Page:Diary of the times of Charles II Vol. I.djvu/50

xxxviii be any proof of good management and address, nothing could have been better done. And in his public character generally it is no small merit in him to have pursued an honest, straightforward, and consistent course, in times when, with the exception of Sir William Temple, and very few others, duplicity and corruption were the order of the day. The next in order of birth in this series of correspondents is Robert, the second Earl of Sunderland, the nephew of Henry Sidney: a name better known to history than that of the Earl of Ronmey. He was born in 1641, and was only one year younger than his uncle, and succeeded when a child to the title and estates of his father, who was killed at the battle of Newbury.

The young Earl of Sunderland was sent to Oxford, and was resident there in 1660. Among other friendships formed there, he became very intimate with the celebrated William Penn. Whether he attended with him the preaching of Thomas Loe, the layman and Quaker, for which the latter was fined for non-conformity, does not appear, but he was certainly engaged with him in a riot, into