Page "William Sacheverell" Paragraph 7

In the judgment of Speaker Onslow, Sacheverell was the " ablest parliament man " of the reign of Charles II.

He was one of the earliest English parliamentary orators ; his speeches greatly impressed his contemporaries, and in a later generation, as Thomas Macaulay observes, they were " a favourite theme of old men who lived to see the conflicts of Robert Walpole and William Pulteney.

Though his fame has become dimmed in comparison with that of Shaftesbury, Russell and Sidney, he was equally conspicuous in the parliamentary proceedings of Charles II's reign, and left a more permanent mark than any of them on the constitutional changes of the period.