Note 627 — Chapter XI · (continued 2)

Burnet, p. 130. Southampton left all the business of the treasury, according to Burnet, p. 131, in the hands of Sir Philip Warwick, "a weak but incorrupt man." The king, he says, chose to put up with his contradiction rather than make him popular by dismissing him. But in fact, as we see by Clarendon's instance, the king retained his ministers long after he was displeased with them. Southampton's remissness and slowness, notwithstanding his integrity, Pepys says, was the cause of undoing the nation as much as anything; "yet, if I knew all the difficulties he has lain under, and his instrument Sir Philip Warwick, I might be of another mind." May 16, 1667.—He was willing to have done something, Clarendon tells us (p. 415) to gratify the presbyterians; on which account, the bishops thought him not enough affected to the church. His friend endeavours to extenuate this heinous sin of tolerant principles.