under the great seal of William; and they had in their secret
drawers promises of pardon in the handwriting of James.

Among those who were guilty of this wickedness three men stand
preeminent, Russell, Godolphin and Marlborough. No three men
could be, in head and heart, more unlike to one another; and the
peculiar qualities of each gave a peculiar character to his
villany. The treason of Russell is to be attributed partly to
fractiousness; the treason of Godolphin is to be attributed
altogether to timidity; the treason of Marlborough was the
treason of a man of great genius and boundless ambition.

It may be thought strange that Russell should have been out of
humour. He had just accepted the command of the united naval
forces of England and Holland with the rank of Admiral of the
Fleet. He was Treasurer of the Navy. He had a pension of three
thousand pounds a year. Crown property near Charing Cross, to the
value of eighteen thousand pounds, had been bestowed on him. His
indirect gains must have been immense. But he was still
dissatisfed. In truth, with undaunted courage, with considerable
talents both for war and for administration, and with a certain
public spirit, which showed itself by glimpses even in the very
worst parts of his life, he was emphatically a bad man, insolent,
malignant, greedy, faithless. He conceived that the great
services which he had performed at the time of the Revolution had
not been adequately rewarded. Every thing that was given to
others seemed to him to be pillaged from himself. A letter is
still extant which he wrote to William about this time. It is
made up of boasts, reproaches and sneers. The Admiral, with
ironical professions of humility and loyalty, begins by asking