Tory squires, and of those needy retainers of the court, who had been returned in multitudes to the Parliament of 1685, had given place to the men of the old country party, the men who had driven the Cabal from power, who had carried the Habeas Corpus Act, and who had sent up the Exclusion Bill to the Lords. Among them was Powle, deeply read in the history and law of Parliament, and distinguished by the species of eloquence which is required when grave questions are to be solemnly brought under the notice of senates; and Sir Thomas Littleton, versed in European politics, and gifted with a vehement and piercing logic which had often, when, after a long sitting, the candles had been lighted, roused the languishing House, and decided the event of the debate. There, too, was William Sacheverell, an orator whose great parliamentary abilities were, many years later, a favourite theme of old men who lived to see the conflicts of Walpole and Pulteney.[1] With these eminent persons was joined Sir Robert Clayton, the wealthiest merchant of London, whose palace in the Old Jewry surpassed in splendour the aristocratical mansions of Lincoln's Inn Fields and Covent Garden, whose villa among the Surrey hills was described as a garden of Eden, whose banquets vied with those of Kings, and whose judicious munificence, still attested by numerous public monuments, had obtained for him in the annals of the City a place second only to that of Gresham. In the Parliament which met at Oxford in 1681, Clayton had, as member for the capital, and at the request of his constituents, moved for leave to bring in the Bill of Exclusion, and had been seconded by Lord Russell. In 1685 the City, deprived of its franchises and governed by the creatures of the court, had returned four Tory representatives. But the old charter had now been restored; and Clayton had been again chosen by acclamation.[2] Nor must John Birch be passed over. He had begun life as a carter, but had, in the civil wars, left his team, had turned soldier, had risen to the rank of Colonel in the army of the Commonwealth, had, in high fiscal offices, shown
