crown, that all things are now well. The queen has turned out the duke of Somerset, and has created twelve new lords, of which three are peers eldest sons, the rest new created: so that a majority is past dispute. We are all in the greatest joy imaginable to find her majesty declare herself so seasonably.
TO ARCHBISHOP KING.
I CANNOT in conscience take up your grace's time with an empty letter; and it is not every day one can furnish what will be worth your reading. I had all your grace's packets; and I humbly thank your grace for your good instructions to me, which I shall observe as soon as ever it shall please God to put me into a way of life where I can have leisure for such speculations.
In above twenty years that I have known something of courts and ministers, I never saw so strange and odd a complicated disposition of affairs as what we have had for six weeks past. The facts your grace may have met with in every common newspaper; but the springs of them are hardly discoverable even by those who had most opportunity of observing. Neither do I find those who should know best, agree upon the matter. There is a perpetual trial of skill between those who are out and those who are in; and the former are generally more
