finished all with a brief historical account of affairs and events
in England for about a hundred years past.

This conversation was not ended under five audiences, each of several
hours; and the king heard the whole with great attention, frequently
taking notes of what I spoke, as well as memorandums of what questions
he intended to ask me.

When I had put an end to these long discourses, his majesty, in a sixth
audience, consulting his notes, proposed many doubts, queries, and
objections, upon every article. He asked what methods were used to
cultivate the minds and bodies of our young nobility, and in what kind
of business they commonly spent the first and teachable part of their
lives? What course was taken to supply that assembly when any noble
family became extinct? What qualifications were necessary in those who
are to be created new lords; whether the humor of the prince, a sum of
money to a court lady as a prime minister, or a design of strengthening
a party opposite to the public interest, ever happened to be motives in
those advancements? What share of knowledge these lords had in the laws
of their country, and how they came by it, so as to enable them to
decide the properties of their fellow-subjects in the last resort?
Whether they were always so free from avarice, partialities, or want,
that a bribe or some other sinister view could have no place among them?
Whether those holy lords I spoke of were always promoted to that rank
upon account of their knowledge in religious matters and the sanctity of
their lives; had never been compilers with the times while they were
common priests, or slavish prostitute chaplains to some noblemen, whose
opinions they continued servilely to follow, after they were admitted
into that assembly?

He then desired to know what arts were practised in electing those whom
I called commoners; whether a stranger, with a strong purse, might not
influence the vulgar voters to choose him before their own landlord, or
the most considerable gentleman in the neighborhood? How it came to pass
that people were so violently bent upon getting into this assembly,
which I allowed to be a great trouble and expense, often to the ruin of
their families, without any salary or pension: because this appeared
such an exalted strain of virtue and public spirit, that his majesty
seemed to doubt it might possibly not be always sincere; and he desired
to know whether such zealous gentlemen could have any