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Constitutional History of England, Henry VII to George II. Volume 1 of 3

Note 652 — Chapter VII

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Bishop Williams, as we are informed by his biographer, though he promoted the petition of right, stickled for the additional clause adopted by the Lords, reserving the king's sovereign power; which very justly exposed him to suspicion of being corrupted. For that he was so is most evident by what follows; where we are told that he had an interview with the Duke of Buckingham, when they were reconciled; and "his grace had the bishop's consent with a little asking, that he would be his grace's faithful servant in the next session of parliament, and was allowed to hold up a seeming enmity, and his own popular estimation, that he might the sooner do the work." Hacket's Life of Williams, pp. 77, 80. With such instances of baseness and treachery in the public men of this age, surely the distrust of the Commons was not so extravagant as the school of Hume pretend.

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