Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 3.djvu/136

132 household, and a privy counsellor; and to his other honours were added the dedication of Pope's Windsor Forest. He was advanced next year to be treasurer of the household.

Of these favours he soon lost all but his title; for at the accession of king George his place was given to the earl Cholmondeley, and he was persecuted with the rest of his party. Having protested against the bill for attainting Ormond and Bolingbroke, he was, after the insurrection in Scotland, seized Sept. 26, 1715, as a suspected man, and confined in the Tower till Feb. 8, 1717, when he was at last released, and restored to his seat in parliament; where (1719) he made a very ardent and animated speech against the repeal of the bill to prevent Occasional Conformity, which, however, though it was then printed, he has not inserted into his works.

Sometime afterwards (about 1722), being perhaps embarrassed by his profusion, he went into foreign countries, with the usual pretence of recovering his health. In this state of leisure and retirement, he received the first volume of Burnet’s History, of which he cannot be supposed to have approved the general tendency, and where he thought himself able to detect