induced by his friends to absent himself during part of the
discussion. But his anxiety had become insupportable. He come
down to the Speaker's chamber, heard part of the debate,
withdrew, and, after hesitating for an hour or two between
conscience and five thousand pounds a year, took a manly
resolution and rushed into the House just in time to vote. Two
officers of the army, Colonel John Darcy, son of the Lord
Conyers, and Captain James Kendall, withdrew to the lobby.
Middleton went down to the bar and expostulated warmly with them.
He particularly addressed himself to Kendall, a needy retainer of
the court, who had, in obedience to the royal mandate, been sent
to Parliament by a packed corporation in Cornwall, and who had
recently obtained a grant of a hundred head of rebels sentenced
to transportation. "Sir," said Middleton, "have not you a troop
of horse in His Majesty's service?" "Yes, my Lord," answered
Kendall: "but my elder brother is just dead, and has left me
seven hundred a year."

When the tellers had done their office it appeared that the Ayes
were one hundred and eighty-two, and the Noes one and eighty-
three. In that House of Commons which had been brought together
by the unscrupulous use of chicanery, of corruption, and of
violence, in that House of Commons of which James had said that
more than eleven twelfths of the members were such as he would
himself have nominated, the court had sustained a defeat on a
vital question.21

In consequence of this vote the expressions which the King had
used respecting the test were, on the thirteenth of November,
taken into consideration. It was resolved, after much discussion,