Shrewsbury, a popular Whig, and a young man of twenty-eight, was the other Secretary. The Great Seal came into the hands of Commissioners, the chief of whom was Sir John Maynard, who had upheld the Petition of Rights in 1628, had voted with the country party in the struggles preceding the Civil Wars, had subscribed the League and Covenant, and had advised Cromwell to accept the Crown. He was ninety years of age, and when presented to William at Whitehall the Prince remarked, he must have survived all the lawyers of his time. He replied, “he had like to have outlived the law itself, if His Highness had not come over.”[110] The Treasury fell into the hands of Whigs, amongst whom was Godolphin, the husband of Margaret Blagge, a man of practical ability, but of no fixed principle, a staunch Churchman, yet one of a class that could live amongst Jesuits under King James, and could keep on terms with Presbyterians under King William. This administration--a Joseph’s coat of many colours--proceeded from a compromise which under existing circumstances seemed unavoidable. Intended to please different parties, it actually displeased them--a fact soon manifested. But no political appointment aroused so much criticism as the nomination of Burnet to the See of Salisbury. That See had become vacant through the death of Seth Ward; and it was the first piece of ecclesiastical preferment of which William had to dispose after his accession to the throne. The nomination of Bishops in our own time has occasionally provoked immense discussion, but perhaps nobody ever stepped up to the Episcopal Bench amidst such showers of abuse as Gilbert Burnet. To select a High Churchman would have been inconsistent and disastrous; and amongst eligible Low Churchmen, no one had such strong claims upon William as the friend whom he and his wife had consulted at the Hague, the Chaplain who had come with his Fleet, the Secretary who had drawn up his Declarations, and the clergyman who had advocated his cause from the pulpit. But the very grounds upon which rested Burnet’s claims made him the more objectionable to many. These grounds were decidedly political, yet though many a Bishop has been appointed for political reasons, the services now enumerated were not exactly such as to indicate qualification for the office of a spiritual overseership. At the same time it is unfair to Burnet’s memory not to say, that he was a man of piety, Protestant zeal, varied learning, large experience, and indefatigable industry. At a later period, after time had worn down the asperities of the controversy, a mitre could with much propriety have been given him; but it was scarcely in accordance with William’s policy in political appointments to bestow it at once upon one who had obtrusively acted as a partisan, and inspired so much dislike in the opposite party. It should be further stated that many Churchmen were deeply offended at Burnet’s