possible, with both Kings. His irritable and imperious nature was
constantly impelling him to quarrel with both. His spleen was
excited one week by a dry answer from William, and the next week
by an absurd proclamation from James. Fortunately the most
important day of his life, the day from which all his subsequent
years took their colour, found him out of temper with the
banished King.

Godolphin had not, and did not pretend to have, any cause of
complaint against the government which he served. He was First
Commissioner of the Treasury. He had been protected, trusted,
caressed. Indeed the favour shown to him had excited many
murmurs. Was it fitting, the Whigs had indignantly asked, that a
man who had been high in office through the whole of the late
reign, who had promised to vote for the Indulgence, who had sate
in the Privy Council with a Jesuit, who had sate at the Board of
Treasury with two Papists, who had attended an idolatress to her
altar, should be among the chief ministers of a Prince whose
title to the throne was derived from the Declaration of Rights?
But on William this clamour had produced no effect; and none of
his English servants seems to have had at this time a larger
share of his confidence than Godolphin.

Nevertheless, the Jacobites did not despair. One of the most
zealous among them, a gentleman named Bulkeley, who had formerly
been on terms of intimacy with Godolphin, undertook to see what
could be done. He called at the Treasury, and tried to draw the
First Lord into political talk. This was no easy matter; for
Godolphin was not a man to put himself lightly into the power of
others. His reserve was proverbial; and he was especially