62

mSTOBT OP ENGLAND.

cnAP.XVI11.1602 .

plotter. Salisbury xvas a Papist. Sanoroft had, not manymonths before, been, with too much show of reason, suspectedof inviting the French to invade England. Of all the accusedpersons Sprat was the most unlikely to be concerned in anyhazardous design. He had neither enthusiasm nor constancy.Both his ambition and his party spirit had always been ef-fectually kept in order by his love of ease and his anxiety forhis own safety. He had been guilty of some criminal com-pliances in the hope of gaining the favour of James, had sate inthe High Commission, had concurred in several iniquitous de-crees pronounced by that court, and had, with trembling handsand faltering voice, read the Declaration of Indulgence in thechoir of the Abbey. But there he had stopped. As soon as itbegan to be whispered that the civil and religious constitutionof England would speedily be vindicated by extraordinarymeans, he had resigned the powers which he had during twoyears exercised in defiance of law, and had hastened to makehis peace with his clerical brethren. He had in the Conventionvoted for a Regency: but he had taken the oaths without hesi-tation: he had borne a conspicuous part in the coronation ofthe new Sovereigns; and by his skilful hand had been addedto the Form of Prayer used on the fifth of November those sen-tences in which the Church expresses her gratitude for the se-cond great deliverance wrought on that day.* Such a man,possessed of a plentiful income, of a seat in the House of Lords,of one agreeable house among the elms of Bromley, and ofanother in the cloisters of Westminster, was very unlikely torun the risk of martyrdom. He was not, indeed, on perfectlygood terms with the government. For the feeling which, nextto solicitude for his own comfort and repose, seems to have hadthe greatest influence on his public conduct, was his dislikeof the Puritans; a dislike which sprang, not from bigotry, but* Gutch, Collectanea Curiosa.