Every body that saw me almost come to me, as Joseph
Williamson and others, with such eulogys as cannot
be expressed. From thence I went to Westminster
Hall, where I met Mr. G. Montagu, who come to me and
kissed me, and told me that he had often heretofore
kissed my hands, but now he would kiss my lips:
protesting that I was another Cicero, and said, all
the world said the same of me. Mr. Ashburnham,
and every creature I met there of the Parliament, or
that knew anything of the Parliament’s actings,
did salute me with this honour:—Mr. Godolphin;—Mr.
Sands, who swore he would go twenty mile, at any time,
to hear the like again, and that he never saw so many
sit four hours together to hear any man in his life,
as there did to hear me; Mr. Chichly,—Sir
John Duncomb,—and everybody do say that
the kingdom will ring of my abilities, and that I
have done myself right for my whole life: and
so Captain Cocke, and others of my friends, say that
no man had ever such an opportunity of making his
abilities known; and, that I may cite all at once,
Mr. Lieutenant of the Tower did tell me that Mr. Vaughan
did protest to him, and that, in his hearing it, said
so to the Duke of Albemarle, and afterwards to W.
Coventry, that he had sat twenty-six years in Parliament
and never heard such a speech there before: for
which the Lord God make me thankful! and that I may
make use of it not to pride and vain-glory, but that,
now I have this esteem, I may do nothing that may lessen
it! I spent the morning thus walking in the
Hall, being complimented by everybody with admiration:
and at noon stepped into the Legg with Sir William
Warren, who was in the Hall, and there talked about
a little of his business, and thence into the Hall
a little more, and so with him by coach as far as
the Temple almost, and there ’light, to follow
my Lord Brouncker’s coach, which I spied, and
so to Madam Williams’s, where I overtook him,
and agreed upon meeting this afternoon, and so home
to dinner, and after dinner with W. Pen, who come
to my house to call me, to White Hall, to wait on
the Duke of York, where he again and all the company
magnified me, and several in the Gallery: among
others, my Lord Gerard, who never knew me before nor
spoke to me, desires his being better acquainted with
me; and [said] that, at table where he was, he never
heard so much said of any man as of me, in his whole
life. We waited on the Duke of York, and thence
into the Gallery, where the House of Lords waited
the King’s coming out of the Park, which he did
by and by; and there, in the Vane-room, my Lord Keeper
delivered a message to the King, the Lords being about
him, wherein the Barons of England, from many good
arguments, very well expressed in the part he read
out of, do demand precedence in England of all noblemen
of either of the King’s other two kingdoms, be
their title what it will; and did shew that they were
in England reputed but as Commoners, and sat in the
House of Commons, and at conferences with the Lords