[206] King William had made large grants of land out of the forfeited estates in Ireland, to his foreign servants, Portland, Albemarle, Rochford, Galway, and Athlone, and to his favourite, Lady Orkney. The Commons, who now watched every step of their deliverer with bitter jealousy, appointed a commission to enquire into the value of these grants; and followed it with a bill for resuming and applying them to the payment of public debt; “and; in order to prevent the bill from being defeated in the House of Lords, they, by a form seldom used, and which very seldom should be used, tacked it to their bill of supply; so that the Lords could not refuse the one, without disappointing the other. The Lords, to secure themselves from that insignificancy, to which the form of the bill tended to reduce them, disputed, in some conferences with the Commons, the form of it with warmth; but the resumption which it contained with indifference. And in both Houses, even the servants of the Crown gave themselves little trouble to defeat it; partly to gain popularity, but more from national antipathy to foreigners, and envy at gifts in which themselves were no sharers. The King, making allowances for national weaknesses, and for those of human nature, passed the bill without any complaint in public, but with a generous indignation in private, which perhaps made the blow fall more heavy on his friends, when, in order to soften it, he said to them, that it was for his sake, and not for their own, they were suffering,”--_Dalrymple’s Annals._ William felt so deeply the unkindness offered to him, that he prorogued the Parliament without the usual ceremony of a speech from the throne. [207] Mr Steward. [208] More commonly called Vanbrugh. In Dryden’s age, the spelling of proper names was not punctiliously adhered to. [209] Dryden died on the 1st of May, and this letter was written on the 11th of the preceding month. The prologue and epilogue were therefore composed within less than a month of his death. [210] The Hall of the College of Physicians. [211] Mr Malone doubts his being Doctor. [212] Thomas. [213] Sir Richard Philipps, according to Collins. [214] Sir Edward Hartop, says Collins. [215] Susanna, the wife of Sir John Pickering, according to Collins, was the eldest daughter of Sir Erasmus Driden. [216] Erasmus Driden, the poet’s father, was the writer’s great uncle. All these corrections are made by Mr Malone. [217] _Ego sum Preceptor Amoris._ ART. AM. Lib. [218] His Ode on St Cecilia’s Day, entitled, Alexander’s Feast, or the Power of Music. [219] Mrs Philips. [220] Mrs Behn. [Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.] End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of John Dryden, Volume 18 of 18, by John Dryden