had been most grievous to the state. He was so rigid an observer of established laws and rules, that he could not endure a breach or deviation from them; and thought no mischief so intolerable, as the presumption of ministers of state to break positive rules for reasons of state, or judges to transgress known laws upon the plea of conveniency or necessity. This made him so severe against the earl of Strafford and the lord Finch, contrary to his natural gentleness and temper. He likewise concurred in the first bill to take away the votes of bishops in the house of lords. This gave occasion to some to believe that he was no friend to the church, and the established government of it; it also caused many in the house of commons to imagine and hope that he might be brought to a further compliance with their designs. Indeed the great opinion he had of the uprightness and integrity of those persons who appeared most active against the court, kept him longer from suspecting any design against the peace of the kingdom; and though he differed from them commonly in conclusions, he believed their purposes were honest. When better informed what was law, and discerning in them a desire to controul that law by a vote of one or both houses, no man more opposed those attempts, and gave the adverse party more trouble, by reason and argumentation. About six months after passing the above-mentioned bill for taking away the bishops' votes, when the same argument *came again into debate, he changed his opinion, and gave the house all the opposition he could, insomuch that he was by degrees looked upon as an advocate for the court; to which he contributed so little, that he declined those addresses, and even those invitations which he was obliged almost by civility to entertain. He was so jealous of the least imagination of his inclining to preferment, that he affected even a moroseness to the court and to the courtiers, and left nothing undone which might prevent and divert the king's or queen's favour towards him, but the deserving it. When the king sent for him once or twice to speak to him, and to give him thanks for his excellent comportment in those councils which his majesty termed doing him şervice, his answers were more negligent, and less satisfactory, than might be expected; as if he cared only that his actions should be just, not that they should be acceptable: and he took more pains, and more forced his nature to actions unagreeable and unpleasant to it, that he might not be thought to incline to the court, than most men have done to procure an office there: not that he was in truth averse from receiving public employment, for he had a great devotion to the king's person, and had before used some small endeavour to be recommended to him for a foreign negotiation, and had once a desire to be sent ambassador into France; but he abhorred an imagination or doubt should sink into the thoughts of any man, that in the discharge of his trust and duty in parliament he had any bias to the court, or that the king himself should apprehend that he looked for a reward for being honest. For this reason, when he heard it first whispered, that the king had a purpose to make him a privy-counsellor, for which there was in the beginning no other ground but because he was known to be well qualified, he resolved to decline it, and at last suffered himself to be over-ruled by the advice and persuasion of his friends to submit to it. Afterwards, when he found that the king intended to make him secretary of state, he was positive to refuse it, declaring to his friends that he was most unfit for it, and that he must either do that which would be great disquiet to his own nature, or leave that undone which was most necessary to be done by one that was honoured with that place; for the most just and honest men did, every day, that which he could not give himself leave to do. He was so exact and strict an observer of justice and truth, that he believed those necessary condescensions and applications to the weakness of other men, and those arts and insinuations which are necessary for discoveries and prevention of ill, would be in him a declension from his own rules of life, though he acknowledged them fit, and absolutely necessary to be practised in those employments. However, he was at last prevailed upon to submit to the king's command, and became his secretary: but two things he could never bring himself to whilst he continued in that office (which was to his death), for which he was contented to be reproached, as for omissions in a most necessary part of his place. The one, employing of spies, or giving any countenance or entertainment to them; not such emissaries, as with danger would venture to view the enemy's camp, and bring intelligence of their number, or quartering, or any particulars that such an observation can comprehend; but those who, by communication of guilt, or dissimulation of manners, wind themselves into such trusts and secrets, as enable them to make discoveries. The other, the liberty of opening letters, upon a suspicion that they might contain matter of dangerous consequence. For the first, he would say such instruments must be void of all ingenuity and common honesty, before they could be of use; and afterwards they could never be fit to be credited: and that no single preservation could be worth so general a wound and corruption of human society, as the cherishing such persons 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 though he was convinced by the necessity and iniquity of the time, that those advantages of information were not to be declined, and were necessarily to be practised, he found means to put it off from himself, whilst he confessed he needed excuse and pardon for the omission. In all other particulars he filled his place with great sufficiency, being well versed in languages, and with the utmost integrity, being above corruption of any kind.

