Purpose; that was he Free from the Pain This gave him, his Blindness would be Tolerable.

… besides what Affliction he Must have from his Disappointment on the Change of the Times, and from his Own Private Losses, and probably Cares for Subsistence, and for his Family; he was in Perpetual Terror of being Assassinated, though he had Escap'd the Talons of the Law, he knew he had Made Himself Enemies in Abundance. he was So Dejected he would lie Awake whole Nights. He then kept Himself as Private as he could. This Dr. Tancred Robinson had from a Relation of Milton's, Mr. Walker of the Temple. and This is what is Intimated by Himself, VII. 26.

On Evil Daies though fall'n and Evil Tongues, in Darkness, and with Dangers compast round, and Solitude.

Mr. Bendish has heard the Widow or Daughter or Both say it, that Soon after the Restauration the King Offer'd to Employ this Pardon'd Man as his Latin Secretary, the Post in which he Serv'd Cromwell with So much Integrity and Ability; (that a like Offer was made to Thurlow is not Disputed as ever I heard) Milton Withstood the Offer; the Wife press'd his Compliance. Thou art in the Right (says he) You, as Other Women, would ride in your Coach; for Me, My Aim is to Live and Dye an Honest Man.

Other Stories I have heard concerning the Posture he was Usually in when he Dictated, that he Sat leaning Backward Obliquely in an Easy Chair, with his Leg flung over the Elbow of it. that he frequently Compos'd lying in Bed in a Morning ('twas Winter Sure Then) I have been Well inform'd, that when he could not Sleep, but lay Awake whole Nights, he Try'd; not One Verse could he make; at Other times flow'd Easy his Unpremeditated Verse, with a certain Impetus and Æstro, as Himself seem'd to Believe. Then, at what Hour soever, he rung for his Daughter to Secure what Came. I have been also told he would Dictate many, perhaps 40 Lines as it were in a Breath, and then reduce them to half the Number.

ABRAHAM COWLEY.

It is a hard and nice Subject for a man to write of himself, it grates his own heart to say any thing of disparagement, and the Readers Eares to hear any thing of praise from him. There is no danger from me of offending him in this kind; neither my Mind, nor my Body, nor my Fortune, allow me any materials for that Vanity. It is sufficient, for my own contentment, that they have preserved me from being scandalous, or remarkable on the defective side. But besides that, I shall here speak of myself, only in relation to the subject of these precedent discourses, and shall be likelier thereby to fall into the contempt, then rise up to the estimation of most people. As far as my Memory can return back into my past Life, before I knew, or was capable of guessing what the world, or glories, or business of it were, the natural affections of my soul gave me a secret bent of aversion from them, as some Plants are said to turn away from others, by an Antipathy imperceptible to themselves, and inscrutable to mans understanding. Even when I was a very young Boy at School, instead of running about on Holy-daies and playing with my fellows, I was wont to steal from them, and walk into the fields, either alone with a Book, or with some one Companion, if I could find any of the same temper. I was then too, so much an Enemy to all constraint, that my Masters could never prevail on me, by any perswasions or encouragements, to learn without Book the common rules of Grammar, in which they dispensed with me alone, because they found I made a shift to do the usual exercise out of my own reading and observation. That I was then of the same mind as I am now (which I confess, I wonder at my self) may appear by the latter end of an Ode, which I made when I was but thirteen years old, and which was then printed with many other Verses. The Beginning of it is Boyish, but of this part which I here set down (if a very little were corrected) I should hardly now be much ashamed.

  This only grant me, that my means may lye
  Too low for Envy, for Contempt too high.
    Some Honor I would have
  Not from great deeds, but good alone.
  The unknown are better than ill known.
    Rumour can ope' the Grave,
  Acquaintance I would have, but when 't depends
  Not on the number, but the choice of Friends.

  Books should, not business, entertain the Light,
  And sleep, as undisturb'd as Death, the Night.
    My House a Cottage, more
  Then Palace, and should fitting be
  For all my Use, no Luxury.
    My Garden painted o're
  With Natures hand, not Arts; and pleasures yeild,
  Horace might envy in his Sabine field.

  Thus would I double my Lifes fading space,
  For he that runs it well, twice runs his race.
    And in this true delight,
  These unbought sports, this happy State,
  I would not fear nor wish my fate,
    But boldly say each night,
  To morrow let my Sun his beams display,
  Or in clouds hide them; I have liv'd to Day.

You may see by it, I was even then acquainted with the Poets (for the Conclusion is taken out of Horace;) and perhaps it was the immature and immoderate love of them which stampt first, or rather engraved these Characters in me: They were like Letters cut into the Bark of a young Tree, which with the Tree still grow proportionably. But, how this love came to be produced in me so early, is a hard question: I believe I can tell the particular little chance that filled my head first with such Chimes of Verse, as have never since left ringing there: For I remember when I began to read, and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my Mothers Parlour (I know not by what accident, for she her self never in her life read any Book but of Devotion) but there was wont to lie Spencers Works; this I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the Stories of the Knights, and Giants, and Monsters, and brave Houses, which I found every where there: (Though my understanding had little to do with all this) and by degrees with the tinckling of the Rhyme and Dance of the Numbers, so that I think I had read him all over before I was twelve years old, and was thus made a Poet as immediately [1] as a Child is made an Eunuch. With these affections of mind, and my heart wholly set upon Letters, I went to the University; But was soon torn from thence by that violent Publick storm which would suffer nothing to stand where it did, but rooted up every Plant, even from the Princely Cedars to Me, the Hyssop. Yet I had as good fortune as could have befallen me in such a Tempest; for I was cast by it into the Family of one of the best Persons, and into the Court of one of the best Princesses of the World. Now though I was here engaged in wayes most contrary to the Original design of my life, that is, into much company, and no small business, and into a daily sight of Greatness, both Militant and Triumphant (for that was the state then of the English and French Courts) yet all this was so far from altering my Opinion, that it oncly added the confirmation of Reason to that which was before but Natural Inclination. I saw plainly all the Paint of that kind of Life, the nearer I came to it; and that Beauty which I did not fall in Love with, when, for ought I knew, it was reall, was not like to bewitch, or intice me, when I saw that it was Adulterate. I met with several great Persons, whom I liked very well, but could not perceive that any part of their Greatness was to be liked or desired, no more then I would be glad, or content to be in a Storm, though I saw many Ships which rid safely and bravely in it: A storm would not agree with my stomach, if it did with my Courage. Though I was in a croud of as good company as could be found any where, though I was in business of great and honourable trust, though I eate at the best Table, and enjoyed the best conveniences for present subsistance that ought to be desired by a man of my condition in banishment and publick distresses, yet I could not abstain from renewing my old School-boys Wish in a Copy of Verses to the same effect.

And I never then proposed to my self any other advantage from His Majesties Happy Restoration, but the getting into some moderately convenient Retreat in the Country, which I thought in that case I might easily have compassed, as well as some others, who[2] with no greater probabilities or pretences have arrived to extraordinary fortunes: But I had before written a shrewd Prophesie against my self, and I think Apollo inspired me in the Truth, though not in the Elegance of it.

  Thou, neither great at Court nor in the War,
  Nor at th' Exchange shal't be, nor at the wrangling Barr;
  Content thy self with the small barren praise
  Which neglected Verse does raise, &c.

However by the failing of the Forces which I had expected, I did not quit the Design which I had resolved on, I cast my self into it A Corps perdu, without making capitulations, or taking counsel of Fortune. But God laughs at a Man, who sayes to his Soul, Take thy ease: I met presently not onely with many little encumbrances and impediments, but with so much sickness (a new misfortune to me) as would have spoiled the happiness of an Emperour as well as Mine: Yet I do neither repent nor alter my course. Non ego perfidum Dixi Sacramentum; Nothing shall separate me from a Mistress, which I have loved so long, and have now at last married; though she neither has brought me a rich Portion, nor lived yet so quietly with me as I hoped from Her.

      —Nec vos, dulcissima mundi
  Nomina, vos Musæ, Libertas, Otia, Libri,
  Hortique Syluæq; anima remanente relinquam.

      Nor by me ere shall you,
  You of all Names the sweetest, and the best,
  You Muses, Books, and Liberty and Rest;
  You Gardens, Fields, and Woods forsaken be,
  As long as Life it self forsakes not Me.

I think it fit to direct my Speech concerning him, by the same rule by which he was wont to judge of others. In his esteem of other men, he constantly prefer'd the good temper of their minds, and honesty of their Actions, above all the excellencies of their Eloquence or Knowledge. The same course I will take in his praise, which chiefly ought to be fixed on his life. For that he deserves more applause from the most virtuous men, than for his other abilities he ever obtained from the Learned.

He had indeed a perfect natural goodness, which neither the uncertainties of his condition, nor the largeness of his wit could pervert. He had a firmness and strength of mind, that was of proof against the Art of Poetry it self. Nothing vain or fantastical, nothing flattering or insolent appeared in his humour. He had a great integrity, and plainness of Manners; which he preserv'd to the last, though much of his time was spent in a Nation, and way of life, that is not very famous for sincerity. But the truth of his heart was above the corruption of ill examples: And therefore the sight of them rather confirm'd him in the contrary Virtues.

There was nothing affected or singular in his habit, or person, or gesture. He understood the forms of good breeding enough to practise them without burdening himself, or others. He never opprest any mans parts, nor ever put any man out of countenance. He never had any emulation for Fame, or contention for Profit with any man. When he was in business he suffer'd others importunities with much easiness: When he was out of it he was never importunate himself. His modesty and humility were so great, that if he had not had many other equal Virtues, they might have been thought dissimulation.

His Conversation was certainly of the most excellent kind; for it was such as was rather admired by his familiar Friends, than by Strangers at first sight. He surpriz'd no man at first with any extraordinary appearance: he never thrust himself violently into the good opinion of his company. He was content to be known by leisure and by degrees: and so the esteem that was conceiv'd of him, was better grounded and more lasting.

In his Speech, neither the pleasantness excluded gravity, nor was the sobriety of it inconsistent with delight. No man parted willingly from his Discourse: for he so ordered it, that every man was satisfied that he had his share. He govern'd his Passions with great moderation. His Virtues were never troublesome or uneasy to any. Whatever he disliked in others, he only corrected it, by the silent reproof of a better practise.

His Wit was so temper'd, that no man had ever reason to wish it had been less: he prevented other mens severity upon it by his own: he never willingly recited any of his Writings. None but his intimate friends ever discovered he was a great Poet, by his discourse. His Learning was large and profound, well compos'd of all Antient and Modern Knowledge. But it sat exceeding close and handsomly upon him: it was not imbossed on his mind, but enamelled.

He never guided his life by the whispers, or opinions of the World. Yet he had a great reverence for a good reputation. He hearkened to Fame when it was a just Censurer: But not when an extravagant Babler. He was a passionate lover of Liberty and Freedom from restraint both in Actions and Words. But what honesty others receive from the direction of Laws, he had by native Inclination: And he was not beholding to other mens wills, but to his own for his Innocence.

CHARLES II.

One great Objection made to him was the concealing himself, and disguising his Thoughts. In this there ought a Latitude to be given; it is a Defect not to have it at all, and a Fault to have it too much. Human Nature will not allow the Mean: like all other things, as soon as ever Men get to do them well, they cannot easily hold from doing them too much. 'Tis the case even in the least things, as singing, &c.

In France, he was to dissemble Injuries and Neglects, from one reason; in England, he was to dissemble too, though for other Causes; A King upon the Throne hath as great Temptations (though of another kind) to dissemble, as a King in Exile. The King of France might have his Times of Dissembling as much with him, as he could have to do it with the King of France: So he was in a School.

No King can be so little inclined to dissemble but he must needs learn it from his Subjects, who every Day give him such Lessons of it. Dissimulation is like most other Qualities, it hath two Sides; it is necessary, and yet it is dangerous too. To have none at all layeth a Man open to Contempt, to have too much exposeth him to Suspicion, which is only the less dishonourable Inconvenience. If a Man doth not take very great Precautions, he is never so much shewed as when he endeavoureth to hide himself. One Man cannot take more pains to hide himself, than another will do to see into him, especially in the Case of Kings.

It is none of the exalted Faculties of the Mind, since there are Chamber-Maids will do it better than any Prince in Christendom. Men given to dissembling are like Rooks at play, they will cheat for Shillings, they are so used to it. The vulgar Definition of Dissembling is downright Lying; that kind of it which is less ill-bred cometh pretty near it. Only Princes and Persons of Honour must have gentler Words given to their Faults, than the nature of them may in themselves deserve.

Princes dissemble with too many, not to have it discovered; no wonder then that He carried it so far that it was discovered. Men compared Notes, and got Evidence; so that those whose Morality would give them leave, took it for an Excuse for serving him ill. Those who knew his Face, fixed their Eyes there; and thought it of more Importance to see, than to hear what he said. His Face was as little a Blab as most Mens, yet though it could not be called a prattling Face, it would sometimes tell Tales to a good Observer. When he thought fit to be angry, he had a very peevish Memory; there was hardly a Blot that escaped him. At the same time that this shewed the Strength of his Dissimulation, it gave warning too; it fitted his present Purpose, but it made a Discovery that put Men more upon their Guard against him. Only Self-flattery furnisheth perpetual Arguments to trust again: The comfortable Opinion Men have of themselves keepeth up Human Society, which would be more than half destroyed without it.

His Wit consisted chiefly in the Quickness of his Apprehension.
His Apprehension made him find Faults, and that led him to short
Sayings upon them, not always equal, but often very good.

By his being abroad, he contracted a Habit of conversing familiarly, which added to his natural Genius, made him very apt to talk; perhaps more than a very nice judgment would approve.

He was apter to make broad Allusions upon any thing that gave the least occasion, than was altogether suitable with the very Good-breeding he shewed in most other things. The Company he kept whilst abroad, had so used him to that sort of Dialect, that he was so far from thinking it a Fault or an Indecency, that he made it a matter of Rallery upon those who could not prevail upon themselves to join in it. As a Man who hath a good Stomach loveth generally to talk of Meat, so in the vigour of his Age, he began that style, which, by degrees grew so natural to him, that after he ceased to do it out of Pleasure, he continued to do it out of Custom. The Hypocrisy of the former Times inclined Men to think they could not shew too great an Aversion to it, and that helped to encourage this unbounded liberty of Talking, without the Restraints of Decency which were before observed. In his more familiar Conversations with the Ladies, even they must be passive, if they would not enter into it. How far Sounds as well as Objects may have their Effects to raise Inclination, might be an Argument to him to use that Style; or whether using Liberty at its full stretch, was not the general Inducement without any particular Motives to it.

The manner of that time of telling Stories, had drawn him into it; being commended at first for the Faculty of telling a Tale well, he might insensibly be betrayed to exercise it too often. Stories are dangerous in this, that the best expose a Man most, by being oftenest repeated. It might pass for an Evidence for the Moderns against the Ancients, that it is now wholly left off by all that have any pretence to be distinguished by their good Sense.

He had the Improvements of Wine, &c. which made him pleasant and easy in Company; where he bore his part, and was acceptable even to those who had no other Design than to be merry with him.

The Thing called Wit, a Prince may taste, but it is dangerous for him to take too much of it; it hath Allurements which by refining his Thoughts, take off from their dignity, in applying them less to the governing part. There is a Charm in Wit, which a Prince must resist: and that to him was no easy matter; it was contesting with Nature upon Terms of Disadvantage.

His Wit was not so ill-natured as to put Men out of countenance. In the case of a King especially, it is more allowable to speak sharply of them, than to them.

His Wit was not acquired by Reading; that which he had above his original Stock by Nature, was from Company, in which he was very capable to observe. He could not so properly be said to have a Wit very much raised, as a plain, gaining, well-bred, recommending kind of Wit.

But of all Men that ever liked those who had Wit, he could the best endure those who had none. This leaneth more towards a Satire than a Compliment, in this respect, that he could not only suffer Impertinence, but at some times seemed to be pleased with it.

He encouraged some to talk a good deal more with him, than one would have expected from a Man of so good a Taste: He should rather have order'd his Attorney-General to prosecute them for a Misdemeanour, in using Common-sense so scurvily in his Presence. However, if this was a Fault, it is arrogant for any of his Subjects to object to it, since it would look like defying such a piece of Indulgence. He must in some degree loosen the Strength of his Wit, by his Condescension to talk with Men so very unequal to him. Wit must be used to some Equality, which may give it Exercise, or else it is apt either to languish, or to grow a little vulgar, by reigning amongst Men of a lower Size, where there is no Awe to keep a Man upon his guard.

It fell out rather by Accident than Choice, that his Mistresses were such as did not care that Wit of the best kind should have the Precedence in their Apartments. Sharp and strong Wit will not always be so held in by Good-manners, as not to be a little troublesome in a Ruelle. But wherever Impertinence hath Wit enough left to be thankful for being well used, it will not only be admitted, but kindly received; such Charms every thing hath that setteth us off by Comparison.

It is a Quality that must not always spring from the Heart, Mens Pride, as well as their Weakness, maketh them ready to be deceived by it: They are more ready to believe it a Homage paid to their Merit, than a Bait thrown out to deceive them. Princes have a particular Advantage.

There was at first as much of Art as Nature in his Affability, but by Habit it became Natural. It is an Error of the better hand, but the Universality taketh away a good deal of the Force of it. A Man that hath had a kind Look seconded with engaging Words, whilst he is chewing the Pleasure, if another in his Sight should be just received as kindly, that Equality would presently alter the Relish: The Pride of Mankind will have Distinction; till at last it cometh to Smile for Smile, meaning nothing of either Side; without any kind of Effect; mere Drawing-room Compliments; the Bow alone would be better without them. He was under some Disadvantages of this kind, that grew still in proportion as it came by Time to be more known, that there was less Signification in those Things than at first was thought.

The Familiarity of his Wit must needs have the Effect of lessening the Distance fit to be kept to him. The Freedom used to him whilst abroad, was retained by those who used it longer than either they ought to have kept it, or he have suffered it, and others by their Example learned to use the same. A King of Spain that will say nothing but Tiendro cuydado, will, to the generality, preserve more Respect; an Engine that will speak but sometimes, at the same time that it will draw the Raillery of the Few who judge well, it will create Respect in the ill-judging Generality. Formality is sufficiently revenged upon the World for being so unreasonably laughed at; it is destroyed it is true, but it hath the spiteful Satisfaction of seeing every thing destroyed with it.

His fine Gentlemanship did him no Good, encouraged in it by being too much applauded.

His Wit was better suited to his Condition before he was restored than afterwards. The Wit of a Gentleman, and that of a crowned Head, ought to be different things. As there is a Crown Law, there is a Crown Wit too. To use it with Reserve is very good, and very rare. There is a Dignity in doing things seldom, even without any other Circumstance. Where Wit will run continually, the Spring is apt to fail; so that it groweth vulgar, and the more it is practised, the more it is debased.

He was so good at finding out other Mens weak Sides, that it made him less intent to cure his own: That generally happeneth. It may be called a treacherous Talent, for it betrayeth a Man to forget to judge himself, by being so eager to censure others: This doth so misguide Men the first Part of their Lives, that the Habit of it is not easily recovered, when the greater Ripeness of their Judgment inclineth them to look more into themselves than into other Men.

Men love to see themselves in the false Looking-glass of other Mens Failings. It maketh a Man think well of himself at the time, and by sending his Thoughts abroad to get Food for Laughing, they are less at leisure to see Faults at home. Men choose rather to make the War in another Country, than to keep all well at home.

He had a Mechanical Head, which appeared in his inclination to
Shipping and Fortification, &c. This would make one conclude, that
his Thoughts would naturally have been more fixed to Business, if his
Pleasures had not drawn them away from it.

He had a very good Memory, though he would not always make equal good Use of it. So that if he had accustomed himself to direct his Faculties to his Business, I see no Reason why he might not have been a good deal Master of it. His Chain of Memory was longer than his Chain of Thought; the first could bear any Burden, the other was tired by being carried on too long; it was fit to ride a Heat, but it had not Wind enough for a long Course.

A very great Memory often forgetteth how much Time is lost by repeating things of no Use. It was one Reason of his talking so much; since a great Memory will always have something to say, and will be discharging itself, whether in or out of Season, if a good Judgment doth not go along with it, to make it stop and turn. One might say of his Memory, that it was a Beauté Journaliere; Sometimes he would make shrewd Applications, &c. at others he would bring things out of it, that never deserved to be laid in it. He grew by Age into a pretty exact Distribution of his Hours, both for his Business, Pleasures, and the Exercise for his Health, of which he took as much care as could possibly consist with some Liberties he was resolved to indulge in himself. He walked by his Watch, and when he pulled it out to look upon it, skilful Men would make haste with what they had to say to him.

He was often retained in his personal against his politick Capacity. He would speak upon those Occasions most dexterously against himself; Charles Stuart would be bribed against the King; and in the Distinction, he leaned more to his natural Self, than his Character would allow. He would not suffer himself to be so much fettered by his Character as was convenient; he was still starting out of it, the Power of Nature was too strong for the Dignity of his Calling, which generally yielded as often as there was a contest.

It was not the best use he made of his Back-stairs to admit Men to bribe him against himself, to procure a Defalcation, help a lame Accountant to get off, or side with the Farmers against the Improvement of the Revenue. The King was made the Instrument to defraud the Crown, which is somewhat extraordinary.

That which might tempt him to it probably was, his finding that those about him so often took Money upon those Occasions; so that he thought he might do well at least to be a Partner. He did not take the Money to hoard it; there were those at Court who watched those Times, as the Spaniards do for the coming in of the Plate Fleet. The Beggars of both Sexes helped to empty his Cabinet, and to leave room in them for a new lading upon the next Occasion. These Negotiators played double with him too, when it was for their purpose so to do. He knew it, and went on still; so he gained his present end, at the time, he was less solicitous to enquire into the Consequences.

He could not properly be said to be either covetous or liberal; his desire to get was not with an Intention to be rich; and his spending was rather an Easiness in letting Money go, than any premeditated Thought for the Distribution of it. He would do as much to throw off the burden of a present Importunity, as he would to relieve a want.

When once the Aversion to bear Uneasiness taketh place in a Man's Mind, it doth so check all the Passions, that they are dampt into a kind of Indifference; they grow faint and languishing, and come to be subordinate to that fundamental Maxim, of not purchasing any thing at the price of a Difficulty. This made that he had as little Eagerness to oblige, as he had to hurt Men; the Motive of his giving Bounties was rather to make Men less uneasy to him, than more easy to themselves; and yet no ill-nature all this while. He would slide from an asking Face, and could guess very well. It was throwing a Man off from his Shoulders, that leaned upon them with his whole weight; so that the Party was not glader to receive, than he was to give. It was a kind of implied bargain; though Men seldom kept it, being so apt to forget the advantage they had received, that they would presume the King would as little remember the good he had done them, so as to make it an Argument against their next Request.

This Principle of making the love of Ease exercise an entire Sovereignty in his Thoughts, would have been less censured in a private Man, than might be in a Prince. The Consequence of it to the Publick changeth the Nature of that Quality, or else a Philosopher in his private Capacity might say a great deal to justify it. The truth is, a King is to be such a distinct Creature from a Man, that their Thoughts are to be put in quite a differing Shape, and it is such a disquieting task to reconcile them, that Princes might rather expect to be lamented than to be envied, for being in a Station that exposeth them, if they do not do more to answer Mens Expectations than human Nature will allow.

That Men have the less Ease for their loving it so much, is so far from a wonder, that it is a natural Consequence, especially in the case of a Prince. Ease is seldom got without some pains, but it is yet seldomer kept without them. He thought giving would make Men more easy to him, whereas he might have known it would certainly make them more troublesome.

When Men receive Benefits from Princes, they attribute less to his Generosity than to their own Deserts; so that in their own Opinion, their Merit cannot be bounded; by that mistaken Rule, it can as little be satisfied. They would take it for a diminution to have it circumscribed. Merit hath a Thirst upon it that can never be quenched by golden Showers. It is not only still ready, but greedy to receive more. This King Charles found in as many Instances as any Prince that ever reigned, because the Easiness of Access introducing the good Success of their first Request, they were the more encouraged to repeat those Importunities, which had been more effectually stopt in the Beginning by a short and resolute Denial. But his Nature did not dispose him to that Method, it directed him rather to put off the troublesome Minute for the time, and that being his Inclination, he did not care to struggle with it.

I am of an Opinion, in which I am every Day more confirmed by Observation, that Gratitude is one of those things that cannot be bought. It must be born with Men, or else all the Obligations in the World will not create it. An outward Shew may be made to satisfy Decency, and to prevent Reproach; but a real Sense of a kind thing is a Gift of Nature, and never was, nor can be acquired.

The Love of Ease is an Opiate, it is pleasing for the time, quieteth the Spirits, but it hath its Effects that seldom fail to be most fatal. The immoderate Love of Ease maketh a Man's Mind pay a passive Obedience to any thing that happeneth: It reduceth the Thoughts from having Desire to be content.

It must be allowed he had a little Over-balance on the well-natured Side, not Vigour enough to be earnest to do a kind Thing, much less to do a harsh one; but if a hard thing was done to another Man, he did not eat his Supper the worse for it. It was rather a Deadness than Severity of Nature, whether it proceeded from a Dissipation of Spirits, or by the Habit of Living in which he was engaged.

If a King should be born with more Tenderness than might suit with his Office, he would in time be hardned. The Faults of his Subjects make Severity so necessary, that by the frequent Occasions given to use it, it comes to be habitual, and by degrees the Resistance that Nature made at first groweth fainter, till at last it is in a manner quite extinguished.

In short, this Prince might more properly be said to have Gifts than Virtues, as Affability, Easiness of Living, Inclinations to give, and to forgive: Qualities that flowed from his Nature rather than from his Virtue.

He had not more Application to any thing than the Preservation of his Health; it had an intire Preference to any thing else in his Thoughts, and he might be said without Aggravation to study that, with as little Intermission as any Man in the World. He understood it very well, only in this he failed, that he thought it was more reconcilable with his Pleasures, than it really was. It is natural to have such a Mind to reconcile these, that 'tis the easier for any Man that goeth about it, to be guilty of that Mistake.

This made him overdo in point of Nourishment, the better to furnish to those Entertainments; and then he thought by great Exercise to make Amends, and to prevent the ill Effects of his Blood being too much raised. The Success he had in this Method, whilst he had Youth and Vigour to support him in it, encouraged him to continue it longer than Nature allowed. Age stealeth so insensibly upon us, that we do not think of suiting our way of Reasoning to the several Stages of Life; so insensibly that not being able to pitch upon any precise Time, when we cease to be young, we either flatter ourselves that we always continue to be so, or at least forget how much we are mistaken in it.

The King was then thirty years of age, and, as might have been supposed, past the levities of youth and the extravagance of pleasure. He had a very good understanding. He knew well the state of affairs both at home and abroad. He had a softness of temper that charmed all who came near him, till they found how little they could depend on good looks, kind words, and fair promises; in which he was liberal to excess, because he intended nothing by them, but to get rid of importunities, and to silence all farther pressing upon him. He seemed to have no sense of religion: Both at prayers and sacrament he, as it were, took care to satisfy people, that he was in no sort concerned in that about which he was employed. So that he was very far from being an hypocrite, unless his assisting at those performances was a sort of hypocrisy, (as no doubt it was:) But he was sure not to encrease that by any the least appearance of religion. He said once to my self, he was no atheist, but he could not think God would make a man miserable only for taking a little pleasure out of the way. He disguised his Popery to the last. But when he talked freely, he could not help letting himself out against the liberty that under the Reformation all men took of enquiring into matters of religion: For from their enquiring into matters of religion they carried the humour farther, to enquire into matters of state. He said often, he thought government was a much safer and easier thing where the authority was believed infallible, and the faith and submission of the people was implicite: About which I had once much discourse with him. He was affable and easy, and loved to be made so by all about him. The great art of keeping him long was, the being easy, and the making every thing easy to him. He had made such observations on the French government, that he thought a King who might be checkt, or have his Ministers called to an account by a Parliament, was but a King in name. He had a great compass of knowledge, tho' he was never capable of much application or study. He understood the Mechanicks and Physick; and was a good Chymist, and much set on several preparations of Mercury, chiefly the fixing it. He understood navigation well: But above all he knew the architecture of ships so perfectly, that in that respect he was exact rather more than became a Prince. His apprehension was quick, and his memory good. He was an everlasting talker. He told his stories with a good grace: But they came in his way too often. He had a very ill opinion both of men and women; and did not think that there was either sincerity or chastity in the world out of principle, but that some had either the one or the other out of humour or vanity. He thought that no body did serve him out of love: And so he was quits with all the world, and loved others as little as he thought they loved him. He hated business, and could not be easily brought to mind any: But when it was necessary, and he was set to it, he would stay as long as his Ministers had work for him. The ruine of his reign, and of all his affairs, was occasioned chiefly by his delivering himself up at his first coming over to a mad range of pleasure.

