to the blocke, wher it was sever’d from his body at a blow; many of the standers by, who had not bene over charitable to him in his life, beinge much affected with the courage and Christianity of his death.  Thus fell the greatest subjecte in power (and little inferiour to any in fortune) that was at that tyme in ether of the three Kingdomes; who could well remember the tyme when he ledd those people, who then pursued him to his grave.  He was a man of greate partes and extraordinary indowments of nature, not unadorned with some addicion of Arte and learninge, though that agayne was more improoved and illustrated by the other, for he had a readynesse of conception, and sharpnesse of expressyon, which made his learninge thought more, then in truth it was.  His first inclinations and addresses to the Courte, were only to establish his Greatnesse in the Country, wher he apprehended some Actes of power from the[1] L’d Savill, who had bene his ryvall alwayes ther, and of late had strenghtened himselfe by beinge made a Privy Counsellour, and Officer at Courte, but his first attempts were so prosperous that he contented not himselfe with beinge secure from his power in the Country, but rested not till he had bereaved him of all power and place in Courte, and so sent him downe a most abject disconsolate old man to his Country, wher he was to have the superintendency over him too, by getting himselfe at that tyme made L’d President of the North.  These successes, applyed to a nature too elate and arrogant of it selfe, and a quicker progresse into the greatest imployments and trust, made him more transported with disdayne of other men, and more contemninge the formes of businesse, then happily he would have bene, if he had mett with some interruptions in the beginning, and had passed in a more leasurely gradation to the office of a Statesman.  He was no doubte of greate observation, and a piercinge judgement both into thinges and persons, but his too good skill in persons made him judge the worse of thinges, for it was his misfortune to be of a tyme, wherin very few wise men were aequally imployed with him, and scarce any (but the L’d Coventry, whose trust was more confined) whose facultyes and abilityes were aequall to his, so that upon the matter he wholy relyed upon himselfe, and decerninge many defects in most men, he too much neglected what they sayd or did.  Of all his passyons his pryde was most praedominant, which a moderate exercise of ill fortune might have corrected and reformed, and which was by the hande of heaven strangely punished, by bringinge his destruction upon him, by two thinges, that he most despised, the people, and S’r Harry Vane; In a worde, the Epitaph which Plutarch recordes, that Silla wrote for himselfe, may not be unfitly applyed to him; That no man did ever passe him, ether in doinge good to his frends, or in doinge mischieve to his enimyes, for his Actes of both kindes were most exemplar and notorious.

[Footnote 1:  ‘old’ inserted in another hand before ’L’d’.]