Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 391 pages of information about Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles.

Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 391 pages of information about Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles.
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.

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Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.