The English favourite, Sidney, was a man of wit and pleasure, possessed of the most engaging talents for conversation and private friendship, but rendered unfit for public business by indolence and inattention.

He was ennobled, and afterwards created earl of Romney; a title which he enjoyed with several successive posts of profit and importance.

The stream of honour and preferment ran strong in favour of the whigs, and this appearance of partiality confirmed the suspicion and resentment of the opposite party.
* Sir John Holt was appointed lord chief justice of the king's bench, and Sir Henry Pollexfen of the common pleas: the earl of Devonshire was made lord steward of the household, and the earl of Dorset lord chamberlain .-- _Ralph._ {WILLIAM AND MARY, 1688--1701.} THE CONVENTION CONVERTED INTO A PARLIAMENT.
The first resolution taken in the new council was to convert the convention into a parliament, that the new settlement might be strengthened by a legal sanction, which was now supposed to be wanting, as the assembly had not been convoked by the king's writ of summons.
The experiment of a new election was deemed too hazardous; therefore the council determined that the king should, by virtue of his own authority, change the convention into a parliament, by going to the house of peers with the usual state of a sovereign, and pronouncing a speech from the throne to both houses.

This expedient was accordingly practised.

[002] _[See note B, at the end of this Vol.]_ He assured them he should never take any step that would diminish the good opinion they had conceived of his integrity.