account, bade him "refresh himself after so long a journey, and he would take such care of his business, that by the time he came to Paris he should find it despatched"; and that night sent away another messenger to his ambassador, Lockhart; who, by the time Moulins came thither, had so far prevailed with the cardinal, that orders were sent to stop the troops, which were upon their march towards Nismes; and within few days after, Moulins returned with a full pardon and amnesty from the king, under the great seal of France, so fully confirmed with all circumstances, that there was never farther mention made of it, but all things passed as if there had never been any such thing. So that nobody can wonder that his memory remains still in those parts, and with those people, in great veneration.

He would never suffer himself to be denied anything he ever asked of the cardinal, alleging, "that the people would not be otherwise satisfied"; which the cardinal bore very heavily, and complained of to those with whom he would be free. One day he visited Madam Turenne, and when he took his leave of her, she, according to her custom, besought him to continue gracious to the churches. Whereupon the cardinal told her, "that he knew not how to behave himself; if he advised the king to punish and suppress their insolence, Cromwell threatened him to join with the Spaniard; and if he shewed any favour to them, at Rome they accounted him an heretic."

It was

He was not a man of blood, and totally declined Machiavel's method, which prescribes, upon any 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. 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 much contempt of his enemies. In a word, as he had all the wickednesses against which damnation is denounced, and for which hell-fire is prepared, 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 bad man.

(From the Same.)

CLARENDON'S EARLY FRIENDS

MR. SELDEN was a person whom no character can flatter, or transmit in any expressions equal to his merit and virtue. He was of so stupendous learning in all kinds and in all languages, (as may appear in his excellent and transcendent writings), that a man would have thought he had been entirely conversant amongst books, and had never spent an hour but in reading and writing ; yet his humanity, courtesy, and affability was such, that he would have been thought to have been bred in the best courts, but that his good nature, charity, and delight in doing good, and in communicating all he knew, exceeded that breeding. His style in all his writings seems harsh and sometimes obscure; which is not wholly to be imputed to the abstruse subjects of which he commonly treated, out of the paths trod by other men; but to a little undervaluing the beauty of a style, and too much propensity to the language of antiquity; but in his conversation he was the most clear discourser, and had the best faculty of making hard things easy, and presenting them to the understanding of any man that hath been known. Mr. Hyde was wont to say, that he valued himself upon nothing more than upon having had Mr. Selden's acquaintance from the time he was very young; and held it with great delight as long as they were suffered to continue together in London; and he was very much troubled always when he heard him blamed, censured, and reproached, for staying in London, and in the parliament, after they were in rebellion, and in the worst times, which his age obliged him to do; 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 hindered them if he could with his own safety, to which he was always enough indulgent. If he had some infirmities with other men, they were weighed down with wonderful and prodigious abilities and excellencies in the other scale.

Charles Cotton was a gentleman born to a competent fortune, and so qualified in his person and education, that for many years he continued the greatest ornament of the town, in the esteem of those who had been best bred. His natural parts were very great, his wit flowing in all the parts of conversation: the superstructure of learning not raised to a considerable height; but having passed some years in Cambridge, and then in France,

and conversing always with learned men, his expressions were ever proper and significant, and gave great lustre to his discourse upon any argument; so that he was thought by those who were not intimate with him, to have been much better acquainted with books than he was. He had all those qualities which in youth raise men to the reputation of being fine gentlemen; such a pleasantness and gaiety of humour, such a sweetness and gentleness of nature, and such a civility and delightfulness in conversation, that no man in the court or out of it, appeared a more accomplished person; all these extraordinary qualifications being supported by as extraordinary a clearness of courage and fearlessness of spirit, of which he gave too often manifestation. Some unhappy suits in law, and waste of his fortune in those suits, made some impression upon his mind; which being improved by domestic afflictions, and those indulgences to himself which naturally attend those afflictions, rendered his age less reverenced than his youth had been; and gave his best friends cause to have wished that he had not lived so long.

