Note 72 — EPISTLE THE FIFTEENTH.

Sir Robert Bevile, maternal grandfather to John Driden of Chesterton, seems to have been imprisoned for resisting some of Charles I.'s illegal attempts to raise supplies without the authority of parliament. Perhaps our author now viewed his opposition to the royal will as more excusable than he would have thought it in the reigns of Charles II. or of James II. It is thought, that the hard usage which Sir Robert Bevile met on this score, decided our poet's uncle, his son-in-law, in his violent attachment to Cromwell.