P. 553. Burnet, speaking of Lord Essex's suicide (1683)—His man, thinking he stayed longer than ordinary in his closet, looked through the key hole, and there saw him lying dead.—Swift. He was on the close stool.
P. 555. Burnet, on Lord Russell's trial—Finch summed up the evidence against him. But ... shewed more of a vicious eloquence, in turning matters with some subtlety against the prisoners, than of solid or sincere reasoning.—Swift. Afterwards Earl of Aylesford, an arrant rascal.
P. 562. Burnet. I offered to take my oath, that the speech [of Lord Russell] was penned by himself, and not by me.—Swift. Jesuitical.
P. 567. Burnet. I knew Spanheim particularly, who was envoy from the Elector of Brandenburg, who is the greatest critic of the age in all ancient learning.—Swift. Who was—who is, pure nonsense.
P. 568. Burnet. All people were apprehensive of very black designs, when they saw Jeffreys made Lord Chief Justice, who ... run out upon all occasions into declamations, that did not become the bar, much less the bench. He was not learned in his profession: And his eloquence, though viciously copious, yet was neither correct nor agreeable.—Swift. Like Burnet's eloquence.
P. 572. Burnet, on Algernon Sidney's trial, observes, that:—Finch aggravated the matter of the book, as a proof of his intentions, pretending it was an overt act, for he said, Scribere est agere.—Swift. Yet this Finch was made Earl of Aylesford by King George.
Ibid. Burnet, when Sidney charged the sheriffs who brought him the execution-warrant with having packed the jury—one of the sheriffs ... wept. He told it to a person, from whom Tillotson had it, who told it me.—Swift. Admirable authority.
P. 577. Burnet. So that it was plain, that after all the story they had made of the [Rye-house] Plot, it had gone no further, than that a company of seditious and inconsiderable persons were framing among themselves some treasonable schemes, that were never likely to come to anything.—Swift. Cursed partiality.
P. 579. Burnet. The King [Charles II.] had published a story all about the court, ... as the reason of this extreme severity against Armstrong: He said, that he was sent over by Cromwell to murder him beyond sea; ... and that upon his confessing it he had promised him never to speak of it any more as long as he lived. So the King, counting him now dead in law, thought he was free from that promise.—Swift. If the King had a mind to lie, he would have stayed till Armstrong was hanged.
P. 583. Burnet. It ended in dismissing Lord Aberdeen, and making Lord Perth chancellor, to which he had been long aspiring in a most indecent manner.—Swift. Decent and indecent, very useful words to this author.