gled, that the former were tranquillized by the latter. The heavenly stream ran clear from the defilements of an earthly

one:

Αλλα τε μιν καθύπερθεν επιρρέει, ηυτ' ελαιον :

Like sacred oil, it ever seemed to flow,

The waves above unmixed with waves below!

We should but lose our time, therefore, were we to furnish our readers with even an outline of that unanswerable evidence, which has rebutted all the charges of conservative writers against Sir John Eliot, as to his political course being one of personal pique against Buckingham. He never seems to have hated, or envied, or maligned, or insulted any single individual, from the moment of his remorse about Mr. Moyle. Against systems, and not men, when he could demonstrate their evil tendencies, his voice was indeed that of a Boanerges. On one occasion, a poor woman, named Grys, appealed to parliament against the cruel delays of chancery; when Coke, from his sympathies with the bench, attempted to pass off the wrong as occurring in former days, when Egerton was chancellor. De mortuis, exclaimed the old lawyer, nil nisi bonum, and the whole affair was about to be smothered in a select committee. Our great patriot then rose as usual, and pleaded with pathetic power for the distressed. He warned the house to be careful in their choice; for he knew of what vast importance it was, that the cries of the vexed subject should be heard by unbiassed men.' He would have relished even Sir Edward Coke better, had he belonged to any other profession than that of the long robe, which he thought ought to be excluded from parliament as manifesting dependence:" and for this reason, we may imagine, he never allowed himself to be called to the bar. With regard to the supplies for recovering the Palatinate, £300,000 had been voted, instead of the £900,000 demanded; coupled however with a promise, that more should be conceded, if shown to be necessary. The cloven foot was already becoming apparent through the flimsy texture of royal hypocrisy. James had proposed, in order to cajole the Commons into a liberal subsidy, that the money about to be raised should be appropriated by a parliamentary commission; but a constitutional check of this sort, perfectly satisfactory as it appeared, could be and was easily, though shamelessly, rendered void, by the nomination of a secret council of war. Such was the kingcraft upon which the Stuarts prided themselves, to their own ultimate and righteous destruction. Efforts were now made for the abolition, or at least curtailment of monopolies. The lord treasurer Middlesex was impeached, contrary to the remonstrances of the monarch, yet with the fullest connivance of his favorite; far too

mean and jealous, as that personage proved himself, to suffer a rival in the neighbourhood of the throne. Eliot acted on all the committees with Sandys, Digges, Pym, Wentworth, and others. The king justly called Steenie a fool who was preparing a rod in pickle for his own flagellation. Charles Prince of Wales also had joined in the prosecution of Middlesex; upon which his father rebuked him with the bitterness of prophecy; observing quite in vain that he would live to know enough of parliamentary impeachments. The royal ass brayed in the ears of a deaf adder! On went the patriots true as ever to their purpose. Like all selfstyled wise men, caught in the meshes of their craftiness, James began to discern that his juggles could scarcely proceed much further. He complained,-quarrelled,-prorogued,-assembled again,-bullied,-took fresh offence, and finally dissolved on the 29th of October, 1624. He had failed altogether in the object of his concessions. He fancied they would have put him into possession of more money, and more power. 'He let fall some of the flowers of his crown,' says Hacket, that they in parliament 'might gather them; which indeed was no more than a defluvium 'pennarum, the moulting of some feathers, through which the eagle would fly the better.' Alas! this potentate of the air sickened, and expired shortly afterwards.

