Note 286 — Chapter V

Burnet ii. 164, 165. L’Estrange produced some bad evidence, which he does not even seem to have believed himself, to the effect that these stains were of mud, and not wax. Brief Hist. iii. 326, 336. Sir George Sitwell says: “The drops of wax ... may have been spilt the evening before, when Sir Edmund, for some mysterious reason, was engaged in burning a quantity of his private papers” (First Whig 41). But the evidence for this is wholly valueless, being told on hearsay from a bad witness by a worse. Brief Hist. iii. 179.