to doubt, whether the great fame of his abilities, acquired in other stations, were what he justly deserved:  all this he knew well enough, and heard it with great phlegm; neither did it make any alteration in his countenance or humour.  He told Monsieur Buys, the Dutch envoy, two days before the Parliament sat, that he was sorry for what was like to pass, because the States would be the first sufferers, which he desired the envoy to remember:  and to his nearest friends, who appeared in pain about the public or themselves, he only said that all would be well, and desired them not to be frighted.[63]

[Footnote 63:  See Swift’s account of an interview with the lord treasurer in his “Journal to Stella,” December 8th (ibid., p. 296). [W.S.J.]]

It was, I conceive, upon these motives, that the treasurer advised Her Majesty to create twelve new lords,[64] and thereby disable the sting of faction for the rest of her lifetime:  this promotion was so ordered, that a third part were of those on whom, or their posterity, the peerage would naturally devolve; and the rest were such, whose merit, birth, and fortune, could admit of no exception.

[Footnote 64:  See note, vol. ii., p. 308, and note, vol. v., p. 446. [W.S.J.]]

The adverse party, being thus driven down by open force, had nothing left but to complain, which they loudly did; that it was a pernicious[65] example set for ill princes to follow, who, by the same rule, might make at any time an hundred as well as twelve, and by these means become masters of the House of Lords whenever they pleased, which would be dangerous to our liberties.  To this it was answered, that ill princes seldom trouble themselves to look for precedents; that men of great estates will not be less fond of preserving their liberties when they are created peers; that in such a government as this, where the Prince holds the balance between two great powers, the nobility and people, it is the very nature of his office to remove from one scale into the other, or sometimes put his own weight in the lightest, so as to bring both to an equilibrium; and lastly, that the other party had been above twenty years corrupting the nobility with republican principles, which nothing but the royal prerogative could hinder from overspreading us.

[Footnote 65:  P. Fitzgerald says “dangerous.” [W.S.J.]]

The conformity bill above mentioned was prepared by the Earl of Nottingham before the Parliament met, and brought in at the same time with the clause against peace, according to the bargain made between him and his new friends:  this he hoped would not only save his credit with the Church party, but bring them over to his politics, since they must needs be convinced, that instead of changing his own principles, he had prevailed on the greatest enemies to the established religion to be the first movers in a law for the perpetual settlement of it.  Here it was worth observing,