But the King's resolution was fixed.

"I will go on," he said.
"I have been only too indulgent.

Indulgence ruined my father." [389] The artful minister found that his advice had been formerly taken only because it had been shaped to suit the royal temper, and that, from the moment at which he began to counsel well, he began to counsel in vain.
He had shown some signs of slackness in the proceeding against Magdalene College.

He had recently attempted to convince the King that Tyrconnel's scheme of confiscating the property of the English colonists in Ireland was full of danger, and had, with the help of Powis and Bellasyse, so far succeeded that the execution of the design had been postponed for another year.

But this timidity and scrupulosity had excited disgust and suspicion in the royal mind.