6

His mantle was caught by an ill-advised successor, far too inflated, ignorant, and wilful, to have derived the least wisdom from experience. A curvature in his knee, and an impediment in his speech were of slight importance, compared with those painful symptoms of obliquity in disposition, as well as morals, which had marked even his opening years. The old Scottish lady, presiding over his nursery, used to affirm, that he was of a very evil and unthankful nature from his infancy upwards.' He exactly answered to the character of those, who as soon as they 'are born go astray and speak lies.' His servants, tutor, companions, and parents,-all became dupes in their turns. Truth could not have lived in an atmosphere haunted by wretches like Buckingham and Holland. Treachery and falsehood formed the essence and staple of their manners. These vices, instead of breaking forth only here and there, existed to saturation, through whatever they thought, and said, and did. Intrigue, amongst the courtiers of this time, was what honesty is amongst ordinary men, the bond which holds every thing together. Mammon, ambition, and over-reaching tyranny reigned triumphant. To have unveiled the vile and various processes of their operations, would have startled Asmodeus himself; or rivalled those chambers of imagery, in which the idolatries of an apostate people were revealed to the survey of the prophet. On the demise of James in 1625, his good-natured subjects looked out for a change of measures; and as might have been expected, they experienced

sore and thorough disappointment. Charles almost instantly challenged the House of Commons to a contest. No alteration occurred, except decidedly for the worse. He had rushed with an indecent haste into a Roman Catholic marriage, nearly as offensive as the Spanish match, with the Princess Henrietta of France. His father's minion and minister, now become his own, had taken out a new lease of his power; and mocked the sufferings of his country, by appearing in Paris in a white velvet suit, studded with diamonds, and valued at eighty thousand pounds sterling. The crown-jewels, it was imagined by some, had been lent him to augment the blaze of his magnificence, on conducting home a foreign queen to England. Notwithstanding too several instances of unpardonable insolence towards Anne of Austria, he received neither punishment, nor rebuke, on his return. Laud also was collecting his strength for an Episcopal crusade against the Puritans. Under such circumstances, the new sovereign met his first parliament, on the eighteenth of June; when as an assertion of his right divine to govern wrong, he wore the emblem of monarchy on his head, contrary to all precedent previous to the coronation; and furthermore ostentatiously veiled it, at the commencement and close of his harangue, with the most solemn yet ridiculous deference. Sir John Eliot, who was returned as before for Newport, must have sighed at the sight. The king, identifying the present assembly, through an enormous blunder, with its predecessor, ventured to remind his hearers, that he was engaged in a war, undertaken by their advice; upon which most incorrect statement he proceeded to demand the supplies. Meanwhile, certain explanations, given publicly by Buckingham on his precipitate withdrawal from Madrid, and as publicly corroborated by his royal companion, then Prince of Wales, had turned out to be mere mendacious fabrications, forged to produce hostilities. The patriots therefore listened to the son of James, with unfriendly ears, from the beginning of his reign. He knew this, and inwardly conceived thoughts of vengeance: so certain is it, that while the lips of truth will preserve a throne, the lying 'tongue hateth those that are afflicted by it.'

Their first efforts were directed to secure the future safety of the people, by an enlargement of the basis of popular representation. On a repetition of the king's demand for supplies, Eliot and his friends went up to him with an address, respectfully and cautiously worded, promising assistance, but claiming the redress of grievances. The intemperate and threatening answer of the king had no effect on the steady purposes of these great men. They voted tonnage and poundage for one year. The House of Lords, disdaining to accept it with such a limitation, rashly rejected the bill. Still the Commons were not alarmed. They pursued their own course calmly; granted the king readily, as they had promised, two subsidies, and were proceeding

to votes of inquiry and censure into various wrongs and grievances, when the plague suddenly broke out in London. The major part of the members objected to continue at their post: while we are now speaking,' said one, the bell is tolling every minute.' An adjournment to Oxford was consequently proposed, and after a vast deal of squabbling between the king and his two rival ministers, granted. Williams and Buckingham, now fast coming to an open rupture, could not but illustrate the truth of the old saying.'-p.

30.

