to seduce the army from their adherence to >the parliamentary authority, and a proclamation being issued for the apprehending him, and others engaged in that design, he was stopped at Feversham, sent up to Lon-. don, and put under the custody of a ser geant at arms. From hence, in the month of July following, he was bailed, and soon after found it necessary to withdraw to France. In this attempt to fly, however, he was not much more successful than in the former, reaching no farther than Canterbury before he was again seized, and obliged to undergo a very strict examination. Whether he was put into confinement on this occasion, or suffered to proceed on his journey, is a point that his biographers have not explained; but it was not very long, we find, before he joined the Queen in France, where he staid some time, till accompanying some military stores, which that Princess sent over for the use of the Earl of Newcastle, he was entertained by his lordship, who had been

his old friend and patron in the station of lieutenant-general of the Ordnance.

In his military capacity he appears to have behaved well, for at the siege of Gloucester in 1643, he received the honour of knighthood from the King, as an acknowledgment of his bravery and signal services; but, on the declining of the King's affairs, so far as to be beyond retrieving, Sir William once more returned to France, where he changed his religion for that of the church of Rome, and remained for a considerable time with the Queen and Prince of Wales. By them he was held in high esteem, and appears to have been entrusted with some important negociation in 1646, and particularly employed by the Queen in an attempt, though an unsuccessful one, to prevail on King Charles I. to comply with some temporising steps which she considered as necessary to his interests. In 1650 an ingenious project having been formed for sending a select number of ar

tificers (particularly weavers) from Francs to Virginia, for the improvement of that colony, our author (encouraged to it, by the Queen Mother) undertook the conduct of this expedition, and absolutely embarked in the prosecution of it, from one of the ports of Normandy; but fortune not being inclined to favour him, the vessel had scarcely got clear of the French coast before she fell in with, and was taken by a ship of war belonging to the parliament, which carried her into the Isle of Wight. Sir W. Davenant on this occasion was confined for some time close prisoner in Cowes Castle, and in the ensuing year was sent up to the Tower of London, in order to take his trial before the high court of justice.

During his confinement his life was for a long time kept in the utmost suspense and danger, yet what is very remarkable, it had so little effect on his natural vivacity and easiness of disposition, that he still, with great assiduity, pursued his poem af

Gondebert, two books of which he had written whilst in France

By what means he escaped this impending storm is not related: some have attributed it to the intervention of two aldermen of York, to whom he had shewn some civilities, when they had been taken prisoners in the north by the earl of Newcastle's forces; and others ascribe his safety to the mediation of Milton. Though the former of these particulars may have some foundation, and might be a concurrent circumstance in his preservation, yet the latter is most likely to have been the principal instrument in it, as that immortal bard was a man whose interest was most potent at that time, and it is reasonable to suppose a sympathetic regard for a person of Sir William's poetical abilities, must have pleaded strongly in his favour, with so humane a man as Milton, and point out to him, that true honour ought to be considered of no party, but claims the protection of all, and what seems to confirm

this is, that we find ten years afterwards,. when the latter was exactly in the same predicament, he stood indebted for the same protection from Sir William; to whom therefore mankind ought to consider themselves as under double obliga-. tions, since, but for his intercession for the life of Milton, it is more than probablethe world would never have known the finest piece of poetry in it. Be this however as it will, he was at length admitted. to his liberty as a prisoner at large, yet his circumstances being now considerably reduced, he made a bold effort towards at once redressing them, and redeeming the public from that cynical and austere gloom which had long hung over it, occasioned by the suppression of theatrical amusements. He well knew that a theatre, if conducted with skill and address, would still find a sufficient number of partisans to support it; and having obtained the countenance of Lord Whitelock, Sir Joseph Maynard and some other persons of.