To William Ramsden, Esq.
          
                                                  (Undated.)

“DEAR WILL,—­The Parliament are still proceeding, but not much advanced on their eight hundred thousand pounds Bill on money at interest, offices, and lands; and the Excise Bills valued at four hundred thousand pounds a year.  The first for the navy, which scarce will be set out.  The last to be for paying one million three hundred thousand pounds, which the King owes at interest, and perhaps may be given for four, five, or six years, as the House chances to be in humour.  But an accident happened which liked to have spoiled all:  Sir John Coventry having moved for an imposition on the playhouses, Sir John Berkenhead, to excuse them, sayed they had been of great service to the King.  Upon which Sir John Coventry desired that gentleman to explain whether he meant the men or the women players.  Hereupon it is imagined, that, the House adjourning from Tuesday before till Thursday after Christmas-day, on the very Tuesday night of the adjournment, twenty-five of the Duke of Monmouth’s troop, and some few foot, layed in wait from ten at night till two in the morning, by Suffolk-street, and as he returned from the Cock, where he supped, to his own house, they threw him down, and with a knife cut off almost the end of his nose; but company coming made them fearful to finish it, so they marched off.  Sir Thomas Sands, lieutenant of the troop, commanded the party; and O’Brian, the Earl of Inchequin’s son, was a principal actor.  The Court hereupon sometimes thought to carry it with a high hand, and question Sir John for his words, and maintain the action.  Sometimes they flagged in their counsels.  However, the King commanded Sir Thomas Clarges, and Sir W. Pultney, to release Wroth and Lake, who were two of the actors, and taken.  But the night before the House met they surrendered them again.  The House being but sullen the next day, the Court did not oppose adjourning for some days longer till it was filled.  Then the House went upon Coventry’s busyness, and voted that they would go upon nothing else whatever till they had passed a Bill, as they did, for Sands, O’Brian, Parry, and Reeves, to come in by the sixteenth of February, or else be condemned, and never to be pardoned, but by an express Act of Parliament, and their names therein inserted, for fear of being pardoned in some general act of grace.  Farther of all such actions, for the future on any man, felony, without clergy; and who shall otherwise strike or wound any parliament-man, during his attendance, or going or coming, imprisonment for a year, treble damages, and incapacity.  This Bill having in some few days been dispatched to the Lords, the House has since gone on in grand Committee upon the first eight hundred thousand pounds Bill, but are not yet half way.  But now the Lords, instead of the sixteenth of February, put twenty-five days after the King’s royal assent, and that registered in their journal;