The Diary Of John Evelyn Vol-2

DIARY OF LONDON

guards. A Council of Peers meet about an expedient to
call a Parliament; adjourn to the House of Lords. The
Chancellor, Earl of Peterborough, and divers others taken.
The Earl of Sunderland flies; Sir Edward Hale, Walker,
and others, taken and secured.

All the world go to see the Prince at St. James's, where
there is a great Court. There I saw him, and several of
my acquaintance who came over with him. He is very
stately, serious and reserved. The English soldiers sent
out of town to disband them; not well pleased.

24th December, 1688. The King passes into France,,
whither the Queen and child were gone a few days before.

26th December, 1688. The Peers and such Common-
ers as were members of the Parliament at Oxford, being
the last of Charles II. meeting, desire the Prince of
Orange to take on him the disposal of the public reve-
nue till a convention of Lords and Commons should meet
in full body, appointed by his circular letters to the
shires and boroughs, 22d of January. I had now quartered
upon me a Lieutenant-Colonel and eight horses.

3oth December, 1688. This day prayers for the Prince
of Wales were first left off in our Church.

7th January, 1688-89. A long frost and deep snow; the
Thames almost frozen over.

15th January, 1689. I visited the Archbishop of Can-
terbury, where I found the Bishops of St. Asaph, Ely,
Bath and Wells, Peterborough, and Chichester, the Earls
of Aylesbury and Clarendon, Sir George Mackenzie, Lord-
Advocate of Scotland, and then came in a Scotch Arch-
bishop, etc. After prayers and dinner, divers serious
matters were discoursed, concerning the present state of
the Public, and sorry I was to find there was as yet no
accord in the judgments of those of the Lords and Com-
mons who were to convene; some would have the Princess
made Queen without any more dispute, others were for
a Regency; there was a Tory party (then so called), who
were for inviting his Majesty again upon conditions; and
there were Republicans who would make the Prince of
Orange like a Stadtholder. The Romanists were busy
among these several parties to bring them into confu-
sion: most for ambition or other interest, few for con-
science and moderate resolutions. I found nothing of all
this in this assembly of Bishops, who were .pleased toe occasions, the