He sums up the charges against him thus:--"That I am a papist and some will needs have me a Jesuite; that the access and interest I have been thought to have had with the king is thereto ascribed; that I have been a great caballer and councealor of those things that have been done for the advancement of the Romish interest and agrieving of the people: and thence have been a joint contriver with the Jesuit Peters and others; and that for this I have received advantages and money from the king, and so consequently am chargeable with the odium and censure that such doings merit." To this he replies, that he has been married eighteen years and has several children, which proves him no Jesuit; that for twenty-two years he has been no Papist, "without being under the least temptation to return to it again;" that he has always avowed his opposition to those principles "in the opinion of some more forwardly than prudently," when the catholic party was strong, "judging it," he adds sarcastically, "a fitter season then than now to show zeal for the Protestant religion." The only money ever paid to him from the treasury is acknowledged in the published accounts, and so on. But what is most daring is his charity towards the fallen monarch and his Catholic friends in the hour of their unpopularity. "For I must confess that the fatal stroaks the interest of the Church of Rome seems to have gotten in these nations does not a whitt increase my aversion to their religion, for that I judge truth and error is not rightly measured by such events; and as to the persons of Roman Catholics, as it never agreed with the notions I have of the Christian religion to hate these persons, so their present misfortunes are so far from embittering my spirit towards them that it rather increases tenderness and regard to them, while I consider the ingenerous spirit of those who cannot take a more effectual way to lessen the reputation of the Protestant religion."
"I come now to the great charge of my access to and interest with the king. And if I should ask whether that were a crime? I find few reasonable men, if any, would say so. But I am neither afraid nor ashamed to give a candid account of that matter." He then gives the occasion of their meeting in 1676, as narrated elsewhere, and proceeds:--"To do him right, I never found reason to doubt his sincerity in the matter of liberty of conscience.... After his happening to be in Scotland, giving me an opportunity of more frequent access, and that begetting an opinion of interest, I acknowledge freely that I was ready to use it to the advantage of my friends and acquaintances, what I esteemed just and reasonable for me to meddle in." Again he says, "In short I must own nor will I decline to avow that I love King James, that I wish him well, that I have been and am sensibly touched with a feeling of his misfortunes, and that I cannot excuse myself from the duty of praying for him that God may bless him, and sanctify His afflictions to him. And if so be His will to take from him an earthly crown, He may prepare his heart and direct his steps so that he may obtain through mercy an heavenly one, which all good Christians judge the most preferable."