The governing cabal, since Ross’s busyness, are Buckingham, Lauderdale, Ashly, Orrery, and Trevor.  Not but the other cabal too have seemingly sometimes their turn.  Madam,[150:1] our King’s sister, during the King of France’s progress in Flanders, is to come as far as Canterbury.  There will doubtless be family counsels then.  Some talk of a French Queen to be then invented for our King.  Some talk of a sister of Denmark; others of a good virtuous Protestant here at home.  The King disavows it; yet he has sayed in publick, he knew not why a woman may not be divorced for barrenness, as a man for impotency.  The Lord Barclay went on Monday last for Ireland, the King to Newmarket.  God keep, and increase you, in all things.—­Yours, etc.

   “April 14, 1670.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[77:1] Clarendon’s Life, vol. ii. p. 442.

[79:1] The clerks, however, only counted the members who voted, and kept no record of their names.  Mr. Gladstone remembered the alteration being made in 1836, and how unpopular it was.  The change was a greater revolution than the Reform Bill.  See The Unreformed House of Commons by Edward Posselt, vol. i. p. 587.

[79:2]

    “And a Parliament had lately met
    Without a single Bankes.”—­Praed.

[82:1] See Dr. Halley’s Lancashire—­its Puritanism and Nonconformity, vol. ii. pp. 1-140, a most informing book.

[88:1] Clarendon’s History, vol. vi. p. 249.

[90:1] An Historical Poem.—­Grosart, vol. i. p. 343.

[92:1] Macaulay’s History, vol. i. p. 154.

[95:1] I am acquainted with the romantic story which would have us believe that Lady Fauconberg, foretelling the time to come, had caused some other body than her father’s to be buried in the Abbey (see Notes and Queries, 5th October 1878, and Waylen’s House of Cromwell, p. 341).

[96:1] See The Unreformed House of Commons, by Edward Porritt, vol. i. p. 51.  Marvell’s old enemy, Parker, Bishop of Oxford, in his History of his own Time, composed after Marvell’s death, reviles his dead antagonist for having taken this payment which, the bishop says, was made by a custom which “had a long time been antiquated and out of date.”  “Gentlemen,” says the bishop, “despised so vile a stipend,” yet Marvell required it “for the sake of a bare subsistence, although in this mean poverty he was nevertheless haughty and insolent.”  In Parker’s opinion poor men should be humble.

[98:1] Parliamentary History, vol. iv., App.  No.  III.

[104:1] Mr. Gladstone’s testimony is that no real improvement was effected until within the period of his own memory.  ’Our services were probably without a parallel in the world for their debasement.’ (See Gleanings, vi. p. 119.)