Thus lived and died King Charles the second. He was the greatest instance in history of the various revolutions of which any one man seemed capable. He was bred up, the first twelve years of his life, with the splendor that became the heir of so great a Crown. After that he past thro' eighteen years in great inequalities, unhappy in the war, in the loss of his Father, and of the Crown of England. Scotland did not only receive him, tho' upon terms hard of digestion, but made an attempt upon England for him, tho' a feeble one. He lost the battle of Worcester with too much indifference: And then he shewed more care of his person, than became one who had so much at stake. He wandered about England for ten weeks after that, hiding from place to place. But, under all the apprehensions he had then upon him, he shewed a temper so careless, and so much turned to levity, that he was then diverting himself with little houshold sports, in as unconcerned a manner, as if he had made no loss, and had been in no danger at all. He got at last out of England. But he had been obliged to so many, who had been faithful to him, and careful of him, that he seemed afterwards to resolve to make an equal return to them all: And finding it not easy to reward them all as they deserved, he forgot them all alike. Most Princes seem to have this pretty deep in them; and to think that they ought never to remember past services, but that their acceptance of them is a full reward. He, of all in our age, exerted this piece of prerogative in the amplest manner: For he never seemed to charge his memory, or to trouble his thoughts, with the sense of any of the services that had been done him. While he was abroad at Paris, Colen, or Brussells, he never seemed to lay any thing to heart. He pursued all his diversions, and irregular pleasures, in a free carrier; and seemed to be as serene under the loss of a Crown, as the greatest Philosopher could have been. Nor did he willingly hearken to any of those projects, with which he often complained that his Chancellor persecuted him. That in which he seemed most concerned was, to find money for supporting his expence. And it was often said, that, if Cromwell would have compounded the matter, and have given him a good round pension, that he might have been induced to resign his title to him. During his exile he delivered himself so entirely to his pleasures, that he became incapable of application. He spent little of his time in reading or study, and yet less in thinking. And, in the state his affairs were then in, he accustomed himself to say to every person, and upon all occasions, that which he thought would please most: So that words or promises went very easily from him. And he had so ill an opinion of mankind, that he thought the great art of living and governing was, to manage all things and all persons with a depth of craft and dissimulation. And in that few men in the world could put on the appearances of sincerity better than he could: Under which so much artifice was usually hid, that in conclusion he could deceive none, for all were become mistrustful of him. He had great vices, but scarce any vertues to correct them: He had in him some vices that were less hurtful, which corrected his more hurtful ones. He was during the active part of life given up to sloth and lewdness to such a degree, that he hated business, and could not bear the engaging in any thing that gave him much trouble, or put him under any constraint. And, tho' he desired to become absolute, and to overturn both our religion and our laws, yet he would neither run the risque, nor give himself the trouble, which so great a design required. He had an appearance of gentleness in his outward deportment: But he seemed to have no bowels nor tenderness in his nature: And in the end of his life he became cruel. He was apt to forgive all crimes, even blood it self: Yet he never forgave any thing that was done against himself, after his first and general act of indemnity, which was to be reckoned as done rather upon maxims of state than inclinations of mercy. He delivered himself up to a most enormous course of vice, without any sort of restraint, even from the consideration of the nearest relations: The most studied extravagancies that way seemed, to the very last, to be much delighted in, and pursued by him. He had the art of making all people grow fond of him at first, by a softness in his whole way of conversation, as he was certainly the best bred man of the age. But when it appeared how little could be built on his promise, they were cured of the fondness that he was apt to raise in them. When he saw young men of quality, who had something more than ordinary in them, he drew them about him, and set himself to corrupt them both in religion and morality; in which he proved so unhappily successful, that he left England much changed at his death from what he had found it at his Restoration. He loved to talk over all the stories of his life to every new man that came about him. His stay in Scotland, and the share he had in the war of Paris, in carrying messages from the one side to the other, were his common topicks. He went over these in a very graceful manner; but so often, and so copiously, that all those who had been long accustomed to them grew weary of them: And when he entred on those stories they usually withdrew: So that he often began them in a full audience, and before he had done there were not above four or five left about him: Which drew a severe jest from Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. He said, he wondred to see a man have so good a memory as to repeat the same story without losing the least circumstance, and yet not remember that he had told it to the same persons the very day before. This made him fond of strangers; for they hearkned to all his often repeated stories, and went away as in a rapture at such an uncommon condescension in a King.

His person and temper, his vices as well as his fortunes, resemble the character that we have given us of Tiberius so much, that it were easy to draw the parallel between them. Tiberius's banishment, and his coming afterwards to reign, makes the comparison in that respect come pretty near. His hating of business, and his love of pleasures; his raising of favourites, and trusting them entirely; and his pulling them down, and hating them excessively; his art of covering deep designs, particularly of revenge, with an appearance of softness, brings them so near a likeness, that I did not wonder much to observe the resemblance of their face and person. At Rome I saw one of the last statues made for Tiberius, after he had lost his teeth. But, bating the alteration which that made, it was so like King Charles, that Prince Borghese, and Signior Dominica to whom it belonged, did agree with me in thinking that it looked like a statue made for him.

THE EARL OF CLARENDON.

Edward Hyde, knighted 1643, created Baron Hyde 1660, Earl of Clarendon 1661. Lord Chancellor 1658-1667.

The Earl of Clarendon was bred to the Law, and was like to grow eminent in his profession when the wars began. He distinguished himself so in the House of Commons, that he became considerable, and was much trusted all the while the King was at Oxford. He stayed beyond sea following the King's fortune till the Restoration; and was now an absolute favourite, and the chief or the only Minister, but with too magisterial a way. He was always pressing the King to mind his affairs, but in vain. He was a good Chancellour, only a little too rough, but very impartial in the administration of justice. He never seemed to understand foreign affairs well: And yet he meddled too much in them. He had too much levity in his wit, and did not always observe the decorum of his post. He was high, and was apt to reject those who addressed themselves to him with too much contempt. He had such a regard to the King, that when places were disposed of, even otherwise than as he advised, yet he would justify what the King did, and disparage the pretensions of others, not without much scorn; which created him many enemies. He was indefatigable in business, tho' the gout did often disable him from waiting on the King: Yet, during his credit, the King came constantly to him when he was laid up by it.

THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE.

John Maitland, second Earl, created Duke 1672, Secretary of State for Scotland 1660-1680.

The Earle of Latherdale, who had bene very eminent in contrivinge and carryinge on the kings service, when his Majesty was crowned in Scotlande, and therby had wrought himselfe into a very particular esteme with the kinge, had marched with him into Englande, and behaved himselfe well at Worcester, wher he was taken prissoner, had besydes that meritt, the sufferinge an imprysonment from that very tyme, with some circumstances of extreme rigour, beinge a man against whome Crumwell had alwayes professed a more then ordinary animosity, and though the sceane of his imprysonment had bene altred, accordinge to the alterations of the goverments which succeeded, yett he never founde himselfe in compleate liberty, till the kinge was proclaymed by the Parliament, and then he thought it not necessary to repayre into Scotlande for authority or recommendation, but sendinge his advise thither to his frends, he made hast to transporte himselfe with the Parliament Commissyoners to the Hague, where he was very well receaved by the kinge, and left nothinge undone on his parte, that might cultivate these old inclinations, beinge a man of as much addresse, and insinuation, in which that nation excells, as was then amongst them. He applyed himselfe to those who were most trusted by the kinge with a marvellous importunity, and especially to the Chancellour, with whome as often as they had ever bene togither, he had a perpetuall warr. He now magnifyed his constancy with lowde elogiums as well to his face, as behinde his backe, remembred many sharpe exspressions formerly used by the Chancellour which he confessed had then made him mad, though upon recollection afterwards he had founde to be very reasonable. He was very polite in all his discources, called himselfe and his nation a thousand Traytors, and Rebells, and in his discourses frequently sayd, when I was a Traytour, or when I was in rebellion, and seemed not æqually delighted with any argument, as when he skornefully spake of the Covenante, upon which he brake a hundred jests: in summ all his discourses were such, as pleased all the company, who commonly believed all he sayd, and concurred with him. He [renew]ed his old acquaintance and familiarity with Middleton, by all the protestations of frendshipp, assured him of the unanimous desyre of Scotlande, to be [un]der his commaunde, and declared to the kinge, that he could not send any man into Scotlande who would be able to do him so much service in the place of Commissyoner as Middleton, and that it was in his Majestys power to unite that whole kingdome to his service as one m[an:] all which pleased the kinge well, so that by the tyme that the Commissioners appeared at London, upon some old promise in Scotlande, or new inclination upon his longe sufferings, which he magnifyed enough, the kinge gave him the Signett, and declared him to be Secretary of State of that kingdome, and at the same tyme declared that Middleton should be his Commissyoner, the Earle of Glengarne his Chancellour, the Earle of Rothesse, who was likewise one of the Commissyoners, and his person very agreable to the kinge, President of the Councell, and conferred all other inferiour offices, upon men most notable for ther affection to the old goverment of Church and State.

The Earl of Lauderdale, afterwards made Duke, had been for many years a zealous Covenanter: But in the year forty seven he turned to the King's interests; and had continued a prisoner all the while after Worcester fight, where he was taken. He was kept for some years in the tower of London, in Portland castle, and in other prisons, till he was set at liberty by those who called home the King. So he went over to Holland. And since he continued so long, and contrary to all mens opinions in so high a degree of favour and confidence, it may be expected that I should be a little copious in setting out his character; for I knew him very particularly. He made a very ill appearance: He was very big: His hair red, hanging odly about him: His tongue was too big for his mouth, which made him bedew all that he talked to: And his whole manner was rough and boisterous, and very unfit for a Court. He was very learned, not only in Latin, in which he was a master, but in Greek and Hebrew. He had read a great deal of divinity, and almost all the historians ancient and modern: So that he had great materials. He had with these an extraordinary memory, and a copious but unpolished expression. He was a man, as the Duke of Buckingham called him to me, of a blundering understanding. He was haughty beyond expression, abject to those he saw he must stoop to, but imperious to all others. He had a violence of passion that carried him often to fits like madness, in which he had no temper. If he took a thing wrong, it was a vain thing to study to convince him: That would rather provoke him to swear, he would never be of another mind: He was to be let alone: And perhaps he would have forgot what he had said, and come about of his own accord. He was the coldest friend and the violentest enemy I ever knew: I felt it too much not to know it. He at first seemed to despise wealth: But he delivered himself up afterwards to luxury and sensuality: And by that means he ran into a vast expence, and stuck at nothing that was necessary to support it. In his long imprisonment he had great impressions of religion on his mind: But he wore these out so entirely, that scarce any trace of them was left. His great experience in affairs, his ready compliance with every thing that he thought would please the King, and his bold offering at the most desperate counsels, gained him such an interest in the King, that no attempt against him nor complaint of him could ever shake it, till a decay of strength and understanding forced him to let go his hold. He was in his principles much against Popery and arbitrary government: And yet by a fatal train of passions and interests he made way for the former, and had almost established the latter. And, whereas some by a smooth deportment made the first beginnings of tyranny less discernible and unacceptable, he by the fury of his behaviour heightned the severity of his ministry, which was liker the cruelty of an inquisition than the legality of justice. With all this he was a Presbyterian, and retained his aversion to King Charles I. and his party to his death.

THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY.

The man that was in the greatest credit with the Earl of Southampton was Sir Anthony Ashly Cooper, who had married his niece, and became afterwards so considerable that he was raised to be Earl of Shaftsbury. And since he came to have so great a name, and that I knew him for many years in a very particular manner, I will dwell a little longer on his character; for it was of a very extraordinary composition. He began to make a considerable figure very early. Before he was twenty he came into the House of Commons, and was on the King's side; and undertook to get Wiltshire and Dorsetshire to declare for him: But he was not able to effect it. Yet Prince Maurice breaking articles to a town, that he had got to receive him, furnished him with an excuse to forsake that side, and to turn to the Parliament. He had a wonderful faculty in speaking to a popular assembly, and could mix both the facetious and the serious way of arguing very agreeably. He had a particular talent to make others trust to his judgment, and depend on it: And he brought over so many to a submission to his opinion, that I never knew any man equal to him in the art of governing parties, and of making himself the head of them. He was as to religion a Deist at best: He had the dotage of Astrology in him to a high degree: He told me, that a Dutch doctor had from the stars foretold him the whole series of his life. But that which was before him, when he told me this, proved false, if he told me true: For he said, he was yet to be a greater man than he had been. He fancied, that after death our souls lived in stars. He had a general knowledge of the slighter parts of learning, but understood little to the bottom: So he triumphed in a rambling way of talking, but argued slightly when he was held close to any point. He had a wonderful faculty at opposing, and running things down; but had not the like force in building up. He had such an extravagant vanity in setting himself out, that it was very disagreeable. He pretended that Cromwell offered to make him King. He was indeed of great use to him in withstanding the enthusiasts of that time. He was one of those who press'd him most to accept of the Kingship, because, as he said afterwards, he was sure it would ruin him. His strength lay in the knowledge of England, and of all the considerable men in it. He understood well the size of their understandings, and their tempers: And he knew how to apply himself to them so dextrously, that, tho' by his changing sides so often it was very visible how little he was to be depended on, yet he was to the last much trusted by all the discontented party. He was not ashamed to reckon up the many turns he had made: And he valued himself on the doing it at the properest season, and in the best manner. This he did with so much vanity, and so little discretion, that he lost many by it. And his reputation was at last run so low, that he could not have held much longer, had he not died in good time, either for his family or for his party: The former would have been ruined, if he had not saved it by betraying the latter.

  Some by their Friends, more by themselves thought wise,
  Oppos'd the Pow'r, to which they could not rise.
  Some had in Courts been Great, and thrown from thence,
  Like Fiends, were harden'd in Impenitence.
  Some, by their Monarch's fatal mercy grown,
  From Pardon'd Rebels, Kinsmen to the Throne,
  Were raised in Pow'r and publick Office high:
  Strong Bands, if Bands ungrateful men coud tie.
  Of these the false Achitophel was first:
  A Name to all succeeding Ages curst.
  For close Designs, and crooked Counsels fit;
  Sagacious, Bold, and Turbulent of wit:
  Restless, unfixt in Principles and Place;
  In Pow'r unpleas'd, impatient of Disgrace.
  A fiery Soul, which working out its way,
  Fretted the Pigmy-Body to decay:
  And o'r inform'd the Tenement of Clay,
  A daring Pilot in extremity;
  Pleas'd with the Danger, when the Waves went high
  He sought the Storms; but for a Calm unfit,
  Would Steer too nigh the Sands, to boast his Wit.
  Great Wits are sure to Madness near alli'd;
  And thin Partitions do their Bounds divide:
  Else, why should he, with Wealth and Honour blest,
  Refuse his Age the needful hours of Rest?
  Punish a Body which he coud not please;
  Bankrupt of Life, yet Prodigal of Ease?
  And all to leave, what with his Toil he won,
  To that unfeather'd, two-legg'd thing, a Son:
  Got, while his Soul did huddled Notions trie;
  And born a shapeless Lump, like Anarchy.
  In Friendship false, implacable in Hate:
  Resolv'd to Ruine or to Rule the State.
  To Compass this, the Triple Bond he broke;
  The Pillars of the Publick Safety shook:
  And fitted Israel for a Foreign Yoke.
  Then, seiz'd with Fear, yet still affecting Fame,
  Usurp'd a Patriot's All-attoning Name.
  So easie still it proves in Factious Times,
  With publick Zeal to cancel private Crimes:
  How safe is Treason, and how sacred ill,
  here none can sin against the Peoples Will:
  Where Crouds can wink; and no offence be known,
  Since in anothers guilt they find their own.
  Yet, Fame deserv'd, no Enemy can grudge;
  The Statesman we abhor, but praise the Judge.
  In Israels Courts ne'r sat an Abbetbdin
  With more discerning Eyes, or Hands more clean:
  Unbrib'd, unsought, the Wretched to redress;
  Swift of Dispatch, and easie of Access.
  Oh, had he been content to serve the Crown,
  With Vertues onely proper to the Gown;
  Or, had the rankness of the Soil been freed
  From Cockle, that opprest the Noble Seed:
  David, for him his tuneful Harp had strung,
  And Heav'n had wanted one Immortal Song.
  But wild Ambition loves to slide, not stand;
  And Fortunes Ice prefers to Vertues Land:
  Achitophel, grown weary to possess
  A lawful Fame, and lazie Happiness,
  Disdain'd the Golden Fruit to gather free,
  And lent the Croud his Arm to shake the Tree.
  Now, manifest of Crimes, contriv'd long since,
  He stood at bold Defiance with his Prince:
  Held up the Buckler of the Peoples Cause,
  Against the Crown; and sculk'd behind the Laws,
  The wish'd occasion of the Plot he takes;
  Some Circumstances finds, but more he makes.
  By buzzing Emissaries, fills the ears
  Of listning Crouds, with Jealousies and Fears
  Of Arbitrary Counsels brought to light,
  And proves the King himself a Jebusite.
  Weak Arguments! which yet he knew full well,
  Were strong with People easie to Rebel.
  For, govern'd by the Moon, the giddy Jews
  Tread the same Track when she the Prime renews:
  And once in twenty Years, their Scribes Record,
  By natural Instinct they change their Lord.
  Achitophel still wants a Chief, and none
  Was found so fit as Warlike Absalon:
  Not, that he wish'd his Greatness to create,
  (For Polititians neither love nor hate:)
  But, for he knew, his Title not allow'd,
  Would keep him still depending on the Croud:
  That Kingly pow'r, thus ebbing out, might be
  Drawn to the Dregs of a Democracie.

THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

The first of these was a man of noble presence. He had a great liveliness of wit, and a peculiar faculty of turning all things into ridicule with bold figures and natural descriptions. He had no sort of literature: Only he was drawn into chymistry: And for some years he thought he was very near the finding the philosopher's stone; which had the effect that attends on all such men as he was, when they are drawn in, to lay out for it. He had no principles of religion, vertue, or friendship. Pleasure, frolick, or extravagant diversion was all that he laid to heart. He was true to nothing, for he was not true to himself. He had no steadiness nor conduct: He could keep no secret, nor execute any design without spoiling it. He could never fix his thoughts, nor govern his estate, tho' then the greatest in England. He was bred about the King: And for many years he had a great ascendent over him: But he spake of him to all persons with that contempt, that at last he drew a lasting disgrace upon himself. And he at length ruined both body and mind, fortune and reputation equally. The madness of vice appeared in his person in very eminent instances; since at last he became contemptible and poor, sickly, and sunk in his parts, as well as in all other respects, so that his conversation was as much avoided as ever it had been courted. He found the King, when he came from his travels in the year 45, newly come to Paris, sent over by his father when his affairs declined: And finding the King enough inclined to receive ill impressions, he, who was then got into all the impieties and vices of the age, set himself to corrupt the King, in which he was too successful, being seconded in that wicked design by the Lord Percy. And to compleat the matter, Hobbs was brought to him, under the pretence of instructing him in mathematicks: And he laid before him his schemes, both with relation to religion and politicks, which made deep and lasting impressions on the King's mind. So that the main blame of the King's ill principles, and bad morals, was owing to the Duke of Buckingham.

  Some of their Chiefs were Princes of the Land:
  In the first Rank of these did Zimri stand:
  A man so various, that he seem'd to be
  Not one, but all Mankind's Epitome.
  Stiff in Opinions, always in the wrong;
  Was Every thing by starts, and Nothing long:
  But, in the course of one revolving Moon,
  Was Chymist, Fidler, States-Man, and Buffoon:
  Then all for Women, Painting, Rhiming, Drinking;
  Besides ten thousand Freaks that dy'd in thinking.
  Blest Madman, who coud every hour employ,
  With something New to wish, or to enjoy!
  Railing and praising were his usual Theams;
  And both (to shew his Judgment) in Extreams:
  So over Violent, or over Civil,
  That every Man, with him, was God or Devil.
  In squandring Wealth was his peculiar Art:
  Nothing went unrewarded, but Desert.
  Begger'd by Fools, whom still he found too late:
  He had his Jest, and they had his Estate.
  He laugh'd himself from Court; then sought Relief
  By forming Parties, but could ne'r be Chief:
  For, spight of him, the weight of Business fell
  On Absalom and wise Achitophel:
  Thus, wicked but in Will, of Means bereft,
  He left not Faction, but of that was left.

THE MARQUIS OF HALIFAX.

George Savile, created Baron Savile and Viscount Halifax 1668, Earl of Halifax 1679, Marquis of Halifax 1682.

I name Sir George Saville last, because he deserves a more copious character. He rose afterwards to be Viscount, Earl, and Marquis of Halifax. He was a man of a great and ready wit; full of life, and very pleasant; much turned to satyr. He let his wit run much on matters of religion: So that he passed for a bold and determined Atheist; tho' he often protested to me, he was not one; and said, he believed there was not one in the world: He confessed, he could not swallow down every thing that divines imposed on the world: He was a Christian in submission: He believed as much as he could, and he hoped that God would not lay it to his charge, if he could not disgest iron, as an ostrich did, nor take into his belief things that must burst him: If he had any scruples, they 20 were not sought for, nor cherished by him; for he never read an atheistical book. In a fit of sickness, I knew him very much touched with a sense of religion. I was then often with him. He seemed full of good purposes: But they went off with his sickness. He was always talking of morality and friendship. He was punctual in all payments, and just in all his private dealings. But, with relation to the publick, he went backwards and forwards, and changed sides so often, that in conclusion no side trusted him. He seemed full of Common-wealth notions: Yet he went into the worst part of King Charles's reign. The liveliness of his imagination was always too hard for his judgment. A severe jest was preferred by him to all arguments whatsoever. And he was endless in consultations: For when after much discourse a point was settled, if he could find a new jest, to make even that which was suggested by himself seem ridiculous, he could not hold, but would study to raise the credit of his wit, tho' it made others call his judgment in question. When he talked to me as a philosopher of his contempt of the world, I asked him, what he meant by getting so many new titles, which I call'd the hanging himself about with bells and tinsel. He had no other excuse for it, but this, that, since the world were such fools as to value those matters, a man must be a fool for company: He considered them but as rattles: Yet rattles please children: So these might be of use to his family. His heart was much set on raising his family. But, tho' he made a vast estate for them, he buried two of his sons himself, and almost all his grandchildren. The son that survived was an honest man, but far inferior to him.

SIR EDMUND SAUNDERS.

The Lord Chief Justice Saunders succeeded in the Room of Pemberton. His Character, and his Beginning, were equally strange. He was at first no better than a poor Beggar Boy, if not a Parish Foundling, without known Parents, or Relations. He had found a way to live by Obsequiousness (in Clement's-Inn, as I remember) and courting the Attornies Clerks for Scraps. The extraordinary Observance and Diligence of the Boy, made the Society willing to do him Good. He appeared very ambitious to learn to write; and one of the Attornies got a Board knocked up at a Window on the Top of a Staircase; and that was his Desk, where he sat and wrote after Copies of Court and other Hands the Clerks gave him. He made himself so expert a Writer that he took in Business, and earned some Pence by Hackney-writing. And thus, by degrees, he pushed his Faculties, and fell to Forms, and, by Books that were lent him, became an exquisite entering Clerk; and, by the same course of Improvement of himself, an able Counsel, first in special Pleading, then, at large. And, after he was called to the Bar, had Practice, in the King's Bench Court, equal with any there. As to his Person, he was very corpulent and beastly; a mere Lump of morbid Flesh. He used to say, by his Troggs, (such an humourous Way of talking he affected) none could say be wanted Issue of his Body, for he had nine in his Back. He was a fetid Mass, that offended his Neighbours at the Bar in the sharpest Degree. Those, whose ill Fortune it was to stard near him, were Confessors, and, in Summer-time, almost Martyrs. This hateful Decay of his Carcase came upon him by continual Sottishness; for, to say nothing of Brandy, he was seldom without a Pot of Ale at his Nose, or near him. That Exercise was all he used; the rest of his Life was sitting at his Desk, or piping at home; and that Home was a Taylor's House in Butcher-Row, called his Lodging, and the Man's Wife was his Nurse, or worse; but, by virtue of his Money, of which he made little Account, though he got a great deal, he soon became Master of the Family; and, being no Changling, he never removed, but was true to his Friends, and they to him, to the last Hour of his Life.

So much for his Person and Education. As for his Parts, none had them more lively than he. Wit and Repartee, in an affected Rusticity, were natural to him. He was ever ready, and never at a Loss; and none came so near as he to be a Match for Serjeant Mainard. His great Dexterity was in the Art of special Pleading, and he would lay Snares that often caught his Superiors who were not aware of his Traps. And he was so fond of Success for his Clients that, rather than fail, he would set the Court hard with a Trick; for which he met sometimes with a Reprimand, which he would wittily ward off, so that no one was much offended with him. But Hales could not bear his Irregularity of Life; and for that, and Suspicion of his Tricks, used to bear hard upon him in the Court. But no ill Usage from the Bench was too hard for his Hold of Business, being such as scarce any could do but himself. With all this, he had a Goodness of Nature and Disposition in so great a Degree that he may be deservedly styled a Philanthrope. He was a very Silenus to the Boys, as, in this Place, I may term the Students of the Law, to make them merry whenever they had a Mind to it. He had nothing of rigid or austere in him. If any, near him at the Bar, grumbled at his Stench, he ever converted the Complaint into Content and Laughing with the Abundance of his Wit. As to his ordinary Dealing, he was as honest as the driven Snow was white; and why not, having no Regard for Money, or Desire to be rich? And, for good Nature and Condescension, there was not his Fellow. I have seen him, for Hours and half Hours together, before the Court sat, stand at the Bar, with an Audience of Students over against him, putting of Cases, and debating so as suited their Capacities, and encouraged their Industry. And so in the Temple, he seldom moved without a Parcel of Youths hanging about him, and he merry and jesting with them.

It will be readily conceived that this Man was never cut out to be a Presbyter, or any Thing that is severe and crabbed. In no Time did he lean to Faction, but did his Business without Offence to any. He put off officious Talk of Government or Politicks, with Jests, and so made his Wit a Catholicon, or Shield, to cover all his weak Places and Infirmities. When the Court fell into a steddy Course of using the Law against all Kinds of Offenders, this Man was taken into the King's Business; and had the Part of drawing, and Perusal of almost all Indictments and Informations that were then to be prosecuted, with the Pleadings thereon if any were special; and he had the settling of the large Pleadings in the Quo Warranto against London. His Lordship had no sort of Conversation with him, but in the Way of Business, and at the Bar; but once, after he was in the King's Business, he dined with his Lordship, and no more. And then he shewed another Qualification he had acquired, and that was to play Jigs upon an Harpsichord; having taught himself with the Opportunity of an old Virginal of his Landlady's; but in such a Manner, not for Defect but Figure, as to see him were a Jest. The King, observing him to be of a free Disposition, Loyal, Friendly, and without Greediness or Guile, thought of him to be the Chief Justice of the King's Bench at that nice Time. And the Ministry could not but approve of it. So great a Weight was then at stake, as could not be trusted to Men of doubtful Principles, or such as any Thing might tempt to desert them. While he sat in the Court of King's Bench, he gave the Rule to the general Satisfaction of the Lawyers. But his Course of Life was so different from what it had been, his Business incessant, and, withal, crabbed; and his Diet and Exercise changed, that the Constitution of his Body, or Head rather, could not sustain it, and he fell into an Apoplexy and Palsy, which numbed his Parts; and he never recovered the Strength of them. He out-lived the Judgment on the Quo Warranto; but was not present otherwise than by sending his Opinion, by one of the Judges, to be for the King, who, at the pronouncing of the Judgment, declared it to the Court accordingly, which is frequently done in like Cases.

