lie in common;" for I found the effect did not answer, and that in the mean time, he led so uneasy a life, by solicitations and pursuits, as no man would endure who had a remedy at hand. About the beginning of his ministry, I did, at the request of several considerable persons, take the liberty of representing this matter to him. His answer was short and cold: "That he hoped his friends would trust him: that he heartily wished none but those who loved the church and queen were employed; but that all things could not be done on a sudden." I have reason to believe, that his nearest acquaintance were then wholly at a loss what to think of his conduct. He was forced to preserve the opinion of power, without which he could not act, while in reality he had little or none; and besides, he thought it became him to take the burden of reproach upon himself, rather than lay it upon the queen his mistress, who was grown very positive, slow, and suspicious; and from the opinion of having been formerly too much directed, fell into the other extreme, and became difficult to be advised. So that few ministers had ever, perhaps, a harder game to play, between the jealousy and discontents of his friends on one side, and the management of the queen's temper on the other.
There could hardly be a firmer friendship, in appearance, than what I observed between those three great men, who were then chiefly trusted; I mean the lords Oxford, Bolingbroke, and Harcourt. I remember, in the infancy of their power, being at the table of the first, where they were all met, I could not forbear taking notice of the great affection they bore to each other; and said, "I would ven-