He was one of the lords, who, June 5, 1642, signed a declaration, wherein they professed they were fully persuaded that his majesty had no intention to raise war upon his parliament. About the same time he subscribed to levy twenty horse for his majesty's service. Upon which, and other accounts, he was excepted from the parliament's favour in the instructions given by the two houses to their general the earl of Essex. Whilst he was with the king at Oxford, his majesty 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 his majesty make a trial of his fortune by the Sortes Virgilianæ, an usual kind of divination in ages past, made by opening a Virgil. The king opening the book, the passage which happened to come up, was that part of Dido's imprecation against Æneas, iv. 615, &c. which is thus translated by Dryden :

Oppressed with numbers in the unequal field,
His men discouraged, and himself expell'd;
Let him for succour sue from place to place,
Torn from his subjects and his son's embrace, &c.

King Charles seeming concerned at this accident, the lord Falkland, who observed it, would likewise try his own fortune in the same manner; hoping he might fall upon some passage that could have 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 stumbled upon was yet more suited to his destiny, than the other had been to the king's; being the following expressions of Evander, upon the untimely death of his son Pallas, Æn. xi. 152.

O Pallas! thou hast failed thy plighted word,
To fight with caution, not to tempt the sword:
I warn'd thee, but in vain; for well I knew
What perils youthful ardour would pursue;
That boiling blood would carry thee too far;
Young, as thou wert, in dangers, raw to war.
O curst essay of arms, disastrous doom,
Prelude of bloody fields, and fights to come!

From the beginning of the civil war his natural cheerfulness and vivacity grew clouded, and a kind of sadness and dejection of spirit stole upon him, which he had never been used to: yet being among those who believed that one battle would end all differences, and that there would be so great a victory on one side, that the other would be compelled to submit to any conditions from the victor (which supposition and conclusion generally sunk into the minds of most men, and prevented the looking after many advantages that might then have been laid hold of), he resisted those indispositions, "et in luctu bellum inter remedia erat." But after the resolution of the two houses, not to admit any treaty for peace, those indispositions, which had before touched him, grew into a perfect habit of uncheerfulness; and he, who had been so exactly easy and affable to all men, became on a sudden less communicable, sad, pale, and exceedingly affected with the spleen. In his clothes and habit, which he had minded before always with more neatness and industry and expence than is usual to so great a soul, he was now not only incurious, but too negligent; and in his reception of suitors, and the necessary or casual addresses to his place, so quick and sharp, and severe, that there wanted not some men (strangers to his nature and disposition) who believed him proud and imperious. When there was any overture or hope of peace, he would be more erect and vigorous, and exceedingly solicitous to press any thing which he thought might promote it: and sitting among his friends, often, after a deep silence and frequent sighs, would, with

a

shrill and sad accent, repeat the word Peace, Peace

and would passionately profess, that the very agony of the war, and the view of the calamities and desolation the kingdom did and must endure, took his sleep from him, and would shortly break his heart. This made some think, or - pretend to think, that he was so much enamoured of peace, that he would have been glad the king should have bought it at any price; which was a most unreasonable calumny: yet it made some impression on him, or at least he used it for an excuse of the daringness of his spirit; for at the siege of Gloucester, when his friend passionately reprehended him for exposing his person unnecessarily to danger (for he delighted to visit the trenches and nearest approaches, and to discover what the enemy did) as being so much beside the duty of his place, that it might be understood rather to be against it, he would say merrily, "That his office could not take away the privilege of his age; and that a secretary in war might be present at the greatest secret of danger:" but withal alleged seriously, "That it concerned him to be more active in enterprises of hazard than other men, that all might see that his impatience for peace proceeded not from pusillanimity, or fear to adventure his own person." In the morning before the first battle of Newbury *, as always upon action, he was very cheerful; and putting himself into the first rank of the lord Byron's regiment, advanced upon the enemy, who had lined the hedges on both sides with musqueteers; from whence he was shot with a musquet in the lower part of the belly, and in the instant falling from his horse, his body was not found till the next morning. Thus fell that incomparable young man, Sept. 20, 1643, in the 34th year of his age, having so much dispatched the true business of life, that the eldest rarely attain to that immense Anowledge, and the youngest enter not into the world with more innocency.

His contemporaries, particularly lord Clarendon, from whom, and in whose words, most of the preceding account is given, assure us, he was a man of prodigious parts, both natural and acquired, of a wit so sharp, and a nature so sincere, that nothing could be more lovely; of great in