the reports from the
Commissioners of Accounts, where they were continually
discountenanced, and treated rather as offenders than judges. In
this posture we met, and the King, being exceedingly necessitous for
money, spoke to us _stylo minaci et imperatorio_; and told us the
inconveniences which would fall on the nation by want of a supply,
should not ly at his door; that we must not revive any discord
betwixt the Lords and us; that he himself had examined the accounts,
and found every penny to have been employed in the war; and he
recommended the Scotch union. The Garroway party appeared with the
usual vigour, but the country gentlemen appeared not in their true
number the first day: so, for want of seven voices, the first blow
was against them. When we began to talk of the Lords, the King sent
for us alone, and recommended a rasure of all proceedings. The same
thing you know that we proposed at first. We presently ordered it,
and went to tell him so the same day, and to thank him. At coming
down, (a pretty ridiculous thing!) Sir Thomas Clifford carryed
Speaker and Mace, and all members there, into the King's cellar, to
drink his health. The King sent to the Lords more peremptoryly, and
they, with much grumbling, agreed to the rasure. When the
Commissioners of Accounts came before us, sometimes we heard them
_pro forma_, but all falls to dirt. The terrible Bill against
Conventicles is sent up to the Lords; and we and the Lords, as to
the Scotch busyness, have desired the King to name English
Commissioners to treat, but nothing they do to be valid, but on a
report to Parliament, and an act to confirm. We are now, as we
think, within a week of rising. They are making mighty alterations
in the Conventicle Bill (which, as we sent up, is the quintessence
of arbitrary malice), and sit whole days, and yet proceed but by
inches, and will, at the end, probably affix a Scotch clause of the
King's power in externals. So the fate of the Bill is uncertain, but
must probably pass, being the price of money. The King told some
eminent citizens, who applyed to him against it, that they must
address themselves to the Houses, that he must not disoblige his
friends; and if it had been in the power of their friends, he had
gone without money. There is a Bill in the Lords to encourage people
to buy all the King's fee-farm rents; so he