therefore desired to be excused from the employment. But the Apparition prest him with much earnestness to undertake it, telling him that the circumstances and secret discoveries (which he should be able to make to the Duke of such passages in the course of his life which were known to none but himselfe) would make it appeare that his message was not the fancy of a distempered braine, but a reality. And so the Apparition tooke his leave of him for that night, telling him that he would give him leave to consider until the next night, and then he would come to receive his answer, whether he would undertake his message to the Duke of Buckingham or noe. Mr. Towse passed the next day with much trouble and perplexity, debateing and reasoning with himselfe whether he should deliver this message to the Duke of Buckingham or not; but in the conclusion he resolved to doe it. And the next night, when the Apparition came, he gave his answer accordingly, and then received full instructions. "After which Mr. Towse went and found out Sir Thomas Bludder and Sir Ralph Freeman, by whom he was brought to the Duke of Buckingham, and had several private and long audiences of him. I myselfe, by the favour of a friend, was once admitted to see him in private conference with the Duke, where (although I heard not their discourse) I observed much earnestness in their actions and gestures. After which conference Mr. Towse told me that the Duke would not follow the advice that was given him, which was (as I remember) that he intimated the casting off and rejection of some men who had great interest in him--and, as I take it, he named Bishop Laud; and that he, the Duke, was to do some popular acts in the ensueing parliament, of which the Duke would have had Mr. Towse to have been a Burgess, but he refused it, alledging that, unless the Duke had followed his directions, he must doe him hurt if he were of the parliament. Mr. Towse also then told me that the Duke confessed that he had told him those things that no creature knew but himselfe, and that none but God or the Divell could reveale to him. The Duke offered Mr. Towse to have the King knighte him, and to have given him preferment (as he told me), but that he refused it, saying that, unless he would follow his advice, he should receive nothing from him. Mr. Towse, when he made this relation, told me the Duke would inevitably be destroyed before such a time (which he then named), and accordingly the Duke’s death happened before that time. He likewise told me that he had written downe all the discourses he had had with the Apparition; and that _at last his comeing to him was so familiar, that he was as little troubled with it as if it had been a friend or acquaintance that had come to visit him_. Mr. Towse told me further, that the Archbishop (then Bishop of London) Dr. Laud, should, by his counsels, be the author of a very great trouble to the kingdome, by which it should be reduced to that extremity of