it; though he said 'he must make his provision very secretly, for that he might be well suspected for going to sea again without being freighted, after he was so newly returned.' Colonel Windham being advertised of this, came, together with the Lord Wilmot, to the captain's house, from whence the lord and the captain rid to a house near Lyme, where the master of the bark met them; and the Lord Wilmot being satisfied with the discourse of the man, and his wariness in foreseeing suspicions which would arise, it was resolved that on such a night, which upon consideration of the tides was agreed upon, the man should draw out his vessel from the pier, and, being at sea, should come to such a point about a mile from the town, where his ship should remain upon the beach when the water was gone, which would take it off again about break of day the next morning. There was very near that point, even in the view of it, a small inn, kept by a man who was reputed honest, to which the cavaliers of the country often resorted; and the London road passed that way, so that it was seldom without company. Into that inn the two gentlemen were to come in the beginning of the night, that they might put themselves on board. They found many passengers in the inn, and so were to be contented with an ordinary chamber, which they did not intend to sleep long in. But as soon as there appeared any light, Wilmot went out to discover the bark, of which there was no appearance. In a word, the sun arose, and nothing like a ship in view. They sent to the captain, who was as much amazed; and he sent to the town, and his servant could not find the master of the bark, which was still in the pier. ... marches were like to last for many days, and it would not be fit for the king to stay so long in that place. Thereupon he resorted to his old security of taking a woman behind him, a kinswoman of Colonel Windham, whom he carried in that manner to a place not far from Salisbury, to which Colonel Philips conducted him. In this journey he passed through the middle of a regiment of horse, and, presently after, met Desborough walking down a hill with three or four men with him, who had lodged in Salisbury the night before, all that road being full of soldiers. The next day, upon the plains, Dr Hinchman, one of the prebends of Salisbury, met the king, the Lord Wilmot and Philips then leaving him to go to the sea-coast to find a vessel, the doctor conducting the king to a place called Heale, three miles from Salisbury, belonging then to Serjeant Hyde, who was afterwards Chief-justice of the King's Bench, and then in the possession of the widow of his elder brother-a house that stood alone from neighbours, and from any highway-where coming in late in the evening, he supped with some gentlemen who accidentally were in the house, which could not well be avoided. But the next morning he went early from thence, as if he had continued his journey; and the widow, being trusted with the knowledge of her guest, sent her servants out of the way, and at an hour appointed received him again, and accommodated him in a little room, which had been made since the beginning of the troubles for the concealment of delinquents, the seat always belonging to a Malignant family. Here he lay concealed, without the knowledge of some gentlemen who lived in the house, and of others who daily resorted thither, for many days; the widow herself only attending him with such things as were necessary, and bringing him such letters as the doctor received from the Lord Wilmot and Colonel Philips. A vessel being at last provided upon the coast of Sussex, and to meet him at Stonehenge, upon the plains, three miles from Heale, whither the widow took care to direct him; and being there met, he attended him to the place, where Colonel Philips received him. He, the next day, delivered him to the Lord Wilmot, who went with him to a house in Sussex recommended by Colonel Gunter, a gentleman of that country, who had served the king in the war, who met him there, and had provided a little bark at Brighthelmstone, a small fisher-town, where he went early on board, and, by God's blessing, arrived safely in Normandy. The truth of the disappointment was this: the man meant honestly, and made all things ready for his departure; and the night he was to go out with his vessel, he had stayed in his own house, and slept two or three hours; and the time of the tide being come that it was necessary to be on board, he took out of a cup-notice thereof sent to Dr Hinchman, he sent to the king board some linen and other things, which he used to carry with him to sea. His wife had observed that he had been for some days fuller of thoughts than he used to be, and that he had been speaking with seamen who used to go with him, and that some of them had carried provisions on board the bark; of which she had asked her husband the reason, who had told her 'that he was promised freight speedily, and therefore he would make all things ready.' She was sure that there was yet no lading in the ship, and therefore when she saw her husband take all those materials with him, which was a sure sign that he meant to go to sea, and it being late in the night, she shut the door, and swore he should not go out of his house. He told her 'he must go, and was engaged to go to sea that night, for which he should be well paid.' His wife told him 'she was sure he was doing somewhat that would undo him, and she was resolved he should not go out of his house; and if he should persist in it, she would