TWO GROUPS OF DIVINES.

BENJAMIN WHITCHCOT or WHICHCOTE (1609-83), Provost of King's College,
Cambridge, 1645. RALPH CUDWORTH (1617-88), Master of Clare College,
Cambridge, 1645, and Christ's College, 1654. JOHN WILKINS (1614-72),
Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, 1648; Master of Trinity College,
Cambridge, 1659; Bishop of Chester, 1668. HENRY MORE (1614-87), Fellow
of Christ's College, Cambridge, 1639. JOHN WORTHINGTON (1618-71),
Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, 1650.

JOHN TILLOTSON (1630-94), Archbishop of Canterbury, 1691. EDWARD STILLINGFLEET (1635-99), Bishop of Worcester, 1689. SIMON PATRICK (1626-1707), Bishop of Chichester, 1689; Ely, 1691. WILLIAM LLOYD (1627-1717), Bishop of St. Asaph, 1680; Lichfield, 1692; Worcester, 1700. THOMAS TENISON (1636-1715), Archbishop of Canterbury, 1694.

With this great accession of wealth there broke in upon the Church a great deal of luxury and high living, on the pretence of hospitality; while others made purchases, and left great estates, most of which we have seen melt away. And with this overset of wealth and pomp, that came on men in the decline of their parts and age, they, who were now growing into old age, became lazy and negligent in all the true concerns of the Church: They left preaching and writing to others, while they gave themselves up to ease and sloth. In all which sad representation some few exceptions are to be made; but so few, that, if a new set of men had not appeared of another stamp, the Church had quite lost her esteem over the Nation.

These were generally of Cambridge, formed under some divines, the chief of whom were Drs. Whitchcot, Cudworth, Wilkins, More, and Worthington. Whitchcot was a man of a rare temper, very mild and obliging. He had great credit with some that had been eminent in the late times; but made all the use he could of it to protect good men of all persuasions. He was much for liberty of conscience: And being disgusted with the dry systematical way of those times, he studied to raise those who conversed with him to a nobler set of thoughts, and to consider religion as a seed of a deiform nature, (to use one of his own phrases.) In order to this, he set young students much on reading the ancient Philosophers, chiefly Plato, Tully, and Plotin, and on considering the Christian religion as a doctrine sent from God, both to elevate and sweeten humane nature, in which he was a great example, as well as a wise and kind instructer. Cudworth carried this on with a great strength of genius, and a vast compass of learning. He was a man of great conduct and prudence: Upon which his enemies did very falsly accuse him of craft and dissimulation. Wilkins was of Oxford, but removed to Cambridge. His first rise was in the Elector Palatine's family, when he was in England. Afterwards he married Cromwell's sister; but made no other use of that alliance, but to do good offices, and to cover the University from the sourness of Owen and Goodwin. At Cambridge he joined with those who studied to propagate better thoughts, to take men off from being in parties, or from narrow notions, from superstitious conceits, and a fierceness about opinions. He was also a great observer and a promoter of experimental philosophy, which was then a new thing, and much looked after. He was naturally ambitious, but was the wisest Clergy-man I ever knew. He was a lover of mankind, and had a delight in doing good. More was an open hearted, and sincere Christian philosopher, who studied to establish men in the great principles of religion against atheism, that was then beginning to gain ground, chiefly by reason of the hypocrisy of some, and the fantastical conceits of the more sincere enthusiasts.

Hobbs, who had long followed the Court, and passed there for a mathematical man, tho' he really knew little that way, being disgusted by the Court, came into England in Cromwell's time, and published a very wicked book, with a very strange title, The Leviathan. His main principles were, that all men acted under an absolute necessity, in which he seemed protected by the then received doctrine of absolute decrees. He seemed to think that the universe was God, and that souls were material, Thought being only subtil and unperceptible motion. He thought interest and fear were the chief principles of society: And he put all morality in the following that which was our own private will or advantage. He thought religion had no other foundation than the laws of the land. And he put all the law in the will of the Prince, or of the people: For he writ his book at first in favour of absolute monarchy, but turned it afterwards to gratify the republican party. These were his true principles, tho' he had disguised them, for deceiving unwary readers. And this set of notions came to spread much. The novelty and boldness of them set many on reading them. The impiety of them was acceptable to men of corrupt minds, which were but too much prepared to receive them by the extravagancies of the late times. So this set of men at Cambridge studied to assert, and examine the principles of religion and morality on clear grounds, and in a philosophical method. In this More led the way to many that came after him. Worihington was a man of eminent piety and great humility, and practised a most sublime way of self-denial and devotion. All these, and those who were formed under them, studied to examine farther into the nature of things than had been done formerly. They declared against superstition on the one hand, and enthusiasm on the other. They loved the constitution of the Church, and the Liturgy, and could well live under them: But they did not think it unlawful to live under another form. They wished that things might have been carried with more moderation. And they continued to keep a good correspondence with those who had differed from them in opinion, and allowed a great freedom both in philosophy and in divinity: From whence they were called men of Latitude. And upon this men of narrower thoughts and fiercer tempers fastened upon them the name of Latitudinarians. They read Episcopius much. And the making out the reasons of things being a main part of their studies, their enemies called them Socinians. They were all very zealous against popery. And so, they becoming soon very considerable, the Papists set themselves against them to decry them as Atheists, Deists, or at best Socinians. And now that the main principle of religion was struck at by Hobbs and his followers, the Papists acted upon this a very strange part. They went in so far even into the argument for Atheism, as to publish many books, in which they affirmed, that there was no certain proofs of the Christian religion, unless we took it from the authority of the Church as infallible. This was such a delivering up of the cause to them, that it raised in all good men a very high indignation at Popery; that party shewing, that they chose to make men, who would not turn Papists, become Atheists, rather than believe Christianity upon any other ground than infallibility.

The most eminent of those, who were formed under those great men I have mention'd, were Tillotson, Stillingfleet, and Patrick. The first of these was a man of a clear head, and a sweet temper. He had the brightest thoughts, and the most correct style of all our divines; and was esteemed the best preacher of the age. He was a very prudent man; and had such a management with it, that I never knew any Clergy-man so universally esteemed and beloved, as he was for above twenty years. He was eminent for his opposition to Popery. He was no friend to persecution, and stood up much against Atheism. Nor did any man contribute more to bring the City to love our worship, than he did. But there was so little superstition, and so much reason and gentleness in his way of explaining things, that malice was long levelled at him, and in conclusion broke out fiercely on him. Stillingfleet was a man of much more learning, but of a more reserved, and a haughtier temper. He in his youth writ an Irenicum for healing our divisions, with so much learning and moderation, that it was esteemed a masterpiece. His notion was, that the Apostles had settled the Church in a constitution of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, but had made no perpetual law about it, having only taken it in, as they did many other things, from the customs and practice of the synagogue; from which he inferred, that certainly the constitution was lawful since authorised by them, but not necessary, since they had made no settled law about it. This took with many; but was cried out upon by others as an attempt against the Church. Yet the argument was managed with so much learning and skill, that none of either side ever undertook to answer it. After that, he wrote against infidelity, beyond any that had gone before him. And then he engaged to write against Popery, which he did with such an exactness and liveliness, that no books of controversy were so much read and valued, as his were. He was a great man in many respects. He knew the world well, and was esteemed a very wise man. The writing of his Irenicum was a great snare to him: For, to avoid the imputations which that brought upon him, he not only retracted the book, but he went into the humours of that high sort of people beyond what became him, perhaps beyond his own sense of things. He applied himself much to the study of the law and records, and the original of our constitution, and was a very extraordinary man. Patrick was a great preacher. He wrote much, and well, and chiefly on the Scriptures. He was a laborious man in his function, of great strictness of life, but a little too severe against those who differed from him. But that was, when he thought their doctrines struck at the fundamentals of religion. He became afterwards more moderate. To these I shall add another divine, who, tho' of Oxford, yet as he was formed by Bishop Wilkins, so he went into most of their principles; but went far beyond them in learning. Lloyd was a great critick in the Greek and Latin authors, but chiefly in the Scriptures; of the words and phrases of which he carried the most perfect concordance in his memory, and had it the readiest about him, of all men that ever I knew. He was an exact historian, and the most punctual in chronology of all our divines. He had read the most books, and with the best judgment, and had made the most copious abstracts out of them, of any in this age: So that Wilkins used to say, he had the most learning in ready cash of any he ever knew. He was so exact in every thing he set about, that he never gave over any part of study, till he had quite mastered it. But when that was done, he went to another subject, and did not lay out his learning with the diligence with which he laid it in. He had many volumes of materials upon all subjects laid together in so distinct a method, that he could with very little labour write on any of them. He had more life in his imagination, and a truer judgment, than may seem consistent with such a laborious course of study. Yet, as much as he was set on learning, he had never neglected his pastoral care. For several years he had the greatest cure in England, St. Martins, which he took care of with an application and diligence beyond any about him; to whom he was an example, or rather a reproach, so few following his example. He was a holy, humble, and patient man, ever ready to do good when he saw a proper opportunity: Even his love of study did not divert him from that. He did upon his promotion find a very worthy successor in his cure, Tenison, who carried on and advanced all those good methods that he had begun in the management of that great cure. He endowed schools, set up a publick library, and kept many Curates to assist him in his indefatigable labours among them. He was a very learned man, and took much pains to state the notions and practices of heathenish idolatry, and so to fasten that charge on the Church of Rome. And, Whitehall lying within that parish, he stood as in the front of the battel all King James's reign; and maintained, as well as managed, that dangerous post with great courage and much judgment, and was held in very high esteem for his whole deportment, which was ever grave and moderate. These have been the greatest divines we have had these forty years: And may we ever have a succession of such men to fill the room of those who have already gone off the stage, and of those who, being now very old, cannot hold their posts long. Of these I have writ the more fully, because I knew them well, and have lived long in great friendship with them; but most particularly with Tillotson and Lloyd. And, as I am sensible I owe a great deal of the consideration that has been had for me to my being known to be their friend, so I have really learned the best part of what I know from them. But I owed them much more on the account of those excellent principles and notions, of which they were in a particular manner communicative to me. This set of men contributed more than can be well imagined to reform the way of preaching; which among the divines of England before them was over-run with pedantry, a great mixture of quotations from fathers and ancient writers, a long opening of a text with the concordance of every word in it, and a giving all the different expositions with the grounds of them, and the entring into some parts of controversy, and all concluding in some, but very short, practical applications, according to the subject or the occasion. This was both long and heavy, when all was pye-balled, full of many sayings of different languages. The common style of sermons was either very flat and low, or swelled up with rhetorick to a false pitch of a wrong sublime. The King had little or no literature, but true and good sense; and had got a right notion of style; for he was in France at a time when they were much set on reforming their language. It soon appear'd that he had a true taste. So this help'd to raise the value of these men, when the King approved of the style their discourses generally ran in; which was clear, plain, and short. They gave a short paraphrase of their text, unless where great difficulties required a more copious enlargement: But even then they cut off unnecessary shews of learning, and applied themselves to the matter, in which they opened the nature and reasons of things so fully, and with that simplicity, that their hearers felt an instruction of another sort than had commonly been observed before. So they became very much followed: And a set of these men brought off the City in a great measure from the prejudices they had formerly to the Church.

JAMES II.

Born 1633. Created Duke of York. Succeeded Charles II 1685. Fled to France 1688. Died 1701.

I will digress a little to give an account of the Duke's character, whom I knew for some years so particularly, that I can say much upon my own knowledge. He was very brave in his youth, and so much magnified by Monsieur Turenne, that, till his marriage lessened him he really clouded the King, and pass'd for the superior genius. He was naturally candid and sincere, and a firm friend, till affairs and his religion wore out all his first principles and inclinations. He had a great desire to understand affairs: And in order to that he kept a constant journal of all that pass'd, of which he shewed me a great deal. The Duke of Buckingham gave me once a short but severe character of the two brothers. It was the more severe, because it was-true: The King (he said) could see things if he would, and the Duke would see things if he could. He had no true judgment, and was soon determined by those whom he trusted: But he was obstinate against all other advices. He was bred with high notions of the Kingly authority, and laid it down for a maxim, that all who opposed the King were rebels in their hearts. He was perpetually in one amour or other, without being very nice in his choice: Upon which the King said once, he believed his brother had his mistresses given him by his Priests for penance. He gave me this account of his changing his religion: When he escaped out of the hands of the Earl of Northumberland, who had the charge of his education trusted to him by the Parliament, and had used him with great respect, all due care was taken, as soon as he got beyond sea, to form him to a strict adherence to the Church of England: Among other things much was said of the authority of the Church, and of the tradition from the Apostles in support of Episcopacy: So that, when he came to observe that there was more reason to submit to the Catholick Church than to one particular Church, and that other traditions might be taken on her word, as well as Episcopacy was received among us, he thought the step was not great, but that it was very reasonable to go over to the Church of Rome: And Doctor Steward having taught him to believe a real but unconceivable presence of Christ in the Sacrament, he thought this went more than half way to transubstantiation. He said, that a Nun's advice to him to pray every day, that, if he was not in the right way, God would set him right, did make a great impression on him. But he never told me when or where he was reconciled. He suffered me to say a great deal to him on all these heads. I shewed the difference between submission and obedience in matters of order and indifferent things, and an implicite submission from the belief of infallibility. I also shewed him the difference between a speculation of a mode of Christ's presence, when it rested in an opinion, and an adoration founded on it: Tho' the opinion of such a presence was wrong, there was no great harm in that alone: But the adoration of an undue object was idolatry. He suffered me to talk much and often to him on these heads. But I plainly saw, it made no impression: And all that he seemed to intend by it was, to make use of me as an instrument to soften the aversion that people began to be possessed with to him. He was naturally eager and revengeful: And was against the taking off any that set up in an opposition to the measures of the Court, and who by that means grew popular in the House of Commons. He was for rougher methods. He continued for many years dissembling his religion, and seemed zealous for the Church of England: But it was chiefly on design to hinder all propositions that tended to unite us among our selves. He was a frugal Prince, and brought his Court into method and magnificence: For he had 100000_l_. a year allowed him. He was made High Admiral: And he came to understand all the concerns of the sea very particularly. He had a very able Secretary about him, Sir William Coventry; a man of great notions and eminent vertues, the best Speaker in the House of Commons, and capable of bearing the chief ministry, as it was once thought he was very near it. The Duke found, all the great seamen had a deep tincture from their education: They both hated Popery, and loved liberty: They were men of severe tempers, and kept good discipline. But in order to the putting the fleet into more confident hands, the Duke began a method of sending pages of honour, and other young persons of quality, to be bred to the sea. And these were put in command, as soon as they were capable of it, if not sooner. This discouraged many of the old seamen, when they saw in what a channel advancement was like to go; who upon that left the service, and went and commanded merchantmen. By this means the vertue and discipline of the navy is much lost. It is true, we have a breed of many gallant men, who do distinguish themselves in action. But it is thought, the Nation has suffered much by the vices and disorders of those Captains, who have risen by their quality, more than by merit or service.

He was a Prince that seemed made for greater things, than will be found in the course of his Life, more particularly of his Reign: He was esteemed in the former parts of his Life, a Man of great Courage, as he was quite thro' it a man of great application to business: He had no vivacity of thought, invention or expression: But he had a good judgment, where his Religion or his Education gave him not a biass, which it did very often: He was bred with strange Notions of the Obedience due to Princes, and came to take up as strange ones, of the Submission due to Priests: He was naturally a man of truth, fidelity, and justice: But his Religion was so infused in him, and he was so managed in it by his Priests, that the Principles which Nature had laid in him, had little power over him, when the concerns of his Church stood in the way: He was a gentle Master, and was very easy to all who came near him: yet he was not so apt to pardon, as one ought to be, that is the Vicegerent of that God, who is slow to anger, and ready to forgive: He had no personal Vices but of one sort: He was still wandring from one Amour to another, yet he had a real sense of Sin, and was ashamed of it: But Priests know how to engage Princes more entirely into their interests, by making them compound for their Sins, by a great zeal for Holy Church, as they call it. In a word, if it had not been for his Popery, he would have been, if not a great yet a good Prince. By what I once knew of him, and by what I saw him afterwards carried to, I grew more confirmed in the very bad opinion, which I was always apt to have, of the Intrigues of the Popish Clergy, and of the Confessors of Kings: He was undone by them, and was their Martyr, so that they ought to bear the chief load of all the errors of his inglorious Reign, and of its fatal Catastrophe. He had the Funeral which he himself had desired, private, and without any sort of Ceremony.

NOTES

The History of Great Britain, Being the Life and Reign of King James
The First, Relating To what passed from his first Accesse to the
Crown, till his Death. By Arthur Wilson, Esq. London, 1653. (pp.
289-90.)

Arthur Wilson (1595-1652) was a gentleman-in-waiting to Robert Devereux, third Earl of Essex, during James's reign, and was afterwards in the service of Robert Rich, second Earl of Essex. The History was written towards the end of his life, and published the year after his death. He was the author also of an autobiography, Observations of God's Providence in the Tract of my Life (first printed in Francis Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, 1735, Lib. XII, pp. 6-34), and of three plays, The Swisser (performed at Blackfriars, 1633, first printed in 1904, ed. Albert Feuillerat, from the MS. in the British Museum), The Corporall (performed, 1633, but not extant), and The Inconstant Lady (first printed in 1814, ed. Philip Bliss, from the MS. in the Bodleian Library). The three plays were entered in the Registers of the Stationers' Company, September 4, 1646, and September 9, 1653. But nothing he wrote appears to have been published during his life.

Page 2, l. 24. Peace begot Plenty. An adaptation of the wellknown saying which Puttenham in his Arte of English Poesie (ed. Arber, p. 217) attributes to Jean de Meung. Puttenham gives it thus:

  Peace makes plentie, plentie makes pride,
  Pride breeds quarrell, and quarrell brings warre:
  Warre brings spoile, and spoile pouertie,
  Pouertie pacience, and pacience peace:
  So peace brings warre, and warre brings peace.

It is found also in Italian and Latin. Allusions to it are frequent in the seventeenth century. Compare the beginning of Swift's Battle of the Books, and see the correspondence in The Times Literary Supplement, February 17-March 30, 1916.

The Court and Character of King James. Written and taken by Sir A.W. being an eye, and eare witnesse. Qui nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare. Published by Authority. London, MDCL.

'The Character of King James' forms a section by itself at the conclusion of the volume, pp. 177-89. The volume was reprinted in the following year, when there were added to it 'The Court of King Charles' and 'Observations (instead of a Character) upon this King, from his Childe-hood'. Both editions are carelessly printed. The second, which corrects some of the errors of the first but introduces others, has been used for the present text.

Weldon was clerk of the kitchen to James I and afterwards clerk of the Green Cloth. He was knighted in 1617, and accompanied James to Scotland in that year, but was dismissed from his place at court for his satire on the Scots. He took the side of the parliament in the Civil War. The dedication to Lady Elizabeth Sidley (first printed in the second edition) states that the work 'treads too near the heeles of truth, and these Times, to appear in publick'. According to Anthony à Wood she had suppressed the manuscript, which was stolen from her. Weldon had died before it was printed. The answer to it called Aulicus Coquinariæ describes it as 'Pretended to be penned by Sir A.W. and published since his death, 1650'.

Other works of the same kind, though of inferior value, are Sir Edward
Peyton's The Divine Catastrophe of The Kingly Family Of the House of
Stuarts, 1652, and Francis Osborne's Traditionall Memoyres on The
Raigne of King James, 1658. They were printed together by Sir Walter
Scott in 1811 under the title The Secret History of the Court of
James the First, a collection which contains the historical material
employed in The Fortunes of Nigel.

Though carelessly written, and as carelessly printed, Weldon's character of James is in parts remarkably vivid. It was reprinted by itself in Morgan's Pboenix Britannicus, 1732, pp. 54-6; and it was incorporated in the edition of Defoe's Memoirs of a Cavalier published in 1792: see The Retrospective Review, 1821, vol. iii, pt. ii, pp. 378-9.

There is a valuable article on Weldon's book as a whole in The
Retrospective Review, 1823, vol. vii, pt. I.

PAGE 4, l. 6. before he was born, probably an allusion to the murder of Rizzio in Mary's presence.

On James's capacity for strong drinks, compare Roger Coke's Detection of the Court and State of England (1694), ed. 1719, vol. i, p. 78.

l. 27. that foul poysoning busines, the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury, the great scandal of the reign. Robert Ker, or Carr, created Viscount Rochester 1611 and Earl of Somerset 1613, had cast his eye on the Countess of Essex, and, after a decree of nullity of marriage with Essex had been procured, married her in December 1613. Overbury, who had been Somerset's friend, opposed the projected marriage. On a trumped up charge of disobedience to the king he was in April 1613 committed to the Tower, where he was slowly poisoned, and died in September. Somerset and the Countess were both found guilty in 1616, but ultimately pardoned; four of the accomplices were hanged. Weldon deals with the scandal at some length in the main part of his work, pp. 61 ff.

l. 30. Mountgomery, Philip Herbert, created Earl of Montgomery 1605, succeeded his brother, William Herbert, as fourth Earl of Pembroke in 1630 (see No. 7). To this 'most noble and incomparable paire of brethren' Heminge and Condell dedicated the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays, 1623. Montgomery's character is given by Clarendon, History, ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 74-5; and, as fourth Earl of Pembroke, vol. ii, pp. 539-41.

Page 5, l. 22. unfortunate in the marriage of his Daughter. James's daughter Elizabeth married the Elector Palatine, Frederick V, in 1613. His election as King of Bohemia led to the Thirty Years' War (1618-48) in which James long hesitated to become involved and played at best an ineffectual part. The opinion here expressed is explained by an earlier passage in Weldon's book, pp. 82-4: 'In this Favourites (Somerset's) flourishing time, came over the Palsgrave to marry our Kings daughter, which for the present, gave much content, and with the generall applause, yet it proved a most infortunate match to him and his Posterity, and all Christendome, for all his Alliance with so many great Princes, which put on him aspiring thoughts, and was so ambitious as not to content himselfe with his hereditary patrimony of one of the greatest Princes in Germany; but must aspire to a Kingdome, beleeving that his great allyance would carry him through any enterprise, or bring him off with honour, in both which he failed; being cast out of his own Country with shame, and he and his, ever after, living upon the devotion of other Princes; but had his Father in Law spent halfe the mony in Swords he did in words, for which he was but scorned, it had kept him in his own inheritance, and saved much Christian bloud since shed; but whiles he, being wholly addicted to peace, spent much treasure, in sending stately Embassadours to treat, his Enemies (which he esteemed friends) sent Armies with a lesse charge to conquer, so that it may be concluded, that this then thought the most happy match in Christendome, was the greatest unhappinesse to Christendome, themselves, and posterity.'

l. 27. Sir Robert Mansell (1573-1656), Vice-Admiral of England under Charles I. Clarendon, writing of the year 1642, says that 'his courage and integrity were unquestionable' (ed. Macray, vol. ii, p. 219). 'Argiers' or 'Argier' was the common old form of 'Algiers': cf. The Tempest, I. ii. 261, 265.

Page 6, l. 2. Cottington, Francis Cottington (1578-1652), baronet 1623, Baron Cottington, 1631. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1629 to 1642.

Page 7, l. 5. The first edition reads 'In sending Embassadours, which were'. The printer's substitution of 'His' for 'In' and omission of 'which' do not wholly mend the syntax.

l. 10. peace with honour. An early instance of the phrase made famous by Lord Beaconsfield in his speech of July 16, 1878, after the Congress of Berlin, 'Lord Salisbury and myself have brought you back peace, but a peace I hope with honour.' Cf. Notes and Queries, 1887, Seventh Series, vol. iii, p. 96.

l. 14. Nullum tempus, &c., the law maxim Nullum tempus occurrit regi, lapse of time does not bar the crown. The Parliament which met in February 1624 passed 'An Act for the generall quiett of the Subject agaynst all pretences of Concealement' (21° Jac. I, c. 2) which declared sixty years' possession of Lands, &c., to be a good title against the Crown.

l. 18. his Tuesday Sermons, likewise explained by an earlier passage in Weldon's book, pp. 8, 9: 'the chiefe of those secrets, was that of Gowries Conspiracy, though that Nation [the Scots] gave little credit to the Story, but would speak sleightly and despitefully of it, and those of the wisest of that Nation; yet there was a weekly commemoration by the Tuesday Sermon, and an anniversary Feast, as great as it was possible, for the Kings preservation, ever on the fifth of August.' James attempted to force the Tuesday sermon on the University of Oxford; it was to be preached by members of each college in rotation. See Brodrick's Memorials of Merton College, 1885, p. 70.

Page 8, l. 1. a very wise man. Compare The Fortunes of Nigel, chap. v: 'the character bestowed upon him by Sully—that he was the wisest fool in Christendom'. Two volumes of the Mémoires of Maximilien de Béthune, Duc de Sully (1560-1641), appeared in 1638; the others after 1650. There is much about James in the second volume, but this description of him does not appear to be there.

ll. 10-12. two Treasurers, see p. 21, ll. 15-22: three
Secretaries, Sir Thomas Lake; Sir Robert Naunton; Sir George Calvert,
Baron Baltimore; Sir Edward Conway, Viscount Conway: two Lord
Keepers, Sir Francis Bacon; John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln (see
p. 18, l. 5): two Admiralls, Charles Howard of Effingham, Earl of
Nottingham; the Duke of Buckingham: three Lord chief Justices, Sir
Edward Coke; Henry Montagu, Earl of Manchester; James Ley, Earl of
Marlborough.

Weldon's statement is true of the year 1623; he might have said 'three Treasurers' and 'four Secretaries'.

Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 7-9, 18-20; History, Bk. I, ed. 1702, vol. i, pp. 9-11, 26-9; ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 10-13, 38-43.

This is the first of the portraits in Clarendon's great gallery, and it is drawn with great care. Clarendon was only a youth of twenty when Buckingham was assassinated, and he had therefore not the personal knowledge and contact to which the later portraits owe so much of their value. But he had throughout all his life been interested in the remarkable career of this 'very extraordinary person'. Sir Henry Wotton's 'Observations by Way of Parallel' on the Earl of Essex and Buckingham had suggested to him his first character study, 'The Difference and Disparity' between them. (It is printed after the 'Parallel' in Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, and described in the third edition, 1672, as 'written by the Earl of Clarendon in his younger dayes'.) His two studies offer an interesting comparison. Many of the ideas are the same, but there is a marked difference in the precision of drawing and the ease of style. The character here reprinted was written when Clarendon had mastered his art.

Page 13, l. 25. The passage here omitted deals with Buckingham's unsuccessful journey to Spain with Prince Charles, and with his assassination.

Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 27, 28; History, Bk. I, ed. 1702, vol. i, pp. 36-8; ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 56-9.

Page 18, l. 5. the Bishopp of Lincolne, John Williams (1582-1650), afterwards Archbishop of York. He succeeded Bacon as Lord Keeper. He is sketched in Wilson's History of Great Britain, pp. 196-7, and Fuller's Church-History of Britain, 1655, Bk. XI, pp. 225-8. His life by John Hacket, Scrinia Reserata, 1693, is notorious for the 'embellishments' of its style; a shorter life, based on Hacket's, was an early work of Ambrose Philips.

Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 28-32; History, Bk. I, ed. 1702, vol. i, pp. 31-43; ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 59-67.

Another and more favourable character of Weston is the matter of an undated letter which Sir Henry Wotton sent to him as 'a strange New years Gift' about 1635. 'In short, it is only an Image of your Self, drawn by memory from such discourse as I have taken up here and there of your Lordship, among the most intelligent and unmalignant men; which to pourtrait before you I thought no servile office, but ingenuous and real'. See Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, ed. 1672, pp. 333-6.

Page 21, l. 7. the white staffe. 'The Third Great Officer of the
Crown, is the Lord High Treasurer of England, who receives this High
Office by delivery of a White Staffe to him by the King, and
holds it durante bene placito Regis' (Edward Chamberlayne, Angliæ
Notitia, 1674, p. 152).

Page 23, l. 4. L'd Brooke, Sir Fulke Greville (1554-1628) the friend and biographer of Sir Philip Sidney. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1614 to 1621.

Page 28, l. 18. eclarcicement, introduced into English about this time, and in frequent use till the beginning of the nineteenth century.

l. 28. a younge, beautifull Lady, Frances, daughter of Esmé, third Duke of Lennox, married to Jerome Weston, afterwards second Earl of Portland, in 1632.

Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 33, 34; History, Bk. I, ed. 1702, vol. i, p. 44; ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 69-71.

This is one of Clarendon's most unfriendly portraits. It was seriously edited when first printed. The whole passage about the coldness and selfishness of Arundel's nature on p. 31, ll. 12-30, was omitted, as likewise the allusion to his ignorance on p. 30, ll. 25-7, 'wheras in truth he was only able to buy them, never to understande them.' Minor alterations are the new reading 'thought no part of History so considerable, as what related to his own Family' p. 30, ll. 28, 29, and the omission of 'vulgar' p. 31, l. 11. The purpose of these changes is obvious. They are extreme examples of the methods of Clarendon's first editors. In no other character did they take so great liberties with his text.

Arundel's great collection of ancient marbles is now in the Ashmolean Museum in the University of Oxford. The inscriptions were presented to the University in 1667 by Lord Henry Howard, Arundel's grandson, afterwards sixth Duke of Norfolk, and the statues were reunited to them in 1755 by the gift of Henrietta Countess of Pomfret. As Clarendon's History was an official publication of the University, it is probable that the prospect of receiving the statues induced the editors to remove or alter the passages that might be thought offensive.

As a whole this character does not show Clarendon's usual detachment. Arundel was Earl Marshal, and Clarendon in the Short Parliament of 1640 and again at the beginning of the Long Parliament had attacked the jurisdiction of the Earl Marshal's Court, which, as he says, 'never presumed to sit afterwards'. The account given in Clarendon's Life, ed. 1759, pp. 37-9, explains much in this character. Clarendon there says that Arundel 'did him the honour to detest and hate him perfectly'. There was resentment on both sides. The character was written in Clarendon's later years, but he still remembered with feeling the days when as Mr. Edward Hyde he was at cross purposes with this Earl of ancient lineage.

A different character of Arundel is given in the 'Short View' of his life written by Sir Edward Walker (1612-77), Garter King of Arms and Secretary of War to Charles I:

'He was tall of Stature, and of Shape and proportion rather goodly than neat; his Countenance was Majestical and grave, his Visage long, his Eyes large black and piercing; he had a hooked Nose, and some Warts or Moles on his Cheeks; his Countenance was brown, his Hair thin both on his Head and Beard; he was of a stately Presence and Gate, so that any Man that saw him, though in never so ordinary Habit, could not but conclude him to be a great Person, his Garb and Fashion drawing more Observation than did the rich Apparel of others; so that it was a common Saying of the late Earl of Carlisle, Here comes the Earl of Arundel in his plain Stuff and trunk Hose, and his Beard in his Teeth, that looks more like a Noble Man than any of us. He was more learned in Men and Manners than in Books, yet understood the Latin Tongue very well, and was Master of the Italian; besides he was a great Favourer of learned Men, such as Sir Robert Cotton, Sir Henry Spelman, Mr. Camden, Mr. Selden, and the like. He was a great Master of Order and Ceremony, and knew and kept greater Distance towards his Sovereign than any Person I ever observed, and expected no less from his inferiours; often complaining that the too great Affability of the King, and the French Garb of the Court would bring MAJESTY into Contempt…. He was the greatest Favourer of Arts, especially Painting, Sculpture, Designs, Carving, Building and the like, that this Age hath produced; his Collection of Designs being more than of any Person living, and his Statues equal in Number, Value and Antiquity to those in the Houses of most Princes; to gain which, he had Persons many Years employed both in Italy, Greece, and so generally in any part of Europe where Rarities were to be had. His Paintings likewise were numerous and of the most excellent Masters, having more of that exquisite Painter Hans Holben than are in the World besides…. He was a Person of great and universal Civility, but yet with that Restriction as that it forbad any to be bold or sawcy with him; though with those whom he affected, which were Lovers of State, Nobility and curious Arts, he was very free and conversible; but they being but few, the Stream of the times being otherwise, he had not many Confidents or Dependents; neither did he much affect to have them, they being unto great Persons both burthensome and dangerous. He was not popular at all, nor cared for it, as loving better by a just Hand than Flattery to let the common People to know their Distance and due Observance. Neither was he of any Faction in Court or Council, especially not of the French or Puritan…. He was in Religion no Bigot or Puritan, and professed more to affect moral Vertues than nice Questions and Controversies…. If he were defective in any thing, it was that he could not bring his Mind to his Fortune; which though great, was far too little for the Vastness of his noble Designs.'

Walker's character was written before Clarendon's. It is dated 'Iselsteyne the 7th of June 1651'. It was first published in 1705 in his Historical Discourses upon Several Occasions, pp. 221-3.

Page 30, l. 15. his wife, 'the Lady Alithea Talbot, third Daughter and Coheir of Gilbert Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury, Grandchild of George Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury and Earl Marshal of England' (Walker, Historical Discourses, p. 211).

Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 34, 35; History, Bk. I, ed. 1702, vol. i, pp. 44-6; ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 71-3.

This pleasing portrait of Pembroke, one of the great patrons of literature of James's reign, follows immediately after the unfriendly portrait of Arundel, the art collector. Clarendon knew the value of contrast in the arrangement of his gallery.

Pembroke is sometimes supposed to have been the patron of Shakespeare. It cannot, however, be proved that there were any personal relations, though the First Folio was dedicated to him and his brother, the Earl of Montgomery, afterwards fourth Earl of Pembroke. See note, p. 4, l. 30. He was the patron of Ben Jonson, who dedicated to him his Catiline, his favourite play, and his Epigrams, 'the ripest of my studies'; also of Samuel Daniel, Chapman, and William Browne. See Shakespeare's England, vol. ii, pp. 202-3.

Clarendon has also given a character of the fourth Earl, 'the poor
Earl of Pembroke', History, ed. Macray, vol. ii, pp. 539-41.

Timber: or, Discoveries; Made Vpon Men and Matter. By Ben: Iohnson.
London, Printed M.DC.XLI. (pp. 101-2.)

This character is a remarkable testimony to the impression which Bacon's restrained eloquence made on his contemporaries. Yet it is little more than an exercise in free translation. Jonson has pieced together two passages in the Controversies of Marcus Seneca, and placed the name of 'Dominus Verulanus' in the margin. The two passages are these:

'Non est unus, quamvis præcipuus sit, imitandus: quia nunquam par fit imitator auctori. Hæc natura est rei. Semper citra veritatem est similitudo.' Lib. I, Præfatio (ed. Paris, 1607, p. 58).

'Oratio eius erat valens cultu, ingentibus plena sententiis. Nemo minus passus est aliquid in actione sua otiosi esse. Nulla pars erat, quæ non sua virtute staret. Nihil, in quo auditor sine damno aliud ageret. Omnia intenta aliquo, petentia. Nemo magis in sua potestate habuit audientium affectus. Verum est quod de illo dicit Gallio noster. Cum diceret, rerum potiebatur, adeo omnes imperata faciebant. Cum ille voluerat, irascebantur. Nemo non illo dicente timebat, ne desineret.' Epit. Declamat. Lib. III (p. 231).

From the continuation of the first passage Jonson took the words 'insolent Greece' ('insolenti Græciæ') in his verses 'To the memory of Shakespeare'.

Jonson has left a more vivid picture of Bacon as a speaker in a short sentence of his Conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden: 'My Lord Chancelor of England wringeth his speeches from the strings of his band.'

Page 36, l. 18. which the King hinted at, in the King's Speech to the Lords, 1621: 'But because the World at this time talks so much of Bribes, I have just cause to fear the whole Body of this House hath bribed him [Prince Charles] to be a good Instrument for you upon all occasions: He doth so good Offices in all his Reports to me, both for the House in generall, and every one of you in particular.' The speech is given in full by Wilson before the passage on Bacon.

Page 37, l. 25. The passage here omitted is 'The humble Submission and
Supplication of the Lord Chancellour'.

Page 38, l. 10. a good Passeover, a good passage back to Spain.
Gondomar was Spanish ambassador.

The Church-History of Britain; From the Birth of Jesus Christ, Untill the Year M.DC.XLVIII. Endeavoured By Thomas Fuller. London, 1655. (Bk. x, p. 89.)

Resuscitatio, Or, Bringing into Publick Light Severall Pieces, of
the Works, Civil, Historical, Philosophical, & Theological, Hitherto
Sleeping; Of the Right Honourable Francis Bacon Baron of Verulam,
Viscount Saint Alban. According to the best Corrected Coppies.
Together, With his Lordships Life. By William Rawley, Doctor in
Divinity, His Lordships First, and Last, Chapleine. Afterwards,
Chapleine, to His late Maiesty. London, 1657.

'The Life of the Honourable Author' serves as introduction to this volume of Bacon's literary remains. It runs to fourteen pages, unnumbered. The passage quoted from this life (c1v-c2v) is of the nature of a character.

Rawley's work is disfigured by pedantically heavy punctuation. He carried to absurd excess the methods which his Master adopted in the 1625 edition of his Essays. It has not been thought necessary to retain all his commas.

Page 42, l. 23. M'r Cowly, an indication of Cowley's fame among his contemporaries. This was written in 1668, after the publication of Paradise Lost, but Clarendon ignores Milton.

A New Volume of Familiar Letters, Partly Philosophicall, Politicall,
Historicall. The second Edition, with Additions. By James Howell, Esq.
London, 1650. (Letter XIII, pp. 25-6.)

This is the second volume of Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ, first published 1645 (vol. 1) and 1647 (vol. 2). The text is here printed from the copy of the second edition which Howell presented to Selden with an autograph dedication: 'Ex dono Authoris … Opusculum hoc honoris ergô mittitur, Archiuis suis reponendum. 3° non: Maij 1652.' The volume now reposes in the Selden collection in the Bodleian library. The second edition of this letter differs from the first in the insertion of the bracketed words, ll. 22, 23, and the date.

The authenticity of the letters as a whole is discussed in Joseph Jacob's edition, 1890, pp. lxxi ff. This was probably not a real letter written to his correspondent at the given date. But whenever, and in whatever circumstances, Howell wrote it, the value of the picture it gives us of Ben Jonson is not impaired.

PAGE 43, l. 9. Sir Tho. Hawk. Sir Thomas Hawkins, translator of
Horace's Odes and Epodes, 1625; hence 'your' Horace, p. 44, l. 4.

PAGE 44, l. 6. Iamque opus, Ovid, Metam. xv. 871; cf. p. 202, l. 13. l. 8. Exegi monumentum, Horace, Od. iii. 30. i. l. 10. O fortunatam, preserved in Quintilian, Inst. Orat. ix. 4. 41 and xi. I. 24, and in Juvenal, Sat. x. 122.

This remarkable portrait of a country gentleman of the old school is from the 'Fragment of Autobiography', written by the first Earl of Shaftesbury (see Nos. 68, 69) towards the end of his life. The manuscript is among the Shaftesbury papers in the Public Record Office, but at present (1918) has been temporarily withdrawn for greater safety, and is not available for reference. The text is therefore taken from the modernized version in W.D. Christie's Memoirs of Shaftesbury, 1859, pp. 22-5, and Life of Shaftesbury, 1871, vol. i, appendix i, pp. xv-xvii.

The character was published in Leonard Howard's Collection of Letters, from the Original Manuscripts, 1753, pp. 152-5, and was reprinted in The Gentleman's Magazine for April 1754, pp. 160-1, and again in The Connoisseur, No. 81, August 14, 1755. The Gentleman's Magazine (1754, p. 215) is responsible for the error that it is to be found in Peck's Desiderata Curiosa.

Hastings was Shaftesbury's neighbour in Dorsetshire. A full-length portrait of him in his old age, clad in green cloth and holding a pike-staff in his right hand, is at St. Giles, the seat of the Shaftesbury family. It is reproduced in Hutchins's History of Dorset, ed. 1868, vol. iii, p. 152.

PAGE 44, ll. 24-26. He was the second son of George fourth Earl of Huntingdon. Shaftesbury is describing his early associates after his marriage in 1639: 'The eastern part of Dorsetshire had a bowling-green at Hanley, where the gentlemen went constantly once a week, though neither the green nor accommodation was inviting, yet it was well placed for to continue the correspondence of the gentry of those parts. Thither resorted Mr. Hastings of Woodland,' &c.

Page 47, l. 12. 'my part lies therein-a.' As was pointed out by E.F. Rimbault in Notes and Queries, 1859, Second Series, vol. vii, p. 323, this is part of an old catch printed with the music in Pammelia. Musicks Miscellanie. Or, Mixed Varietie of Pleasant Roundelayes, and delightfull Catches, 1609:

  There lies a pudding in the fire,
    and my parte lies therein a:
  whome should I call in,
    O thy good fellowes and mine a.

Pammelia, 'the earliest collection of rounds, catches, and canons printed in England', was brought out by Thomas Ravenscroft. Another edition appeared in 1618.

Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 383-4; History, Bk. XI, ed. 1704, vol. iii, pp. 197-9; ed. Macray, vol. iv, pp. 488-92.

The sense of Fate overhangs the portrait in which Clarendon paints for posterity the private virtues of his unhappy master. The easy dignity of the style adapts itself to the grave subject. This is one of Clarendon's greatest passages. It was written twenty years after Charles's death, but Time had not dulled his feelings. 'But ther shall be only incerted the shorte character of his person, as it was found in the papers of that person whose life is heare described, who was so nerely trusted by him, and who had the greatest love for his person, and the greatest reverence for his memory, that any faythfull servant could exspresse.' So he wrote at first in the account of his own life. On transferring the passage to the History he substituted the more impersonal sentence (p. 48, l. 27—p. 49, l. 5) which the general character of the History demanded.

Page 48, l. 15. our blessed Savyour. Compare 'The Martyrdom of King Charls I. or His Conformity with Christ in his Sufferings. In a Sermon preached at Bredah, Before his Sacred Majesty King Charls The Second, And the Princess of Orange. By the Bishop of Downe. Printed at the Hage 1649, and reprinted at London … 1660'. Clarendon probably heard this sermon.

treatises. E.g. Elenchus Motuum Nuperorum in Anglia (part 1), 1649, by George Bate or Bates, principal physician to Charles I and II; England's black Tribunall. Set forth in the Triall of K. Charles I, 1660; and the sermon mentioned above.

Page 51, l. 20. educated by that people. His tutor was Sir Peter
Young (1544-1628), the tutor of James. Patrick Young (1584-1652), Sir
Peter's son, was Royal Librarian.

Mémoires Of the reigne of King Charles I. With a Continuation to the
Happy Restauration of King Charles II. By Sir Philip Warwick, Knight.
Published from the Original Manuscript. With An Alphabetical Table.
London, 1701. (pp. 64-75.)

Warwick (1609-83) was Secretary to Charles in 1647-8. 'When I think of dying', he wrote, adapting a saying of Cicero, 'it is one of my comforts, that when I part from the dunghill of this world, I shall meet King Charles, and all those faithfull spirits, that had virtue enough to be true to him, the Church, and the Laws unto the last.' (Mémoires, p. 331.) Passages in the Mémoires show that they were begun after the summer of 1676 (p. 37), and completed shortly after May 18, 1677 (p. 403).

Page 56, l. 26. [Greek: Eikon Basilikae]. The Pourtraicture of His Sacred Maiesty in his Solitudes and Sufferings was published in February 1649. Charles's authorship was at once doubted in Milton's [Greek: EIKONOKLASTAES] and in [Greek: EIKON ALAETHINAE]. The Pourtraicture of Truths most sacred Majesty truly suffering, though not solely, and supported in [Greek: EIKON AKLASTOS], in [Greek: EIKON AE PISTAE], and in The Princely Pellican, all published in 1649. The weight of evidence is now strongly in favour of the authorship of John Gauden (1605-62), bishop of Exeter at the Restoration. Gauden said in 1661 that he had written it, and examination of his claims is generally admitted to have confirmed them. See H.J. Todd's Letter concerning the Author, 1825, and Gauden the Author, further shewn, 1829; and C.E. Doble's four letters in The Academy, May 12-June 30, 1883.

Carlyle had no doubt that Charles was not the author. 'My reading progresses with or without fixed hope. I struggled through the "Eikon Basilike" yesterday; one of the paltriest pieces of vapid, shovel-hatted, clear-starched, immaculate falsity and cant I have ever read. It is to me an amazement how any mortal could ever have taken that for a genuine book of King Charles's. Nothing but a surpliced Pharisee, sitting at his ease afar off, could have got up such a set of meditations. It got Parson Gauden a bishopric.'—Letter of November 26, 1840 (Froude's Thomas Carlyle, 1884, vol. i, p. 199).

Page 57, l. 4. Thomas Herbert (1606-82), made a baronet in 1660. Appointed by Parliament in 1647 to attend the King, he was latterly his sole attendant, and accompanied him with Juxon to the scaffold. His Threnodia Carolina, reminiscences of Charles's captivity, was published in 1702 under the title, Memoirs of the Two last Years of the Reign of that unparalleled Prince, of ever Blessed Memory, King Charles I. It was 'printed for the first time from the original MS.' (now in private possession), but in modernized spelling, in Allan Fea's Memoirs of the Martyr King, 1905, pp. 74-153.

l. 10. Gilbert Burnet (1643-1715), bishop of Salisbury, 1689, the historian whose characters are given in the later part of this volume. His Mémoires of the Lives and Actions of James and William Dukes of Hamilton, 1677, his first historical work, appeared while Warwick was writing his Mémoires of Charles. It attracted great attention, as its account of recent events was furnished with authentic documents. 'It was the first political biography of the modern type, combining a narrative of a man's life with a selection from his letters' (C.H. Firth, introduction to Clarke and Foxcroft's Life of Burnet, 1907, p. xiii).

l. 15. affliction gives understanding. Compare Proverbs 29. 15, and Ecclesiasticus 4. 17 and 34. 9; the exact words are not in the Authorised Version.

l. 30. Robert Sanderson (1587-1663), Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, 1642, Bishop of Lincoln, 1660. Izaak Walton wrote his Life, 1678.

Page 58, l. 20. Sir Dudley Carleton (1573-1632), created Baron Carleton, 1626, and Viscount Dorchester, 1628; Secretary of State, 1628.

Page 59, ll. 11-13. Plutarch, Life of Alexander the Great; opening sentences, roughly paraphrased.

Page 60, l. 20. Venient Romani, St. John, xi. 48. See The Archbishop of Canterbury's Speech or His Funerall Sermon, Preacht by himself on the Scaffold on Tower-Hill, on Friday the 10. of Ianuary, 1644. London, 1644, p. 10: 'I but perhaps a great clamour there is, that I would have brought in Popery, I shall answer that more fully by and by, in the meane time, you know what the Pharisees said against Christ himself, in the eleventh of Iohn, If we let him alone, all men will beleeve on him, Et venient Romani, and the Romanes will come and take away both our place and the Nation. Here was a causelesse cry against Christ that the Romans would come, and see how just the Iudgement of God was, they crucified Christ for feare least the Romans should come, and his death was that that brought in the Romans upon them, God punishing them with that which they most feared: and I pray God this clamour of veniunt Romani, (of which I have given to my knowledge no just cause) helpe not to bring him in; for the Pope never had such a Harvest in England since the Reformation, as he hath now upon the Sects and divisions that are amongst us.'

ll. 22-30. Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) brought out his De Jure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres at Paris in 1625. Towards the end of the dedication to Louis XIII Grotius says: 'Pertæsos discordiarum animos excitat in hanc spem recens contracta inter te & sapientissimum pacisque illius sanctæ amantissimum Magnæ Britanniæ Regem amicitia & auspicatissimo Sororis tuæ matrimonio federata.'

Clarendon, MS. History, p. 59; History, Bk. III, ed. 1702, vol. i, pp. 203-4; ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 340-2.

Page 62, l. 23. Thomas Savile (1590-1658), created Viscount Savile, 1628, Privy Councillor, 1640, Controller and then Treasurer of the Household. 'He was', says Clarendon, 'a man of an ambitious and restless nature, of parts and wit enough, but in his disposition and inclination so false that he could never be believed or depended upon. His particular malice to the earl of Strafford, which he had sucked in with his milk, (there having always been an immortal feud between the families, and the earl had shrewdly overborne his father), had engaged him with all persons who were willing, and like to be able, to do him mischieve' (History, Bk. VI, ed. Macray, vol. ii, p. 534).

Page 65, l. 21. Warwick was member for Radnor in the Long Parliament from 1640 to 1644. The Bill of Attainder passed the Commons on April 21, 1641, by 204 votes to 59 (Clarendon, ed. Macray, vol. i, p. 306; Rushworth, Historical Collections, third part, vol. i, 1692, p. 225). The names of the minority were posted up at Westminster, under the heading 'These are Straffordians, Betrayers of their Country' (Rushworth, id., pp. 248-9). There are 56 names, and 'Mr. Warwick' is one of them.

Clarendon, MS. History, p. 398; History, Bk. VI, ed. 1703, vol. ii, pp. 115-6; ed. Macray, vol. ii, pp. 477-8.

Page 68, l. 5. Et velut æquali. The source of this quotation is not yet found.

l. 17. Robert Greville (1608-43), second Baron Brooke, cousin of Sir Fulke Greville, first Baron (p. 23, l. 4). See Clarendon, ed. Macray, vol. ii, pp. 474-5.

l. 27. all his Children. Compare Warwick's account of 'that most noble and stout Lord, the Earle of Northampton', Mémoires, pp. 255-7: 'This may be said of him, that he faithfully served his Master, living and dead; for he left six eminent sons, who were all heirs of his courage, loyalty, and virtue; whereof the eldest was not then twenty.'

Clarendon, MS. History, pp. 477-8; History, Bk. VII, ed. 1703, vol. ii, pp. 269-70; ed. Macray, vol. iii, pp. 177-8.

Carnarvon's character has much in common with Northampton's. Though separated in the History, they are here placed together as companion portraits of two young Royalist leaders who fell early in the Civil War.

Page 70, l. 21. Dorchester and Weymouth surrendered to Carnarvon on August 2 and 5, 1643. They were granted fair conditions, but on the arrival of the army of Prince Maurice care was not taken 'to observe those articles which had been made upon the surrender of the towns; which the earl of Carnarvon (who was full of honour and justice upon all contracts) took so ill that he quitted the command he had with those forces, and returned to the King before Gloster' (Clarendon, vol. iii, p. 158).

Clarendon, MS. History, pp. 478-81; History, Bk. VII, ed. 1703, vol. ii, pp. 270-7; ed. Macray, vol. iii, pp. 178-90.

Clarendon wrote two characters of Falkland, the one in 1647 in the 'History' and the other in 1668 in the 'Life'. Both are long, and both are distinguished by sustained favour of affection and admiration as well as by wealth of detail. He was aware that the earlier character was out of scale in a history, but he would not condense it. He even thought of working it up into a book by itself, wherein he would follow the example of Tacitus who wrote the Agricola before the Annals and Histories. He corresponded about it with John Earle (see No. 50). From two of the letters the following extracts are taken:

'I would desire you (at your leisure) to send me that discourse of your own which you read to me at Dartmouth in the end of your contemplations upon the Proverbs, in memory of my Lord Falkland; of whom in its place I intend to speak largely, conceiving it to be so far from an indecorum, that the preservation of the fame and merit of persons, and deriving the same to posterity, is no less the business of history, than the truth of things. And if you are not of another opinion, you cannot in justice deny me this assistance' (March 16, 1646-7: State Papers, 1773, vol. ii, p. 350).

'I told you long since, that when I came to speak of that unhappy battle of Newbury, I would enlarge upon the memory of our dear friend that perished there; to which I conceive myself obliged, not more by the rights of friendship, than of history, which ought to transmit the virtue of excellent persons to posterity; and therefore I am careful to do justice to every man who hath fallen in the quarrel, on which side soever, as you will find by what I have said of Mr. Hambden himself. I am now past that point; and being quickened your most elegant and political commemoration of him, and from hints there, thinking it necessary to say somewhat for his vindication in such particulars as may possibly have made impression in good men, it may be I have insisted longer upon the argument than may be agreeable to the rules to be observed in such a work; though it be not much longer than Livy is in recollecting the virtues of one of the Scipios after his death. I wish it were with you, that you might read it; for if you thought it unproportionable for the place where it is, I could be willingly diverted to make it a piece by itself, and inlarge it into the whole size of his life; and that way it would be sooner communicated to the world. And you know Tacitus published the life of Julius Agricola, before either of his annals or his history. I am contented you should laugh at me for a fop in talking of Livy or Tacitus; when all I can hope for is to side Hollingshead, and Stow, or (because he is a poor Knight too, and worse than either of them) Sir Richard Baker' (December 14, 1647, id. p. 386).

l. 26. His mother's father, Sir Lawrence Tanfield, Chief Baron of the Exchequer. He died in May 1625. See p. 87, ll. 21 ff.

Page 72, l. 3. His education. See p. 87, ll. 6-13. His father, Henry Carey, first Viscount, was Lord Deputy of Ireland from 1622 to 1629, when he was recalled. He died in 1633.

l. 30. his owne house, at Great Tew, 16 miles NW. of Oxford; inherited from Sir Lawrence Tanfield. The house was demolished in 1790, but the gardens remain.

PAGE 74, l. 14. two large discources. See p. 94, ll. 10-15. Falkland's Of the Infallibilitie of the Church of Rome … Now first published from a Copy of his owne hand had appeared at Oxford in 1645, two years before Clarendon wrote this passage. It is a short pamphlet of eighteen quarto pages. It had been circulated in manuscript during his lifetime, and he had written a Reply to an Answer to it. The second 'large discource' may be this Reply. Or it may be his Answer to a Letter of Mr. Mountague, justifying his change of Religion, being dispersed in many Copies. Both of these were first published, along with the Infallibilitie, in 1651, under the editorship of Dr. Thomas Triplet, tutor of the third Viscount, to whom the volume is dedicated. The dedication is in effect a character of Falkland, and dwells in particular on his great virtue of friendship. A passage in it recalls Clarendon. 'And your blessed Mother', says Triplet, 'were she now alive, would say, she had the best of Friends before the best of Husbands. This was it that made Tew so valued a Mansion to us: For as when we went from Oxford thither, we found our selves never out of the Universitie: So we thought our selves never absent from our own beloved home'.

l. 25. He was Member for Newport in the Isle of Wight in The Short Parliament, and again in The Long Parliament.

