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1624

BUCKINGHAM'S NARRATIVE.

185

King, Prince, and State were all merged in that imposing personality. We can well imagine how he looked as he stood there, with head erect and flashing eye, to disclose much was suspected, and The tale which he told is

Feb. 24. Buckingham's narrative.

those secrets of which so
so little was really known.

easy to criticise, and it has been judged again and again with unmeasured reprobation; but, after all, as far as it is possible to test it, its fault lay rather in its omissions than in its assertions. Over much of which the historian is bound to take account-over the folly of the journey itself—over Charles's reticence, as long as reticence was possible, with respect to his personal religion—over his solemn promises to make impracticable concessions, Buckingham threw the discreet veil of total silence. On the other hand the evidence which he produced to show that the Spanish ministers had never seriously intended giving effect to their master's rash promise to aid with his arms in the recovery of the Palatinate was entirely conclusive. Taking it all in all, the narrative bears the aspect not so much of a deliberate falsehood, as of the outpourings of a heart upon which fancy and passion had impressed their glowing pictures. When Buckingham ended by asking whether Spanish diplomacy should still be listened to, or whether, these treaties being 'set aside, his Majesty were best to trust to his own strength, and to stand upon his own feet,' he was sure to carry his hearers with him, and to sit down the most popular man in England.1

One effect at least of the Spanish treaties was indelibly imprinted on the English mind. Bringing into prominent relief Feb. 26. the connection between the English Catholics and Bill against the great Spanish monarchy, they had served to whet the spirit of intolerance. Almost the first work to which the Commons addressed themselves was a Bill for increasing the penalties on recusancy.

the recus

ants.

On the 27th Weston, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was to deliver the formal report of Buckingham's narrative to the Lower House. Before he had time to rise, he was interrupted by Sir John Eliot, a member whose parliamentary experience 2 Commons' Journals, i, 718.

Lords' Journals, iii. 220.

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of 1614.

Feb. 27.

Sir John
Eliot.

had been confined to the few weeks of the abortive session When he sat down at the end of his maiden speech, Eliot must have made himself a name as the foremost political orator of the time. Early in life he had accompanied Buckingham, then an unknown youth, on a Continental tour, and had received from him, when he rose to be Lord High Admiral of England, the appointment of ViceAdmiral of Devon. During his patron's absence in Spain, he had been imprisoned on an unjust charge springing out of his unwearied performance of the duties of his office; and his liberation, which was almost coincident with the Duke's return, was doubtless owing to his powerful interposition. But, warm and affectionate as Eliot's nature was, he was not the man to allow any tie to an individual to fetter him in the performance of a public duty; and though there was, for some time to come, no actual estrangement between him and Buckingham, it is probable that the retirement of the King to give place to the minister left a disagreeable impression on his mind. He was to the bottom of his heart an idealist. To him the Parliament was scarcely a collection of fallible men, just as the King was hardly a being who could by any possibility go deliberately astray. If he who wore the crown had wandered from the right path, he had but to listen to those who formed, in more than a rhetorical sense, the collective wisdom of the nation. Whoever stepped between the King and people, whoever tendered other counsel than the House of Commons had to offer, was a divider and a traitor. The time had not yet come when Eliot was to breathe his own lofty and resolute spirit into the consultations of those around him; but from the beginning, great as his intellectual powers were, it was not by mere force of intellect that he won his way to distinction. It was the moral nature of the man, his utter self-forgetfulness, which made him what he was, which compelled him to risk his whole life and fortunes for the chance of flinging his protest into the air against securely placed iniquity in high places, and which made him as gentle and placable as the saintly men of old in the presence of opposition the motives of which he believed to be pure.

His moral weight.

This time Eliot rose to beg the House not to forget, in the

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His speech on freedom of debate.

ELIOT COMES FORWARD.

187

midst of their fresher interests, to vindicate that freedom of speech which had been refused them at the close of the last Parliament. The privileges of the Commons, he argued, could not be derogatory to the King's honour. "The business," he said, "is the King's. The kingdom hath its representative in the King. In him our resolutions rest. We are only called hither upon either the general affairs of the kingdom, or the special propositions of his Majesty, and thereon to deliberate and consult, not to conclude." The Parliament, he went on to say, was the body; the King the spirit by which it was moved. "He is, in the metaphor, the breath of our nostrils, and the bond by which we are tied one to another. Then can it not be we should attempt against, or in anything neglect, the honour of him who is so much cur own." 1

Comparison
Ietween

Bacon and
Eliot.

