orious. Among the commissioners who sate with him at the
Admiralty were two distinguished members of the House of Commons,
William Sacheverell, a veteran Whig, who had great authority in his
party, and Sir John Lowther, an honest and very moderate Tory, who in
fortune and parliamentary interest was among the first of the English
gentry. [19]

Mordaunt, one of the most vehement of the Whigs, was placed at the head
of the Treasury; why, it is difficult to say. His romantic courage, his
flighty wit, his eccentric invention, his love of desperate risks and
startling effects, were not qualities likely to be of much use to him in
financial calculations and negotiations. Delamere, a more vehement Whig,
if possible, than Mordaunt, sate second at the board, and was Chancellor
of the Exchequer. Two Whig members of the House of Commons were in the
Commission, Sir Henry Capel, brother of that Earl of Essex who died by
his own hand in the Tower, and Richard Hampden, son of the great leader
of the Long Parliament. But the Commissioner on whom the chief weight of
business lay was Godolphin. This man, taciturn, clearminded, laborious,
inoffensive, zealous for no government and useful to every government,
had gradually become an almost indispensable part of the machinery of
the state. Though a churchman, he had prospered in a Court governed by
Jesuits. Though he had voted for a Regency, he was the real head of a
treasury filled with Whigs. His abilities and knowledge, which had in
the late reign supplied the deficiencies of Bellasyse and Dover, were
now needed to supply the deficiencies of Mordaunt and Delamere. [20]

There were some difficulties in disposing of the Great Seal. The King
at first wished to confide it to Nottingham, whose father had borne it
during several years with high reputation. [21] Nottingham, however,
declined the trust; and it was offered to Halifax, but was again
declined. Both these Lords doubtless felt that it was a trust which they
could not discharge with honour to themselves or with advantage to
the public. In old times, indeed, the Seal had been generally held by
persons who were not lawyers. Even in the seventeenth century it had
been confided to two eminent men, who had never studied at any Inn
of Court. Dean Williams had been Lord Keeper to James the First.
Shaftesbury had been Lord Chancellor to Charles the Second. But such
appointments could no longer be made without serious inconvenience.
Equity had