So full of zeal, he has no need of grace;
A saint, that can both flesh and spirit use,
Alike haunt conventicles and stews.—P. [328.]
Sir Thomas Player, chamberlain of the city of London, was, like Sir Robert Clayton, one of the city members, both in the Westminster and Oxford parliaments; and, being as zealous as his colleague in the popular cause, what has been said concerning their mode of marching to Oxford, applies to him as well as to the other. He is accused of libertinism, in the pasquinade quoted in the last note, where the Charter of London makes him this bequest: "To Sir Thomas Player, I leave all the manor of Moorfields, with all the wenches and bawdy-houses thereunto belonging, with Mrs Cresswells[416] for his immediate inheritance, to enjoy and occupy all, from the bawd to the whore downward, at nineteen shillings in the pound cheaper than any other person, because he may not exhaust the chamber by paying old arrears, nor embezzle the stock by running into new scores."[417]
Let David's brother but approach the town,
Double our guards, he cries, we are undone.
P. [328.]
When the Duke of York unexpectedly returned from Brussels, on the news of the king's illness, his arrival spread discomfiture through Shaftesbury's party in court, and rage and alarm among those in the city. Sir Thomas Player, at the head of a numerous body of citizens, or persons who called themselves so, made his appearance before the lord-mayor, and court of aldermen; and after having expatiated, in a set speech, upon the horrors of Popery, and upon the return of the Duke of York, whose religion had first led to the conspiracy, and whose recent arrival must necessarily give it new life, he gravely demanded, that the city-guards should be doubled, and that four companies, instead of two, should be appointed to duty every night. The lord-mayor, after some discussion, evaded Sir Thomas's request, by referring it to the livery. In the vehemence of the chamberlain's oratory, a remarkable expression, noticed in the text, chanced to escape him, "that he durst hardly go to sleep, for fear of awaking with his throat cut." In the pretended account of this interview, he is only made to say, that it was now out of doubt, that the Papists had burnt the city; "And if they had not been disappointed, would have cut our throats too at the same time, while we were endeavouring to save the small remainder of our goods." But the publisher acknowledges, he could give but an imperfect account of the "speech of this worthy and deserving knight, and the Lord Mayor's generous reply thereunto." "Cutting throats," indeed, appears to have been a frequent terror of the zealous knight. In the Westminster parliament, he made a speech on the Exclusion Bill, in which, after stating that he had read in Scripture of one man dying for a nation, but never of three nations dying for one man; he assured the House, that they "would be embroiled in blood before they were aware of it;" that he had "no patience to think of sitting still while his throat was a cutting;" and therefore prayed, they would endeavour to have laws that might enable them to defend themselves.[418] In the parliament of Oxford, Sir Thomas Player made a violent speech, upon Fitzharris being withdrawn from the city jail, and sent to the Tower, with a view, as he contended, of stifling his evidence against the Duke of York and the Papists; and concluded by making a motion, which was carried, that if any judge, justice, or jury, should proceed upon him, and he be found guilty, they be declared guilty of his murder, and betrayers of the rights of the commons of England. In short, Sir Thomas Player was a hot-headed violent factionary; but Rouse, one of his dependants who suffered for the Rye-house plot, with his dying breath cleared Sir Thomas of any accession to that conspiracy; and declared, that he broke with Lord Shaftesbury, upon perceiving the violent plans which he agitated after his being freed from the Tower. State Trials, p. 750.