reform the grievances of the state, but also to A.D. 1625. raise all necessary supplies for the king. This declaration was presented to him; but he, being determined not to suffer any reflections on his minister, dissolved the parliament on the 12th of August 1625. After the dissolution, the king sent letters to the lieutenants of the counties, ordering them to return the names of such persons within their respective counties as might be able to furnish him with sums of money, and to specify their dwellings, and what sums the lieutenants thought they might spare; for which privy seals were afterwards issued out. The collectors of the loan were required, also, to return the names of such as discovered a disposition to delay or excuse the payment of the sums imposed. Money raised by privy seals. liament. The king called another parliament, which met New parFebruary the 6th, 1625-6. He treated this as he had done the former; for in all his speeches he used a style entirely unbecoming an English prince to an English parliament. He told the house of commons, soon after their meeting, that "he would not allow any of his servants to be questioned by them, and that if they did not hasten his supply, it would be worse for themselves; A.D. 1625. for if any ill happened, he thought he should be the last that would feel it." Notwithstanding this, the duke was attacked as the chief cause of all the public miscarriages; upon which the king told them again in a message, that "he would not allow any of his servants to be questioned amongst them, much less such as were of eminent place and near unto him." This could not but increase the discontents of the people, who saw that their welfare was considered as inferior to the duke's, and that their interest was sacrificed to the humour of a favourite. The spirit of the the parlia- house, however, was not to be broken by scolding messages. The grievances were still insisted on; the principal of which were new impositions and monopolies, the demand of loans, levying of tonnage and poundage without act of parliament, and the misapplication of the money thus raised: these were heightened by the loss of the nation's honour; the contempts and affronts suffered from Spirited conduct of ment. évery neighbouring power; the ill-conducted enA.D. 1626. deavours on behalf of the Palatinate; the fruitless and expensive expedition against Cadiz; and the reckless carelessness which permitted our very coasts to be infested by the pirates of Algiers. For these and other matters, 18 the Duke of A.D. 1626. * Buckingham was impeached by the commons. Sir Dudley Diggs and Sir John Elliot, two of the managers, were immediately after the impeachment sent for out of the house by two messengers of the chamber, who, by the king's command, conveyed them to the Tower; and the king told the house soon after, that " he had been too remiss heretofore in punishing such insolent speeches as concerned himself." The commons, resenting so notorious a violation of their privileges as the imprisonment of their members, resolved to proceed in no other business till they were righted in their liberties; and the judges giving it as their opinion, that the whole house * What was said of Louis the Eleventh of France, was applied in the house, as the cause of all the grievances; 18 Among these other matters was a charge of having poisoned James," with having twice administered a potion to the late king a few days before his death, not only of a nature unknown to the physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries, but against a positive order by the first, that nothing should be given at the interval he took advantage of; and further with having applied a plaister to his breast of unknown qualities; both of which potion and plaister were accompanied with the worst symptoms, a transcendent presumption of dangerous consequences." This charge is fully discussed by Mr. Brodie, vol. ii. p. 113, et seq. A.D. 1626. was under arrest, by the restraint of any of its Regard shown to the king. members without a proper reason being assigned, Sir Dudley Diggs and Sir John Elliot were released. The imprisoning of these two patriotic men was a weak, as well as an arbitrary step. Violent actions, which a prince cannot justify, tend to render his government hated; but his being reduced to show that he cannot support them must make it despised. Notwithstanding the commons were so strenuous for a redress of the public grievances, they manifested a proper regard to the king's necessities. They voted him an ample supply, and that the bill for the same should be brought in as soon as the grievances were presented to and redressed by the king. They appeared, likewise, extremely cautious of giving him the most distant offence : for one Mr. Moor having said in a debate, " We were born free, and must continue free, if the king would keep his kingdom;" adding, however, these words, "thanks be to God, we have no occasion, we having a just and pious king;" he was committed by them to the Tower, and kept there till the king declared he had forgiven his offence. It is evident that it was not any irregular or improper method which the commons pursued in ty conduct. order to have the public grievances redressed, but A.D. 1626. the design itself of redressing them, which irritated the court and produced their dissolution: for the king sent a letter to the speaker, wherein, among many other things, he said, "We will and His haughrequire you to signify unto them (the commons) that we do expect that they forthwith bring in their bill of subsidy, to be passed without delay or condition, so as it may fully pass the house by the end of the next week at the farthest; which if they do not, it will force us to take other resolutions." The commons returned a dutiful and submissive answer to this, which was delivered by their speaker; but, upon their proceeding to a remonstrance relating to the Duke of Buckingham, and concerning tonnage and poundage taken by the king, since the death of his father, without consent of parliament, the king threatened immediately to dissolve them. Upon this, the house of lords prepared a petition, expressing “their great and universal sorrow for his message about the dissolution, and therefore, being his hereditary great council, they offered him their faithful advice to continue this parliament; by which the great and apparent dangers at home and abroad might be prevented, and his majesty |