The author of these memoranda in pencil, which extend, at intervals of time, from the meeting of the parliament to April 1642, though mistaken by Mr. Hatsell for Sir Edmund Verney, member for the county of Bucks, and killed at the battle of Edgehill, has been ascertained by my learned friend, Mr. Serjeant D'Oyly, to be his brother Sir Ralph, member for Aylesbury. He continued at Westminster, and took the covenant; but afterwards retired to France, and was disabled to sit by a vote of the house, Sept. 22, 1645. [210] _Mém. de Motteville_, i. 264. Clarendon has hardly been ingenuous in throwing so much of the blame of this affair on Lord Digby. Indeed, he insinuates in one place, that the queen's apprehension of being impeached, with which some one in the confidence of the parliamentary leaders (either Lord Holland or Lady Carlisle) had inspired her, led to the scheme of anticipating them (ii. 232). It has been generally supposed that Lady Carlisle gave the five members a hint to absent themselves. The French ambassador, however, Montereuil, takes the credit to himself. "J'avois prévenu mes amis, et ils s'étoient mis en sûreté." Mazure, p. 429. It is probable that he was in communication with that intriguing lady. [211] Pp. 159, 180. [212] The earliest proof that the Commons gave of their intention to take the militia into their hands was immediately upon the discovery of Percy's plot, 5th May 1641, when an order was made that the members of each county, etc., should meet to consider in what state the places for which they serve are in respect of arms and ammunition, and whether the deputy lieutenants and lord lieutenants are persons well affected to the religion and the public peace, and to present their names to the house, and who are the governors of forts and castles in their counties. Commons' Journals. Not long afterwards, or at least before the king's journey to Scotland, Sir Arthur Haslerig, as Clarendon informs us, proposed a bill for settling the militia in such hands as they should nominate, which was seconded by St. John, and read once, "but with so universal a dislike, that it was never called upon a second time." Clarendon, i. 488. I can find nothing of this in the Journals, and believe it to be one of the anachronisms into which this author has fallen, in consequence of writing at a distance from authentic materials. The bill to which he alludes must, I conceive, be that brought in by Haslerig long after (7th Dec. 1641), not, as he terms it, for settling the militia, but for making certain persons, leaving their names in blank, "lords general of all the forces within England and Wales, and lord admiral of England." The persons intended seem to have been Essex, Holland, and Northumberland. The Commons had for some time planned to give the two former earls a supreme command over the trained bands north and south of Trent (Journals, Nov. 15 and 16); which was afterwards changed into the scheme of lord lieutenants