ir admirers will deny, and
which appear chiefly to have influenced them in acting their several
parts upon the public stage. For I do not intend to draw their
characters entire, which would be tedious, and little to the purpose,
but shall only single out those passions, acquirements, and habits,
which the owners were most likely to transfer into their political
schemes, and which were most subservient to the designs they seemed to
have in view.

The Lord Somers[11] may very deservedly be reputed the head and oracle
of that party; he hath raised himself, by the concurrence of many
circumstances, to the greatest employments of the state, without the
least support from birth or fortune; he hath constantly, and with great
steadiness, cultivated those principles under which he grew. That
accident which first produced him into the world, of pleading for the
bishops whom King James had sent to the Tower, might have proved a piece
of merit, as honourable as it was fortunate, but the old republican
spirit, which the Revolution had restored, began to teach other
lessons--That since we had accepted a new King, from a Calvinistical
commonwealth, we must also admit new maxims in religion and government.
But, since the nobility and gentry would probably adhere to the
established Church, and to the rights of monarchy, as delivered down
from their ancestors, it was the practice of those politicians to
introduce such men as were perfectly indifferent to any or no religion,
and who were not likely to inherit much loyalty from those to whom they
owed their birth. Of this number was the person I am now describing. I
have hardly known any man, with talents more proper to acquire and
preserve the favour of a prince; never offending in word or gesture; in
the highest degree courteous and complaisant; wherein he set an
excellent example to his colleagues, which they did not think fit to
follow. But this extreme civility is universal and undistinguished, and
in private conversation, where he observeth it as inviolably as if he
were in the greatest assembly, it is sometimes censured as formal. Two
reasons are assigned for this behaviour: first, from the consciousness
of his humble original,[12] he keepeth all familiarity at the utmost
distance, which otherwise might be apt to intrude; the second, that
being sensible how subject he is to violent passions, he avoideth all
incitements to them, by teaching those he converses with, from his own
exam