tell the neighbours, and carry him before the mayor to be examined, that the truth might be found out.' The poor man, thus mastered by the passion and violence of his wife, was forced to yield to her, that there might be no farther noise, and so went into his bed.... There was, between that and Salisbury, a very honest gentleman, Colonel Robert Philips, a younger brother of a very good family, which had always been very loyal, and he had served the king during the war. The king was resolved to trust him, and so sent the Lord Wilmot to a place from whence he might send to Mr Philips to come to him; and when he had spoken with him, Mr Philips should come to the king, and Wilmot was to stay in such a place as they two should agree. Mr Philips accordingly came to the colonel's house, which he could do without suspicion, they being nearly allied. The ways were very full of soldiers, which were sent now from the army to their quarters, and many regiments of horse and foot were assigned for the west, of which division Desborough was commander-in-chief. These Character of Oliver Cromwell. He was one of those men whom his very enemies could not condemn without commending him at the same time; for he could never have done half that mischief without great parts of courage, industry, and judgment. He must have had a wonderful understanding in the natures and humours of men, and as great a dexterity in applying them; who, from a private and obscure birth-though of a good family-without interest or estate, alliance or friendship, could raise himself to such a height, and compound and knead such opposite and contradictory tempers, humours, and interests into a consistence, that contributed to his designs, and to their own destruction; whilst himself grew insensibly powerful enough to cut off those by whom he had climbed, in the instant that they projected to demolish their own building. Without doubt, no man with more wickedness ever attempted anything, or brought to pass what he desired more wickedly, more in the face and contempt of religion and moral honesty. Yet wickedness as great as his could never have accomplished those designs without the assistance of a great spirit, 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 gracious, no ornament of want of custom. discourse, none of those talents which use to conciliate the affections of the stander-by. Yet as he grew into place and authority, his parts seemed to be raised, as if he had had concealed faculties, till he had occasion to use them; and when he was to act the part of a great man, he did it without any indecency, notwithstanding the After he was confirmed and invested Protector by the humble petition and advice, he consulted with very few upon any action of importance, nor communicated any enterprise he resolved upon with more than those who were to have principal parts in the execution of it; nor with them sooner than was absolutely necessary. What he once resolved, in which he was not rash, he would not be dissuaded from, nor endure any contradiction of his power and authority, but extorted obedience from them who were not willing to yield it. Thus he subdued a spirit that had been often troublesome to the most sovereign power, and made Westminster Hall as obedient and subservient to his commands as any of the rest of his quarters. In all other matters, which did not concern the life of his jurisdiction, he seemed to have great reverence for the law, rarely interposing between party and party. As he proceeded with this kind of indignation and haughtiness with those who were refractory, and durst contend with his greatness, so towards all who complied with his good pleasure, and courted his protection, he used great civility, generosity, and bounty. To reduce three nations, which perfectly hated him, to an entire obedience to all his dictates; to awe and govern those nations by an army that was indevoted to him, and wished his ruin, was an instance of a very prodigious address. But his greatness at home was but a shadow of the glory he had abroad. It was hard to discover which feared him most, France, Spain, or the Low Countries, where his friendship was current at the value he put upon it. As they did all sacrifice their honour and their interest to his pleasure, so there is nothing he could have demanded that either of them would have denied him. ... To conclude his character: Cromwell was not so far a man of blood as to follow Machiavel's method; which prescribes, upon a total alteration of government, as a thing absolutely necessary, to cut off all the heads of those, and extirpate their families, who are friends to the old one. It was confidently reported, that in the council of officers it was more than once proposed 'that there might be a general massacre of all the royal party, as the only expedient to secure the government,' but that Cromwell would never consent to it; it may be, out of too great a contempt of his enemies. 