interest in her majesty's
favour, but without any engagement of service.

As for consideration, pension, gratification, or reward, I declare to
all the world I have had none, except only that old appointment which
her majesty was pleased to make me in the days of the ministry of my
lord Godolphin; of which I have spoken already, and which was for
services done in a foreign country some years before. Neither have I
been employed, directed, or ordered by my lord treasurer aforesaid to
do, or not to do, anything in the affairs of the unhappy differences
which have so long perplexed us, and for which I have so many, and such
unjust reproaches.

I come next to enter into the matters of fact, and what it is I have
done, or not done, which may justify the treatment I have met with; and
first, for the negative part, what I have not done.

The first thing in the unhappy breaches which have fallen out, is the
heaping up scandal upon the persons and conduct of men of honour on one
side as well as the other; those unworthy methods of falling upon one
another by personal calumny and reproach. This I have often in print
complained of as an unchristian, ungenerous, and unjustifiable practice.
Not a word can be found in all I have written reflecting on the persons
or conduct of any of the former ministry. I served her majesty under
their administration; they acted honourably and justly in every
transaction in which I had the honour to be concerned with them, and I
never published or said anything dishonourable of any of them in my
life; nor can the worst enemy I have produce any such thing against me.
I always regretted the change, and looked upon it as a great disaster to
the nation in general, I am sure it was so to me in particular; and the
divisions and feuds among parties which followed that change were
doubtless a disaster to us all.

The next thing that followed the change was the peace: no man can say
that ever I once said in my life that I approved of the peace. I wrote a
public paper at that time, and there it remains upon record against me.
I printed it openly, and that so plainly as others durst not do, that I
did not like the peace; neither that which was made, nor that which was
before making; that I thought the protestant interest was not taken care
of in either; and that the peace I was for was such as should neither
have given the Spanish monarchy to the house of Bourbon nor to the house
of Austria, but that this b