no danger of being out-voted, was not restrained; and therefore used
as an argument against those who were gone upon pretence that they
were not suffered to deliver their opinion freely in the House,
which could not be believed, when all men knew what liberty Mr.
Waller took, and spoke every day with impunity against the sense and
proceedings of the House."

Waller, as he continued to sit, was one of the commissioners
nominated by the Parliament to treat with the king at Oxford; and
when they were presented, the king said to him, "Though you are the
last, you are not the lowest nor the least in my favour."
Whitelock, who, being another of the commissioners, was witness of
this kindness, imputes it to the king's knowledge of the plot, in
which Waller appeared afterwards to have been engaged against the
Parliament. Fenton, with equal probability, believes that his
attempt to promote the royal cause arose from his sensibility of the
king's tenderness. Whitelock says nothing of his behaviour at
Oxford: he was sent with several others to add pomp to the
commission, but was not one of those to whom the trust of treating
was imparted.

The engagement, known by the name of Waller's plot, was soon
afterwards discovered. Waller had a brother-in-law, Tomkyns, who
was clerk of the queen's council, and at the same time had a very
numerous acquaintance, and great influence, in the city. Waller and
he, conversing with great confidence, told both their own secrets
and those of their friends; and, surveying the wide extent of their
conversation, imagined that they found in the majority of all ranks
great disapprobation of the violence of the Commons, and
unwillingness to continue the war. They knew that many favoured the