onversation.

Many attempts were made upon him, by the instigation of his mother
(who was a Lady of another perswasion in religion, and of a most
maskulyne understandinge, allayed with the passyon and infirmityes of
her owne sex) to perverte him in his piety to the Church of Englande,
and to reconcile him to that of Rome, which they prosequted with the
more confidence, because he declined no opportunity or occasyon of
conference with those of that religion, whether Priests or Laiques,
havinge diligently studyed the controversyes, and exactly reade all or
the choycest of the Greeke and Latine fathers, and havinge a memory so
stupendious, that he remembred on all occasyons whatsoever he reade:
And he was so greate an enimy to that passyon and uncharitablenesse
which he saw produced by difference of opinion in matters of religion,
that in all those disputations with Priests and others of the Roman
Church, he affected to manifest all possible civillity to ther
persons, and estimation of ther partes, which made them retayne still
some hope of his reduction, even when they had given over offeringe
farther reasons to him to that purpose: But this charity towards them
was much lesned, and any correspondence with them quyte declined, when
by sinister Artes they had corrupted his two younger brothers, beinge
both children, and stolen them from his house, and transported them
beyonde seas, and perverted his sisters, upon which occasyon he writt
two large discources against the principle positions of that Religion,
with that sharpnesse of Style, and full waight of reason, that the
Church is deprived of greate jewells, in the concealment of them, and
that they are not published to the world.

He was superiour to all those passyons and affections which attende
vulgar mindes, and was guilty of no other ambition, then of knowledge,
and to be reputed a lover of all good men, and that made him to much a
contemner of those Artes which must be indulged to in the transaction
of humane affayrs. In the last shorte Parliament he was a Burgesse
in the house of Commons, and from the debates which were then managed
with all imaginable gravity and sobriety, he contracted such a
reverence to Parliaments that he thought it really impossible, that
they could ever produce mischieve or inconvenience to the kingdome,
or that the kingdome could be tolerably happy in the intermissyon
of them; and from the unhappy, and unseasonable dissolution of that
co