Page 75, l. 5. His father was Controller of the Household before his appointment as Lord Deputy of Ireland. Cf. p. 91, ll. 3, 4.

l. 18. L'd Finch, Sir John Finch (1584-1660), Speaker, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and Lord Keeper, created Baron Finch, 1640. He was impeached in 1640 and fled to Holland. 'The Lord Falkland took notice of the business of ship-money, and very sharply mentioned the lord Finch as the principal promoter of it, and that, being then a sworn judge of the law, he had not only given his own judgement against law, but been the solicitor to corrupt all the other judges to concur with him in their opinion; and concluded that no man ought to be more severely prosecuted than he' (Clarendon, vol. i, p. 230).

l. 30. Sir Harry Vane, the elder, was dismissed from the Secretaryship of State in November 1641. In an earlier section of the History (vol. i, p. 458) Clarendon claims responsibility for Falkland's acceptance of the Secretaryship: 'It was a very difficult task to Mr. Hyde, who had most credit with him, to persuade him to submit to this purpose of the King cheerfully, and with a just sense of the obligation, by promising that in those parts of the office which required most drudgery he would help him the best he could, and would quickly inform him of all the necessary forms. But, above all, he prevailed with him by enforcing the ill consequence of his refusal', &c.

l. 20. Some sharpe expressions. See the quotation by Fuller, p. 105, ll. 14, 15. Clarendon refers to Falkland's speech 'Concerning Episcopacy' in the debate on the bill for depriving the bishops of their votes, introduced on March 30, 1641: 'The truth is, Master Speaker, that as some ill Ministers in our state first tooke away our mony from us, and after indeavoured to make our mony not worth the taking, by turning it into brasse by a kind of Antiphilosophers-stone: so these men used us in the point of preaching, first depressing it to their power, and next labouring to make it such, as the harme had not beene much if it had beene depressed, the most frequent subjects even in the most sacred auditories, being the Jus divinum of Bishops and tithes, the sacrednesse of the clergie, the sacriledge of impropriations, the demolishing of puritanisme and propriety, the building of the prerogative at Pauls, the introduction of such doctrines, as, admitting them true, the truth would not recompence the scandall; or of such as were so far false, that, as Sir Thomas More sayes of the Casuists, their businesse was not to keepe men from sinning, but to enforme them Quam prope ad peccatum sine peccato liceat accedere: so it seemed their worke was to try how much of a Papist might bee brought in without Popery, and to destroy as much as they could of the Gospell, without bringing themselves into danger of being destroyed by the Law.'—Speeches and Passages of This Great and Happy Parliament: From the third of November, 1640 to this instant June, 1641, p. 190. The speech is reprinted in Lady Theresa Lewis's Lives of the Friends of Clarendon, 1852, vol. i, pp. 53-62.

Page 83, l. 2. Falkland's participation in 'the Northern Expedition against the Scots', 1639, was the subject of a eulogistic poem by Cowley:

  Great is thy Charge, O North; be wise and just,
  England commits her Falkland to thy trust;
  Return him safe: Learning would rather choose
  Her Bodley, or her Vatican to loose.
  All things that are but writ or printed there,
  In his unbounded Breast engraven are, &c.

l. 15. the furious resolution, passed on November 24, 1642, after the battle at Brentford: see Clarendon, vol. ii, pp. 395-9.

ll. 11-28. The date of this incident is uncertain. Professor Firth believes it to have happened when the House resolved that Colonel Goring 'deserved very well of the Commonwealth, and of this House', for his discovery of the army plot, June 9, 1641 (Journals of the House of Commons, vol. ii, p. 172).

Page 85, l. 18. the leaguer before Gloster. The siege of Gloucester was raised by the Earl of Essex on September 8, 1643. Clarendon had described it (vol. iii, pp. 167 ff.) just before he came to the account of Falkland.

Page 86, l. 1. the battell, i.e. of Newbury, September 20, 1643. How Falkland met his death is told in Byron's narrative of the fight: 'My Lord of Falkland did me the honour to ride in my troop this day, and I would needs go along with him, the enemy had beat our foot out of the close, and was drawne up near the hedge; I went to view, and as I was giving orders for making the gap wide enough, my horse was shott in the throat with a musket bullet and his bit broken in his mouth so that I was forced to call for another horse, in the meanwhile my Lord Falkland (more gallantly than advisedly) spurred his horse through the gapp, where both he and his horse were immediately killed.' See Walter Money, The Battles of Newbury, 1884, p. 52; also p. 93.

A passage in Whitelocke's Memorials, ed. 1682, p. 70, shows that he had a presentiment of his death: 'The Lord Falkland, Secretary of State, in the morning of the fight, called for a clean shirt, and being asked the reason of it, answered, that if he were slain in the Battle, they should not find, his body in foul Linnen. Being diswaded by his friends to goe into the fight, as having no call to it, and being no Military Officer, he said he was weary of the times, and foresaw much misery to his own Countrey, and did beleive be should be out of it ere night, and could not be perswaded to the contrary, but would enter into the battle, and was there slain.'

This is Falkland in his younger days, amid the hospitable pleasures of
Tew, before he was overwhelmed in politics and war.

Page 88, l. 2. the two most pleasant places, Great Tew (see p. 72, l. 30) and Burford, where Falkland was born. He sold Burford in 1634 to William Lenthall, the Speaker of the Long Parliament: see p. 91, l. 5.

Page 89, l. 2. He married Lettice, daughter of Sir Richard Morrison of Tooley Park, Leicestershire. His friendship with her brother Henry is celebrated in an ode by Ben Jonson, 'To the immortall memorie, and friendship of that noble paire, Sir Lucius Cary, and Sir H. Morison' (Under-woods, 1640, p. 232).

Page 91, ll. 17-20. So in the MS. The syntax is confused, but the sense is clear.

Page 92, ll. 21, 22. Gilbert Sheldon (1598-1677), Archbishop of Canterbury, 1663; Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and builder of the Sheldonian Theatre there.

Clarendon has given short characters of Sheldon and Morley in his Life. For his characters of Earle and Chillingworth, see Nos. 50 and 52.

l. 17. It is notable that Clarendon nowhere suggests that Falkland was also a poet. Cowley gives his verses the highest praise in his address to him on the Northern Expedition (see p. 83, l. 2, note); and they won him a place in Suckling's Sessions of the Poets:

  He was of late so gone with Divinity
  That he had almost forgot his Poetry,
  Though to say the truth (and Apollo did know it)
  He might have been both his Priest and his Poet.

This very pleasing portrait of Godolphin serves as a pendant to the longer and more elaborate description of his friend. Clarendon wrote also a shorter character of him in the History (vol. ii, pp. 457-8).

Page 96, l. 2. so very small a body. He is the 'little Cid' (i.e.
Sidney) of Suckling's Sessions of the Poets.

l. 6. In the character in the History Clarendon says that he left 'the ignominy of his death upon a place which could never otherwise have had a mention to the world'. The place was Chagford.

Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 69-70; History, Bk. I, ed. 1702, vol. i, pp. 69-73; ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 119-25.

The three characters of Laud here given supplement each other. They convey the same idea of the man.

Page 97, l. 20. George Abbott (1562-1633), Archbishop of Canterbury, 1611. In the preceding paragraph Clarendon had written an unfavourable character of him. He 'considered Christian religion no otherwise than as it abhorred and reviled Popery, and valued those men most who did that most furiously': 'if men prudently forbore a public reviling and railing at the hierarchy and ecclesiastical government, let their opinions and private practice be what it would, they were not only secure from any inquisition of his, but acceptable to him, and at least equally preferred by him': his house was 'a sanctuary to the most eminent of that factious party'. Cf. p. 100, ll. 21-7.

Page 101, l. 2. In the omitted portion Clarendon dealt with the 'Arminianism', as it was then understood in England: 'most of the popular preachers, who had not looked into the ancient learning, took Calvin's word for it, and did all they could to propagate his opinions in those points: they who had studied more, and were better versed in the antiquities of the Church, the Fathers, the Councils, and the ecclesiastical histories, with the same heat and passion in preaching and writing, defended the contrary. But because in the late dispute in the Dutch churches, those opinions were supported by Jacobus Arminius, the divinity professor in the university of Leyden in Holland, the latter men we mentioned were called Arminians, though many of them had never read a word written by Arminius'. Arminius (the name is the Latinized form of Harmens or Hermans) died in 1609.

Page 104, l. 15. Canterbury College was founded at Oxford in 1363 by
Simon Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury. It was incorporated in Christ
Church, Wolsey's foundation, and so 'lost its name'; but the name
survives in the Canterbury quadrangle.

Page 107, l. 27. cleansed it by fire. Perhaps a reminiscence of
Dryden's Annus Mirabilis, 1667, stanza 276:

  The daring Flames peep't in, and saw from far
    The awful Beauties of the Sacred Quire:
  But since it was prophan'd by Civil War,
    Heav'n thought it fit to have it purg'd by fire.

Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 152-3; History, Bk. IV, ed. 1702, vol. i, pp. 332-3; ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 563-5.

This is the first of three characters of Hertford in Clarendon's History. The others, in Bk. VI (MS. Life) ed. Macray, ii. 528, and Bk. VII (MS. History) iii. 128, are supplementary.

Page 114, l. 10. disobligations, on account of his secret marriage with James's cousin, Arabella Stuart, daughter of Charles Stuart, Earl of Lennox, brother of the Earl of Darnley. She died a prisoner in the Tower; he escaped to France, but after her death was allowed to return to England in 1616. He succeeded his grandfather as Earl of Hertford in 1621. He lived in retirement from the dissolution of Parliament in March 1629 to 1640, when he was made a Privy Councillor.

Page 115, l. 5. He was appointed Governor to the Prince of Wales in May 1641, in succession to the Earl of Newcastle. He was then in his fifty-third year. In the following month he was made a Marquis. See his life in Lady Theresa Lewis's Lives of the Friends of Clarendon, vol. ii, pp. 436-42.

Page 116, l. 2. attacque, an unexpected form of 'attach' at this time, and perhaps a slip, but 'attack' and 'attach' are ultimately the same word; cf. Italian attaccare. The New English Dictionary gives an instance in 1666 of 'attach' in the sense of 'attack'.

Clarendon, MS. History, Transcript, vol. iv, pp. 440-2; History, Bk.
VIII, ed. 1703, vol. ii, pp. 391-3; ed. Macray, vol. iii, pp. 380-3.

The original manuscript of much of Book VIII is lost. The text is taken from the transcript that was made for the printers.

This is the portrait of a great English nobleman whose tastes lay in music and poetry and the arts of peace, but was forced by circumstances into the leadership of the Royalist army in the North. He showed little military talent, though he was far from devoid of personal courage; and he escaped from the conflict, weary and despondent, when other men were content to carry on the unequal struggle. He modelled himself on the heroes of Romance. The part he tried to play could not be adjusted to the rude events of the civil war.

His romantic cast of mind is shown in his challenge to Lord Fairfax to follow 'the Examples of our Heroick Ancestors, who used not to spend their time in scratching one another out of holes, but in pitched Fields determined their Doubts'. Fairfax replied by expressing his readiness to fight but refusing to follow 'the Rules of Amadis de Gaule, or the Knight of the Sun, which the language of the Declaration seems to affect in appointing pitch'd battles' (Rushworth, Historical Collections, third part, vol. ii, 1692, pp. 138, 141).

Warwick's short character of Newcastle resembles Clarendon's: 'He was a Gentleman of grandeur, generosity, loyalty, and steddy and forward courage; but his edge had too much of the razor in it: for he had a tincture of a Romantick spirit, and had the misfortune to have somewhat of the Poet in him; so as he chose Sir William Davenant, an eminent good Poet, and loyall Gentleman, to be Lieutenant-Generall of his Ordnance. This inclination of his own and such kind of witty society (to be modest in the expressions of it) diverted many counsels, and lost many opportunities; which the nature of that affair, this great man had now entred into, required' (Mémoires, pp. 235-6).

His life by the Duchess of Newcastle—the 'somewhat fantastical, and original-brain'd, generous Margaret Newcastle', as Charles Lamb calls her—was published in 1667. The edition by C.H. Firth, 1886, contains copious historical notes, and an introduction which points out Newcastle's place as a patron and author.

Page 116, ll. 15-22. Newcastle had been besieged at York. He was relieved by Prince Rupert, who, against Newcastle's advice, forced on the disastrous battle of Marston Moor (July 2, 1644) without waiting for reinforcements. In this battle Newcastle was not in command but fought at the head of a company of volunteers. The next day he embarked at Scarborough for the continent, where he remained till the Restoration.

l. 24. He published two books on horsemanship—La Méthode et Invention Nouvelle de Dresser les Chevaux, written originally in English, but printed in French at Antwerp in 1658, and A New Method and Extraordinary Invention to Dress Horses, 1667. The former was dedicated to Prince Charles, whom, as Governor, he had taught to ride. On his reputation as a horseman, see C.H. Firth, op. cit., pp. xx-xxii.

Page 117, l. 20. He was Governor of the Prince from 1638 to 1641: cf. note on p. 115, l. 5.

l. 29. Newcastle-upon-Tyne (from which he took his title) was 'speedily and dexterously' secured for the King at the end of June 1642 'by his lordship's great interest in those parts, the ready compliance of the best of the gentry, and the general good inclinations of the place' (Clarendon, vol. ii, p. 227).

Page 118, l. 17. Henry Clifford (1591-1643) fifth Earl of Cumberland. He had commanded the Royalist forces in Yorkshire, but was 'in his nature inactive, and utterly inexperienced'. He willingly gave up the command (Clarendon, vol. ii, pp. 282, 464-5). He died shortly afterwards.

Page 119, l. 8. unacquainted with War. Clarendon expressed himself privately on this point much more emphatically than the nature of his History would allow: 'you will find the Marquis of Newcastle a very lamentable man and as fit to be a General as a Bishop.' (Letter to Sir Edward Nicholas, dated Madrid, June 4, 1650: State Papers, 1786, vol. iii, p. 20.)

l. 10. James King (1589?-1652?), created Baron Eythin and Kerrey in the Scottish peerage in 1643. He had been a general in the army of the King of Sweden, and returned to this country in 1640. He left it with Newcastle after Marston Moor. He entirely disapproved of Rupert's plans for the battle; his comment, as reported by Clarendon, was 'By God, sir, it is very fyne in the paper, but ther is no such thinge in the Feilds' (vol. iii, p. 376).

Clarendon, MS. Life, p. 136; History, Bk. IV, ed. 1702, vol. i, pp. 270-1; ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 461-3.

The references to Digby in various parts of the History show the interest—sometimes an amused interest—that Clarendon took in his strange and erratic character. 'The temper and composition of his mind was so admirable, that he was always more pleased and delighted that he had advanced so far, which he imputed to his virtue and conduct, than broken or dejected that his success was not answerable, which he still charged upon second causes, for which he could not be accountable' (vol. iv, p. 122). 'He was a person of so rare a composition by nature and by art, (for nature alone could never have reached to it,) that he was so far from being ever dismayed by any misfortune, (and greater variety of misfortunes never befell any man,) that he quickly recollected himself so vigorously, that he did really believe his condition to be improved by that ill accident' (id., p. 175). But the interest is shown above all by the long study of Digby that he wrote at Montpelier in 1669. It was first printed in his State Papers, 1786, vol. iii, supplement, pp. li-lxxiv. The manuscript—a transcript revised by Clarendon—is in the Bodleian Library, Clarendon MS. 122, pp. 1-48.

Page 120, l. 8. the other three, Sir John Culpeper, or Colepeper;
Lord Falkland; and Clarendon.

Page 121, l. 2. sharpe reprehension. 'He was committed to the Fleet in June 1634, but released in July, for striking Mr. Crofts in Spring Garden, within the precincts of the Court. Cal. Dom. State. Papers, 1634-5 (1864), pp. 81, 129'—Macray, vol. i, p. 461.

Shaftesbury gives a brief sketch of him at this time in his fragmentary autobiography: 'The Earl of Bristoll was retired from all business and lived privately to himself; but his son the Lord Digby, a very handsome young man of great courage and learning and of a quick wit, began to show himself to the world and gave great expectations of himself, he being justly admired by all, and only gave himself disadvantage with a pedantic stiffness and affectation he had contracted.'

Page 123, l. 5. a very unhappy councell, the impeachment and attempted 'Arrest of the Five Members', January 3 and 4, 1642. Compare Clarendon, vol. i, p. 485: 'And all this was done without the least communication with any body but the Lord Digby, who advised it.'

Clarendon, MS. Life, p. 389, and MS. History, p. 25 (or 597); History, Bk. XI, ed. 1704, vol. iii, pp. 210-11; ed. Macray, vol. iv, pp. 510-11.

This admirable character was not all written at the same time. The first sentence is from Clarendon's Life, and the remainder from the History, where the date, '21 Nov. 1671', is appended. 123, l. 15. Crumwells owne character,—in the debate in Parliament on carrying out the sentence of death, March 8, 1649. Clarendon had briefly described Cromwell's speech: 'Cromwell, who had known him very well, spake so much good of him, and professed to have so much kindness and respect for him, that all men thought he was now safe, when he concluded, that his affection to the public so much weighed down his private friendship, that he could not but tell them, that the question was now, whether they would preserve the most bitter and the most implacable enemy they had' (vol. iv, p. 506).

l. 22. He married in November 1626, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Charles
Morrison, of Cassiobury, Hertfordshire, and granddaughter of the first
Viscount Campden. Their daughter Theodosia was the wife of the second
Earl of Clarendon.

Page 124, l. 13. an indignity, probably a reference to Lord Hopton's command of the army in the west; see vol. iv, p. 131.

Clarendon, MS. Life, p. 273; History, Bk. VIII, ed. 1703, vol. ii, pp. 427-8; ed. Macray, vol. iii, pp. 443-5.

The four generals in this group are described on various occasions in the History. In this passage Clarendon sums up shortly what he says elsewhere, and presents a parallel somewhat in the manner of Plutarch.

Page 125, l. 23. Clarendon has a great passage in Book VII (vol. iii, pp. 224-6) on the value of Councils, even when the experience and wisdom of the councillors individually may not promise the right decisions. The passage is suggested by, and immediately follows, a short character of Prince Rupert.

Page 126, ll. 15, 16. Clarendon refers to the retreat of the Parliamentary Army at Lostwithiel, on August 31, 1644, when Essex embarked the foot at Fowey and escaped by sea, and Sir William Balfour broke away with the horse. In describing it, Clarendon says that 'the notice and orders came to Goring when he was in one of his jovial exercises; which he received with mirth, and slighting those who sent them, as men who took alarms too warmly; and he continued his delights till all the enemy's horse were passed through his quarters, nor did then pursue them in any time' (vol. iii, p. 403; cf. p. 391). But Goring's horse was not so posted as to be able to check Balfour's. See the article on Goring by C.H. Firth in the Dictionary of National Biography and S.R. Gardiner's Civil War, 1893, vol. ii, pp. 13-17. Clarendon was misinformed; yet this error in detail does not impair the truth of the portrait.

Clarendon, MS. History, pp. 447-8; History, Bk. VII, ed. 1704, vol. ii, pp. 204-6; ed. Macray, vol. iii, pp. 61-4.

The studied detachment that Clarendon tried to cultivate when writing about his political enemies is nowhere shown better than in the character of Hampden. 'I am careful to do justice', he claimed, 'to every man who hath fallen in the quarrel, on which side soever, as you will find by what I have said of Mr. Hambden himself' (see No. 21, note). The absence of all enthusiasm makes the description of Hampden's merits the more telling. But there is a tail with a sting in it.

The last sentence, it must be admitted, is not of a piece with the rest of the character. There was some excuse for doubting its authenticity. But doubts gave place to definite statements that it had been interpolated by the Oxford editors when seeing the History through the press. Edmund Smith, the author of Phædra and Hippolytus, started the story that while he was resident in Christ Church he was 'employ'd to interpolate and alter the Original', and specially mentioned this sentence as having been 'foisted in'; and the story was given a prominent place by Oldmixon in his History of England, during the Reigns of the Royal House of Stuart (see Letters of Thomas Burnat to George Duckett, ed. Nichol Smith, 1914, p. xx). A controversy ensued, the final contribution to which is John Burton's Genuineness of L'd Clarendon's History Vindicated, 1744. Once the original manuscript was accessible, all doubt was removed. Every word of the sentence is there to be found in Clarendon's hand. But it is written along the margin, to take the place of a deleted sentence, and is evidently later than the rest of the character. This accounts for the difference in tone.

Page 129, ll. 22 ff. Compare Warwick, Mémoires, p. 240: 'He was of a concise and significant language, and the mildest, yet subtillest, speaker of any man in the House; and had a dexterity, when a question was going to be put, which agreed not with his sense, to draw it over to it, by adding some equivocall or sly word, which would enervate the meaning of it, as first put.'

At the beginning of this short character of Hampden, Warwick says that 'his blood in its temper was acrimonious, as the scurfe commonly on his face shewed'.

Page 131, l. 4. this that was at Oxforde, i.e. the overture,
February and March 1643: Clarendon, vol. ii, pp. 497 ff.

ll. 24-6. Erat illi, &c. Cicero, Orat. in Catilinam iii. 7. 'Cinna' should be 'Catiline'.

Clarendon, MS. History, pp. 525-7; History, Bk. VII, ed. 1703, vol. ii, pp. 353-5; ed. Macray, vol. iii, pp. 321-4.

The character of Pym does not show the same detachment as the character of Hampden. Clarendon has not rejected unauthenticated Royalist rumour.

Page 132, ll. 7-9. This rumour occasioned the publication of an official narrative of his disease and death, 'attested under the Hands of his Physicians, Chyrurgions, and Apothecary', from which it appears that he died of an intestinal abscess. See John Forster's John Pym ('Lives of Eminent British Statesmen', vol. iii), pp. 409-11.

Page 133, l. 26. Oliver St. John (1603-42), Solicitor-General, mortally wounded at Edgehill.

Page 134, l. 3. Francis Russell (1593-1641), fourth Earl of Bedford. 'This lord was the greatest person of interest in all the popular party, being of the best estate and best understanding of the whole pack, and therefore most like to govern the rest; he was besides of great civility, and of much more good-nature than any of the others. And therefore the King, resolving to do his business with that party by him, resolved to make him Lord High Treasurer of England, in the place of the Bishop of London, who was as willing to lay down the office as any body was to take it up; and, to gratify him the more, at his desire intended to make Mr. Pimm Chancellor of the Exchequer, as he had done Mr. St. John his Solicitor-General' (Clarendon, vol. i, p. 333). The plan was frustrated by Bedford's death in 1641. The Chancellorship of the Exchequer was bestowed on Culpeper (id., p. 457).

ll. 27 ff. The authority for this story is the Mercurius Academicus for February 3, 1645-6 (pp. 74-5), a journal of the Court party published at Oxford (hence the title), and the successor of the Mercurius Aulicus. The Irishman is there reported to have made this confession on the scaffold.

Page 135, ll. 25-8. The last Summer, i.e. before Pym's death, 1643.
See Clarendon, vol. iii, pp. 116, 135, 141.

Page 136, ll. 7-10. He died on December 8, 1643, and was buried on
December 13 in Westminster Abbey, whence his body was ejected at the
Restoration.

Clarendon, MS. History, Bk. X, p. 24 (or 570); History, ed. 1704, vol. iii, pp. 84-5; ed. Macray, vol. iv, pp. 305-7.

The two characters of Cromwell by Clarendon were written about the same time. Though the first is from the manuscript of the History, it belongs to a section that was added in 1671, when the matter in the original History was combined with the matter in the Life. It describes Cromwell as Clarendon remembered him before he had risen to his full power. He was then in Clarendon's eyes preeminently a dissembler—'the greatest dissembler living'. The other character views him in the light of his complete achievement. It represents him, with all his wickedness, as a man of 'great parts of courage and industry and judgement'. He is a 'bad man', but a 'brave, bad man', to whose success, remarkable talents, and even some virtues, must have contributed. The recognition of his greatness was unwilling; it was all the more sincere.

Page 136, l. 22. Hampden's mother, Elizabeth Cromwell, was the sister of Cromwell's father.

Page 138, l. 18. the Modell, i.e. the New Model Army, raised in the
Spring of 1645. See C.H. Firth's Cromwell's Army, 1902, ch. iii.

Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 549-50; History, Bk. XV, ed. 1704, vol. iii, pp. 505-6, 509; ed. Macray, vol. vi, pp. 91-2, 97.

Page 139, ll. 3, 4. quos vituperare, Cicero, Pro Fonteio, xvii. 39 'Is igitur vir, quem ne inimicus quidem satis in appellando significare poterat, nisi ante laudasset.'

ll. 17-22. Editorial taste in 1704 transformed this sentence thus: 'In a word, as he was guilty of many Crimes against which Damnation is denounced, and for which Hell-fire is prepared, so he had some good Qualities which have caused the Memory of some Men in all Ages to be celebrated; and he will be look'd upon by Posterity as a brave wicked Man.'

Page 141, l. 17. a servant of Mr. Prynn's, John Lilburne (1614-57). But it is doubtful if he was Prynne's servant; see the article in the Dictionary of National Biography. Lilburne's petition was presented by Cromwell on November 9, 1640, and referred to a Committee; and on May 4, 1641, the House resolved 'That the Sentence of the Star-Chamber, given against John Lilborne, is illegal, and against the Liberty of the Subject; and also, bloody, wicked, cruel, barbarous, and tyrannical' (Journals of the House of Commons, vol. ii, pp. 24, 134).

ll. 29, 30. Warwick was imprisoned on suspicion of plotting against the Protector's Government in 1655.

A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe, Esq.; Edited by
Thomas Birch, 1742, vol. i, p. 766.

This passage is from a letter written to 'John Winthrop, esq; governor of the colony of Connecticut in New England', and dated 'Westminster, March 24, 1659'.

Reliquiæ Baxterianæ: or, Mr. Richard Baxter's Narrative of The most
Memorable Passages of his Life and Times. Faithfully Publish'd from
his own Original Manuscript, By Matthew Sylvester. London: MDCXCVI.
(Lib. I, Part I, pp. 98-100.)

The interest of this character lies largely in its Presbyterian point of view. It is a carefully balanced estimate by one who had been a chaplain in the Parliamentary army, but opposed Cromwell when, after the fall of Presbyterianism, he assumed the supreme power.

Page 144, ll. 19-24. See the article by C.H. Firth on 'The Raising of the Ironsides' in the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1899, vol. xiii, and its sequel, 'The Later History of the Ironsides', 1901, vol. xv; and the articles on John Desborough (who married Cromwell's sister) and James Berry in the Dictionary of National Biography. 'Who Captain Ayres was it is difficult to say … He left the regiment about June 1644, and his troop was given to James Berry … the captain-lieutenant of Cromwell's own troop'. (R.H.S. Trans., vol. xiii, pp. 29, 30). Berry subsequently became one of Cromwell's major-generals. His character is briefly sketched by Baxter, who calls him 'my old Bosom Friend', Reliquiæ, 1696, p. 57. For Captain William Evanson, see R.H.S. Trans., vol. xv, pp. 22-3.

Page 146, l. 12. A passage from Bacon's essay 'Of Faction' (No. 51) is quoted in the margin in the edition of 1696. 'Fraction' in l. 12 is probably a misprint for 'Faction'.

Page 148, ll. 7-10. The concluding sentence of the essay 'Of Simulation and Dissimulation'. Brackets were often used at this time to mark a quotation.

Much the same opinion of Fairfax was held by Sir Philip Warwick and Clarendon. Warwick says he was 'a man of a military genius, undaunted courage and presence of mind in the field both in action and danger, but of a very common understanding in all other affairs, and of a worse elocution; and so a most fit tool for Mr. Cromwel to work with' (Mémoires, p. 246). Clarendon alludes to him as one 'who had no eyes, and so would be willinge to be ledd' (p. 138, l. 24). But Milton saw him in a different light when he addressed to him the sonnet on his capture of Colchester in August 1648:

  Fairfax, whose name in armes through Europe rings
  Filling each mouth with envy, or with praise,…
  Thy firm unshak'n vertue ever brings
  Victory home,…
  O yet a nobler task awaites thy hand;
  For what can Warr, but endless warr still breed,
  Till Truth, & Right from Violence be freed,
  And Public Faith cleard from the shamefull brand
  Of Public Fraud. In vain doth Valour bleed
  While Avarice, & Rapine share the land.

