P. 626. Burnet. This gave all thinking men a melancholy prospect. England now seemed lost, unless some happy accident should save it. All people saw the way for packing a Parliament now laid open.—Swift. Just our case at the Queen's death.
P. 638. Burnet says that Musgrave and others pretended:—when money was asked for just and necessary ends, to be frugal patriots, and to be careful managers of the public treasure.—Swift. A party remark,
P. 651. Burnet. Goodenough, who had been under-sheriff of London when Cornish was sheriff, offered to swear against Cornish; and also said, that Rumsey had not discovered all he knew. So Rumsey to save himself joined with Goodenough, to swear Cornish guilty of that for which the Lord Russell had suffered. And this was driven on so fast, that Cornish was seized on, tried, and executed within the week.—Swift. Goodenough went to Ireland, practised law, and died there.
Ibid. Burnet. It gave a general horror to the body of the nation: And it let all people see, what might be expected from a reign that seemed to delight in blood.—Swift. The same here since the Queen's death.
P. 654. Burnet. The Archbishop of Armagh[5] [1685,] had continued Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and was in all points so compliant to the court, that even his religion came to be suspected on that account.—Swift. False.
[Footnote 5: Michael Boyle, who, when Archbishop of Dublin, was made chancellor soon after the Restoration (1665), and continued in that office to January, 1686, during which time he was raised to the Archbishopric of Armagh.—SEWARD.]
Ibid Burnet, and yet this archbishop:—was not thought thorough-paced. So Sir Charles Porter, who was a zealous promoter of everything that the King proposed, and was a man of ready wit, and being poor was thought a person fit to be made a tool of, was declared Lord Chancellor of Ireland.—Swift. False and scandalous.
P. 669. Burnet. Solicitor-general Finch ... was presently after turned out. And Powis succeeded him, who was a compliant young aspiring lawyer, though in himself he was no ill natured man.—Swift. Sir Thomas Powis, a good dull lawyer.
P. 670. Burnet, speaking of the power claimed for the King to dispense with the sacramental test, says:—It was an overturning the whole government, ... to say that laws, ... where one of the penalties was an incapacity, which by a maxim of law cannot be taken away even by a pardon, should at the pleasure of the prince be dispensed with: A fine was also set by the Act on offenders, but not given to the King, but to the informer, which thereby became his. So that the King could no more pardon that, than he could discharge the debts of the subjects, and take away property.—Swift. Wrong reasoning.
P. 672. Burnet. Intimations were everywhere given, that the King would not have them [Dissenters], or their meetings, to be disturbed. Some of them began to grow insolent upon this shew of favour.—Swift. The whole body of them grew insolent, and complying to the King.