the Presbyterians were grown very inconsiderable in their number and
quality, and would daily come into the church, if we did not fright them
from it by new severities. When the act was passed, they presently
changed their style, and raised a clamour, through both kingdoms, of the
great numbers of considerable gentry who were laid aside, and could no
longer serve their queen and country; which hyperbolical way of
reckoning, when it came to be melted down into truth, amounted to about
fifteen country justices, most of them of the lowest size, for estate,
quality, or understanding. However, this puts me in mind of a passage
told me by a great man, though I know not whether it be anywhere
recorded. That a complaint was made to the king and council in Sweden,
of a prodigious swarm of Scots, who, under the condition of pedlars,
infested that kingdom to such a degree, as, if not suddenly prevented,
might in time prove dangerous to the state, by joining with any
discontented party. Meanwhile the Scots, by their agents, placed a good
sum of money to engage the offices of the prime minister in their
behalf; who, in order to their defence, told the council, he was assured
they were but a few inconsiderable people, that lived honestly and
poorly, and were not of any consequence. Their enemies offered to prove
the contrary, whereupon an order was made to take their number, which
was found to amount, as I remember, to about thirty thousand. The affair
was again brought before the council, and great reproaches made the
first minister, for his ill computation; who, presently took the other
handle, said, he had reason to believe the number yet greater than what
was returned; and then gravely offered to the king's consideration,
whether it were safe to render desperate so great a body of able men,
who had little to lose, and whom any hard treatment would only serve to
unite into a power capable of disturbing, if not destroying the peace of
the kingdom. And so they were suffered to continue.