There are a great many ingredients must go to the making me happy in a husband; first, as my Cousin F. says, our humours must agree; and to do that he must have that kind of breeding that I have had, and used that kind of company; that is, he must not be so much a country gentleman as to understand nothing but hawks and dogs, and be fonder of either than of his wife; nor of the next sort of them whose aim reaches no further than to be Justice of Peace, and once in his life High Sheriff, who reads no books but statutes, and studies nothing but how to make a speech interlarded with Latin that may amaze his disagreeing poor neighbours, and fright them rather than persuade them into quietness. He must not be a thing that began the world in a free school, was sent from thence to the University, and is at his furthest when he reaches the Inns of Court, has no acquaintance but those of his form in these places, speaks the French he has picked out of old laws, and admires nothing but the stories he has heard of the revels that were kept there before his time. He may not be a town gallant neither, that lives in a tavern and an ordinary, that cannot imagine how an hour should be spent without company unless it be in sleeping, that makes court to all the women he sees, thinks they believe him, and laughs and is laughed at equally. Nor a travelled Monsieur whose head is all feather inside and outside, that can talk of nothing but dances and duels, and has courage enough to wear slashes, when everybody else dies with cold to see him. He must not be a fool of no sort, nor peevish, nor ill-natured, nor proud, nor covetous, and to all this must be added that he must love me and I him as much as we are capable of loving. Without all this, his fortune, though never so great, would not satisfy me; and with it a very moderate one would keep me from ever repenting my disposal....
I have been thinking of sending you my picture till I could come myself; but a picture is but dull company, and that you need not; besides I cannot tell whether it be very like me or not, though 'tis the best I ever had drawn for me, and Mr. Lely will have it that he never took more pains to make a good one in his life, and that was it, I think, that spoiled it. He was condemned for making the first that he drew of me a little worse than I, and in making this better he has made it as unlike as t' other. He is now, I think, at my Lord Paget's at Marlow, where I am promised he shall draw a picture of my Lady for me—she gives it me, she says, as the greatest testimony of her friendship to me, for by her own rule she is past the time of having pictures taken of her. After eighteen, she says, there is no face but decays apparently: I would fain have had her except such as had never been beauties, for my comfort, but she would not.
[A PRESBYTERIAN VIEW OF THE TRIERS (1653).]
Source.—Richard Baxter, Reliquæ Baxterianæ. Vol. i., p. 72.
One of the chief works which he [Cromwell] did was the purging of the Ministry; of which I shall say somewhat more. And here I suppose the reader to understand that the Synod of Westminster was dissolved with the Parliament; and therefore a society of ministers with some others were chosen by Cromwell to sit at Whitehall, under the name of Triers, who were mostly Independents, but some sober Presbyterians with them, and had power to try all that came for institution or induction, and without their approbation none were admitted. This assembly of Triers examined themselves all that were able to come up to London, but if any were unable, or were of doubtful qualification between worthy or unworthy, they used to refer them to some ministers in the country where they lived, and to approve them if they approved them.
And because this assembly of Triers is most heavily accused and reproached by some men, I shall speak the truth of them, and suppose my word shall be the rather taken, because most of them took me for one of their boldest adversaries as to their opinions, and because I was known to disown their power, insomuch that I refused to try any under them upon their reference, except a very few, whose importunity and necessity moved me (they being such as for their episcopal judgment, or some such cause, the Triers were like to have rejected). The truth is that, though their authority was null, and though some few over busy and over rigid Independents among them were too severe against all that were Arminians, and too particular in enquiring after evidences of Sanctification in those whom they examined, and somewhat too lax in their admission of unlearned and erroneous men that favoured Antinomianism or Anabaptism; yet to give them their due, they did abundance of good to the church. They saved many a congregation from ignorant ungodly drunken teachers; that sort of men that intended no more in the ministry than to say a sermon, as readers say their Common Prayers, and so patch up a few good words together to talk the people asleep with on Sunday; and all the rest of the week go with them to the alehouse and harden them in their sin. And that sort of Ministers that either preached against a holy life, or preached as men that never were acquainted with it; all those that used the ministry but as a common trade to live by and were never likely to convert a soul, all these they usually rejected, and in their stead admitted of any that were able serious Preachers, and lived a godly life, of what tolerable opinion soever they were. So that though they were many of them somewhat partial for the Independents, Separatists, Fifth Monarchy men and Anabaptists, and against the Prelatists and Arminians, yet so great was the benefit above the hurt which they brought to the Church, that many thousands of souls blessed God for the faithful ministers whom they let in, and grieved when the Prelatists afterwards cast them out again.