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 looked upon by posterity as a brave wicked man. BULSTRODE WHITELOCKE. BULSTRODE WHITELOCKE (1605-1676), an eminent lawyer, who wrote Memorials of English Affairs from the beginning of the reign of Charles I. to the Restoration, was of principles opposite to those of Lord Clarendon, though, like Selden and other moderate anti-royalists, he was averse to a civil war. Whitelocke was the legal adviser of Hampden during the prosecution of that celebrated patriot for refusing to pay ship-money. As a member of parliament, and one of the commissioners appointed to treat with the king at Oxford, he advocated pacific measures; and, being an enemy to arbitrary power both in church and state, he refused, in the Westminster Assembly for settling the form of church-government, to admit the assumed divine right of presbytery. Under Cromwell he held several high appointments; and during the government of the Protector's son Richard, acted as one of the keepers of the great seal. At the Restoration, he retired to his estate in Wiltshire, which continued to be his principal residence till his death in 1676. Whitelocke's Memorials not having been intended for publication, are almost wholly written in the form of a diary, and are to be regarded rather as a collection of historical materials than as history itself. In a posthumous volume of Essays, Ecclesiastical and Civil, he strongly advocates religious toleration. BISHOP BURNET. GILBERT BURNET, Bishop of Salisbury, was one of the most remarkable men of his age, equally active and equally eminent as an historian, He was a native a politician, and a theologian. of Edinburgh, born September 18, 1643. His father, a lawyer, was a royalist and an Episcopalian, and after the Restoration, was raised to the bench as a Scottish judge. His mother was a no less decided Presbyterian, being a sister of the famous Covenanting leader and republican, Johnston of Warriston, who was created a peer by Cromwell, and in the subsequent reign of Charles, was, by a mockery of legal forms and of justice, put to death. Young Gilbert Burnet adhered to the Episcopalian side of his house, but his divided parental allegiance in church matters probably first taught him the value of religious toleration. He was an M.A. of Aberdeen University before he was fourteen years of age, and he afterwards studied Hebrew under a learned rabbi in Holland. Entering the church, he was five years minister of Salton, in Haddingtonshire, whence he removed zealous and ambitious, Burnet wrote pamphlets in to Glasgow as professor of divinity. Always favour of reconciling the churches, remedying abuses, and vindicating the authority and constitution of the church and state in Scotland. He was offered, but refused, a bishopric; and opposing the Scottish administration of Lauderdale, he removed to London, where he obtained the appointment of preacher at the Rolls Chapel, and lecturer at St Clement's. As a preacher, Burnet was highly popular. His appearance and action were commanding, his manner was frank and open, and he was a great master of extemPoraneous eloquence. It was then customary for congregations admiring their ministers to express approbation of particular passages by a deep hum, and Burnet's hearers, it is said, used to hum so long and loud that he would, during the pause, sit down and wipe the perspiration from his forehead. The hour-glass was also used in the pulpit, and when the stated time for the sermon was exhausted, Burnet's hummers would encourage him to turn up the glass, and run off the sand once more. His reputation was raised still higher by the publication, in 1679, of the first volume of his History of the Reformation of the Church of England, of which the second volume appeared in 1681, and a supplementary volume in 1714. This able work is still the best history of the important period of which it treats. Some Passages in the Life and Death of the Earl of Rochesterthe libertine peer and poet, whom Burnet had attended on his death-bed-appeared in 1680, and added to the impression of Burnet's talents and Death and Character of Edward VI. From the History of the Reformation. piety. Such services seemed to call for church was a strong partisan, somewhat credulous, and a preferment, and Charles would have pressed a minute, garrulous describer of events, great and bishopric on the popular divine; but Burnet small. But he was emphatically an honest, declined court favour. He even went the length generous, and good-natured man. He appealed of writing a strong remonstrance to the king on to the God of truth that he had on all occasions in the errors of his government and his personal his work told the truth, and, however mistaken he vices. Charles threw the letter into the fire; but may be on some points, he is justly entitled to the when Burnet attended Lord William Russell to praise of having been a faithful chronicler. That the scaffold, and wrote an account of the noble he is a lively and interesting one, has never been sufferer's last moments, the profligate monarch disputed. His book is one of the few histories of was so incensed that he discharged Burnet from which the reader never tires. It is a gallery of his lectureship, and prohibited him from preaching pictures-some overshaded, some too bright, but at the Rolls Chapel. The divine, however, went all lifelike. It seems,' as Horace Walpole says, on writing treatises and sermons in favour of 'as if he had just come from the king's closet, toleration, and he compiled Lives of Sir Matthew or from the apartments of the men whom he Hale and Bishop Bedell (1682 and 1685). He describes, and was telling his readers, in plain, next travelled in Switzerland and Italy, of which honest terms, what he had seen and heard.' The he wrote a narrative; and settling at the Hague diaries of Evelyn and Pepys may be considered as in 1686, became one of the counsellors and adher-supplements to Burnet, completing part of the ents of the party of William of Orange. In the period over which he ranges. revolution of 1688, he was one of the chief actors, accompanying