376

CHAP.

X.

1688.

HISTORY OP ENGLAND.

was in this state of excitement, the Common Council was pre-paring at Guildhall an address of thanks and congratulation.The Lord Mayor was unable to preside. He had never heldup his head since the Chancellor had been dragged into thejustice room in the garb of a collier. But the Aldermen andthe other officers of the corporation were in their places.On the following day the magistrates of the City went in stateto pay their duty to their deliverer. Their gratitude waseloquently expressed by their Recorder, Sir George Treby.Some princes of the House of Nassau, he said, had been thechief officers of a great republic. Others had worn the im-perial crown. But the peculiar title of that illustrious line tothe public veneration was this, that God had set it apart andconsecrated it to the high office of defending truth and free-dom against tyrants from generation to generation. Onthe same day all the prelates who were in town, Sancroftexcepted, waited on the Prince in a body. Then came theclergy of London, the foremost men of their profession inknowledge, eloquence, and influence, with their bishop attheir head. With them were mingled some eminent dissentingministers, whom Compton, much to his honour, treatedwith marked courtesy. A few months earlier, or a fewmonths later, such courtesy would have been considered bymany Churchmen as treason to the Church. Even then itwas but too plain to a discerning eye that the armistice towhich the Protestant sects had been forced would not longoutlast the danger from which it h^d sprung. About a hundredNonconformist divines, resident in the capital, presented aseparate address. They were introduced by Devonshire,and were received with every mark of respect and kindness.The lawyers paid their homage, headed by Maynard, who,at ninety years of age, was as alert and clear-headed as whenhe stood up in Westminster Hall to accuse Strafford. “Mr.Serjeant,” said the Prince, “you must have survived all thelawyers of your standing.” “Yes, Sir,” said the old man,“and, but for your Highness, I should have survived the lawstoo.”*

* Fourlh Collection of Papers relating to the present juncture of