applications, rough as they were, he recovered in a few months. The Lady
Abbess, who called him her son, treated him with the affection and care
of a mother; and he always declared that every thing which he saw within
these walls, was conducted with the strictest decency and decorum. He
received a great many devout admonitions from the ladies there, and
they would fain have persuaded him to acknowledge what they thought so
miraculous a deliverance, by embracing the _Catholic faith_, as they were
pleased to call it. But they could not succeed; for though no religion
lay near his heart, yet he had too much of the spirit of a gentleman
lightly to change that form of religion which he wore, as it were loose
about him; as well as too much good sense to swallow those monstrous
absurdities of Popery which immediately presented themselves to him,
unacquainted as he was with the niceties of the controversy.




CHAPTER III.

MILITARY PREFERMENTS.


When his liberty was regained by an exchange of prisoners, and his health
thoroughly established, he was far from rendering unto the Lord according
to that wonderful display of divine mercy which he had experienced.
I know very little of the particulars of those wild, thoughtless and
wretched years which lay between the 19th and 30th of his life; except
that he frequently experienced the divine goodness in renewed instances,
particularly in preserving him in several hot military actions, in all
which he never received so much as a wound after this, forward as he was