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 Memoires 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.