Page:A Letter from a Person of Quality, to His Friend in the Country (1675).pdf/16

 (and so best known) were mistaken, and the Commission render'd ineffectual as to them.

Besides this, the great Ministers of State did in their common publick assure the partie, that all the places of Profit, Command, and Trust, should only be given to the old Cavalier; no Man that had served, or been of the contrary Party, should be left in any of them; And a direction is issued to the Great Ministers before mentioned, and Six or seven of the Bishops to meet at Lambeth-House, who were like the Lords of the Articles in Scotland, to prepare their compleat Modell for the ensuing Session of Parliament.

And now comes this memorable Session of Aprill 13. 75. then, which never any came with more expectation of the Court, or dread and apprehension of the People; the Officers, Court Lords, and Bishops, were clearly the major Vote in the Lords House, and they assured themselves to have the Commons as much at their dispose when they reckoned the number of the Courtiers, Officers, Pensioners encreased by the addition of the Church and Cavalier party, besides the Address they had made to Men of the best quality there by hopes of Honor, great employment, and such things as would take. In a word, the French King's Ministers, who are the great Chapmen of the World, did not out-doe ours at this time, and yet the over ruling hand of God has blown upon their Politics, and the Nation is escaped this Session, like a Bird out of the snare of the Fowler.

In this Sessions the Bishops wholly laid aside their Zeal against Popery. The Committee of the whole House for Religion, which the Country Lords had caused to be set up again by the example of the former Sessions, could hardly get, at any time, a day appointed for their Sitting, and the main thing design'd for a Bill voted in the former Session, ''viz. the marrying our Princes to none but Protestants, was rejected and carryed in the Negative by the unanimous Votes of the Bishops Bench; for I must acquaint you that our great Prelates were so neer an Infallibility, that they were always found in this Session of one mind in the Lords House; yet the Lay Lords, not understanding from how excellent a Principle this proceeded, commonly called them for that reason the dead Weight, and they really proved so in the following business, for the third day of this Session this Bill of Test was brought into the Lords House by the Earl of Lindsey'' L. High Chamberlain, a person of great quality, but in this imposed upon, and received its first reading and appointment for the second without much opposition; the Country Lords being desirous to observe what weight they put upon it, or how they designed to manage it.

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