In the year 1640, Mr. Waller was returned Burgess for Agmondesham, in which Parliament he opposed the court measures. The writer of his life observes[2], 'that an intermission of Parliaments for 12 years disgusted the nation, and the House met in no good humour to give money. It must be confessed, some late proceedings had raised such jealousies as would be sure to discover themselves, whenever the King should come to ask for a supply; and Mr. Waller was one of the first to condemn those measures. A speech he made in the House upon this occasion, printed at the end of his poems, gives us some notion of his principles as to government.' Indeed we cannot but confess he was a little too inconstant in them, and was not naturally so steady, as he was judicious; which variable temper was the cause of his losing his reputation, in a great measure, with both parties, when the nation became unhappily divided. His love to poetry, and his indolence, laid him open to the insinuations of others, and perhaps prevented his fixing so resolutely to any one party, as to make him a favourite with either. As Mr. Waller did not come up to the heighths of those who were for unlimited monarchy, so he did not go the lengths of such as would have sunk the kingdom into a commonwealth, but had so much credit at court, that in this parliament the King particularly sent to him, to second his demands of some subsidies to pay the army; and Sir Henry Vane objecting against first voting a supply, because the King would not accept it, unless it came up to his proportion; Mr. Waller spoke earnestly to Sir Thomas Jermyn, comptroller of the houshold, to save his master from the effects of so bold a falsity; for, says he, I am but a country gentleman, and cannot pretend to know the King's mind: but Sir Thomas durst not contradict the secretary; and his son the earl of St. Alban's, afterwards told Mr. Waller, that his father's cowardice ruined the King. In the latter end of the year 1642, he was one of the commissioners appointed by the Parliament, to present their propositions for peace to his Majesty at Oxford. Mr. Whitelocke, in his Memorials, tells us, that when Mr. Waller kissed the King's hand in the garden at Christ's Church, his Majesty said to him, 'though you are last, yet you are not the worst, nor the least in our favour.' The discovery of a plot, continues Mr. Whitelocke, 'then in hand in London to betray the Parliament, wherein Mr. Waller was engaged, with Chaloner, Tomkins, and others, which was then in agitation, did manifest the King's courtship of Mr. Waller to be for that service.'