Fairfax's military capacity is certain, and his private virtues are unquestioned. Writing in 1648, Milton credited him with the power to settle the affairs of the nation. But Fairfax was not a politician. He broke with Cromwell over the execution of the king, and in July 1650 retired into private life. Baxter, Warwick, and Clarendon all wrote of him at a distance of time that showed his merits and limitations in truer perspective.

Milton addressed him again when singing the praises of Bradshaw and Cromwell and other Parliamentary leaders in his Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio Secunda, 1654. As a specimen of a contemporary Latin character, and a character by Milton, the passage is now quoted in full:

'Sed neque te fas est præterire, Fairfaxi, in quo cum summa fortitudine summam modestiam, summam vitæ sanctitatem, & natura & divinus favor conjunxit: Tu harum in partem laudum evocandus tuo jure ac merito es; quanquam in illo nunc tuo secessu, quantus olim Literni Africanus ille Scipio, abdis te quoad potes; nec hostem solum, sed ambitionem, & quæ præstantissimum quemque mortalium vincit, gloriam quoque vicisti; tuisque virtutibus & præclare factis, jucundissimum & gloriosissimum per otium frueris, quod est laborum omnium & humanarum actionum vel maximarum finis; qualique otio cum antiqui Heroes, post bella & decora tuis haud majora, fruerentur, qui eos laudare conati sunt poetæ, desperabant se posse alia ratione id quale esset digne describere, nisi eos fabularentur, coelo receptos, deorum epulis accumbere. Verum te sive valetudo, quod maxime crediderim, sive quid aliud retraxit, persuasissimum hoc habeo, nihil te a rationibus reipublicæ divellere potuisse, nisi vidisses quantum libertatis conservatorem, quam firmum atque fidum Anglicanæ rei columen ac munimentum in successore tuo relinqueres' (ed. 1654, pp. 147-8).

Page 149, l. 9. The Self-denying Ordinance, discharging members of
Parliament from all offices, civil and military, passed both Houses on
April 3, 1645.

Clarendon, MS. Life, p. 103; History, Bk. III, ed. 1702, vol. i, pp. 148-9; ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 247-9.

Baxter has an account of Vane in his Autobiography: 'He was the Principal Man that drove on the Parliament to go too high, and act too vehemently against the King: Being of very ready Parts, and very great Subtilty, and unwearied Industry, he laboured, and not without Success, to win others in Parliament, City and Country to his Way. When the Earl of Strafford was accused, he got a Paper out of his Father's Cabinet (who was Secretary of State) which was the chief Means of his Condemnation: To most of our Changes he was that within the House, which Cromwell was without. His great Zeal to drive all into War, and to the highest, and to cherish the Sectaries, and especially in the Army, made him above all Men to be valued by that Party … When Cromwell had served himself by him as his surest Friend, as long as he could; and gone as far with him as their way lay together, (Vane being for a Fanatick Democracie, and Cromwell for Monarchy) at last there was no Remedy but they must part; and when Cromwell cast out the Rump (as disdainfully as Men do Excrements) he called Vane a Jugler' (Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, Lib. I, Part I, p. 75). This account occurs in Baxter's description of the sectaries who were named after him 'Vanists'.

Clarendon and Baxter both lay stress on the element of the fanatic in Vane's nature; and in a later section of the History Clarendon speaks of it emphatically: … 'Vane being a man not to be described by any character of religion; in which he had swallowed some of the fancies and extravagances of every sect or faction, and was become (which cannot be expressed by any other language than was peculiar to that time) a man above ordinances, unlimited and unrestrained by any rules or bounds prescribed to other men, by reason of his perfection. He was a perfect enthusiast, and without doubt did believe himself inspired' (vol. vi, p. 148).

Milton's sonnet, to Vane 'young in yeares, but in sage counsell old' gives no suggestion of the fanatic:

          besides to know
  Both spirituall powre & civill, what each meanes
  What severs each thou 'hast learnt, which few have don.
  The bounds of either sword to thee wee ow.
  Therfore on thy firme hand religion leanes
  In peace, & reck'ns thee her eldest son.

There was much in Vane's views about Church and State with which
Milton sympathized; and the sonnet was written in 1652, before
Cromwell broke with Vane.

See also Pepys's Diary, June 14, 1662, and Burnet's History of His
Own Time, ed. Osmund Airy, vol. i, pp. 284-6.

Page 150, ll. 13, 14. Magdalen College, a mistake for Magdalen Hall, of which Vane was a Gentleman Commoner; but he did not matriculate. See Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, vol. iii, col. 578.

l. 17. He returned to England in 1632; he had been in the train of the English ambassador at Vienna.

ll. 25 ff. He transported himself into New England in 1635. He was chosen Governor of Massachusetts in March 1636 and held the post for one year, being defeated at the next election. He retransported himself into England in August 1637.

Page 151, ll. 27-9. 'In New Hampshire and at Rhode Island. The grant by the Earl of Warwick as the Governor of the King's Plantations in America of a charter for Providence, &c., Rhode Island, is dated March 14, 164-3/4; Calendar of Colonial State Papers, 1574-1660, p. 325. The code of laws adopted there in 1647 declares "sith our charter gives us power to govern ourselves … the form of government established in Providence plantations is democratical." Collections of the Massachusetts Hist. Soc., second series, vol. vii, p. 79.'—Note by Macray.

Page 152, ll. 2, 3. He married Frances, daughter of Sir Christopher
Wray, of Ashby, Lincolnshire.

ll. 5, 6. He was made joint Treasurer of the Navy in January 1639, and was dismissed in December 1641.

ll. 10 ff. Strafford was created Baron of Raby in 1640. At the conclusion of Book VI Clarendon says that the elder Vane's 'malice to the Earl of Strafford (who had unwisely provoked him, wantonly and out of contempt) transported him to all imaginable thoughts of revenge'. Cf. p. 63, l. 25.

Clarendon, MS. History, p. 486 (first paragraph) and Life, p. 249 (second paragraph); History, Bk. VII, ed. 1703, vol. ii, p. 292; ed. Macray, vol. iii, pp. 216-17.

Clarendon added the first paragraph in the margin of the manuscript of his earlier work when he dovetailed the two works to form the History in its final form.

Page 152, l. 27. this Covenant, the Solemn League and Covenant, which passed both Houses on September 18, 1643: 'the battle of Newbery being in that time likewise over (which cleared and removed more doubts than the Assembly had done), it stuck very few hours with both Houses; but being at once judged convenient and lawful, the Lords and Commons and their Assembly of Divines met together at the church, with great solemnity, to take it, on the five and twentieth day of September' (Clarendon, vol. iii, p. 205).

Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, Governor of Nottingham Castle and Town … Written by His Widow Lucy, Daughter of Sir Allen Apsley, Lieutenant of the Tower, &c. Now first published from the original manuscript by the Rev. Julius Hutchinson … London: 1806. (pp. 4-6.)

The original manuscript has disappeared, and the edition of 1806 is the only authoritative text. It has been many times reprinted. It was edited with introduction, notes, and appendices by C.H. Firth in 1885 (new edition, 1906).

The Memoirs as a whole are the best picture we possess of a puritan soldier and household of the seventeenth century. They were written by his widow as a consolation to herself and for the instruction of her children. To 'such of you as have not seene him to remember his person', she leaves, by way of introduction, 'His Description.' It is this passage which is here reprinted.

Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 212-15; History, Bk. VI, ed. 1703, vol. ii, pp. 158-62; ed. Macray, vol. ii, pp. 541-8.

These five characters of Parliamentary peers follow one another at the conclusion of Clarendon's sixth book, and are part of his 'view of those persons who were of the King's Council, and had deserted his service, and stayed in the Parliament to support the rebellion'. A short passage on the Earl of Holland, between the characters of Warwick and Manchester, is omitted.

Taken as a group, they are yet another proof of Clarendon's skill in portraiture. Each character is clearly distinguished.

Page 159, ll. 7-10. His grandfather was William Cecil (1520-98), Lord Burghley, the great minister of Elizabeth; his father was Robert Cecil (1563-1612), created Earl of Salisbury, 1605, Secretary of State at the accession of James.

Page 160, l. 9. He was member for King's Lynn in 1649, and
Hertfordshire in 1654 and 1656.

Page 161, ll. 3-19. 'Clarendon's view that Warwick was a jovial hypocrite is scarcely borne out by other contemporary evidence. The "jollity and good humour" which he mentions are indeed confirmed. "He was one of the most best-natured and cheerfullest persons I have in my time met with," writes his pious daughter-in-law (Autobiography of Lady Warwick, ed. Croker, p. 27). Edmund Calamy, however, in his sermon at Warwick's funeral, enlarges on his zeal for religion; and Warwick's public conduct during all the later part of his career is perfectly consistent with Calamy's account of his private life (A Pattern for All, especially for Noble Persons, &c., 1658, 410, pp. 34-9).'—C.H. Firth, in the Dictionary of National Biography.

l. 13. Randevooze (or -vouze, or -vouce, or -vowes) is a normal spelling of Rendezvous in the seventeenth century. The words had been introduced into English by the reign of Elizabeth.

ll. 20-2. The proceedings are described at some length by Clarendon, vol. ii, pp. 19-22, 216-23. Warwick was appointed Admiral by the Parliament on July 1, 1642.

l. 23. The expulsion of the Long Parliament on April 20, 1653. A thorough examination of all the authorities for the story of the expulsion will be found in two articles by C.H. Firth in History, October 1917 and January 1918.

ll. 24-5. Robert Rich, his grandson, married Frances, Cromwell's youngest daughter, in November 1657, but died in the following February, aged 23. See Thurloe's State Papers, vol. vi, p. 573.

ll. 22-3. He resigned his generalship on April 2, 1645, the day before the Self-Denying Ordinance was passed.

ll. 24 ff. His first wife was Buckingham's cousin, their mothers being sisters. He married his second wife in 1626, before Buckingham's death. He was five times married.

Page 163, l. 11. his father, Henry Montagu (1563-1642), created Baron Montagu of Kimbolton and Viscount Mandeville, 1620, and Earl of Manchester, 1628. By the favour of Buckingham he had been made Lord Treasurer in 1620, but within a year was deprived of the office and 'reduced to the empty title of President of the Council'; see the character (on the whole favourable) by Clarendon, vol. i, pp. 67-9.

l. 12. Manchester and Warwick are described by Clarendon as 'the two pillars of the Presbyterian party' (vol. iv, p. 245).

Page 164, l. 16. He was accused with the five members of the House of
Commons, January 3, 1642. Cf. p. 123, l. 5.

l. 26. Elsewhere Clarendon says that Manchester 'was known to have all the prejudice imaginable against Cromwell' (vol. iv, p. 245). He lived in retirement during the Commonwealth, but returned to public life at the Restoration, when he was made Lord Chamberlain.

This character may be compared with Clarendon's other character of Manchester, vol. i, pp. 242-3, and with the character in Warwick's Mémoires, pp. 246-7. Burnet, speaking of him in his later years, describes him as 'A man of a soft and obliging temper, of no great depth, but universally beloved, being both a vertuous and a generous man'.

ll. 20-5. Antony à Wood did not share Clarendon's scepticism about Say's descent, though he shared his dislike of Say himself: see Athenæ Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, vol. in, col. 546.

Page 166, ll. 25 ff. See Clarendon, ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 333-5. Cf. note p. 134, l. 3. After the King's execution he took little part in public affairs, but at the Restoration he managed to be made a Privy Councillor and Lord Privy Seal.

Clarendon has another and shorter character of Say, which supplements the character here given, and deals mainly with his ecclesiastical politics (vol. i, p. 241). He was thought to be the only member of the Independent party in the House of Peers (vol. iii, p. 507).

Arthur Wilson gives short characters of Essex, Warwick, and Say: 'Saye and Seale was a seriously subtil Peece, and alwayes averse to the Court wayes, something out of pertinatiousnesse; his Temper and Constitution ballancing him altogether on that Side, which was contrary to the Wind; so that he seldome tackt about or went upright, though he kept his Course steady in his owne way a long time: yet it appeared afterwards, when the harshnesse of the humour was a little allayed by the sweet Refreshments of Court favours, that those sterne Comportments supposed naturall, might be mitigated, and that indomitable Spirits by gentle usage may be tamed and brought to obedience' (Reign of King James I, p. 162).

This and the four following characters of men of learning and letters are taken from the early section of the Life where Clarendon proudly records his friendships and conversation with 'the most excellent men in their several kinds that lived in that age, by whose learning and information and instruction he formed his studies, and mended his understanding, and by whose gentleness and sweetness of behaviour, and justice, and virtue, and example, he formed his manners.' The characters of Jonson, Falkland, and Godolphin which belong to the same section have already been given.

Page 167, l. 27. his conversation, fortunately represented for us in his Table-Talk, a collection of the 'excellent things that usually fell from him', made by his amanuensis Richard Milward, and published in 1689.

l. 5. Seldence, a phonetic spelling, showing Clarendon's haste in composition.

ll. 15, 16. Compare Clarendon's History, vol. ii, p. 114: 'he had for many years enjoyed his ease, which he loved, was rich, and would not have made a journey to York, or have lain out of his own bed, for any preferment, which he had never affected. Compare also Aubrey's Brief Lives, ed. A. Clark, vol. ii, p. 224: 'He was wont to say "I'le keepe myselfe warme and moyst as long as I live, for I shall be cold and dry when I am dead ".'

Izaak Walton included a short character of Earle in his Life of Hooker, published in the year of Earle's death: 'Dr. Earle, now Lord Bishop of Salisbury, of whom I may justly say, (and let it not offend him, because it is such a trifle as ought not to be concealed from posterity, or those that now live, and yet know him not,) that since Mr. Hooker died, none have lived whom God hath blessed with more innocent wisdom, more sanctified learning, or a more pious, peaceable, primitive temper: so that this excellent person seems to be only like himself, and our venerable Richard Hooker.'

Page 168, l. 25. Earle of Pembroke, the fourth Earl, Lord
Chamberlain 1626-1641: see p. 4, l. 30, note.

Page 169, l. 3. Proctour, in 1631. The 'very witty and sharpe discourses' are his Micro-cosmographie, first published anonymously in 1628.

l. 28. He was made chaplain and tutor to Prince Charles in 1641. His 'lodginge in the court' as chaplain to the Lord Chamberlain had made him known to the king.

'The Ever Memorable Mr. John Hales, of Eaton-Colledge', as he is called on the title-page of his Golden Remains, published in 1659 (second impression, 1673), is probably best known now by his remark 'That there was no subject of which any Poet ever writ, but he would produce it much better treated of in Shakespeare'. This remark was first given in print in Dryden's essay Of Dramatick Poesie, 1668, and was repeated in varying forms in Nahum Tate's Dedication to the Loyal General, 1680, Charles Gildon's Reflections on Mr. Rymer's Short View of Tragedy, 1694, and Nicholas Rowe's Account of the Life of Shakespear, 1709. But it had apparently been made somewhere between 1633 and 1637 in the company of Lord Falkland. It is the one gem that survives of this retired student's 'very open and pleasant conversation'.

Clarendon's portrait explains the honour and affection in which the 'ever memorable' but now little known scholar was held by all his friends. The best companion to it is the life by Wood, Athenæ Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, vol. iv, cols. 409-15. See also John Pearson's preface to Golden Remains.

Page 170, ll. 10 ff. Hales was elected Fellow of Merton College in 1605, and Regius Professor of Greek in 1615. His thirty-two letters to Sir Dudley Carlton (cf. p. 58, l. 20) reporting the proceedings of the Synod of Dort, run from November 24, 1618, to February 7, 1619, and are included in his Golden Remains. On his return to England in 1619 he withdrew to his fellowship at Eton.

Sir Henry Savile's monumental edition of the Greek text of St. Chrysostom, in eight large folio volumes, was published at Eton, 1610-12. Savile was an imperious scholar, but when Clarendon says that Hales 'had borne all the labour' of this great edition, he can only mean that Hales had given his assistance at all stages of its production. In Brodrick's Memorials of Merton College, p. 70, it is stated that Hales was voted an allowance for the help he had given. Savile was appointed Warden of Merton in 1585 and Provost of Eton in 1596, and continued to hold both posts at the same time till his death in 1622.

Page 171, ll. 8-12. Compare the verse epistle in Suckling's Fragmenta Aurea, which was manifestly addressed to Hales, though his name is not given (ed. 1648, pp. 34-5):

  Whether these lines do find you out,
  Putting or clearing of a doubt;
   … know 'tis decreed
  You straight bestride the Colledge Steed …
  And come to Town; 'tis fit you show
  Your self abroad, that men may know
  (What e're some learned men have guest)
  That Oracles are not yet ceas't …
  News in one day as much w' have here
  As serves all Windsor for a year.

In Suckling's Sessions of the Poets, 'Hales set by himselfe most gravely did smile'.

ll. 14 ff. Compare the story told by Wood: 'When he was Bursar of his Coll. and had received bad money, he would lay it aside, and put good of his own in the room of it to pay to others. Insomuch that sometimes he has thrown into the River 20 and 30_l_. at a time. All which he hath stood to, to the loss of himself, rather than others of the Society should be endamaged.'

l. 19. Reduced to penury by the Civil Wars, Hales was 'forced to sell the best part of his most admirable Library (which cost him 2500_l_.) to Cornelius Bee of London, Bookseller, for 700_l_. only'. But Wood also says that he might be styled 'a walking Library'. Another account of his penury and the sale of his library is found in John Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, 1714, Part II, p. 94.

Page 173, ll. 1 ff. His Tract concerning Schisme and Schismaticks was published in 1642, and was frequently reissued. It was written apparently about 1636, and certainly before 1639. He was installed as canon of Windsor on June 27, 1639.

Clarendon clearly enjoyed writing this character of Chillingworth. The shrewd observation is tempered by subdued humour. Looking back on his friendship at a distance of twenty years, he felt an amused pleasure in the disputatiousness which could be irritating, the intellectual vanity, the irresolution that came from too great subtlety. Chillingworth was always 'his own convert'; 'his only unhappiness proceeded from his sleeping too little and thinking too much'. But Clarendon knew the solid merits of The Religion of Protestants (History, vol. i, p. 95); and he felt bitterly the cruel circumstances of his death.

Page 176, l. 14. the Adversary, Edward Knott (1582-1656), Jesuit controversialist.

l. 29. Lugar, John Lewgar (1602-1665): see Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, vol. iii, cols. 696-7.

Page 177, l. 24. This Engine is described in the narrative of the siege of Gloucester in Rushworth's Historical Collections, ed. 1692, Part III, vol. ii, p. 290: 'The King's Forces, by the Directions of Dr. Chillingworth, had provided certain Engines, after the manner of the Roman Testudines cum Pluteis, wherewith they intended to Assault the City between the South and West Gates; They ran upon Cart-Wheels, with a Blind of Planks Musquet-proof, and holes for four Musqueteers to play out of, placed upon the Axle-tree to defend the Musqueteers and those that thrust it forwards, and carrying a Bridge before it; the Wheels were to fall into the Ditch, and the end of the Bridge to rest upon the Towns Breastworks, so making several compleat Bridges to enter the City. To prevent which, the Besieged intended to have made another Ditch out of their Works, so that the Wheels falling therein, the Bridge would have fallen too short of their Breastworks into their wet Mote, and so frustrated that Design.'

ll. 26 ff. Hopton took Arundel Castle on December 9, 1643, and was forced to surrender on January 6 (Clarendon, vol. iii, pp. 330-5). Aubrey says that Chillingworth 'dyed of the morbus castrensis after the taking of Arundel castle by the parliament: wherin he was very much blamed by the king's soldiers for his advice in military affaires there, and they curst that little priest and imputed the losse of the castle to his advice'. (Brief Lives, ed. A. Clark, vol. i, p. 172). The chief actor in the final persecution was Francis Cheynell (1608-65), afterwards intruded President of St. John's College and Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford; see his Chillingworthi Novissima. Or, the Sicknesse, Heresy, Death, and Buriall of William Chillingworth (In his own phrase) Clerk of Oxford, and in the conceit of his fellow Souldiers, the Queens Arch-Engineer, and Grand-Intelligencer, 1644.

Weakness of character disguised by ready wit, pleasant discourse, and charm of manner is Clarendon's judgement on Waller. They had been friends in their early days when Waller was little more than an opulent poet who could make a good speech in parliament; but his behaviour on the discovery of 'Waller's plot', the purpose of which was to hold the city for the king, his inefficiency in any action but what was directed to his own safety and advancement, and his subsequent relations with Cromwell, definitely estranged them. To Clarendon, Waller is the time-server whose pleasing arts are transparent. 'His company was acceptable, where his spirit was odious.' The censure was the more severe because of the part which Waller had just played at Clarendon's fall. The portrait may be overdrawn; but there is ample evidence from other sources to confirm its essential truth.

Burnet says that 'Waller was the delight of the House: And even at eighty he said the liveliest things of any among them: He was only concerned to say that which should make him be applauded. But he never laid the business of the House to heart, being a vain and empty, tho' a witty, man' (History of His Own Time, ed. 1724, vol. i, p. 388). He is described by Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. A. Clark, vol. ii, pp. 276-7.

Clarendon's character was included by Johnson in his Life of Waller, with a few comments. Page 179, l. 1. a very rich wife, Anne, only daughter of John Bankes, mercer; married 1631, died 1634. 'The fortune which Waller inherited from his father, which must have been largely increased during his long minority, has been variously estimated at from £2,000 to £3,500 a year; adding to this the amount which he received with Miss Bankes, said to have been about £8,000, and allowing for the difference in the value of the money, it appears probable that, with the exception of Rogers, the history of English literature can show no richer poet' (Poems of Waller, ed. Thorn Drury, vol. i, p. xx).

l. 4. M'r Crofts, William Crofts (1611-77), created Baron Crofts of Saxham in 1658 at Brussels. He was captain of Queen Henrietta Maria's Guards.

ll. 10-14. Waller's poems were first published in 1645, when Waller was abroad. But they had been known in manuscript. They appear to have first come to the notice of Clarendon when Waller was introduced to the brilliant society of which Falkland was the centre. If the introduction took place, as is probable, about 1635, this is the explanation of Clarendon's 'neere thirty yeeres of age'. But some of his poems must have been written much earlier. What is presumably his earliest piece, on the escape of Prince Charles from shipwreck at Santander on his return from Spain in 1623, was probably written shortly after the event it describes, though like other of his early pieces it shows, as Johnson pointed out, traces of revision.

l. 21. nurced in Parliaments. He entered Parliament in 1621, at the age of sixteen, as member for Amersham. See Poems, ed. Drury, vol. i. p. xvii.

Page 180, l. 5. The great instance of his wit is his reply to Charles II, when asked why his Congratulation 'To the King, upon his Majesty's happy Return' was inferior to his Panegyric 'Upon the Death of the Lord Protector'—'Poets, Sir, succeed better in fiction than in truth' (quoted from Menagiana in Fenton's 'Observations on Waller's Poems', and given by Johnson). See Lives of the Poets, ed. G.B. Hill, vol. i, p. 271.

Brief View and Survey of the Dangerous and pernicious Errors to Church and State, In Mr. Hobbes's Book, Entitled Leviathan. By Edward Earl of Clarendon. Oxford, 1676. (pp. 2-3.)

It is a misfortune that Clarendon did not write a character of Hobbes, and, more than this, that there is no character of Hobbes by any one which corresponds in kind to the other characters in this collection. But in answering the Leviathan, Clarendon thought it well to state by way of introduction that he was on friendly terms with the author, and the passage here quoted from his account of their relations is in effect a character. He condemned Hobbes's political theories; 'Yet I do hope', he says, 'nothing hath fallen from my Pen, which implies the least undervaluing of Mr. Hobbes his Person, or his Parts.'

Page 181, l. 21. ha's, a common spelling at this time and earlier, on the false assumption that has was a contraction of haves.

The text of these notes on Hobbes is taken direct from Aubrey's manuscript, now in the Bodleian Library. The complete life is printed in Brief Lives by John Aubrey, edited by Andrew Clark, 1898, vol. i, pp. 321-403.

Aubrey collected most of his biographical notes, to which he gave the title '[Greek: Schediasmata.] Brief Lives', in order to help Anthony à Wood in the compilation of his Athenæ Oxonienses. 'I have, according to your desire', he wrote to Wood in 1680, 'putt in writing these minutes of lives tumultuarily, as they occur'd to my thoughts or as occasionally I had information of them…. 'Tis a taske that I never thought to have undertaken till you imposed it upon me.' Independently of Wood, Aubrey had collected material for a life of Hobbes, in accordance with a promise he had made to Hobbes himself. All his manuscript notes were submitted to Wood, who made good use of them. On their return Aubrey deposited them in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the library of which is now merged in the Bodleian.

The notes were written 'tumultuarily', jotted down hastily, and as hastily added to, altered, and transposed. They are a first draft for the fair copy which was never made. The difficulty of giving a true representation of them in print is increased by Aubrey's habit of inserting above the line alternatives to words or phrases without deleting the original words or even indicating his preference. In the present text the later form has, as a rule, been adopted, the other being given in a footnote.

'The Life of Mr. Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesburie' is by far the longest of Aubrey's 'Brief Lives', but it does not differ from the others in manner. The passages selected may be regarded as notes for a character.

Page 183, ll. 1 ff. Aubrey is a little more precise in his notes on Bacon. 'Mr. Thomas Hobbes told me … that he was employed in translating part of the Essayes, viz. three of them, one whereof was that of the Greatnesse of Cities, the other two I have now forgott' (ed. A. Clark, vol. i, p. 83). On the evidence of style, Aldis Wright thought that the other two essays translated by Hobbes were 'Of Simulation and Dissimulation' and 'Of Innovation': see the preface to his edition of Bacon's Essays, 1862, pp. xix, xx. The translation appeared in 1638 under the title Sermones fideles, sive interiora rerum.

l. 4. Gorhambury was Bacon's residence in Hertfordshire, near St. Alban's, inherited from his father. Aubrey described it in a long digression 'for the sake of the lovers of antiquity', ed. Clark, vol. i, pp. 79-84, and p. 19.

l. 5. Thomas Bushell (1594-1674), afterwards distinguished as a mining engineer and metallurgist: see his life in the Dictionary of National Biography.

l. 20. Henry Lawes (1596-1662), who wrote the music for Comus, and to whom Milton addressed one of his sonnets:

  Harry whose tuneful and well measur'd Song
  First taught our English Musick how to span
  Words with just note and accent,…
  To after age thou shalt be writ the man,
  That with smooth aire couldst humor best our tongue.

This sonnet was prefixed to Lawes's Choice Psalmes in 1648; his Ayres and Dialogues for One, Two, and Three Voices appeared in three books from 1653 to 1658.

The Life of That Reverend Divine, and Learned Historian, Dr. Thomas
Fuller. London, 1661. (pp. 66-77.)

This work was twice reissued with new title-pages at Oxford in 1662, and was for the first time reprinted in 1845 by way of introduction to J.S. Brewer's edition of Fuller's Church History. It is the basis of all subsequent lives of Fuller. But the author is unknown.

The passage here quoted from the concluding section of this Life is the only contemporary sketch of Fuller's person and character that is now known. Aubrey's description is a mere note, and is considerably later: 'He was of a middle stature; strong sett; curled haire; a very working head, in so much that, walking and meditating before dinner, he would eate-up a penny loafe, not knowing that he did it. His naturall memorie was very great, to which he had added the art of memorie: he would repeate to you forwards and backwards all the signes from Ludgate to Charing-crosse' (ed. A. Clark, vol. i, p. 257).

Page 191, ll. 3 ff. Compare Aubrey. But Fuller disclaimed the use of an art of memory. 'Artificiall memory', he said, 'is rather a trick then an art.' He condemned the 'artificiall rules which at this day are delivered by Memory-mountebanks'. His great rule was 'Marshall thy notions into a handsome method'. See his section 'Of Memory' in his Holy State, 1642, Bk. III, ch. 10; and compare J.E. Bailey, Life of Thomas Fuller, 1874, pp. 413-15.

