208 LIFE, TIMES, AND SCIENTIFIC LABOURS [1651. 



friends, its warmest and most needful supporters had 

 first to be considered ; while charitable acts, and the 

 asserted claims of persons related to recusants, and per 

 sons specially proscribed by Parliament, and all who 

 were even remotely related to them would have to 

 submit to long delays and hard wrung submissions, 

 when the object was to obtain the least assistance from 

 an already depressed treasury. 



That the Marquis s wife and family received any as 

 sistance whatever, through appeals to the Common 

 wealth Parliament, is significant of the high estimation 

 in which he himself must have been held, simply for 

 his moral worth, and his not overstrained political bias : 

 marking his acts with extreme humanity in war, and 

 good sense in avoiding the risk of launching into any of 

 those extraordinary measures, for which the late King 

 had granted him the ample powers already considered. 

 Indeed the Nuncio,* as early as 1646, had correctly 

 estimated his Lordship s character, designating him &quot; an 

 Englishman of a very mild temper.&quot; 



* See page 182. 



