xample to the large chapter of political infirmity. Both workmen
attempting to convert each other into tools, by first trying their
respective malleability on the anvil, are liable to be disconcerted by
even a slight accident, whenever that proves, to perfect conviction, how
little they can depend on each other, and that each party comes to
cheat, and not to be cheated!

This piece of secret history is in part recoverable from good
authority. The two great actors were the Duke of Buckingham and Dr.
Preston, the master of Emmanual College, and the head of the puritan
party.

Dr. Preston was an eminent character, who from his youth was not without
ambition. His scholastic learning, the subtilty of his genius, and his
more elegant accomplishments, had attracted the notice of James, at
whose table he was perhaps more than once honoured as a guest; a
suspicion of his puritanic principles was perhaps the only obstacle to
his court preferment; yet Preston unquestionably designed to play a
political part. He retained the favour of James by the king's hope of
withdrawing the doctor from the opposition party, and commanded the
favour of Buckingham by the fears of that minister; when, to employ the
quaint style of Hacket, the duke foresaw that "he might come to be tried
in the furnace of the next sessions of parliament, and he had need to
make the refiners his friends:" most of these "refiners" were the
puritanic or opposition party. Appointed one of the chaplains of Prince
Charles, Dr. Preston had the advantage of being in frequent attendance;
and as Hacket tells us, "this politic man felt the pulse of the court,
and wanted not the intelligence of all dark mysteries through the Scotch
in his highness's bed-chamber." A close communication took place between
the duke and Preston, who, as Hacket describes, was "a good crow to
smell carrion." He obtained an easy admission to the duke's closet at
least thrice a week, and their notable conferences Buckingham appears to
have communicated to his confidential friends. Preston, intent on
carrying all his points, skilfully commenced with the smaller ones. He
winded the duke circuitously,--he worked at him subterraneously. This
wary politician was too sagacious to propose what he had at heart--the
extirpation of the hierarchy! The thunder of James's voice, "No bishop!
no king!" in the conference at Hampton Court, still echoed in the ear of
the puritan. He assured the duke that the love of t