England under Charles II. from the Restoration to the Treaty of Nimeguen, 1660-1678: English History from Contemporary Writers
Taylor, W. F.
1889
Burnet on the Declaration of Indulgence. Clarendon and Bristol.
Burnet: History of his own Time, , vol. 1, p. 196 | |
.-The Church party was alarmed at all this, and though they were unwilling to suspect the king or the duke, yet the management for Popery was so visible that in the next session of Parliament the king's declaration was severely arraigned and the authors of it were plainly enough pointed at. This was done chiefly by the lord Clarendon's friends. And at this the earl of Bristol was highly displeased, | |
120 | and resolved to take all possible methods to ruin the earl of Clarendon. He had a great skill in astrology, and had possessed the king with a high opinion of it; and told the duke of Buckingham, as he said to the earl of Rochester, Wilmot, from whom I had it, that he was confident that he would lay that before the king, which would totally alienate him both from his brother and from the lord Clarendon: for he could demonstrate by the principles of that art that he was to fall by his brother's means, if not by his hand; and he was sure this would work on the king. It would so, said the duke of Buckingham, but in another way than he expected, for it would make the king so afraid of offending him that he would do anything rather than provoke him. Yet the lord Bristol would lay this before the king. And the duke of Buckingham believed that it had the effect ever after that he had apprehended: for though the king never loved nor esteemed the duke, yet he seemed to stand in some sort of awe of him. |
But this was not all: the lord Bristol resolved to offer articles of impeachment against the earl of Clarendon to the House of Lords. . . So the lord Bristol drew his impeachment and carried it to the king, who took much pains . . . to dissuade him from it. But he would not be wrought on. The next day he carried the charge to the House of Lords. It was of a very mixed nature: in one part he charged Clarendon with raising jealousies and spreading reports of the king's being a papist; and yet in the other articles he charged him with correspondence | |
121 | with the Court of Rome, in order to the making the lord Aubigny a cardinal, and several other things of a very strange nature. As soon as he put it in he it seems either repented of it or at least was prevailed with to abscond. . . Proclamations went out for discovering him. But he kept out of the way till the storm was over. |