John Vaughan was then a student of the law in the Inner Temple, but at that time indulged more to the politer learning; and was in truth a man of great parts of nature, and very well adorned by arts and books, and so much cherished by Mr. Selden, that he grew to be of entire trust and friendship with him, and to that owed the best part of his reputation; for he was of so magisterial and supercilious a humour, so proud and insolent a behaviour, that all Mr. Selden's instructions, and authority, and example, could not file off that roughness of his nature, so as to make him very grateful. He looked most into those parts of the law which disposed him to least reverence to the crown, and most to popular authority; yet without inclination to any change in government; and therefore, before the beginning of the civil war, and when he clearly discerned the approaches to it in parliament (of which he was a member), he withdrew himself into the fastnesses of his own country, North Wales, where he enjoyed a secure, and as near an innocent life, as the iniquity of that time would permit; and upon the return of King Charles the Second, he appeared under the character of a man who had preserved his loyalty entire, and was esteemed accordingly by all that party.

His friend Mr. Hyde, who was then become Lord High Chancellor of England, renewed his old kindness and friendship towards him, and was desirous to gratify him all the ways he

could, and earnestly pressed him to put on his gown again, and take upon him the office of a judge; but he excused himself upon his long discontinuance (having not worn his gown, and wholly discontinued the profession from the year 1640, full twenty years), and upon his age, and expressly refused to receive any promotion ; but continued all the professions of respect and gratitude imaginable to the chancellor, till it was in his power to manifest the contrary, to his prejudice, which he did with circumstances very uncommendable. (From the Life.)

CLARENDON'S EARLY MANHOOD

UNDER this universal acquaintance and general acceptation, Mr. Hyde led for many years as cheerful and pleasant a life as any man did enjoy, as long as the kingdom took any pleasure in itself. His practice grew every day as much as he wished, and would have been much more if he had wished it, by which he not only supported his expense, greater much than men of his rank and pretences used to make, but increased his estate by some convenient purchases of land adjoining to his other; and he grew so much in love with business and practice that he gave up his whole heart to it; resolving by a course of severe study, to recover the time he had lost upon less profitable learning, and to intend nothing else but to reap all those benefits to which that profession could carry him, and to the pursuing whereof he had so many and so unusual encouragements; and towards which it was not the least that God had blessed him with an excellent wife, who perfectly resigned herself to him, and who then had brought him, before any troubles in the kingdom, three sons and a daughter, which he then and ever looked upon as his greatest blessing and consolation.

Because we shall have little cause hereafter to mention any other particulars in the calm part of his life, whilst he followed the study and practice of the law, it will not in this place appear a very impertinent digression to say that he was, in that very time when fortune seemed to smile and to intend well towards him, and often afterwards, throughout the whole course of his life, wont to say that, "when he reflected upon himself and his past actions, even from the time of his first coming to the Middle Temple, he had much more cause to be terrified upon the reflection than the

man who had viewed Rochester bridge in the morning that it was broken, and which he had galloped over in the night; that he had passed over more precipices than the other had done, for many nights and days and some years together; from which nothing but the immediate hand of God could have preserved him." For though it is very true the persons before mentioned were the only men in whose company, in those seasons of his life, he took delight, yet he frequently found himself in the conversation of worse, and, indeed, of all manner of men; and it being in the time when the war was entered into against the two crowns, and the expeditions made to, and unprosperous returns from, Cadiz and the Isle of Rhè, the town was full or soldiers, and of young gentlemen who intended to be soldiers, or as like them as they could; great license used of all kinds, in clothes, in diet, in gaming, and all kinds of expenses equally carried on by men who had fortunes of their own to support it, and by others who, having nothing of their own, cared not what they spent whilst they could find credit so that there was never an age in which, in so short a time, so many young gentlemen, who had not experience in the world, or some good tutelar angel to protect them, were insensibly and suddenly overwhelmed in that sea of wine, and women, and quarrels, and gaming, which almost overspread the whole kingdom and the nobility and gentry thereof. And when he had, by God's immediate blessing, disentangled himself from these labyrinths, (his nature and inclination disposing him rather to pass through those dissolute quarters than to make any stay in them), and was enough composed against any extravagant excursions; he was still conversant with a rank of men (how worthy soever) above his quality, and engaged in an expense above his fortune, if the extraordinary accidents of his life had not supplied him for those excesses; so that it brought no prejudice upon him, except in the censure of severe men, who thought him a person of more license than in truth he was, and who, in a short time, were very fully reconciled to him.

He had without doubt great infirmities, which, by a providential mercy, were reasonably restrained from growing into vices, at least into any that were habitual. He had ambition enough to keep him from being satisfied with his own condition, and to raise his spirit to great designs of raising himself; but not to transport him to endeavour it, by any crooked and indirect means. He was never suspected to flatter the greatest men, or in the least degree to dis