118 APPENDIX. 



Absolom, which I found not at all blamed in Holy Writt, (and yet 

 his was a larger step than mine, I having never taken any kind of 

 oath or made any formal promise that I ever remember to any of 

 those governments) ; as likewise seriously reflecting upon those 

 oaths of supremacy and allegiance which I had taken during the 

 reign of Charles I. at Winchester Colledg, I took at last a firm re- 

 solution to do my native prince, and the rightfull heir to the crown, 

 all the service that should lay in my power. And here I cannot 

 omitt to observe, 



1 . That this juncture of time was the darkest moon of all that 

 king s reign, a time when hee was in a manner abandoned by almost 

 all his neighbouring princes and states, and miserably betrayed by 

 many of his domestic servants, and some of those in whose hands 

 were all his secrets and principal affayres. A time when he was 

 in great distress for moneys, that being prest by Sir Richard Willis 

 to send him fifty or sixty pound, as oft as hee sent him over new 

 instructions, which was usually once a month (though at the same 

 time hee had much greater sums conveyed to him by my hands in 

 dark nights and obscure places such as the Vine Tavern in Holborn, 

 hackney coaches, and the like ! ) His Majesty was frequently forced 

 to pawn his plate or jewels, and as I remember, once to sell his 

 coach horses to supply him. All which misfortunes Sir Richard 

 Willis having enumerated and illustrated in a letter of his to mee 

 about the same time to encourage the king's enemies here, pin'd 

 the basket, and closed his letter with this paragraph, verbatim, viz., 

 And now I know not what power that little king has left him, unless it 

 bee to command his followers to run madd as they please. 



2. This was a time when Hived in greater plenty then ever I did 

 since the king's Restauration, having a house well furnish't, a suffi- 

 cient number of servants and attendants, a very good coach and 

 horses in my stables, a revenue of above a thousand pound per 

 annum to mainteyn it , and several hundreds of pounds of ready 

 money by mee ; and a beautiful young woman to my wife for a 

 companion. Now the giving myself up to serve the king was not 

 onely to hazard all this, but to live in dayly expectation of being 

 taken out of my bed or house, and drag'd to the torments, and there 

 had my flesh pull'd off my bones with red hot pincers ; these were 

 Thurloe's own expressions how they had dealt with mee had they in 

 the least suspected mee. 



3. Had ambition been and titles of honor been what I aym'd at, 

 whenever the king should be restored; so little appearance was 

 there at that time of any such change, and such characters were 

 then given of the king's person, that to rely upon a promised honor, 

 would have seemed no other then building castles in the ayr, and a 

 hundred pound for the purchase of a Gartar would have been 

 thought a desperate adventure. 



4. Had gold been the god I then worship't, I had fayr opportuni- 

 ties, as its well known whilst I resided at Geneva, to have gone 

 away with above twenty thousand pounds into some remote corner 

 of the world, where the power then in being could never have 



