Shaftesbury gives a brief sketch of him at this time in his fragmentary autobiography: 'The Earl of Bristoll was retired from all business and lived privately to himself; but his son the Lord Digby, a very handsome young man of great courage and learning and of a quick wit, began to show himself to the world and gave great expectations of himself, he being justly admired by all, and only gave himself disadvantage with a pedantic stiffness and affectation he had contracted.'
l. 19. As Baron Digby, during the lifetime of his father; June 9, 1641.
Page 123, l. 5. a very unhappy councell, the impeachment and attempted 'Arrest of the Five Members', January 3 and 4, 1642. Compare Clarendon, vol. i, p. 485: 'And all this was done without the least communication with any body but the Lord Digby, who advised it.'
31.
Clarendon, MS. Life, p. 389, and MS. History, p. 25 (or 597); History, Bk. XI, ed. 1704, vol. iii, pp. 210-11; ed. Macray, vol. iv, pp. 510-11.
This admirable character was not all written at the same time. The first sentence is from Clarendon's Life, and the remainder from the History, where the date, '21 Nov. 1671', is appended. 123, l. 15. Crumwells owne character,—in the debate in Parliament on carrying out the sentence of death, March 8, 1649. Clarendon had briefly described Cromwell's speech: 'Cromwell, who had known him very well, spake so much good of him, and professed to have so much kindness and respect for him, that all men thought he was now safe, when he concluded, that his affection to the public so much weighed down his private friendship, that he could not but tell them, that the question was now, whether they would preserve the most bitter and the most implacable enemy they had' (vol. iv, p. 506).
l. 22. He married in November 1626, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Charles
Morrison, of Cassiobury, Hertfordshire, and granddaughter of the first
Viscount Campden. Their daughter Theodosia was the wife of the second
Earl of Clarendon.
Page 124, l. 13. an indignity, probably a reference to Lord Hopton's command of the army in the west; see vol. iv, p. 131.
32.
Clarendon, MS. Life, p. 273; History, Bk. VIII, ed. 1703, vol. ii, pp. 427-8; ed. Macray, vol. iii, pp. 443-5.