In the same year, 1632,[346] Mr. Francis Windbank was made secretary of state by the interest of Bishop Laud, who hath entered it in his Diary. “1632. June 15. Mr. Francis Windbank, my old friend, was sworn Secretary of State; which place I obtained for him of my gracious master King Charles.” He proved so much a creature of the queen’s, and such an advocate and patron of all suffering papists and jesuits, that he had the character of a papist, and brought a very great odium upon Laud who preferred him. That which created him the more envy, was the turning out the old secretary, Sir John Coke, who was displaced by Laud “for his honest firmness against popery,” as the author of the remarks on the complete historian assures us, and for his hatred and opposition to the jesuits. This job was labouring for three years’ space and at last obtained by Laud’s influence on the King. ----- Footnote 346: Com. Hist. p. 67. ----- These instances, and many others which might be mentioned, are sufficient to discover what sort of a protestant Laud was, and how he stood affected to the church of Rome. I shall now consider his character for piety, which was exactly of a piece with his protestantism. He was a creature of the Duke of Buckingham, who was one of the lewdest men in the kingdom. This man, as Archbishop Abbot said of him, was the only inward counsellor with Buckingham; “sitting with him sometimes privately whole hours, and feeding his humour with malice and spite.” His marrying the Earl of Devonshire to the Lady Rich, though she had another husband, is a glorious argument of his regard to the laws of God, and particularly of his reverence for the seventh commandment.