Williams, however, was undoubtedly the least wicked man, and was therefore quickly ruined by the other. He dared to tell his rival some wholesome verities, before he ceased to be lordkeeper: No man that is wise,' said he, will ever show himself angry with the people of England.' Nevertheless he hated Sir John Eliot, who was now not less active at Oxford than he had been at Westminster. Secret intelligence having reached him, that the loan of ships, promised to France for service against Spain, had been diverted by royal treachery, to the use of Louis XIII. and the Catholics against the Protestants at Rochelle, he hurried to the house, and implored them to grant no further supplies, for that there were heavy grievances to be considered. Some members also required an account of the last subsidies granted for the recovery of the Palatinate, which had been squandered by the court according to custom. Others again alluded to the conduct of the crown in dispensing with the laws against Popery. Many pressed for the repeal of a duty on wines, imposed by the deceased monarch without the consent of parliament. Charles, by his ungracious carriage, aggravated the irritation. Eliot, prominent as he appeared in all and each of the complaints just mentioned, reserved his heaviest blows for the Duke of Buckingham. He had already taken his measure of men and things. Even Wentworth had not deceived him. His orations were frequent, brief, pointed, and pungent. He directed attention to the real sources of evil, whoever might be concerned in concealing them under clouds of mystification. Public opinion shot up, like the gourd of Jonah; whilst whispers got abroad with respect to an impeachment of the haughty favorite. The king, exasperated in the extreme, abruptly dissolved on the twelfth of August; persisted in carrying on the Spanish war up to the disastrous expedition to Cadiz; and levied forced loans upon his own kingdoms.

Among the grievances complained of, about this period as also long before, was Purveyance, or the royal right of impressing vehicles and victuals, in arbitrary quantities and at prices far below their values; under pain of imprisonment by the Board of Green Cloth. Bacon describes the purveyors some years before, as living at free quarters upon the country, cutting down timber without consent from its owners, and exacting labour, with little

or no recompense. An arrangement had once been on the point of being settled with James the First, to pay him £200,000 per annum as an indemnity for the abolition of claims, which although nominally restrained by no less than six and thirty statutes, had recently augmented rather than diminished. The sovereign was in fact a Rob Roy on a large scale,-the Richard Turpin of the nation; and his representatives were licensed highwaymen and freebooters, levying an abominable black-mail from their fellowsubjects. Incidents of military tenure, together with the courts of Star-Chamber and High-Commission, acted like sackcloth in inflaming beyond endurance every sore place. At the coronation, an order had been issued, directing all persons possessed of landed property to the amount of £40 per annum, to receive the dignity of knighthood, or compound for the omission by a fine fixed at discretion. The second parliament of Charles received no kindlier treatment than his first. Buckingham had strained hard to disqualify the leading patriots by the notable project of having them pricked for sheriffs of their respective counties. Sir John Eliot was the grand object of his apprehension; but with regard to him, the trick completely broke down; for whilst the duke, on the one hand prevented him from being returned for Newport, he so augmented his popularity on the other, that the electors of Cornwall would hear of no other representative. He thus rode in triumph upon the cheers and suffrages of those who knew him best, as knight of their shire, instead of being the burgess for a borough. British law, says Miss Aiken, had been trampled down; English liberty cried aloud for champions and asserters, ' and not in vain : deep thoughts and high resolves were maturing in manly bosoms; great and important principles were to be 'laid down; noble sentiments to be uttered and inspired; and 'they seized at once upon the language of truth and nature, as 'their inalienable right.' Sir John Eliot did so beyond all others; and well knowing with whom he would have to deal, he provided with quiet calmness for his own household. He assigned over every portion of his extensive estates to trustees for the benefit of his family that no fears as to poverty rushing on his children might paralyze, in some moment of paternal weakness, either his integrity or his patriotism. Having taken such necessary, yet affecting precautions, he repaired to the post of danger; determined at whatever hazard, to strike down the great traitor, who had imperilled the liberty and the property of the kingdom.' Here, therefore, as soon as the session was fairly opened, his vehement eloquence rose high and loud in that great, warm, and ruffling' assembly, as Whitlocke calls it, which met on the 6th of February, 1626. Searching committees were appointed at his suggestion, which traced home each national disgrace to