officers, and the inequalitie of the customs then required; and urged therein a necessitie for the marchantes to have a new book of rates, to settle and compose it; which could not be prepared in so short a time and sitting. Others alleged the pretermitted customs, grounded upon the misconstruction of that lawe, which ought to be examined likewise; and the lawyers that then remayned were thought to be incapable of that worke. Therefore, on these reasons, they infer'd a desire for a limitation in the Act, and that it might but continue for one year; against which time those difficulties being resolved, they might again renew it, with a larger extension and continuance, Others to this added the question of impositions in the generall, and craved a special care not to have that excluded. The older times were mentioned to note the former grants, wherein, though there were collected a great varietie and difference, yet all were within the limitation of some years. Sometimes for one, sometimes for two, seldome above three, and that in the best raignes and governments, and to the wisest princes; but never for life, till towards the end of Henry VI., in whose beginnings also it had had other limitations and restraints, and, for the time, a less extent and latitude.”—vol. i. p. 293.

This limitation was vehemently opposed by the members of the Privy Council. Finally, a proviso was added saving all rights of the Crown, and on the 7th of July the bill for one year was sent up to the Lords, where, as Eliot says, 'It received like favour and dispatch; * but was not made a law, wanting the "roy le veut;" which being denied it, show'd what must be lookt for.' (p. 294.)

We admit that Eliot's explanation alters the case with regard to the bill for tonnage and poundage, but we think even from his account and from the reference to the old precedents, that a well-grounded mistrust of Buckingham, not the absence of the lawyers, was the real cause of the limitation to one year. The circumstances no doubt afforded a plausible ground for withholding the grant for life at the moment; but the whole proceeding tended to set the King still more strongly against Parliament.

On the 8th of July Buckingham came up to London, and, at the earnest request of Sir Humphry May, Eliot went to York House in order, if possible, to dissuade him from asking the Commons for a fresh supply. The Duke persisted, alleged that it was the fault of the members themselves if they had gone away, and finally made it clearly appear that' success was not so much desired as a reasonable ground for quarrel.'

The proposal was made in the House by Sir John Cooke, but

* The common notion is that the Lords rejected the bill. See Hallam, 'Constit. History,' vol. i., p. 370. See, however, the Edinburgh Review,' No. 245, p. 13, where it is stated that it appears from the Lords' Journal that it proceeded no further than the first reading, when it was suffered to drop, most probably, at he instance of the king's ministers.'

was

6

was immediately dropped without being pressed to a division. 'It was doubtless,' says Mr. Forster, the turning point of the destiny of Charles I.; for, if the young King had started with a disposition to treat the Commons fairly, he would have kept at his side the most powerful and the most loyal of his subjects, who were then the most trusted leaders of that House.' Instead of this it was clear that the reins were abandoned to the self-will and caprice of Buckingham; and after a difficulty as to the right of the House to adjourn itself, and a breach of the usual forms in not returning the supply bill to the Commons, the House separated on the 11th of July to meet again at Oxford on the 1st of August. A writ of adjournment was brought down, which the Commons refused to open or read, and the House adjourned itself; but, before this took place, Eliot moved a call of the members within three days of their next meeting.

The shortness of the interval, and the fact that Oxford, as well as London, was infected with the plague, seemed to show that there was an intention of causing unnecessary annoyance. All these difficulties were attributed to Buckingham's influence, and predisposed the opposition to attack him. The public grounds of discontent, however, were quite sufficient without the aggravation of personal feeling. It was in the course of this summer, and while Parliament was sitting, that eight English ships had been most disgracefully placed at the disposal of the French Government for the purpose of assisting in the attack on the Protestants of Rochelle. The crews mutinied more than once, and it was only after repeated protests from Admiral Pennington, the commander, that this transfer was carried out by an express Royal command. The crews returned, and Pennington kept out of the way till Parliament was dissolved.

At Oxford the Commons assembled in the Divinity School and the Lords in Christ Church Hall. The first complaint which came before the Lower House was one relating to a pardon granted to a Jesuit. The excuse was that it was customary to grant such favours to ambassadors on their leaving.*

The intention of striking at Buckingham became clear on the second day, when Sir Edward Coke again raised the question of Montagu and his book.. The Duke and Laud were at that very time pressing this man on the King, as if the fact that he was obnoxious to the Commons formed an irresistible claim to preferment! The House were then asked for a further supply of 40,000l. to be applied in some design of the nature of which they were kept in total ignorance. In reality Buckingham * See above, p. 70. This was not one of Bassompierre's priests; for he did not arrive till October 18th (28th) in this year.

desired

desired to get rid of the Parliament, and he applied for a trifling sum in the first instance for the purpose of putting them more in the wrong by its refusal. The very smallness of the amount, however, inspired suspicion of the whole proceeding by which the Parliament appeared to have been so unnecessarily summoned to Oxford; but the demand was in a very short time enlarged to 200,000l. by those who represented the Crown. When Sir Robert Phillips spoke he alluded to the fact that tonnage and poundage were at that very moment being levied without the authority of Parliament, and stated that they were still ignorant of the object which the ships to be furnished and sent out with this supply were destined to effect. It was evident enough that the Commons would neither refuse the supply at once nor grant it so as to admit of immediate prorogation.