The text is taken direct from Aubrey's manuscript, such contractions as 'X'ts coll:' and 'da:' for daughter being expanded. For the complete life, see Brief Lives, ed. A. Clark, vol. ii, pp. 62-72.

There is no character of Milton. We have again to be content with notes for a character.

Page 192, l. 7. Christ's College, Cambridge, which Milton entered in
February 1625, aged sixteen.

ll. 15-18. Milton had three daughters, by his first wife—Anne, Mary, and Deborah. Mary died unmarried. Deborah's husband, Abraham Clarke, left Dublin for London during the troubles in Ireland under James II: see Masson's Life of Milton, vol. vi, p. 751. He is described by Johnson as a 'weaver in Spitalfields': see Lives of the Poets, ed. G.B. Hill, vol. i, pp. 158-60.

Page 193, ll. 2-4. Litera Canina. See Persius, Sat. i. 109
'Sonat hic de nare canina littera'; and compare Ben Jonson, English
Grammar, 'R Is the Dogs Letter, and hurreth in the sound.'

ll. 11, 12. But the Comte de Cominges, French Ambassador to England, 1662-5, in his report to Louis XIV on the state of literature in England, spoke of 'un nommé Miltonius qui s'est rendu plus infâme par ses dangereux écrits que les bourreaux et les assassins de leur roi'. This was written in 1663, and Cominges knew only Milton's Latin works. See J.J. Jusserand, A French Ambassador at the Court of Charles the Second, 1892, p. 58, and Shakespeare en France, 1898, p. 107.

Page 194, l. 4. Milton died November 8: see Masson, Life of Milton, vol. vi, p. 731.

Letters of State, Written by Mr. John Milton, To most of the Sovereign Princes and Republicks of Europe. From the Year 1649 Till the Year 1659. To which is added, An Account of his Life…. London: Printed in the Year, 1694. (p. xxxvi.)

'The Life of Mr. John Milton' (pp. i-xliv) serves as introduction to this little volume of State Papers. It is the first life of Milton. Edward Phillips (1630-96) was the son of Milton's sister, and was educated by him. Unfortunately he failed to take proper advantage of his great opportunity. The Life is valuable for some of its details, but as a whole it is disappointing; and it makes no attempt at characterization. The note on Milton in his Theatrum Poetarum, or a Compleat Collection of the Poets, 1675, is also disappointing.

Explanatory Notes and Remarks on Milton's Paradise Lost. By J.
Richardson, Father and Son. With the Life of the Author, and a
Discourse on the Poem. By J.R. Sen. London: M.DCC.XXXIV. (pp. iii-v;
xciv; c; cxiv.)

Jonathan Richardson (1665-1745) was one of the chief portrait-painters of his time. There are portraits by him of Pope, Steele, and Prior—all now in the National Portrait Gallery; and his writings on painting were standard works till the time of Reynolds. His book on Milton was an excursion late in life, with the assistance of his son, into another field of criticism. His introductory life of Milton (pp. i-cxliii) is a substantial piece of work, and is valuable as containing several anecdotes that might otherwise have been lost. Those that bear on Milton's character are here reproduced. The typographical eccentricities have been preserved.

Page 194, ll. 28 ff. Edward Millington's place of business was 'at the
Pelican in Duck Lane' in 1670; from Michaelmas, 1671, it was 'at the
Bible in Little Britain' (see Arber's Term Catalogues, vol. i, pp.
31, 93). It was about 1680 that he turned auctioneer of books, though
he did not wholly abandon publishing. 'There was usually as much
Comedy in his "Once, Twice, Thrice", as can be met with in a modern
Play.' See the Life and Errors of John Dunton, ed. 1818, pp. 235-6.
He died at Cambridge in 1703.

Page 196, l. 4. Dr. Tancred Robinson (d. 1748), physician to George I, and knighted by him.

l. 10. Henry Bendish (d. 1740), son of Bridget Ireton or Bendish, Cromwell's granddaughter: see Letters of John Hughes, ed. John Duncombe, vol. ii (1773), pp. x, xlii.

l. 14. John Thurloe (1616-68), Secretary of State under Cromwell. Compare No. 38 note.

The Works of M'r Abraham Cowley. Consisting of Those which were
formerly Printed: and Those which he Design'd for the Press, Now
Published out of the Authors Original Copies. London, 1668.—'Several
Discourses by way of Essays, in Verse and Prose,' No. II. (pp. 143-6.)

Cowley's Essays were written towards the close of his life. They were 'left scarce finish'd', and many others were to have been added to them. They were first published posthumously in the collected edition of 1668, under the superintendence of Thomas Sprat (see No. 61). This edition, which alone is authoritative, has been followed in the present reprint of the eleventh and last Essay, probably written at the beginning of 1667.

ll. 19 ff. The concluding stanzas of 'A Vote', printed in Cowley's Sylva, 1636. Cowley was then aged eighteen. The first stanza contains three new readings, 'The unknown' for 'Th' ignote', 'I would have' for 'I would hug', and 'Not on' for 'Not from'.

Page 200, l. 4. immediately. The reading in the text of 1668 is 'irremediably', but 'immediately' is given as the correct reading in the 'Errata' (printed on a slip that is pasted in at the conclusion of Cowley's first preface). The edition of 1669 substitutes 'immediately' in the text. The alteration must be accepted on Sprat's authority, but it is questionable if it gives a better sense.

ll. 6-10. Cowley was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, as a Westminster scholar on June 14, 1637. He was admitted Minor Fellow in 1640, and graduated M.A. in 1643. He was ejected in the following year as a result of the Earl of Manchester's commission to enforce the solemn League and Covenant in Cambridge. See Cowley's Pure Works, ed. J.R. Lumby, pp. ix-xiii, and Johnson's Lives of the Poets, ed. G.B. Hill, vol. i, p. 5.

l. 12. one of the best Persons, Henry Jermyn, created Baron Jermyn, 1643, and Earl of St. Albans, 1660, chief officer of Henrietta Maria's household in Paris: see Clarendon, vol. iv, p. 312. As secretary to Jermyn, Cowley 'cyphcr'd and decypher'd with his own hand, the greatest part of all the Letters that passed between their Majesties, and managed a vast Intelligence in many other parts: which for some years together took up all his days, and two or three nights every week' (Sprat). He told Sprat that he intended to dedicate all his Essays to St. Albans 'as a testimony of his entire respects to him'.

Page 201, l. 10. Well then. The opening lines of 'The Wish', included in The Mistress, 1647 (ed. 1668, pp. 22-3).

ll. 14 ff. At the instance of Jermyn, Cowley had been promised by both Charles I and Charles II the mastership of the Savoy Hospital, but the post was given in 1660 to Sheldon, and in 1663, on Sheldon's promotion to the Archbishopric of Canterbury, to Henry Killigrew: see W.J. Loftie, Memorials of the Savoy, 1878, pp. 145 ff., and Wood, Fasti Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, part I, col. 494. In the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1661-2, p. 210, there is the statement of the case of Abraham Cowley, 'showing that the place may be held by a person not a divine, and that Cowley … having seen all preferments given away, and his old University companions advanced before him, is put to great shame by missing this place'. He is called 'Savoy missing Cowley' in the Restoration Session of the Poets, printed in Poems on State Affairs.

l. 21. Thou, neither. In the ode entitled 'Destinie', Pindarique Odes, 1656 (ed. 1668, p. 31, 'That neglected').

l. 28. A Corps perdu, misprinted A Corps perdi, edd. 1668, 1669, A Corpus perdi, 1672, 1674, &c.; Perdue, Errata, 1668.

ll. 3-5. 'Out of hast to be gone away from the Tumult and Noyse of the City, he had not prepar'd so healthful a situation in the Country, as he might have done, if he had made a more leasurable choice. Of this he soon began to find the inconvenience at Barn Elms, where he was afflicted with a dangerous and lingring Fever…. Shortly after his removal to Chertsea [April 1665], he fell into another consuming Disease. Having languish'd under this for some months, he seem'd to be pretty well cur'd of its ill Symptomes. But in the heat of the last Summer [1667], by staying too long amongst his Laborers in the Medows, he was taken with a violent Defluxion, and Stoppage in his Breast, and Throat. This he at first neglected as an ordinary Cold, and refus'd to send for his usual Physicians, till it was past all remedies; and so in the end after a fortnight sickness, it prov'd mortal to him' (Sprat). In the Latin life prefixed to Cowley's Poemata Latina, 1668, Sprat is more specific: 'Initio superioris Anni, inciderat in Morbum, quem Medici Diabeten appellant.'

ll. 11 ff. Nec vos. These late Latin verses may be Cowley's own, but they are not in his collected Latin poems. Compare Virgil, Georgics, ii. 485-6. 'Syluæq;' = 'Sylvæque': 'q;' was a regular contraction for que: cf. p. 44, l. 6.

The Works of Mr. Abraham Cowley, 1668.—'An Account of the Life and
Writings of M'r Abraham Cowley'. (pp. [18]-[20].)

Thomas Sprat (1635-1713), author of The History of the Royal-Society, 1667, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, 1684, was entrusted by Cowley's will with 'the revising of all his Works that were formerly printed, and the collecting of those Papers which he had design'd for the Press'; and as literary executor he brought out in 1668 a folio edition of the English works, and an octavo edition of the Latin works. To both he prefixed a life, one in English and the other in Latin. The more elaborate English life was written partly in the hope that 'a Character of Mr. Cowley may be of good advantage to our Nation'. Unfortunately the ethical bias has injured the biography. In Johnson's words, 'his zeal of friendship, or ambition of eloquence, has produced a funeral oration rather than a history: he has given the character, not the life of Cowley; for he writes with so little detail that scarcely any thing is distinctly known, but all is shewn confused and enlarged through the mist of panegyrick.' Similarly Coleridge asks 'What literary man has not regretted the prudery of Sprat in refusing to let his friend Cowley appear in his slippers and dressing-gown?' (Biographia Literaria, ch. iii). His method is the more to be regretted as no one knew Cowley better in his later years. His greatest error of judgement was to suppress his large collection of Cowley's letters. But with all its faults Sprat's Life of Cowley occupies an important place at the beginning of English biography of men of letters. It is the earliest substantial life of a poet whose reputation rested on his poetry. Fulke Greville's life of Sir Philip Sidney was the life of a soldier and a statesman of promise; and to Izaak Walton, Donne was not so much a poet as a great Churchman.

In the edition of 1668 the life of Cowley runs to twenty-four folio pages. The passage here selected deals directly with his character.

Page 203, ll. 25-7. It is evidently the impression of a stranger at first sight that Aubrey gives in his short note: 'A.C. discoursed very ill and with hesitation' (ed. A. Clark, vol. i, p. 190).

A Character of King Charles the Second: And Political, Moral and
Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections. By George Savile, Marquis of
Halifax. London: MDCCL.

Halifax's elaborate and searching account of Charles II was first published in 1750 'from his original Manuscripts, in the Possession of his Grand-daughter Dorothy Countess of Burlington'. It consists of seven parts: I. Of his Religion; II. His Dissimulation; III. His Amours, Mistresses, &c.; IV. His Conduct to his Ministers; V. Of his Wit and Conversation; VI. His Talents, Temper, Habits, &c.; VII. Conclusion. Only the second, fifth, and sixth are given here. The complete text is reprinted in Sir Walter Raleigh's Works of Halifax, 1912, pp. 187-208.

For other characters of Charles, in addition to the two by Burnet which follow, see Evelyn's Diary, February 4, 1685; Dryden's dedication of King Arthur, 1691; 'A Short Character of King Charles the II' by John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, Duke of Buckingham, 'Printed from the Original Copy' in Miscellaneous Works Written by George, late Duke of Buckingham, ed. Tho. Brown, vol. ii, 1705, pp. 153-60, and with Pope's emendations in Works, 1723, vol. ii, pp. 57-65; and James Welwood's Memoirs Of the Most Material Transactions in England, for the Last Hundred Years, Preceding the Revolution, 1700, pp. 148-53.

Page 208, l. 12. An allusion to the Quarrel of the Ancients and
Moderns, which assumed prominence in England with the publication
in 1690 of Sir William Temple's Essay upon the Ancient and Modern
Learning. Compare Burnet, p. 223, l. 11 and note.

PAGE 209, l. 29. Ruelle. Under Louis XIV it was the custom for ladies of fashion to receive morning visitors in their bedrooms; hence ruelle, the passage by the side of a bed, came to mean a ladies' chamber. Compare The Spectator, Nos. 45 and 530.

Page 211, l. 2. Tiendro cuydado, evidently an imperfect recollection of the phrase se tendrá cuydado, 'care will be taken', 'the matter will have attention': compare Cortes de Madrid, 1573, Peticion 96,… 'se tendrá cuidado de proueher en ello lo que conuiniere'.

Page 212, ll. 7, 8. Compare Pepys's Diary, May 4, 1663: 'meeting the King, we followed him into the Park, where Mr. Coventry and he talking of building a new yacht out of his private purse, he having some contrivance of his own'. Also, Evelyn's Diary, February 4, 1685: 'a lover of the sea, and skilful in shipping; not affecting other studies, yet he had a laboratory and knew of many empirical medicines, and the easier mechanical mathematics.' Also, Buckingham, ed. 1705, p. 155: 'the great and almost only pleasure of Mind he seem'd addicted to, was Shipping and Sea-Affairs; which seem'd to be so much his Talent for Knowledge, as well as Inclination, that a War of that Kind, was rather an Entertainment, than any Disturbance to his Thoughts.' Also Welwood, Memoirs, p. 151. Also, Burnet, infra, p. 219.

Page 213, l. 10. According to Pepys (Diary, December 8, 1666), the distinction between Charles Stuart and the King was drawn by Tom Killigrew in his remonstrance to Charles on the very ill state that matters were coming to: 'There is a good, honest, able man, that I could name, that if your Majesty would employ, and command to see all things well executed, all things would soon be mended; and this is one Charles Stuart, who now spends his time in employing his lips about the Court, and hath no other employment; but if you would give him this employment, he were the fittest man in the world to perform it.'

Bishop Burnet's History of His Own Time. Vol. i. From the Restoration of King Charles II. to the Settlement of King William and Queen Mary at the Revolution. London: 1724. (pp. 93-4.)

Burnet began his History of His Own Time in 1683, after the publication of his History of the Reformation. In its original form it partook largely of the nature of Memoirs. But on the appearance of Clarendon's History in 1702 he was prompted to recast his entire narrative on a method that confined the strictly autobiographical matter to a section by itself and as a whole assured greater dignity. The part dealing with the reign of Charles II was rewritten by August 1703. The work was brought down to 1713 and completed in that year. Two years later Burnet died, leaving instructions that it was not to be printed till six years after his death.

The History was published in two folio volumes, dated 1724 and 1734. The first, which contains the reigns of Charles II and James II, came out at the end of 1723 and was edited by Burnet's second son, Gilbert Burnet, then rector of East Barnet. The second volume was edited by his third son, Thomas Burnet, afterwards a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas. The complete autograph of the History, and the transcript which was prepared for the press under the author's directions, are now both in the Bodleian Library.

The original form of the work survives in two transcripts (one of them with Burnet's autograph corrections) in the Harleian collection in the British Museum, and in a fragment of Burnet's original manuscript in the Bodleian. The portions of this original version that differ materially from the final printed version were published in 1902 by Miss H.C. Foxcroft under the title A Supplement to Burnet's History.

Much of the interest of the earlier version lies in the characters, which are generally longer than they became on revision, and sometimes contain details that were suppressed. But in a volume of representative selections, where the art of a writer is as much our concern as his matter, the preference must be given to what Burnet himself intended to be final. The extracts are reprinted from the two volumes edited by his sons. There was not the same reason to go direct to his manuscript as to Clarendon's: see notes p. 231, l. 26; p. 252, l. 10; and p. 255, l. 6.

Burnet's two characters of Charles II are in striking agreement with the more elaborate study by Halifax.

Page 222, l. 16. he became cruel. This statement was attacked by Roger North, Lives of the Norths, ed. 1890, vol. i, p. 330: 'whereas some of our barbarous writers call this awaking of the king's genius to a sedulity in his affairs, a growing cruel, because some suffered for notorious treasons, I must interpret their meaning; which is a distaste, because his majesty was not pleased to be undone as his father was; and accordingly, since they failed to wound his person and authority, they fell to wounding his honour.' Buckingham says, 'He was an Illustrious Exception to all the Common Rules of Phisiognomy; for with a most Saturnine harsh sort of Countenance, he was both of a Merry and a Merciful Disposition' (ed. 1705, p. 159); with which compare Welwood, ed. 1700, p. 149. The judicial verdict had already been pronounced by Halifax: see p. 216, ll. 23 ff.

ll. 21-3. See Burnet, ed. Osmund Airy, vol. i, p. 539, for the particular reference. The scandal was widespread, but groundless.

Page 223, l. 9. the war of Paris, the Fronde. See Clarendon, vol. v, pp. 243-5.

ll. 11 ff. Compare Buckingham, ed. 1705, p. 157: 'Witty in all sorts of Conversation; and telling a Story so well, that, not out of Flattery, but the Pleasure of hearing it, we seem'd Ignorant of what he had repeated to us Ten Times before; as a good Comedy will bear the being often seen.' Also Halifax, p. 208, ll. 7-14.

l. 17. John Wilmot (1647-80), second Earl of Rochester, son of Henry Wilmot, first Earl (No. 32). Burnet knew him well and wrote his life, Some Passages of the Life and Death Of the Right Honourable John Earl of Rochester, 1680; 'which', says Johnson, 'the critick ought to read for its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety' (Lives of the Poets, ed. G.B. Hill, vol. i, p. 222).

ll. 25 ff. The resemblance to Tiberius was first pointed out in print in Welwood's Memoirs, p. 152, which appeared twenty-four years before Burnet's History. But Welwood was indebted to Burnet. He writes as if they had talked about it; or he might have seen Burnet's early manuscript.

The author of most of the characters in this volume himself deserves a fuller character. The main portions of Burnet's original sketch (1683) are therefore given here, partly by way of supplement, and partly to illustrate the nature of Burnet's revision (1703):

'The great man with the king was chancellor Hyde, afterwards made Earl of Clarendon. He had been in the beginning of the long parliament very high against the judges upon the account of the ship-money and became then a considerable man; he spake well, his style had no flaw in it, but had a just mixture of wit and sense, only he spoke too copiously; he had a great pleasantness in his spirit, which carried him sometimes too far into raillery, in which he sometimes shewed more wit than discretion. He went over to the court party when the war was like to break out, and was much in the late king's councils and confidence during the war, though he was always of the party that pressed the king to treat, and so was not in good terms with the queen. The late king recommended him to this king as the person on whose advices he wished him to rely most, and he was about the king all the while that he was beyond sea, except a little that he was ambassador in Spain; he managed all the king's correspondences in England, both in the little designs that the cavaliers were sometimes engaged in, and chiefly in procuring money for the king's subsistence, in which Dr. Sheldon was very active; he had nothing so much before his eyes as the king's service and doated on him beyond expression: he had been a sort of governor to him and had given him many lectures on the politics and was thought to assume and dictate too much … But to pursue Clarendon's character: he was a man that knew England well, and was lawyer good enough to be an able chancellor, and was certainly a very incorrupt man. In all the king's foreign negotiations he meddled too much, for I have been told that he had not a right notion of foreign matters, but he could not be gained to serve the interests of other princes. Mr. Fouquet sent him over a present of 10,000 pounds after the king's restoration and assured him he would renew that every year, but though both the king and the duke advised him to take it he very worthily refused it. He took too much upon him and meddled in everything, which was his greatest error. He fell under the hatred of most of the cavaliers upon two accounts. The one was the act of indemnity which cut off all their hopes of repairing themselves of the estates of those that had been in the rebellion, but he said it was the offer of the indemnity that brought in the king and it was the observing of it that must keep him in, so he would never let that be touched, and many that had been deeply engaged in the late times having expiated it by their zeal of bringing home the king were promoted by his means, such as Manchester, Anglesey, Orrery, Ashley, Holles, and several others. The other thing was that, there being an infinite number of pretenders to employments and rewards for their services and sufferings, so that the king could only satisfy some few of them, he upon that, to stand between the king and the displeasure which those disappointments had given, spoke slightly of many of them and took it upon him that their petitions were not granted; and some of them having procured several warrants from the secretaries for the same thing (the secretaries considering nothing but their fees), he who knew on whom the king intended that the grant should fall, took all upon him, so that those who were disappointed laid the blame chiefly if not wholly upon him. He was apt to talk very imperiously and unmercifully, so that his manner of dealing with people was as provoking as the hard things themselves were; but upon the whole matter he was a true Englishman and a sincere protestant, and what has passed at court since his disgrace has sufficiently vindicated him from all ill designs' (Supplement, ed. Foxcroft, pp. 53-6).

There is a short character of Clarendon in Warwick's Mémoires, pp. 196-8; compare also Pepys's Diary, October 13, 1666, and Evelyn's Diary, August 27, 1667, and September 18, 1683.

Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 638-9; Continuation of the Life of Edward
Earl of Clarendon, ed. 1759, pp. 51-2.

Page 226, l. 8. He was released from Windsor Castle in March 1660.
Compare Burnet's character, p. 228, ll. 2-4.

Page 227, ll. 5 ff. John Middleton (1619-74), created Earl of Middleton, 1656. He was taken prisoner at Worcester, but escaped to France. As Lord High Commissioner for Scotland and Commander-in-chief, he was mainly responsible for the unfortunate methods of forcing episcopacy on Scotland.

William Cunningham (1610-64), ninth Earl of Glencairn, Lord Chancellor of Scotland.

John Leslie (1630-81), seventh Earl and first Duke of Rothes,
President of the Council in Scotland; Lord Chancellor, 1667.

On the composition of the ministry in Scotland, compare Burnet, ed.
Osmund Airy, vol. i, pp. 199, ff.

We are fortunate in having companion characters of Lauderdale by Clarendon and Burnet. Their point of view is different. Clarendon describes the Lauderdale of the Restoration who is climbing to power and is officially his inferior. Burnet looks back on him at the height of power and remembers how it was made to be felt. But the two characters have a strong likeness. Burnet is here seen at his best.

Page 228, ll. 14-17. Compare Roger North's Lives of the Norths, ed. 1890, vol. i, p. 231: 'the duke himself, being also learned, having a choice library, took great pleasure … in hearing him talk of languages and criticism'. Compare also Evelyn's Diary, August 27, 1678. His library was dispersed by auction—the French, Italian, and Spanish books on May 14, and the English books on May 27, 1690: copies of the sale catalogues are in the Bodleian. The catalogue of his manuscripts, 1692, is printed in the Bannatyne Miscellany, vol. ii, 1836, p. 149.

l. 30. As Professor of Theology in the University of Glasgow Burnet had enjoyed the favour of Lauderdale, and had dedicated to him, in fulsome terms, A Vindication of the Church and State of Scotland. The break came suddenly, and with no apparent cause, in 1673, when Burnet was appointed royal chaplain and was winning the ears of the King. Henceforward Lauderdale continued a 'violent enemy'. Their relations at this time are described in Clarke and Foxcroft's Life of Gilbert Burnet, 1907, pp. 109 ff., where Burnet's concluding letter of December 15, 1673, is printed in full.

Page 229, ll. 2-7. Richard Baxter delivered himself to Lauderdale in a long letter about his lapse from his former professions of piety—'so fallne from all that can be called serious religion, as that sensuality and complyance with sin is your ordinary course.' The letter (undated, but before 1672) is printed in The Landerdale Papers, ed. Osmund Airy, Camden Society, vol. iii, 1885, pp. 235-9.

ll. 8-12. 'The broad and pungent wit, and the brutal bonhomie.. probably went as far as anything else in securing Charles's favour.' Osmund Airy, Burnet's History, vol. i, p. 185.

Page 230, l. 14. He was chosen for Tewkesbury in March 1640, but he did not sit in the Long Parliament.

l. 18, a town, Weymouth: see p. 70, l. 21 note. He had been appointed governor of it in August 1643 after some dispute, but was shortly afterwards removed (Clarendon, vol. iii, pp. 163-5, 362).

Page 231, l. 2. Shaftesbury writes about the prediction of 'Doctor Olivian, a German, a very learned physician', in his autobiographical fragment: see No. 14 note.

ll. 14, 15. Compare Burnet's first sketch of Shaftesbury, ed. Foxcroft, p. 59: 'he told some that Cromwell offered once to make him king, but he never offered to impose so gross a thing on me.'

ll. 17, 18. See the Newsletter of December 28, 1654, in The Clarke Papers, ed. C.H. Firth, Camden Society, 1899, p. 16: 'a few daies since when the House was in a Grand Committee of the whole House upon the Government, Mr. Garland mooved to have my Lord Protectour crowned, which mocion was seconded by Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Mr. Hen. Cromwell, and others, but waved.'

l. 26. After 'party' Burnet wrote (autograph, fol. 49) 'He had no sort of virtue: for he was both a leud and corrupt man: and had no regard either to trueth or Justice.' But he struck out 'no sort … and had'. The sentence thus read in the transcript (p. 76) 'He had no regard either to Truth or Justice'. This in turn was struck out, either by Burnet himself or by the editor.

The following words are likewise struck out in the transcript, after 'manner' (l. 28): 'and was not out of countenance in owning his unsteadiness and deceitfullness.'

Absalom and Achitophel. A Poem … The Second Edition; Augmented and
Revised. London, 1681. (ll. 142-227.)

The first edition was published on November 17, 1681, a few days before Shaftesbury's trial for high treason. In the second, which appeared within a month, the character of Shaftesbury was 'augmented' by twelve lines (p. 233, ll. 17-28).

Shaftesbury had been satirized by Butler in the Third Part of Hudibras, 1678, three years before the crisis in his remarkable career, and while his schemes still prospered. To Butler he is the unprincipled turn-coat who thinks only of his own interests:

  So Politick, as if one eye
  Upon the other were a Spye;…
  H'had seen three Governments Run down,
  And had a Hand in ev'ry one,
  Was for 'em, and against 'em all.
  But Barb'rous when they came to fall:…
  By giving aim from side, to side,
  He never fail'd to save his Tide,
  But got the start of ev'ry State,
  And at a Change, ne'r came too late….
  Our State-Artificer foresaw,
  Which way the World began to draw:…
  He therefore wisely cast about,
  All ways he could, t'insure his Throat;
  And hither came t'observe, and smoke
  What Courses other Riscers took:
  And to the utmost do his Best
  To Save himself, and Hang the Rest.

Dryden's satire should be compared with Butler's. But a comparison with the prose character by Burnet, which had no immediate political purpose, will reveal even better Dryden's mastery in satirical portraiture. Another verse character is in The Review by Richard Duke, written shortly after Dryden's poem.

Absalom is Monmouth, David Charles II, Israel England, the Jews the
English, and a Jebusite a Romanist.

Page 232, l. 28. Compare Seneca, De Tranquillitate Animi, xvii. 10: 'nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiæ fuit.'

Page 233, l. 7. The humorous definition of man ascribed to Plato in Diogenes Laertius, Lib. vi. 40 (Life of Diogenes), [Greek: Platonos horisamenou, anthropos esti zoon dipoun apteron.]

The son was a handsomer man than the father, though he did not inherit his ability. His son, the third earl, was the critic and philosopher who wrote the Characteristicks.

l. 12. the Triple Bond, the alliance of England, Holland, and Sweden against France in 1667, broken by the war with France against Holland in 1672. But Shaftesbury then knew nothing of the secret Treaty of Dover, 1670.

l. 25. Abbethdin 'the president of the Jewish judicature', 'the father of the house of judgement'. Shaftesbury was Lord Chancellor, 1672-3.

