LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP SHARP. 293 



may come when we can live a year without 

 them. When such a time doth come, I should 

 then think it seasonable to have this matter 

 debated ; but, at the present, my humble mo- 

 tion is, that it may be laid aside, and that the- 

 bill be rejected." 



As upon all occasions he delivered his mind 

 freely when he spoke in the House, he ever 

 made voting a matter of conscience. When any 

 affair came on, of which he did not think him- 

 self so capable a judge as some others of the 

 peers, whose opinions he trusted he might 

 follow, as in cases of privilege of peerage, he. or 

 in matters of trade, which lay more out of his 

 way, he would then, after grounding his vote 

 upon the best judgment he could form, make a 

 private memorandum of the reasons that in- 

 duced him, and enter his own justification in 

 these or the like words : And I hope I have not 

 done amiss in voting so or so. Thus he did after 

 the debates upon the commitmeitt and detainment of 

 the lords in prison*, in November, 1692; and 



* His minutes of the resolutions of the House upon this 

 debate, are as follows: — Nov. 12. "I have been every day this 

 week at the Parliament, and staid out all the debates. The 

 business they have been upon is the commitment and detainment 

 of the lords in prison this last summer ; and these points I 

 find agreed on, 1st. That to commit to prison, upon a bare 

 suspicion of the persons being ill affected to the government, 

 is not strictly legal, but is to be justified only by the necessity 



