At length the main question was put; and the Pastoral Letter was condemned to the flames by a small majority in a full house.

The Ayes were a hundred and sixty-two; the Noes a hundred and fifty-five.

[395] The general opinion, at least of the capital, seems to have been that Burnet was cruelly treated.
[396] He was not naturally a man of fine feelings; and the life which he had led had not tended to make them finer.

He had been during many years a mark for theological and political animosity.

Grave doctors had anathematized him; ribald poets had lampooned him; princes and ministers had laid snares for his life; he had been long a wanderer and an exile, in constant peril of being kidnapped, struck in the boots, hanged and quartered.