Page 234, l. 4. David would have sung his praises instead of writing a psalm, and so Heaven would have had one psalm the less.

ll. 5, 6. Macaulay pointed out in his essay on Sir William Temple that these lines are a reminiscence of a couplet under the portrait of Sultan Mustapha the First in Knolles's Historie of the Turkes (ed. 1638, p. 1370):

Greatnesse, on Goodnesse loues to slide, not stand, and leaues for Fortunes ice, Vertues firm land.

l. 15. The alleged Popish Plot, invented by Titus Oates, to murder the king and put the government in the hands of the Jesuits. Shaftesbury had no share in the invention, but he believed it, and made political use of it.

Page 235, l. 4. This line reappears in The Hind and the Panther,
Part I, l. 211. As W.D. Christie pointed out, it is a reminiscence
of a couplet in Lachrymæ Musarum, 1649, the volume to which
Dryden contributed his school-boy verses 'Upon the Death of the Lord
Hastings':

This is the opening couplet of the English poem preceding Dryden's, and signed 'M.N.' i.e. Marchamont Needham (p. 81).

'The portrait of this Duke has been drawn by four masterly hands: Burnet has hewn it out with his rough chissel; Count Hamilton touched it with that slight delicacy, that finishes while it seems but to sketch; Dryden catched the living likeness; Pope compleated the historical resemblance.'—Horace Walpole, Royal and Noble Authors, ed. 1759, vol. ii, p. 78.

There is also Butler's prose character of 'A Duke of Bucks', first printed in Thyer's edition of the Genuine Remains of Butler, 1759, vol. ii, pp. 72-5, but written apparently about 1667-9. And there is a verse character in Duke's Review.

Page 235, l. 11. a great liveliness of wit. In the first sketch Burnet wrote 'he has a flame in his wit that is inimitable'. It lives in The Rehearsal. His 'Miscellaneous Works' were collected in two volumes by Tom Brown, 1704-5.

l. 14. Sir Henry Percy, created Baron Percy of Alnwick in 1643. He was then general of the ordinance of the king's army. He joined the Queen's party in France in 1645.

Dryden is his own best critic: 'The Character of Zimri in my Absalom, is, in my Opinion, worth the whole Poem: 'Tis not bloody, but 'tis ridiculous enough. And he for whom it was intended, was too witty to resent it as an injury. If I had rail'd, I might have suffer'd for it justly: But I manag'd my own Work more happily, perhaps more dextrously. I avoided the mention of great Crimes and apply'd my self to the representing of Blind-sides, and little Extravagancies: To which, the wittier a Man is, he is generally the more obnoxious. It succeeded as I wish'd.' ('Discourse concerning Satire' prefixed to Dryden's Juvenal, 1693, p. xlii.)

Page 236, ll. 28 ff. Compare Butler: 'He is as inconstant as the Moon, which he lives under … His Mind entertains all Things very freely, that come and go; but, like Guests and Strangers they are not welcome, if they stay long … His Ears are perpetually drilled with a Fiddlestick. He endures Pleasures with less Patience, than other Men do their Pains.'

This is not one of Burnet's best characters. He did not see the political wisdom that lay behind the ready wit. Halifax was too subtle for Burnet's heavy-handed grasp. To recognize the inadequacy of this short-sighted estimate, it is sufficient to have read the 'Character of King Charles II' (No. 62).

Burnet suffered from Halifax's wit: 'In the House of Lords,' says the first Earl of Dartmouth, 'he affected to conclude all his discourses with a jest, though the subject were never so serious, and if it did not meet with the applause he expected, would be extremely out of countenance and silent, till an opportunity offered to retrieve the approbation he thought he had lost; but was never better pleased than when he was turning Bishop Burnet and his politics into ridicule' (Burnet, ed. Airy, vol. i, p. 485).

  Jotham of piercing Wit and pregnant Thought:
  Endew'd by Nature, and by Learning taught
  To move Assemblies, who but onely tri'd
  The worse awhile, then chose the better side;
  Nor chose alone, but turn'd the Balance too;
  So much the weight of one brave man can do.

The Life of the Right Honourable Francis North, Baron of Guilford,
Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, under King Charles II. and King James
II…. By the Honourable Roger North, Esq; London, MDCCXLII. (pp.
223-6.)

Roger North's lives of his three brothers, Lord Keeper Guilford, Sir Dudley North, and Dr. John North, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, were begun about 1710 but were not published till 1742-4, eight years after his death. The edition of the 'Lives of the Norths' by Augustus Jessopp, 3 vols., 1890, contains also his autobiography.

The Life of Lord Keeper Guilford is invaluable as a picture of the bench and bar under Charles II and James II.

Page 240, l. 6. Sir Francis Pemberton (1625-97), Lord Chief Justice, 1681, removed from the King's Bench, 1683, 'near the time that the great cause of the quo warranto against the city of London was to be brought to judgment in that court.' North had just described him as a judge.

Page 241, l. 1. Compare Scott's Monastery, ch. xiv: '"By my troggs," replied Christie, "I would have thrust my lance down his throat."' 'Troggs' is an altered form of 'Troth'. It appears to be Scottish in origin; no Southern instance is quoted in Wright's Dialect Dictionary. Saunders may have learned it from a London Scot.

l. 22. Sir John Maynard (1602-90), 'the king's eldest serjeant, but advanced no farther'. Described by North, ed. 1890, p. 149; also p. 26: 'Serjeant Maynard, the best old book-lawyer of his time, used to say that the law was ars bablativa'.

l. 30. Sir Matthew Hale (1609-76), Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, described by North, pp. 79 ff. Burnet wrote The Life and Death of Sir Matthew Hale, 1682.

Page 243, l. 5. The action taken by the Crown in 1682 contesting the charter of the city of London. Judgement was given for the Crown. See State Trials, ed. 1810, vol. viii, 1039 ff., and Burnet, ed. Airy, vol. ii, pp. 343 ff., and compare Hallam, Constitutional History, ch. xii, ed. 1863, pp. 453-4.

This passage brings together ten of the great divines of the century. It would be easy, as critics have shown, to name as many others, such as Jeremy Taylor, Sanderson, Sheldon, Cosin, Pearson, and South. But Burnet is mainly concerned with the men who in his opinion had the greatest influence during the time of which he is writing, and who were known to him personally. By way of introduction he speaks of the Cambridge Platonists under whom his great contemporaries had been formed. Incidentally he expresses his views on Hobbes's Leviathan, and he concludes with a valuable account of the reform in preaching. The passage as a whole is an excellent specimen of Burnet's method and style.

Page 246, ll. 6, 7. John Owen (1616-83), made Dean of Christ Church by Cromwell in 1651, Vice-Chancellor of the University, 1652-8, deprived of the Deanery, 1659. Thomas Goodwin (1600-80), President of Magdalen College, 1650-60, likewise one of the Commission of Visitors to the University appointed by the Parliament. Both were Independents. See H.L. Thompson, Christ Church (College Histories), 1900, pp. 69, 70; and H.A. Wilson, Magdalen College, 1899, pp. 172-4.

Page 248, l. 5. Simon Episcopius, or Bischop (1583-1643), Dutch theologian and follower of Arminius: see p. 101, l. 3, note.

Page 249, l. 12. Irenicum. A Weapon-Salve for the Churches Wounds, published 1661.

Page 252, l. 10. The following sentence is in the original manuscript (folio 98) before 'But I owed': 'and if I have arrived at any faculty of writing clear and correctly, I owe that entirely to them: for as they joined with Wilkins in that Noble tho despised attempt at an Universall Character, and a Philosophicall Language, they took great pains to observe all the common errours of language in generall, and of ours in particular: and in the drawing the tables for that work, which was Lloyds province, he had looked further into a naturall purity and simplicity of stile, than any man I ever knew: into all which he led me, and so helpt me to any measure of exactnes of writing, which may be thought to belong to me.' The sentence is deleted in the transcript that was sent to the printer; but whether it was deleted by Burnet himself, or by the editor, is uncertain. There are other minor alterations in the same page of the transcript (p. 140).

The book referred to in the omitted passage is Wilkins's Essay Towards a Real Character And a Philosophical Language, presented to the Royal Society and published in 1668. Lloyd's 'continual assistance' is acknowledged in the 'Epistle to the Reader'.

Page 253, l. 23. He served under Turenne in four campaigns, 1652-5, latterly as Lieutenant-General. His own account of these campaigns has fortunately been preserved. It is a portion of the journal to which Burnet refers. See The Life of James the Second King of England, etc., collected out of memoirs writ of his own hand…. Published from the original Stuart manuscripts in Carlton-House, edited by James Stanier Clarke, 2 vols, 1816.

Page 254, l. 20. After the surrender at Oxford on June 24, 1646, James was given into the charge of the Earl of Northumberland and confined at St. James's. See Life, ed. J.S. Clarke, vol. i, pp. 30-1, and Clarendon, vol. iv, pp. 237, and 326-8.

Page 255, l. 3. Richard Stuart (1594-1651), 'the dean of the King's chapel, whom his majesty had recommended to his son to instruct him in all matters relating to the Church' (Clarendon, vol. iv, p. 341). See Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, vol. iii, cols. 295-8, and John Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, Pt. II, p. 48.

ll. 6-8. The autograph reads (fol. 87): 'He said that a Nun had advised him to pray every day, that if he was not in the right way that God would set him right, did make a great impression on him.' The transcript (p. 127) agrees with the print.

ll. 27-9. James definitely joined the Roman church at the beginning of 1669: see Life, ed. J.S. Clarke, vol. i, p. 440.

Page 256, l. 3. As High Admiral he defeated the Dutch at Lowestoft, 1665, and Southwold Bay, 1672. Compare Dryden's Annus Mirabilis, ll. 73-4:

Victorious York did first, with fam'd success,
To his known valour make the Dutch give place;

also his Verses to the Duchess on the Duke's victory of June 3, 1665. He ceased to be High Admiral on the passing of the Test Act, 1673.

Page 256, l. 6. Sir William Coventry (1628-86), secretary to James, 1660-7. 'He was the man of the finest parts and the best temper that belonged to the court:' see his character by Burnet, ed. Airy, vol. i, pp. 478-9.

ll. 13 ff. Compare Pepys's Diary, November 20, 1661, June 27 and July 2, 1662, June 2, 1663, July 21, 1666, &c.

INDEX.

Abbott, George, Archbishop of Canterbury Achitophel. See Shaftesbury. Aires, or Ayres, Captain. Anglesey, Arthur Annesley, first Earl of. Argyle, Archibald Campbell, Marquis of. Arminius. Army, The New Model. Arundel, Thomas Howard, Earl of: character by Clarendon; by Sir Edward Walker; his art collections. Ascham, Roger. Ashley, Lord. See Shaftesbury. Aubrey, John: description of Hobbes; of Milton; his manuscripts; quoted. Aulicus Coquinariæ.

Bacon, Sir Francis, Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans:
  character by Jonson;
    by Arthur Wilson;
    by Fuller;
    by Rawley;
  his relations with Hobbes;
  Essays quoted by Baxter;
  Advancement of Learning;
  Henry VII;
  Apophthegms.
Baker, Sir Richard.
Balfour, Sir William.
Bankes, Anne, wife of Edmund Waller.
Bate, or Bates, George: Elenchus Motuum.
Baxter, Richard:
  character of Cromwell;
  Reliquiæ Baxterianæ;
  letter to Lauderdale.
Bedford, Francis Russell, fourth Earl of.
Bee, Cornelius, bookseller.
Bendish, Bridget.
Bendish, Henry.
Bentivoglio, Cardinal Guido.
Berry, James.
Bible.
Boileau.
Bolton, Edmund: Hypercritica.
Bradshaw, John: Milton's praise of.
Brentford, Patrick Ruthven, Earl of:
  character by Clarendon.
Bristol, John Digby, first Earl of.
Bristol, second Earl of. See Digby, George.
Brooke, Sir Fulke Greville, first Baron.
Brooke, Robert Greville, second Baron.
Buckingham, George Villiers, first Duke of:
  character by Clarendon;
    by Sir Henry Wotton;
  Clarendon's early account.
Buckingham, George Villiers, second Duke of:
  character by Burnet;
    by Dryden (Zimri);
  other characters.
Buckingham, or Buckinghamshire, John Sheffield, Duke of:
  'Character of Charles II'.
Burleigh, William Cecil, Baron.
Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop of Salisbury:
  characters of Charles II;
    Clarendon;
    Lauderdale;
    Shaftesbury;
    Buckingham;
    Halifax;
    seventeenth-century divines;
    James II;
  account of Vane;
    Waller;
  Sir Philip Warwick;
    his characters;
    revision of his characters;
  History of His Own Time;
  Memoirs of Dukes of Hamilton;
  Life of Hale;
  Life of Rochester;
  relations with Lauderdale;
    with English divines.
Burton, John.
Bushell, Thomas.
Butler, Samuel: character of Shaftesbury;
  of Buckingham.
Byron, John, first Baron Byron.

Cæsar. Calamy, Edward. Calvert, Sir George, Baron Baltimore. Camden, William. Cambridge Platonists. Canterbury College. Capel, Arthur, Baron Capel: character by Clarendon, Cromwell's character of him. Carew, Thomas. Carleton, Sir Dudley, Baron Carleton, Viscount Dorchester. Carlisle, James Hay, Earl of. Carlyle, Thomas. Carnarvon, Robert Dormer, Earl of: character by Clarendon. Cavendish, George. Cecil, Robert. See Salisbury. Chamberlayne, Edward: Angliæ Nolitia. Charles I: character by Clarendon; by Sir Philip Warwick; Prince. Charles II: his character by Halifax; by Burnet; other characters; his taste in sermons. Cheynell, Francis. Chillingworth, William: character by Clarendon; his siege engine. Christ Church, Oxford. Christie, W.D. Cicero. Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of: character by Burnet; other characters of him; characters written by him, see Contents; his long study of Digby; his merits as a character writer; his conception of history; his manuscripts; the History; its authenticity; editorial alterations; the Life; View of Hobbes's Leviathan; Essays quoted; Letters quoted; other writings; his picture gallery. Clarendon, Henry Hyde, second Earl of. Clarke, Abraham. Clélie. Coke, Sir Edward. Coke, Roger: Detection of the Court and State of England. Coleridge, S.T. Cominges, Le Comte de, French ambassador. Con, Signior, papal nuncio. Connoisseur, The. Conway, Sir Edward, Viscount Conway. Cottington, Sir Francis, Baron Cottington. Cotton, Sir Robert. Cousin, Victor. Coventry, Sir Thomas, Baron Coventry: character by Clarendon. Coventry, Sir William, character by Burnet. Cowley, Abraham: 'Of My self', character by Sprat, note by Aubrey, his Essays, verses on Falkland, Latin verses. Crofts, William, Baron Crofts. Cromwell, Oliver, Lord Protector: character by Clarendon, by Sir Philip Warwick, by John Maidston, by Baxter. Cudworth, Ralph: character by Burnet. Culpeper, or Colepeper, Sir John. Cumberland, Henry Clifford, Earl of. Cyrus, Le Grand.

Davenant, Sir William. Davila, Enrico Caterino. Desborough, John. Digby, George, Baron Digby, second Earl of Bristol: character by Clarendon; others by Clarendon; description by Shaftesbury. Diogenes Laertius. Divers portraits. Dominico, Signior. Dorchester, Viscount. See Carleton. Dort, Synod of. Dryden, John: character of Shaftesbury, of Buckingham; of Halifax; Absalom and Achitophel; Annus Mirabilis; Of Dramatick Poesie; Verses to Duchess of York; dedication of King Arthur. Duke, Richard, The Review. Dunton, John, Life and Errors.

Earle, or Earles, John, Bishop of Worcester: character by Clarendon; described by Walton; letters from Clarendon; Micro-cosmographie. Eikon Basilike. Elizabeth, daughter of James I. England's Black Tribunall. Episcopius. Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ. Essex, Robert Devereux, second Earl of: Clarendon's early study. Essex, Robert Devereux, third Earl of: character by Clarendon, by Arthur Wilson. Evanson, William. Evelyn, John: Diary; letter quoted.

Fairfax, Ferdinando, second Baron.
Fairfax, Sir Thomas, third Baron:
  character by Baxter,
  Milton's sonnet;
    and Latin character;
  Clarendon's estimate,
  Warwick's estimate.
Falkland, Henry Cary, first Viscount.
Falkland, Lattice, second Viscountess.
Falkland, Lucius Gary, second Viscount:
  character by Clarendon (1647);
  later character (1668);
  his marriage;
  his death;
  his speech concerning episcopacy;
  his writings;
  quoted by Fuller.
  See also Tew.
Finch, Sir John, Baron Finch.
Firth, C.H.
Fouquet, Nicholas.
Fuller, Thomas:
  his character (anonymous);
  described by Aubrey;
  his Life;
  his character of Bacon;
    of Laud;
  his characters;
  Church-History;
  Holy State;
  Worthies of England.

Galerie des Peintures, La.
Gardiner, S.R.
Gauden, John.
Gentleman's Magazine.
Gildon, Charles.
Glencairn, William Cunningham, Earl of.
Godolphin, Sidney: character by Clarendon.
Gondomar, Spanish ambassador.
Goodwin, Thomas, President of Magdalen College, Oxford.
Goring, George, Baron Goring: character by Clarendon.
Greville, Fulke. See Brooke.
Grotius, Hugo.
Guilford, Francis North, Baron of, Lord Keeper.

Hacket, John: Scrinia Reserata. Hale, Sir Matthew, Lord Chief Justice. Hales, John, of Eton: character by Clarendon; letters on Synod of Dort; Tract concerning Schisme; Golden Remains; praise of Shakespeare. Halifax, George Savile, Marquis of: character by Burnet; by Dryden; his character of Charles II. Hall, Joseph, Bishop. Hamilton, Antoine. Hamilton, James, third Marquis and first Duke of Hamilton. Hamilton, William, second Duke of Hamilton. Hammond, Henry, chaplain to Charles I. Hampden, John: character by Clarendon; Clarendon's reference to it; its authenticity; character by Sir Philip Warwick. Hastings, Henry: character by Shaftesbury. Hawkins, Sir Thomas. Hayward, Sir John. Henry, Prince. Herbert, Sir Thomas. Hertford, William Seymour, Marquis of: character by Clarendon. Hobbes, Edmund. Hobbes, Thomas: described by Clarendon; by Aubrey; assists Bacon; Burnet's opinions. Holinshed, Raphael. Holland, Philemon. Holles, Denzil, first Baron Holles. Hopton, Ralph, first Baron Hopton. Horace. Howard, Charles, Baron Howard of Effingham, Earl of Nottingham. Howard, Leonard: Collection of Letters. Howell, James: character of Ben Jonson. Hudibras. Huntingdon, Earls of. Hutchinson, John, Colonel: character by his widow; her Memoirs. Hyde, Edward. See Clarendon.

James I:
  character by Arthur Wilson;
    by Sir Anthony Weldon;
  'the wisest foole in Christendome'.
James II:
  characters by Burnet;
  his journal;
  High Admiral.
Jermyn, Henry, Baron Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans.
Johnson, Samuel:
  quoted;
  Lives of the Poets.
Jonson, Ben:
  character by Clarendon;
    by James Howell;
  his character of Bacon,
    and description.
Jotham. See Halifax.
Juxon, William, Archbishop of Canterbury: character by Sir Philip Warwick.

Killigrew, Henry.
Killigrew, Thomas, the elder.
Kimbolton, Baron. See Manchester, Earl of.
King, James, General.
Knolles, Richard: History of The Turkes.
Knott, Edward: 'the learned Jesuit'.

La Bruyère. Lachrymæ Musarum. Lake, Sir Thomas. Laud, William, Archbishop of Canterbury: character by Clarendon; by Fuller; by Sir Philip Warwick; speech on scaffold. Lauderdale, John Maitland, Earl of: character by Clarendon; character by Burnet; his library. Lawes, Henry, musician. Leicester, Robert Sidney, Earl of. Levett, Mr., Page of Bedchamber to Charles I. Lewgar, John. Lilburne, John. Lincoln, Bishop of. See Williams, John. Livy. Lloyd, William, Bishop of Worcester: character by Burnet. Lucan. Lugar. See Lewgar.

Macaulay, Lord, Machiavelli, Maidston, John: character of Cromwell, Manchester, Edward Montagu, second Earl of, Baron Montagu of Kimbolton, Viscount Mandeville: character by Clarendon, by Warwick, by Burnet, Manchester, Henry Montagu, first Earl of, Mandeville, Viscount. See Manchester, Earl of. Mansell, Sir Robert, Marlborough, James Ley, Earl of, Martyrdom of King Charles, Maurice, Prince. Maynard, Sir John, Mercurius Academicus, Middlesex, Lionel Cranfield, Earl of, Middleton, John, Earl of Middleton, Millington, Edward, bookseller and auctioneer, Milton, John: described by Aubrey, note by Edward Phillips, notes by Jonathan Richardson, his sonnet to Fairfax, to Vane, to Henry Lawes, his Latin character of Fairfax, Eikonoklastes, Defensio Secunda, his daughters, ignored by Clarendon, Milward, Richard, Molière, Montaigne, Montgomery, Earl of. See Pembroke, fourth Earl of. Montpensier, Mlle de, More, Henry, the Cambridge Platonist: character by Burnet, More, Sir Thomas, Morley, George, Bishop of Worcester, 'My part lies therein-a',

Naunton, Sir Robert, Needham, Marchamont, Newcastle, William Cavendish, Marquis of, afterwards Duke of: character by Clarendon, character by Warwick, Life by the Duchess, his books on horsemanship, Clarendon's opinion of his military capacity, Nicholas, Sir Edward, North, Francis. See Guilford, Lord Keeper. North, Roger: character of Sir Edmund Saunders, his Lives of the Norths, North, Sir Thomas, Northampton, Spencer Compton, second Earl of: character by Clarendon, Northumberland, Algernon Percy, tenth Earl of, Nott. See Knott.

Oldmixon, John,
Olivian, Dr., 'a German',
Orrery, Roger Boyle, first Earl of,
Osborne, Francis: Traditionall Memoyres on the Raigne of King James,
Overbury, Sir Thomas,
Ovid,
Owen, John, Dean of Christ Church,

Patrick, Simon, Bishop of Chichester: character by Burnet,
'Peace begot Plenty',
'Peace with honour',
Pearson, John, Bishop of Chester,
Peck, Francis: Desiderata Curiosa,
Pemberton, Sir Francis, Lord Chief Justice,
Pembroke, Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery, fourth Earl of,
Pembroke, William Herbert, third Earl of: character by Clarendon,
Pepys, Samuel: Diary,
Percy, Sir Henry, Baron Percy of Alnwick,
Persius,
Peyton, Sir Edward: Divine Catastrophe of the House of Stuarts,
Philips, Ambrose,
Phillips, Edward:
  note on Milton, his uncle,
  Life of Milton,
  Theatrum Poetarum,
Phoenix Britannicus,
Plato,
Plutarch,
Poems on State Affairs,
Polybius,
Portland, Earl of. See Weston, Sir Richard.
Preaching, reform in,
Prynne, William,
Pym, John: character by Clarendon,

Raleigh, Sir Walter,
Rawley, William:
  character of Bacon,
  Life,
Reliquiæ Wottonianæ,
Retrospective Review,
Rich, Robert, Earl of Warwick's grandson,
Richardson, Jonathan:
  notes on Milton,
  Explanatory Notes on Paradise Lost,
Robinson, Sir Tancred,
Rochester, first Earl of. See Wilmot, Henry.
Rochester, John Wilmot, second Earl of,
Rochester, Laurence Hyde, first Earl of the Hyde family,
Rothes, John Leslie, Earl and Duke of,
Rowe, Nicholas,
Rupert, Prince: character by Clarendon,
Rushworth: Historical Collections,
Russell, Sir William, Treasurer of the Navy,
Ruthven, Patrick. See Brentford, Earl of.
Rutland, Francis Manners, sixth Earl of,

St. John, Oliver,
St. John's College, Oxford,
St. Martin's, 'the greatest cure in England',
St. Paul's Cathedral,
St. Peters in Cornhill,
Salisbury, Robert Cecil, first Earl of,
Salisbury, William Cecil, third Earl of: character by Clarendon,
Sallust,
Sanderson, Robert, Bishop of Lincoln,
Saunders, Sir Edmund, Lord Chief Justice: character by Roger North,
Savile, Sir Henry,
Savile, George. See Halifax, Marquis of.
Savile, Thomas, Viscount Savile,
Savoy Hospital,
Say and Sele, William Fiennes, Viscount:
  character by Clarendon,
    by Arthur Wilson,
Scott, Sir Walter,
Scudéry, Madeleine de
Selden, John: character by Clarendon
Seneca, Lucius Annæus
Seneca, Marcus Annæus
Session of the Poets (Restoration poem)
Sessions of the Poets, Suckling's
Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Baron Ashley, Earl of:
  character by Burnet;
    by Dryden (Achitophel);
    by Butler;
    by Duke;
  his character of Henry Hastings;
  description of Digby;
  his Autobiography
Shakespeare
Sheldon, Gilbert, Archbishop of Canterbury
Shrewsbury, Gilbert Talbot, Earl of
Smith, Edmund
Somaize, Antoine Bandeau, sieur de
Somerset, Robert Ker or Carr, Earl of
Sorel, Charles
Spelman, Sir Henry
Spenser, Edmund
Sprat, Thomas, Bishop of Rochester:
  character of Cowley;
  Life of Cowley
Stillingfleet, Edward, Bishop of Worcester: character by Burnet
Stow, John
Strada, Famiano
Strafford, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of:
  character by Clarendon;
    by Warwick;
Stuart, Richard, dean of the King's Chapel
Suckling, Sir John
Suetonius
Suffolk, Thomas Howard, Earl of
Sully, Duc de: Mémoires
Swift, Jonathan

Tacitus
Tanfield, Sir Lawrence
Tate, Nahum
Temple, Sir William
Tenison, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury: character by Burnet
Tew, seat of Lord Falkland
Theophrastus
Thuanus (Jacques de Thou)
Thucydides
Thurloe, John, Secretary of State;
State Papers
Tiberius, James I compared to;
Charles II compared to
Tillotson, John, Archbishop of Canterbury: character by Burnet
Triplet, Dr. Thomas
Tuesday Sermons of James I
Turenne, Marshal

Vane, Sir Henry, the elder
Vane, Sir Henry, the younger:
  characters by Clarendon;
  character by Baxter;
  Milton's sonnet;
  other accounts
Velleius Paterculus

Walker, Sir Edward: Historical Discourses
Walker, John: Sufferings of the Clergy
Walker, Mr., of the Temple, 'a Relation of Milton's'
Waller, Edmund:
  his character by Clarendon,
  described by Burnet,
    by Aubrey,
Walpole, Horace: Royal and Noble Authors,
Walton, Izaak,
Warwick, Mary, Countess of,
Warwick, Sir Philip:
  character of Charles I,
    Strafford,
    Laud,
    Juxon,
    Cromwell,
    Hampden,
    Fairfax,
    Clarendon,
  his characters,
  his Mémoires,
  a Straffordian,
  imprisoned,
  described by Burnet,
Warwick, Robert Rich, second Earl of:
  character by Clarendon,
    by Arthur Wilson,
  pillar of the Presbyterian party,
Wayte, Mr.,
Weldon, Sir Anthony:
  character of James I,
  Court and Character of King James,
Welwood, James: Memoirs,
Weston, Sir Richard, Earl of Portland:
  character by Clarendon,
    by Wotton,
Whitchcot, or Whichcote, Benjamin: character by Burnet,
Whitelocke: Memorials,
'White Staff',
Wilkins, John:
  character by Burnet,
  his Essay Towards a Real Character,
William of Wickham,
Williams, John, Bishop of Lincoln, Lord Keeper,
Wilmot, Henry, Baron Wilmot, Earl of Rochester: character by Clarendon,
Wilson, Arthur:
  character of James I,
    of Bacon,
    of Essex, Warwick, and Say,
  Reign of King James,
Wolsey, Cardinal,
Wood: Athenæ Oxonienses,
Worthington, John: character by Burnet,
Wotton, Sir Henry,
Wright, Dr., 'an ancient clergyman in Dorsetshire',

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