I left this noble place and conversation, my lady having provided carriages to convey us back in the same manner as we went, and a dinner being prepared at Dunstable against our arrival. Northampton,[Pg 277] having been lately burned and re-edified, is now become a town that for the beauty of the buildings, especially the church and townhouse, may compare with the neatest in Italy itself.
Dr. Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, wrote a very honest and handsome letter to the Commissioners Ecclesiastical, excusing himself from sitting any longer among them, he by no means approving of their prosecuting the Clergy who refused to read the Declaration for liberty of conscience, in prejudice of the Church of England.
The Dutch make extraordinary preparations both at sea and land, which with no small progress Popery makes among us, puts us to many difficulties. The Popish Irish soldiers commit many murders and insults; the whole nation disaffected, and in apprehensions.
After long trials of the doctors to bring up the little Prince of Wales by hand (so many of her Majesty's children having died infants) not succeeding, a country nurse, the wife of a tile maker, is taken to give it suck.