P. 543. Burnet, on Rumbold’s proposal to shoot the King at Hodsdon, in his way to Newmarket, adds:—­They [the conspirators] ran into much wicked talk about the way of executing that.  But nothing was ever fixed on:  All was but talk.—­Swift.  All plots begin with talk.

P. 548. Burnet.  At the time of Lord Russell’s plot, Baillie being asked by the King whether they had any design against his person? he frankly said not; but being asked:—­if they had been in any consultations with lords or others in England, in order to an insurrection in Scotland?  Baillie faltered at this.  For his conscience restrained him from lying;—­Swift. The author and his cousins could not tell lies, but they could plot.

P. 549. Burnet. Next morning he went with him to the Tower gate, the messenger being again fast asleep.—­Swift. Is this a blunder?

P. 553. Burnet, speaking of Lord Essex’s suicide (1683)—­His man, thinking he stayed longer than ordinary in his closet, looked through the key hole, and there saw him lying dead.—­Swift. He was on the close stool.

P. 555. Burnet, on Lord Russell’s trial—­Finch summed up the evidence against him.  But ... shewed more of a vicious eloquence, in turning matters with some subtlety against the prisoners, than of solid or sincere reasoning.—­Swift. Afterwards Earl of Aylesford, an arrant rascal.

P. 562. Burnet. I offered to take my oath, that the speech [of Lord Russell] was penned by himself, and not by me.—­Swift. Jesuitical.

P. 567. Burnet. I knew Spanheim particularly, who was envoy from the Elector of Brandenburg, who is the greatest critic of the age in all ancient learning.—­Swift.  Who was—­who is, pure nonsense.

P. 568. Burnet. All people were apprehensive of very black designs, when they saw Jeffreys made Lord Chief Justice, who ... run out upon all occasions into declamations, that did not become the bar, much less the bench.  He was not learned in his profession:  And his eloquence, though viciously copious, yet was neither correct nor agreeable.—­Swift. Like Burnet’s eloquence.

P. 572. Burnet, on Algernon Sidney’s trial, observes, that:—­Finch aggravated the matter of the book, as a proof of his intentions, pretending it was an overt act, for he said, Scribere est agere.—­Swift. Yet this Finch was made Earl of Aylesford by King George.

Ibid. Burnet, when Sidney charged the sheriffs who brought him the execution-warrant with having packed the jury—­one of the sheriffs ... wept.  He told it to a person, from whom Tillotson had it, who told it me.—­Swift. Admirable authority.

P. 577. Burnet. So that it was plain, that after all the story they had made of the [Rye-house] Plot, it had gone no further, than that a company of seditious and inconsiderable persons were framing among themselves some treasonable schemes, that were never likely to come to anything.—­Swift. Cursed partiality.