The Diary Of John Evelyn Vol-2

JOHN EVELYN

This being the substance of what he said, the Lords
desired it might be published, as containing; matter of
great satisfaction to a jealous people upon this change,
which his Majesty consented to. Then were the Council
sworn, and a Proclamation ordered to be published that
all officers should continue in their stations, that there
might be no failure of public justice, till his further
pleasure should be known. Then the King rose, the
Lords accompanying him to his bedchamber, where, while
he reposed himself, tired indeed as he was with grief and
watching, they returned again into the Council chamber
to take order for the PROCLAIMING his Majesty, which
(after some debate) they consented should be in the very
form his grandfather, King James L, was, after the death
of Queen Elizabeth; as likewise that the Lords, etc.,
should proceed in their coaches through the city for the
more solemnity of it. Upon this was I, and several
other gentlemen waiting in the Privy gallery, admitted
into the Council chamber to be witness of what was re-
solved on. Thence with the Lords, Lord Marshal and
Heralds, and other Crown officers being ready, we first
went to Whitehall gate, where the Lords stood on foot
bareheaded, while the Herald proclaimed his Majesty's
title to the Imperial Crown and succession according to
the form, the trumpets and kettledrums having first
sounded three times, which ended with the people's ac-
clamations. Then a herald called the Lords' coaches
according to rank, myself accompanying the solemnity in
my Lord Cornwallis's coach, first to Temple Bar, where
the Lord Mayor and his brethren met us on horseback,
in all their formalities, and proclaimed the King; hence
to the Exchange in Cornhill, and so we returned in the

to go on in the track they were in, was all they could wish or desire from
a Prince of a different persuasion; but having once approved that way
of expressing it which Mr. Finch had made choice of, he thought it nec-
essary not to vary from it in the declarations or speeches he made after-
ward, not doubting but the world would understand it in the meaning
he intended.--—"Pis true, afterward IT WAS pretended he kept not up to
this engagement; but had they deviated no further from the duty andal-
legience which both nature and repeated oath obliged them to, THAN HE
DID FROM HI'S WORD, they had still remained as happy a people as they
really were during his short reign in England,»—«Life of James II.,»
ii. 435. The words printed in small caps in this extract are from the
interlineations of the son of King James II.ve it, and that he would