Auditor Har- ley's Notes. xxvi ^ P. 240-241. INTRODUCTION. Though he was a favourer of such as dissented from the Church of England for conscience sake, and sometimes went to hear Mr. Baxter and others in London,a which brought him under suspicion of being still a favourer of the Presbyterian cause, yet he constantly attended church ; and having, as his son Edward says, " by the grace of God, and a constant reading of the scriptures, attained a very Christian temper, he never engaged in the narrow principles with which several parties in the Church had embroiled themselves and the country :" a confirmation of which will be seen in his letter to Lord Clarendon, in the Appendix .b Sir Edward was a good and religious man, untainted by the evils of that most licentious age, and during the reign of King James "he weekly spent the greater part of one day, either alone or with some of his family, in imploring the mercy of God, that the stormwhich seemed then to be falling on the nation might be averted." At the commencement of the Revolution he exerted himself with his sons on behalf of the Prince of Orange, and was at once made Governor of Worcester by the gentry there assembled; which city, by his great prudence, was kept in absolute quiet, whilst most others felt the shock of that great change. He was unanimously elected in the first Parliament of King William for the county of Hereford, and, consistently with the high principles which had ever actuated him, avoided all place and recompence, but devoted himself to the obtain- ing of such laws as might be of, real service to his country; and by his means the act for abolishing the arbitrary court of the Marches of Wales was passed. To the second Parliament his return was factiously opposed, under the cry of his being an enemy to the Church ; but, the successful candidate dying within a few months, he was again unanimously elected, and continued, in that and the succeeding Parliaments, constantly to oppose the extravagant ways that were taken for running the nation in debt, by raising funds
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