deprived. Then he pleaded his privilege: so
that the affair was brought into the house of lords, who refused to own
him as a peer after he had ceased to be a bishop. Thus disappointed,
he had recourse to the court of delegates, by whom the archbishop's
sentence was confirmed. The next effort that the commons made, with
a view of mortifying king William, was to raise a clamour against Dr.
Burnet, bishop of Sarum. He was represented in the house as a very unfit
preceptor for the duke of Gloucester, both as a Scottish man, and
author of that pastoral letter which had been burned by order of the
parliament, for asserting that William had a right to the crown from
conquest. A motion was made for addressing his majesty that this
prelate might be dismissed from his employment, but rejected by a great
majority. Burnet had acted with uncommon integrity in accepting the
trust. He had declined the office, which he was in a manner forced to
accept. He had offered to resign his bishopric, thinking the employment
of a tutor would interfere with the duty of a pastor. He insisted upon
the duke's residence all the summer at Windsor, which is in the diocese
of Sarum, and added to his private charities the whole income of his new
office.

INQUIRY INTO THE IRISH FORFEITURES.

The circumstance on which the anti-courtiers built their chief hope of
distressing or disgracing the government, was the inquiry into the Irish
forfeitures, which the king had distributed among his own dependents.
The commissioners appointed by parliament to examine these particulars,
were Annesley, Trenchard, Hamilton, Langford, the earl of Drogheda, sir
Francis Brewster, and sir Richard Leving. The first four were actuated
by all the virulence of faction; the other three were secretly guided
by ministerial influence. They began their inquiry in Ireland, and
proceeded with such severity as seemed to flow rather from resentment
to the court, than from a love of justice and abhorrence of corruption.
They in particular scrutinized a grant of an estate which the king
had made to Mrs. Villiers, now countess of Orkney, so as to expose the
king's partiality for that favourite, and subject him to an additional
load of popular odium. In the course of their examination the earl of
Drogheda, Leving, and Brewster, opposed the rest of the commissioners in
divers articles of the report, which they refused to sign, and sent
over a memorial to the house of commons explaining