An attempt was therefore made to smooth matters over by causing Buckingham to deliver in Christ Church Hall an answer to the petition on Religion as conciliatory as he could make it, but so tainted by personal vanity and arrogance on his part as to irritate rather than soothe. In truth, Buckingham by this time, like most men who live in a world of their own, had become incapable of judging truly of the effect which his words and conduct produced on others. What this effect was is pretty clear from Sir John Eliot's remarks:

In the meane tyme those passages were resolved that had been delivered at the meeting, and divers were the apprehensions which did followe them. That the Lord Keeper, the prime officer of the kingdom, should be made subservient to the Duke (for soe the Act imported, being but an usher to his businesse), was thought preposterous and inverted. That the King's name must be a servant to his ends, under colour of some declaration from His Majestie to exhibit an apologie for himselfe, seemed as a kind of wonder. That the whole Parliament should be made attendant upon him was not without a strangenesse, the like having seldom beene before. But above all portentous it was thought, that religion should be descended to his use, and that which admitts noe equall or compeer to troope up with the rabble of his followers. This was thought much in him soe to assume and take it, but more in those that made that concession to his power.'-vol. i. p. 304.

On the 10th of August a direct message from the King was delivered asking for the means to send out the fleet, and promising, if they voted the supply, to call them together again in the winter.

The Commons did not fall into the snare which had been laid for them, and resolved neither to grant nor to deny, but first to prepare a remonstrance setting out their grievances. The draft

of

of Eliot's speech in the debate which followed has been fortunately preserved in his own handwriting. Mr. Forster tells us that the precedents collected by Sir Robert Cotton, with the intention of speaking himself, were handed over to his friend; and this accounts for the fact that so much of the speech as appears in the Parliamentary Histories is attributed to the former member. The mistake probably arose from the manuscript notes being found among Cotton's papers when they were afterwards seized. The mass of precedents quoted by Eliot had great significancy, as bearing on the point that at all times those who had misled the King by their advice, or who had abused his liberality, had been called to a strict account by Parliament. Our author says:

The drift, thus far, of Eliot's precedents and examples could not be doubtful. Though Buckingham had not been named, they confirmed every notorious abuse of his administration: the waste of royal lands and revenues, the abuse of grants and pensions, the sale of titles and judicial places, favour to recusants, mal-appropriation of subsidies, overriding of the royal authority, concentration of the highest offices in a single person, and bestowing of others unworthily on relatives, favourites, and dependants. They were, in fact, a complete forecast of the subjects comprised afterwards in the articles of his impeachment. All these things, however, known and generally denounced as they were, wanted something of the sharp precision and fatal exactness with which Eliot proceeded now to push his parallel to the very verge of the Oxford meeting; using sarcastically phrases by which Buckingham had provoked laughter at the Christchurch comedy; and, by an incident brought vividly back through the waste of two hundred years, recalling the very shame and wrong they had all resented bitterly in the sudden breaking up at Westminster. The closeness of comparison and unshrinking plainness of speech, and, all circumstances considered, the dauntless courage in these closing passages, are, indeed, extraordinary. "Sir," resumed Eliot, " to draw you out to life the image of a former king's extremities, I will tell you what I have found here in Oxford since our coming to this meeting. It is the story of what was suffered here by Henry VI., writ by a learned man named Gascoigne, twice Vice-Chancellor of this place, a man who witnessed the tragedy of De la Pole. So rent away by ill council were the royal revenues, he tells you, that the King was enforced to live de tollagis et quindenis populi; that he was grown in debt more than half a million; that his powerful favourite, in treating of a foreign marriage, had not gained a nation at home, but had lost a duchy abroad; that, to work his cards, he had induced the King to adjourn the Parliament in villis et remotis partibus regni, where propter defectum hospiti et victualium, few could be expected to attend, and so he might enforce those few, to use the writer's words, concedere regi quamvis pessima. And when an act of resumption was desired

that

that just and frequent way of reparation for the state (I call it frequent, because so usually was it done, that from the time of Henry III. to Edward VI., all kings but one did exercise it)—this powerful minister opposed it, and, telling the King it was ad dedecus regni, so stopped it.

"But what succeeded on the Parliament taking it in hand? The same author tells you that the Commons, though wearied with travail and expenses, protested they would never grant an aid until the King should actualiter resumere all that was belonging to the Crown; adding, that it was most to the disgrace of royalty to leave its creditors in intolerable want, and to be engrossed wholly by the council of ONE MAN, who had brought great misery to the kingdom, such poverty to the King. All which good council still failed to work until by Parliament that bad great man was banished, when the act of resumption forthwith followed, and immediately the supply. If we should now, Mr. Speaker, seek a parallel to this, how would it hold to us?"-vol. i. pp. 419-421.

It is impossible to overrate the courage displayed by Eliot in such a speech as this, and it is impossible to estimate too highly the conservative spirit which guided the leaders of the opposition in all their attacks upon the Court. The one great feature of the English constitution, the appeal to the past, the continuity of law, if we may so term it, is visible throughout the early parliaments of Charles I.; whilst there is joined with it a keen and practical sense of the nature of popular liberty and of its true value in this country.

Eliot concluded by following Phillips in moving a remonstrance to the King, and added, in due time we shall be ready to supply him.' Another eminent western man, Glanville, strongly supported this course. He opposed either a refusal of supply or an immediate grant, although he advocated an assurance that such a grant would in due time be made. He added, with great force, that it was the prerogative of kings to call parliaments at their pleasure, but, in counterpoise of that, their ancestors had erected the privilege for themselves to treat of what business they should please.'

Sir Robert Mansel, who had been named by the Lord High Admiral as a party to the naval preparation, denied all knowledge of its true character, and would not have the matter of supply put to question. This settled the course to be taken, and the remonstrance was resolved upon. The Court was aware of what was going on, and determined to dissolve, notwithstanding some specious opposition on Buckingham's part, but a fresh attempt was first made to obtain a supply. At length, on the 12th of August, the case appeared thoroughly hopeless, and the proposal to name the Duke in the remonstrance

was