omission no bloud could expiate, but that of the greatest victime ever sacrificed sincé Christ in so ignoble a way.

4. He held his thoughts so intent upon play and pleasure, that, to avoyd all interruption likely to impede any part of the felicity he had possessed his imagination with from the union of these crowns, and to fit an example for his neighbours initation, whom he desired to bring into the like resolution, he cast himselfe, as it were, blind-fold into a peace with Spaine, farre more destructive to England than a warre: For it hath not only found that prince an opportunity to recover his strength, (much abated by the queens most happy successes at sea,) but gave him a faire advantage to establish himselfe in the kingdome of Portugall, and quiet the distempers of his owne people, that were, ever since the expulsion of the Moors, (to whom a major part of the subjects, together with their language, is undoubtedly allied,) much perplexed at the cruelty of the inquisition, and so upon

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all opportunities ready to call them back from the Barbary shore: Which could not have been so happily accomplished, but during so still a peace as the new reconciliation of the French king with the pope, and pusillanimous temper of James did at that present afford him, and without which it had not been uneasy for a farre weaker neighbour to have tormented him in the bowels of his own estate, by the least fo mentation they could have used.

5. And as this peace was of infinite con sequence to the Spaniard, so he spared for no cost to procure it: And, to prevent the inserting any article that might obstruct his recourse to or from the Indies, (the magazine of strife,) either on this side or beyond the Line, (thought by the English commissioners not included, however the contrary was after pretended, and no farther dispu ted by King James, then with patience and a quiet submission of his subjects to their sense, not rarely punishing such as transgrest, at their coming home,) he presented

all, both Scotch and English, with gifts, and those no small ones; for by that, the Earle of Northampton,' brother to Suffolke, had,

Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, a man of great talents, but who dishonoured those and his illustrious birth, by his share in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, and his scandalous crouching to the minion Somerset. Lloyd has preserved almost all the good that can be said of him, in the following passage:

"This family had endeared itself to many kings by its service, but to none more than King James, by its obligations. Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, being, as it were, his mother's martyr, (executed for a design to marry her,) and all his relations, his confessors, (kept under for their inclinations to advance him :) reasonable, therefore, it was, that my lord, that duke's brother, should be made Baron of Marnhill, Earl of Northampton, Knight of the Garter, Privy-Counsellour, Lord Privy-Seal, and Lord Warden of the Cinque-Ports. Learning in any man had King James his affection, especially in a nobleman, as our statesman, who was as serious a student in Kings-College and Trinity-hall, in Cambridge, as a discerning observator in Rome and Florence, in Italy. His "Dispensative against the Supposed Poyson of Prophesies," dedicated to Sir Francis Walsingham, bespeaks him a great and a general scholar his speeches at Cambridge and in Starchamber, argue him both witty and wise. His expences shewed him public-spirited; the unparalleled port of his family and dependants, an ancient nobleman. His designing of Audley-End, and building of Suffolk-House, an ar

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he was alone able to raise and finish the goodly pile he built in the Strand, which remaines a monument of his, &c. Nor yet are there a few other no lesse brave houses, fresh in my memory, that had their foundations, if not their walls and roofes plastered with the same morter; though out of my will to name, who had rather be condemned by posterity, that are not likely to hurt me for this modesty, then expose my self to the mercy of the age I have the fortune to live in, by making my pen overfamiliar with my thoughts; since after times may better spare the knowledge of many things then we reveale them; only this I

chitect. His hospital for twelve poor women and a governor, at Rise, in Norfolk; for twelve poor men and a governor, at Clin, in Shropshire; for twenty poor men and a governor, at Greenwich, in Kent, (whereof eight to be chosen out of Shose-Sham, where he was born,) a charitable man. His using of all his interest to avoid the burthen and weight of the treasurer's place, and procure it for the Earl of Suffolk, his nephew. His noble disposition, not to advance himself by court-flattery, or his fortune by state-employment, being a batchellor and a student."-LLOYD'S Worthies, p. 780.

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shall adde, as no improbable conjecture made by many in those daies, that his catholick majesty was so frighted by the prehension of a possibility that our king, according to the nature, no lesse then the obligation of his country, might fall into a conjunction with France, that he would scarce at that time have denied him any thing, to the halfe of his Indies. And from hence all princes may calculate the vast difference that lies between a counsell suborned, and one free from corruption.

6. At his assumption to the throne, the Lord Gray, Lord Cobham, and Sir Walter Rawly, (professed enemies to the late Earle of Essex, and no weak instruments in his destruction,) fell into a treason of a like depth with his; and so improbable to hurt others or benefit themselves, that if ever folly was capable of the title, or pitty due to innocence, theirs might claime so large a share, as not possible to be too severely condemned, or slightly enough punished. Yet as shallow as it was, the Lord Gray