WILLIAM THE THIRD.

25

banish for ever from the Court and the Council that evil ad-viser who had misled His Majesty’s royal uncles, had be-'trayed the liberties of the people, and had abjured theProtestant religion.

Sunderland had been uneasy from the first momentat which his name had been mentioned in the House ofCommons. He was now in an agony of terror. The wholeenigma of his life, an enigma of which many unsatisfactoryand some absurd explanations have been propounded, is atonce solved if we consider him as a man insatiably greedyof wealth and power, and yet nervously apprehensive ofdanger. He rushed with ravenous eagerness at every baitwhich was offered to his cupidity. But any ominousshadow, any threatening murmur, sufficed to stop him inhis full career, and to make him change his course or buryhimself in a hiding place. He ought to have thought him-self fortunate indeed, when, after all the crimes which hehad committed, he found himself again enjoying his picturegallery and his woods at Althorpe, sitting in the House ofLords, admitted to the royal closet, pensioned from thePrivy Purse, consulted about the most important affairsof state. But his ambition and avarice would not sufferhim to rest till he held a high and lucrative office, till hewas a regent of the kingdom. The consequence was, asmight have been expected, a violent clamour; and thatclamour he had not the spirit to face.

His friends assured him that the threatened addresswould not be carried. Perhaps a hundred and sixty

CHAPxx 111

1637 .