former would not join in any measure, which might be deemed offensive or disrespectful towards the latter. Certainly not as equally plausible and warranted, but as not impossible in itself, or inconsistent with the aforesaid conjecture, would it be extravagant to fancy that a somewhat similar notion to that of O'Neile's with regard to Ashburnham's respect for the chancellor might have restrained sir George and Pepys from speaking so freely of the discarded minister, until they were left alone. We are positively told, and on the best authority, that no one could at that time enter Clarendon house unobserved; and that of whatever was passing, little was unknown to the inquisitive and communicative clerk of the Acts, the readers of his Diary have reason to rejoice. Now according to lord Clarendon's particular friend Evelyn, Ashburnham had dined at his lordship's table on the 28th of August, five days previous to that, on which according to Pepys, Ashburnham was dining with lord Clarendon's old crony sir G. Carteret. Light as air as these trifles may be, and wholly inadequate to bear out the assumption of social intercourse between two characters so dissimilar as Clarendon and Ashburnham, they not uselessly reflect back some particles of that powerful light cast on them by the following well attested fact. Inasmuch as they collaterally strengthen the reasonable conclusion, that this, however the only instance, which has come to our knowledge, must be but one of many others, that we know not of. Evelyn's Diary, "August 27, 1667. "Visited the lord chancellor, to whom his ma"jesty had sent for the seales a few days before. "I found him in his bedchamber very sad." "I dined with my late lord chancellor, where "also dined Mr. Ashburnham and Mr. W. Legge "of the bedchamber. His lordship pretty well "in heart; though now many of his friends and ".sycophants abandoned him.” At such a moment it was not likely that his lordship should have invited, or admitted, guests, whom he was not in the habit of familiarly entertaining; or in whose presence he could not safely, as freely, give loose to the sorrows of the statesman and of the patriot, aggravated by the losses, which the husband and the friend had recently sustained by the deaths of the countess of Clarendon and the earl of Southampton. The result of these considerations is an alternative much to be deprecated. Either on the 28th of August 1667 the dissembling host must have had the secret satisfaction of knowing that he had already devoted to endless infamy (ктημа εç aɛ) his unsuspecting guest: or else, when subsequently blest "with grace and opportunity to make full "reflections upon his actions, and observations on what he had seen others do, and suffer," the pious, charitable, forgiving christian must have deliberately supplied, and impartially too, all succeeding historians,-whether most anxious to mark a generous abhorrence for traitors, or a liberal scorn for creatures of a court,-with an apt, ready, and familiar illustration in the name of Ashburnham. 66 6 Life, vol. iii. p. 458-9. "He was wont to say, that of the infinite blessings which ""God had vouchsafed to confer upon him almost from his "cradle,' amongst which he delighted in the reckoning up many signal instances, he esteemed himself so happy in none as in his three acquiescences,' which he called his ""three vacations and retreats he had in his life enjoyed from ""business of trouble and vexation;' and in every of which God "had given him grace and opportunity to make full reflections upon his actions, and his observations upon what he had done himself, and what he had seen others do and suffer; to repair "the breaches in his own mind, and to fortify himself with new "resolutions against future encounters, in an entire resignation "of all his thoughts and purposes into the disposal of God "Almighty, and in a firm confidence of his protection and de"liverance in all the difficulties he should be obliged to contend "with; towards the obtaining whereof, he renewed those vows " " and promises of integrity and hearty endeavour to perform his 66 duty, which are the only means to procure the continuance of "that protection and deliverance. "The first of these recesses or acquiescences was, his remain❝ing and residing in Jersey, when the prince of Wales, his now majesty, first went into France upon the command of the queen his mother, contrary, as to the time, to the opinion of "the council the king his father had directed him to govern "himself by, and, as they conceived, contrary to his majesty's own judgment, the knowing whereof they only waited for; and "his stay there, during that time that his highness first remained "at Paris and St. Germain's, until his expedition afterwards to "the fleet and in the Downs. His second was, when he was " sent by his majesty as his ambassador, together with the lord "Cottington, into Spain; in which two full years were spent 66 before he waited upon the king again. And the third was his "last recess, by the disgrace he underwent, and by the act of "banishment. In which three acquiescences, he had learned more, knew himself and other men much better, and served "God and his country with more devotion, and he hoped more effectually, than in all the other more active part of his life." 66 |