386 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP SHARP. 



hitherto professed ourselves to be, and are re- 

 solved, whatever measures we meet with, to 

 persist in our loyalty and fidelity to their Ma- 

 jesties, and will be ready to give such further 

 proofs thereof as are consequential to our former 

 professions, and proper to persons of our cha- 

 racter and circumstances. We do therefore 

 humbly entreat that your Grace and the reverend 

 clergy of the Church of England may be pleased 

 seriously to consider our present case, and to 

 represent the same to their Majesties ; so as yet 

 we may subsist under the favourable influences 

 of their royal protection, and our feared ruin and 

 desolation may be prevented. 



" That God may long preserve your Grace, 

 and the Church of England in that order, peace, 

 and lustre wherewith he hath blessed you, is, 

 and shall be, the earnest prayer of your's, &c. 



" Signed in our name, and at the appointment 

 of our meeting, by William Demune Proeses — 

 Park CI." 



The next winter, when he came to London, he 

 applied himself to some of the chief of the Scotch 

 nobility to use their endeavours for procuring 

 some more favourable measures to be taken with 

 the episcopal party. Duke Hamilton told him 

 plainly, (12th February, 1693-4) '' that all that 

 could be done for the Scotch clergy was to get the king 

 to recommend it to the parliament of Scotland to give 



