When he was vested with that high dignity, two parts of his conduct were very remarkable; he could never persuade himself that it was lawful to employ spies, or give any countenance or entertainment to such persons, who by a communication of guilt, or dissimulation of manners, wind themselves into such trusts and secrets, as enable them to make discoveries; neither could he ever suffer himself to open letters, upon a suspicion that they might contain matters of dangerous consequence, and proper for statesmen to know.  As to the first he condemned them as void of all honour, and who ought justly to be abandoned to infamy, and that no single preservation could be worth so general a wound and corruption of society, as encouraging such people would carry with it.  The last, he thought such a violation of the law of nature, that no qualification by office could justify him in the trespass, and tho’ the necessity of the times made it clear, that those advantages were not to be declined, and were necessary to be practised, yet he found means to put it off from himself[4].

June 15, 1642, he was one of the lords who signed the declaration, wherein they professed they were fully satisfied his Majesty had no intention to raise war upon his Parliament.  At the same time he subscribed to levy twenty horse for his Majesty’s service, upon which he was excepted from the Parliament’s favour, in the instructions given by the two Houses to their general the Earl of Essex.  He attended the King to Edgehill fight, where after the enemy was routed he was exposed to imminent danger, by endeavouring to save those who had thrown away their arms.  He was also with his Majesty at Oxford, and during his residence there, the King went one day to see the public library, where he was shewed, among other books, a Virgil nobly printed, and exquisitely bound.  The Lord Falkland, to divert the King, would have him make a trial of his fortune by the Sortes Virgilianae, an usual kind of divination in ages past, made by opening a Virgil.  Whereupon the King opening the book, the period which happened to come up, was that part of Dido’s imprecation against AEneas, AEneid. lib. 4. v. 615, part of which is thus translated by Mr. Dryden,

  Oppess’d with numbers in th’ unequal field. 
  His men discouraged and himself expell’d,
  Let him for succour sue from place to place,
  Torn from his subjects, and his sons embrace.

His Majesty seemed much concerned at this accident.  Lord Falkland who observed it, would likewise try his own fortune in the same manner, hoping he might fall upon some passage that had no relation to his case, and thereby divert the king’s thoughts from any impression the other might make upon him; but the place Lord Falkland opened was more suited to his destiny than the other had been to the King’s, being the following expressions of Evander, on the untimely death of his son Pallas.  AEneid. b. ii. verse 152, &c.