William to England in the capacity of chaplain. He was rewarded with the bishopric of Salisbury. As a prelate, Burnet was distinguished for liberality and devoted attention to his duties. He was never indifferent, never idle, and besides discharging the duties of his see, and originating various schemes, he wrote his Exposito go to Westminster, but ordered their first meeting tion of the Thirty-nine Articles, which is still a standard theological work. He died in 1715. Burnet left for publication the work by which he is now most popularly known, the History of his Own Time, giving an outline of the events of the Civil War and Commonwealth, and a full narrative of the succeeding period down to 1713. As he had, under various circumstances, personally known the conspicuous characters of a whole century, and penetrated most of the state secrets of a period nearly as long, he was able to relate events in his memoirs with a fulness and authority not inferior to Clarendon, and in a more easy, idiomatic style, though allowance must also in his case be made for the influence, unconsciously, of political and personal prejudices. Foreseeing that the freedom with which he delivered his opinions and strictures would give offence in many quarters, Burnet left an injunction in his will that his History should not be published till six years after his death, so that it did not make its appearance till 1723, and even then some passages-now restored-were omitted by his sons. Its publication, as might have been expected, was a signal for numerous attacks on the reputation of the author, whose candour and veracity were loudly impeached. All the Tory and Jacobite pens of the age were pointed against the History. Swift, Dartmouth, Lansdowne, and numerous others, proclaimed it to be grossly partial and inaccurate. Pope and Arbuthnot ridiculed the egotistic style of Burnet, but Pope asserted that the humorous Memoirs of P. P., Clerk of this Parish, were written during Burnet's lifetime, though not published before 1727. Hume and later historians continued the depreciatory attacks, and, indeed, they cannot yet be said to have ceased. Whoever writes of the period included in Burnet's History, or of its leading public characters, must consult that work; and it presents many points for assault on the part of those who differ from the theological and political views so broadly and complacently advanced by the author. Burnet cular. In the beginning of January this year [1553], he was seized with a deep cough, and all medicines that were used did rather increase than lessen it. He was so ill when the parliament met, that he was not able and the sermon to be at Whitehall. In the time of his sickness, Bishop Ridley preached before him, and took occasion to run out much on works of charity, and the obligation that lay on men of high condition to be eminent in good works. This touched the king to the quick; so that, presently after the sermon, he sent for the bishop. And, after he had commanded him to sit down by him, and be covered, he resumed most of the heads of the sermon, and said he looked upon himself as chiefly touched by it. He desired him, as he had already given him the exhortation in general, so to direct him to do his duty in that partiso young a prince, burst forth in tears, expressing The bishop, astonished at this tenderness in how much he was overjoyed to see such inclinations in him; but told him he must take time to think on it, and craved leave to consult with the lord-mayor and court of aldermen. So the king writ by him to them to consult speedily how the poor should be relieved. They considered there were three sorts of poor: such as were so by natural infirmity or folly, as impotent persons, and madmen or idiots; such as were so by accident, as sick or maimed persons; and such as, by their idleness, did cast themselves into poverty. So the king ordered the Greyfriars' church, near Newgate, with the revenues belonging to it, to be field, to be an hospital; and gave his own house of a house for orphans; St Bartholomew's, near SmithBridewell to be a place of correction and work for such as were wilfully idle. He also confirmed and enlarged the grant for the hospital of St Thomas in Southwark, which he had erected and endowed in August last. And when he set his hand to these foundations, which was not done before the 5th of June this year, he thanked God that had prolonged his life till he had finished that design. So he was the first founder of those houses, which, by many great additions since that time, have risen to be amongst the noblest in Europe.... umberland, who had done but half his work, except Death thus hastening on him, the Duke of Northhe had got the king's sisters in his hands, got the council to write to them in the king's name, inviting them to come and keep him company in his sickness. But as they were on the way, on the 6th of July, his spirits and body were so sunk, that he found death approaching; and so he composed himself to die in a most devout manner. His whole exercise was in short prayers and ejaculations. The last that he was heard to use was in these words: 'Lord God, deliver me out of this miserable and wretched life, and take me among thy chosen; howbeit, not my will, but thine be done; Lord, I commit my spirit to thee. O Lord, thou knowest how happy it were for me to be with thee; yet, for thy chosen's sake, send me life and health, that I may truly serve thee. O my Lord God, bless my people, and save thine inheritance. O Lord God, save thy chosen