His romantic courage, his flighty wit, his eccentric invention, his love of desperate risks and startling effects, were not qualities likely to be of much use to him in financial calculations and negotiations.

Delamere, a more vehement Whig, if possible, than Mordaunt, sate second at the board, and was Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Two Whig members of the House of Commons were in the Commission, Sir Henry Capel, brother of that Earl of Essex who died by his own hand in the Tower, and Richard Hampden, son of the great leader of the Long Parliament.

But the Commissioner on whom the chief weight of business lay was Godolphin.

This man, taciturn, clearminded, laborious, inoffensive, zealous for no government and useful to every government, had gradually become an almost indispensable part of the machinery of the state.