and instruction; yet he had so subtle a way of interrogating, and, under the notion of doubts, insinuating his objections, that he infused his own opinions into those from whom he pretended to learn and receive them. And even with them who were able to preserve themselves from his infusions, and discerned those opinions to be fixed in him, with which they could not comply, he always left the character of an ingenious and conscientious person. He was indeed a very wise man, and of great parts, and possessed with the most absolute spirit of popularity, and the most absolute faculties to govern the people, of any man I ever knew. For the first year of the parliament he seemed rather to moderate and soften the violent and distempered humours than to inflame them. But wise and dispassioned men plainly discerned, that that moderation proceeded from prudence and observation that the season was not ripe, rather than that he approved of the moderation; and that he begot many opinions and motions, the education whereof he committed to other men; so far disguising his own designs, that he seemed seldom to wish more than was concluded; and in many gross conclusions, which would hereafter contribute to designs not yet set on foot, when he found them sufficiently backed by majority of voices, he would withdraw himself before the question that he might seem not to consent to so much visible unreasonableness; which produced as great a doubt in some, as it did approbation in others, of his integrity. What combination soever had been originally with the Scots for the invasion of

England, and what farther was entered into afterwards in favour of them, and to advance any alteration of the government in parliament, no man doubts was at least with the privity of this gentleman.

After he was among those members accused by the king of high treason, he was much altered; his nature and carriage seeming much fiercer than it did before. And, without question, when he first drew his sword, he threw away the scabbard; for he passionately opposed the overture made by the king for a treaty from Nottingham, and as eminently all expedients that might have produced any accommodations in this that was at Oxford; and was principally relied on, to prevent any infusions which might be made unto the earl of Essex towards peace, or to render them ineffectual, if they were made; and was indeed much more relied on by that party than the general himself. In the first entrance into the troubles, he undertook the command of a regiment of foot, and performed the duty of a colonel, upon all occasions, most punctually. He was very temperate in diet, and a supreme governor over all his passions and affections, and had thereby a great power over other men's. He was of an industry and vigilance not to be tired out or wearied by the most laborious; and of parts not to be imposed upon by the most subtle or sharp; and of a personal courage equal to his best parts; so that he was an enemy not to be wished whenever he might have been made a friend; and as much to be apprehended where he was so, as any man could deserve to be. And

therefore his death was no less pleasing to the one party, than it was condoled in the other. In a word, what was said of Cinna might well be applied to him: "He had a head to contrive, and a tongue to persuade, and a hand to execute any mischief." His death therefore seemed to be a great deliverance to the nation.

CLARENDON.

SIR HARRY VANE, THE YOUNGER. SIR HARRY VANE was a man of great natural parts, and of a very profound dissimulation, of a quick conception, and very ready, sharp, and weighty expression. He had an unusual aspect, which, though it might naturally proceed both from his father and mother, neither of which were beautiful persons, yet made men think there was something in him of extraordinary; and his whole life made good that imagination. Within a very short time after he returned from his studies in Magdalen College in Oxford, where, though he was under the care of a very worthy tutor, he lived not with great exactness, he spent some little time in France, and more in Geneva; and, after his return to England, contracted a full prejudice and bitterness against the church, both against the form of the government, and the liturgy; which was generally in great reverence, even with many of those who were not friends to the other. In this giddiness, which then much displeased, or seemed to displease, his father, who still appeared highly conformable, and ex

ceeding sharp against those who were not, he transported himself into New England, a colony within few years planted by a mixture of all religions, which disposed the professors to dislike the government of the church; who were qualified by the king's charter to choose their own government and governors, under the obligation, "that every man should take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy;" which all the first planters did, when they received their charter, before they transported themselves from hence; nor was there in many years the least scruple amongst them of complying with those obligations; so far men were, in the infancy of their schism, from refusing to take lawful oaths. He was no sooner landed there but his parts made him quickly taken notice of, and very probably his quality, being the eldest son of a privy counsellor, might give him some advantage; insomuch that, when the next season came for the election of their magistrates, he was chosen their governor; in which place he had so ill fortune (his working and unquiet fancy raising and infusing a thousand scruples of conscience, which they had not brought over with them nor heard of before), that he, unsatisfied with them, and they with him, transported himself into England, having sowed such seeds of dissension there, as grew up too prosperously, and miserably divided the poor colony into several factions and divisions and persecutions of each other, which still continue to the great prejudice of that plantation; insomuch as some of them, upon the ground of

the first expedition, liberty of conscience, have withdrawn themselves from their jurisdiction, and obtained other charters from the king, by which, in other forms of government, they have enlarged their plantation within new limits adjacent to the other.

He was no sooner returned into England than he seemed to be much reformed from his extravagancies, and, with his father's approbation and direction, married a lady of good family; and by his father's credit with the earl of Northumberland, who was high admiral of England, was joined presently and jointly with Sir William Russel in the office of treasurer of the navy (a place of great trust and profit), which he equally shared with the other, and seemed a man well satisfied and composed to the government. When his father received the disobligation from the Lord Strafford, by his being created baron of Raby, the house and land of Vane (which title he had promised himself, but it was unluckily cast upon the earl, purely out of contempt of Vane), they sucked in all the thoughts of revenge imaginable; and from thence the son betook himself to the friendship of Mr. Pym, and all the other discontented or seditious persons, and contributed all that intelligence (which will hereafter be mentioned, as he himself will often be) that designed the ruin of the earl, and which grafted him in the entire confidence of those who promoted the same; so that nothing was concealed from him, though it is believed that he communicated his own thoughts to very few.