‘It may therefore please your Honors to give yr. consent for some sett Time and Place of meeting with such convenient speed as may best stand with ye great Affairs. That yr. humble Servant ye Register may Represent to yr. Honors some few Things, wch hee humbly conceaves may much concerne ye Honor & Interest of ys. Most Honble Order to bee provided for.’
‘I delivered this Petition in ye Parliament Howse before they sate, Jan. 23d. 1647.’ (O. S.)
GOD’S PRISONER.
A copy of this Petition he sent to the Deputy Chancellor. It would seem to have startled the Knights, and Dr. Wren evidently wishes the way smoothed. His letter, also an autograph, is headed
‘Copye of my letter sent to the Deputie Chancelor for removal of some scruples wch arose among ye Knights of ye Order before ye Time of their meeting in Council.’
‘Honble Chancelor.—I have no pticular aime in this my humble suite to ye Lords of ye Order to propose any private or Personal Interest of my owne, or any other man’s, much lesse to engage their Honors in anything that may seeme to contest wth or dissent from ye Highe Court of Parliament wherein they now sit & from whence I am not ignorant ye Most Honble Society of ye Most Noble Order receaved as at first Life and Being soe now holds its establishment. My humble & earnest desires, are to represent such Things only as I humbly conceave may nearly concerne ye Honor & Interests of their Most Noble Order. To wch (next as yr. Selfe Honored Sir) I am by oath obliged: (to preserve ye Honor thereof, & of all in itt to my utmost Power) For zeale of this duty wch upon ye intimation of what I here profess, I presume they will not reject, I beseech you to give ym this assurance as yf itt were from ye tender of my owne mouthe, who am at this period God’s Prisoner, & under Him,
‘Yr servant, C. W.’
Whether the Dean succeeded in gathering the Knights together, and what the ‘Things nearly concerning their Honor’ may have been if they were not, as the letter implies they were not, the King’s deliverance, the ‘Parentalia’ does not say, neither does it give any hint of the illness to which the end of the Dean’s letter appears to point.