nds,
and all other people under their feet, began to run out into those mad
extremes, and precipitate themselves into such measures as, according to
the fate of all intemperate councils, ended in their own confusion, and
threw them at last out of the saddle.

The queen, who, though willing to favour the high-church party, did not
thereby design the ruin of those whom she did not employ, was soon
alarmed at their wild conduct, and turned them out, adhering to the
moderate counsels of those who better understood, or more faithfully
pursued, her majesty's and the country's interest. In this turn fell sir
Edward Seymour's party, for so the high men were then called; and to
this turn we owe the conversion of several other great men, who became
whigs on that occasion, which it is known they were not before; which
conversion afterwards begat that unkind distinction of old whig and
modern whig, which some of the former were with very little justice
pleased to run up afterwards to an extreme very pernicious to both.

But I am gone too far in this part. I return to my own story.

In the interval of these things, and during the heat of the first fury
of highflying, I fell a sacrifice for writing against the rage and
madness of that high party, and in the service of the dissenters. What
justice I met with, and, above all, what mercy, is too well known to
need repetition.

This introduction is made that it may bring me to what has been the
foundation of all my further concern in public affairs, and will produce
a sufficient reason for my adhering to those whose obligations upon me
were too strong to be resisted, even when many things were done by them
which I could not approve; and for this reason it is that I think it
necessary to distinguish how far I did or did not adhere to, or join in
or with, the persons or conduct of the late government; and those who
are willing to judge with impartiality and charity, will see reason to
use me the more tenderly in their thoughts, when they weigh the
particulars.

I will make no reflections upon the treatment I met with from the people
I suffered for, or how I was abandoned even in my sufferings, at the
same time that they acknowledged the service I had been to their cause;
but I must mention it to let you know that while I lay friendless and
distressed in the prison of Newgate, my family ruined, and myself
without hope of deliverance, a message was brought me from a person of
honour, w