unaccountable circumstances in any publick affair. A majority against the court, carried by five or six depending lords, who owed the best part of their bread to pensions from the court, and who were told by the publick enemy, that what they did would be pleasing to the queen, though it was openly levelled against the first minister's head: again, those, whose pursestrings and heartstrings were the same, all on a sudden scattering their money to bribe votes: a lord[1], who had been so far always a tory, as often to be thought in the pretender's interest, giving his vote for the ruin of all his old friends, caressed by those whigs, who hated and abhorred him: the whigs all chiming in with a bill against occasional conformity; and the very dissenting ministers agreeing to it, for reasons that no body alive can tell; a resolution of breaking the treaty of peace, without any possible scheme for continuing the war: and all this owing to a doubtfulness, or inconstancy in one certain quarter, which, at this distance, I dare not describe. Neither do I find any one person, though deepest in affairs, who can tell what steps to take. On January the second, the house of lords is to meet, and, it is expected, they will go on in their votes and addresses against a peace.
On the other side, we are endeavouring to get a majority, and have called up two earls sons to the house of peers; and I thought six more would have been called, and perhaps they may before Wednesday. We expect the duke of Somerset and lord Cholmondeley will lose their places; but it is not yet done, and we wish for one more change at court,