people of England; O Lord God, defend this realm from papistry, and maintain thy true religion, that I and my people may praise thy holy name, for Jesus Christ his sake.' Seeing some about him, he seemed troubled that they were so near, and had heard him; but with a pleasant countenance, he said he had been praying to God. And soon after, the pangs of death coming upon him, he said to Sir Henry Sidney, who was holding him in his arms: 'I am faint; Lord, have mercy on me, and receive my spirit;' and so he breathed out his innocent soul. Thus died King Edward VI. that incomparable young prince. He was then in the sixteenth year of his age, and was counted the wonder of that time. He was not only learned in the tongues and other liberal sciences, but knew well the state of his kingdom. He kept a book, in which he writ the characters that were given him of all the chief men of the nation, all the judges, lord-lieutenants, and justices of the peace over England: in it he had marked down their way of living and their zeal for religion. He had studied the matter of the mint, with the exchange and value of money; so that he understood it well, as appears by his journal. He also understood fortification, and designed well. He knew all the harbours and ports both of his own dominions and of France and Scotland; and how much water they had, and what was the way of coming into them. He had acquired great knowledge of foreign affairs; so that he talked with the ambassadors about them in such a manner, that they filled all the world with the highest opinion of him that was possible; which appears in most of the histories of that age. He had great quickness of apprehension; and, being mistrustful of his memory, used to take notes of almost everything he heard; he writ these first in Greek characters, that those about him might not understand them; and afterwards writ them out in his journal. He was tender and compassionate in a high measure; so that he was much against taking away the lives of heretics; and therefore said to Cranmer, when he persuaded him to sign the warrant for the burning of Joan of Kent, that he was not willing to do it, because he thought that was to send her quick to hell. He expressed great tenderness to the miseries of the poor in his sickness, as hath been already shewn. He took particular care of the suits of all poor persons; and gave Dr Cox special charge to see that their petitions were speedily answered, and used oft to consult with him how to get their matters set forward. He was an exact keeper of his word; and therefore, as appears by his journal, was most careful to pay his debts, and to keep his credit, knowing that to be the chief nerve of government; since a prince that breaks his faith, and loses his credit, has thrown up that which he can never recover, and made himself liable to perpetual distrusts and extreme contempt. Robert to be bred in Scotland, who was accounted a saint from his youth up. He had great quickness of parts, a lively apprehension, with a charming vivacity of thought and expression. He had the greatest command of the purest Latin that ever I knew in any man. He was a master both of Greek and Hebrew, and of the whole compass of theological learning, chiefly in the study of the Scriptures. But that which excelled all the rest was, he was possessed with the highest and noblest sense of divine things that I ever saw in any man. He had no regard to his person, unless it was to mortify it by a constant low diet, that was like a perpetual fast. He had a contempt both of wealth and reputation. He seemed to have the lowest thoughts of himself possible, and to desire that all other persons should think as meanly of him as he did himself. He bore all sorts of ill-usage and reproach like a man that took pleasure in it. He had so subdued the natural heat of his temper, that in a great variety of accidents, and in a course of twenty-two years' intimate conversation with him, I never observed the least sign of passion but upon one single occasion. He brought himself into so composed a gravity, that I never saw him laugh, and but seldom smile. And he kept himself in such a constant recollection, that I do not remember that ever I heard him say one idle word. There was a visible tendency in all he said to raise his own mind, and those he conversed with, to serious reflections. He seemed to be in a perpetual meditation. And, though the whole course of his life was strict and ascetical, yet he had nothing of the sourness of temper that generally possesses men of that sort. He was the freest from superstition, of censuring others, or of imposing his own methods on them, possible; so that he did not so much as recommend them to others. He said there was a diversity of tempers, and every man was to watch over his own, and to turn it in the best manner he could. His thoughts were lively, oft out of the way, and surprising, yet just and genuine. And he had laid together in his memory the greatest treasure of the best and wisest of all the ancient sayings of the heathens as well as Christians, that I have ever known any man master of; and he used them in the aptest manner possible. He had been bred up with the greatest aversion imaginable to the whole frame of the Church of England. From Scotland, his father sent him to travel. He spent some years in France, and spoke that language like one born there. He came afterwards and settled in Scotland, and had Presbyterian ordination; but he quickly broke through the prejudices of his education. His