Such language might have been Bacon's language. But the spirit in which the words were uttered was not the spirit of Bacon. To both Eliot and Bacon the Crown and the Parliament were not contracting parties, each of which was to follow its separate interest, but members of one common body, each fulfilling its functions for the benefit of the whole. But whilst Bacon specially idealised the Crown, Eliot specially idealised the Parliament. When the separation threatened to come at last, Bacon clung the more closely to the active ruling power, whilst Eliot trusted with unshaken confidence to the body in which popular instincts were refined under the influence of word and thought. Viewing from afar the follies and errors of the Court, he learned to believe, as no other man believed before or after him, in the representatives of the nation. For him history and philosophy concurred in bearing witness to the greatness of Parliaments, the living mirror of the perpetual wisdom of a mighty nation.

For the sake of the King, Eliot now argued, the counsel of Parliament should be offered freely and without restriction. "More for his sake than for ours," he said, "it behoves that such liberty be allowed." Freedom of speech was the indispensable condition of trustworthy advice."

Eliot on

liberty of speech.

1 Forster, Sir F. Eliot, i. 70, 71.

2 Forster, Sir J. Eliot, i. 135.

Although the question thus raised could hardly be passed over in silence, the leaders of the House were too anxious to get The question to the important work before them to give it much committee. encouragement. The whole subject was referred to a committee, and was never heard of again.1

referred to a

Feb. 26.

against Buckingham.

Weston was at last able to proceed with his report. If there had ever been any hesitation in accepting Buckingham's narrative, there was none now. Inojosa and Coloma Complaint of had done their best to convert him into a national the Spanish ambassadors hero. Hurrying to James, they assured him that if one of their master's servants had spoken of the King of England as Buckingham had spoken of the King of Spain, he would have paid the penalty with the loss of his head. James's only thought in the presence of the fiery Spaniards was to shift the burthen of a reply to other shoulders than his own. He had not been present at Whitehall, he said, when Buckingham's narrative was delivered, and he must therefore leave it to those who heard it to justify or to condemn him. In the House of Lords, Pembroke, who had now thrown himself Buckingham unreservedly on Buckingham's side, led the way in Parliament. exculpating him, and a motion in his favour was unanimously carried. In the Commons the excitement was far greater. "In the way that Buckingham holds," said Phelips, "I pray that he shall keep his head on his shoulders to sce thousands of Spaniards' heads either from their shoulders or in the seas." "And shall he lose his head?" cried Coke. "Never any man deserved better of his king and country." A vote, as unanimous as that of the Lords, cleared Buckingham from blame in the words that he had used.2

Feb. 27.

supported by

Mr. Forster thought (Sir J. Eliot, i. 143) that the speeches of Alford and Phelips leave little doubt that they had received private communications from Buckingham. It is quite possible that some understanding had been arrived at, probably through Pembroke; but there is no proof of this, and there is no necessity to resort to this explanation. According to Nicholas's notes (S. P. Dom. clix), of which Mr. Forster made no use, Phelips said that 'since this motion is on foot, he thinks it should not rest unresolved,' which looks as if he at least expected something to come of the committee.

Feb. 26

2 Inojosa to Philip IV., March 7'

Madrid Palace Library. Coloma tu

1624 THE LORDS CONDEMN THE TREATIES. 189

Feb. 28.

condemned

In the afternoon of the 27th the Lords took the Spanish treaties into consideration. Not a voice was raised in their favour. After two days' debate, in which the Bishops The treaties specially distinguished themselves by their warlike by the Lords. zeal, it was resolved that, unless the Commons should show cause to the contrary, the King should be asked to break off all negotiation with Spain, both for the marriage and for the restoration of the Palatinate.'

March 1. Rudyerd's declaration

The Commons were hardly likely to show cause to the contrary. The great debate was opened on March 1 in the Lower House by Sir Benjamin Rudyerd, whose official position as Surveyor of the Court of Wards, together with his close connection with Pembroke, made him a fit exponent of the coalition which had sprung up between Buckingham and the popular lords.2 At the same time, his own tried devotion to the anti-Spanish policy was likely to secure for him the respectful attention of his hearers.

of policy.

That

Rudyerd, even at his best, was apt rather to skim over the surface of an argument than to penetrate to its depths, and those who look coolly back at the events of that momentous year may be inclined to ask whether it necessarily followed, because the Palatinate was not to be regained by negotiation, that an attempt should be made to regain it by war. such doubts were felt by a few who sat there, by Weston and Wentworth for instance, is all but certain. But Weston had surrendered himself body and soul to Buckingham, and Wentworth, haughty and defiant as he was, had too much good sense to resist the majority of an excited assembly by argument. Those who on this occasion shared his opinions could probably be counted on the fingers. The objection did the King, Mar. 9' Feb. 28 Harl. MSS. 1583, fol. 329.

March Ven. Transcripts.

Valaresso to the Doge,

Elsing's Notes (1624-6) 2. Lords' Four

nals, iii. i. 233; Commons' Journals, i. 721.

Elsing's Notes (1624–1626), 5.

? There is no direct evidence of this; but the fact that he opened the three debates of March 1, 11, and 19, and that the greater part of his advice was adopted by the King, leaves no reasonable doubt that he spoke with authority.

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