preaching had a sublimity both of thought and expression in it. The grace and gravity of his pronunciation was such, that few heard him without a very sensible emotion: I am sure I never did. His style was rather too fine; but there was a majesty and beauty in it that left so deep an impression, that I cannot yet forget the sermons I heard him preach thirty years ago. And yet with this he seemed to look on himself as so ordinary a preacher, that while he had a cure, he was ready to employ all others. And when he was a bishop, he choose to preach to small auditories, and would never give notice beforehand: he had, indeed, a very low voice, and so could not be heard by a great crowd. ... Upon his coming to me [in London], I was amazed to see him, at above seventy, look so fresh and well, that age seemed as it were to stand still with him. His hair was still black, and all his motions were lively. He had the same quickness of thought Character of Archbishop Leighton-Account of his Death. and strength of memory, but, above all, the same heat From Burnet's History of his Own Time. and life of devotion, that I had ever seen in him. When I took notice to him upon my first seeing him how well he looked, he told me he was very near his Arch-end, for all that, and his work and journey both were now almost done. This at that time made no great impression on me. He was the next day taken with an oppression, and as it seemed with a cold and with stitches, which was indeed a pleurisy. He was the son of Dr Leighton, who had in bishop Laud's time writ Zion's Plea against the Prelates, for which he was condemned in the Star-chamber to have his ears cut and his nose slit. He was a man of a violent and ungoverned heat. He sent his eldest son The next day Leighton sunk so that both speech and sense went away of a sudden: and he continued panting about twelve hours, and then died without pangs or convulsions. I was by him all the while. Thus I lost him who had been for so many years the chief guide of my whole life. He had lived ten years in Sussex, in great privacy, dividing his time wholly between study and retirement and the doing of good; for in the parish where he lived, and in the parishes round about, he was always employed in preaching and in reading prayers. He distributed all he had in charities, choosing rather to have it go through other people's hands than his own; for I was his almoner in London. He had gathered a well-chosen library of curious as well as useful books, which he left to the diocese of Dunblane for the use of the clergy there, that country being ill provided with books. He lamented oft to me the stupidity that he observed among the commons of England, who seemed to be much more insensible in the matters of religion than the commons of Scotland were. He retained still a peculiar inclination to Scotland; and if he had seen any prospect of doing good there, he would have gone and lived and died among them. . . . There were two remarkable circumstances in his death. He used often to say, that if he were to choose a place to die in, it should be an inn; it looking like a pilgrim's going home, to whom this world was all as an inn, and who was weary of the noise and confusion in it. He added, that the officious tenderness and care of friends was an entanglement to a dying man; and that the unconcerned attendance of those that could be procured in such a place would give less disturbance. And he obtained what he desired, for he died at the Bell Inn in Warwick Lane. Another circumstance was, that while he was bishop in Scotland, he took what his tenants were pleased to pay him. So that there was a great arrear due, which was raised slowly by one whom he left in trust with his affairs there. And the last payment that he could expect from thence was returned up to him about six weeks before his death. So that his provision and journey failed both at once. Character of Charles II.—From the same. Thus lived and died King Charles II. 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 splendour that became the heir of so great a crown. After that, he passed through eighteen years of great inequalities; unhappy in the war, in the loss of his father, and of the crown of England. Scotland did not only receive him, though upon terms hard of digestion, but made an attempt upon England for him, though 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 household 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, Cologne, or Brussels, he never seemed to lay anything to heart. He pursued all his diversions and irregular pleasures in a free career, 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 expense. 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 virtues 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 anything that gave him much trouble, or put him under any constraint. And though he desired to become absolute, and to overturn both our religion and our laws, yet he would neither run the risk, 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 itself, yet he never forgave anything 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 extravagances 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 topics. 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 entered 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 persons left about him: which drew a severe jest from Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. He said he wondered 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 hearkened to all his often-repeated stories, and |