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port. Having spent some time in Paris, and performed his novitiate, after the fashion of the age, as a soldier in the service of Holland, he made his appearance at the English court. His handsome presence, and mild and polished address, soon gave him a place in the favour of James, which he was sufficiently skilful to retain without exciting the jealousy of Buckingham. He was now made captain of the guard, knight of the garter, and, at length, as Earl of Holland, obtained a place in the privy council. On the decease of Buckingham, the queen endeavoured, and not without a disastrous measure of success, to supply the place of the favourite in regulating the exercises of the royal favour; and the Earl of Holland, having always possessed the good opinion of Henrietta since his part in negotiating her marriage, hoped from this time to exert a greater influence, through her medium, in court matters, than any other person. Nor can he be said to have indulged these thoughts altogether in vain. But the vacillation of his conduct subsequent to the Scottish invasion, proved him to be one of those rudderless barks, which are sure not to escape damage amidst the cross-currents of troubled times. Much may be attributed to his want of judgment, but more to that want of principle which left him a prey to all the little passions of the courtier.

With the members of council already mentioned, Buckingham associated Sir John Cooke and Sir Dudley Carleton, as secretaries of state. The former was a plodding accountant; the latter, a shallow diplomatist, who had spent so much time in foreign countries as to have formed the most mistaken conceptions with regard to the constitution and temper of his own. But a person no less under the direction of the duke, and much more effectively employed by him, was Bishop Laud; concerning whom, however, so

much has been said by all writers who have treated of his times, that no man can hope to offer anything new in relation to him. Attempts are still sometimes made to hold up this personage as a model of ecclesiastical wisdom and virtue. If we must indeed account him a wise man, it is rather unfortunate that his wisdom should have been of so strange a complexion as to have led him to do much more than any other man of his age towards destroying what he meant to preserve, and setting up what he meant to put down. Certainly it is not a rare thing to meet with men whose faculties are thus at fault in adapting the means to the end, but we are not accustomed to number them among the wise of their generation. In fact, the genius of this "little great man," as Bishop Williams very properly called him, was of that narrow, restless, ardent description which could scarcely fail of leading to such consequences. If the object of pursuit selected by such a man be neither wise nor good, he will not find it difficult to persuade himself that it has both these recommendations; and then, by a further pro. cess of self-deception, and in the true spirit of the fanatic, will perhaps reconcile himself to almost anything in the order of means for the sake of such an end. Thus Laud, who always held the canons of the church, even in the most corrupt age, in great honour, became a party in adjudging three men-Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton, from the three professions of law, physic, and divinity, to lose their ears in the pillory, and to be branded in the face with hot irons, as the punishment of certain alleged libels against the state, notwithstanding the said canons had provided that no clergyman should be a party to any sentence depriving an accused person of life or member; and when the sufferers reminded their priestly judge of this inconsistency, he denied the charge, affirming that as the loss of

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the ear was not the loss of hearing, it was no loss of a limb! On the same occasion you might hear him indulging in expressions of pity over the obstinate depravity which made such punishment unavoidable, and the next moment you see him, with his cap in his hand, bowing to the authorities about him, and giving them his best thanks, as having come to a judgment in this case, so expressive of their enlightened sense of duty towards the throne and their religion.* As the primate of the English church, this misguided man diffused the spirit of his own restless intolerance from one end of the kingdom to the other, and even beyond it. Laud gave much umbrage to many of the nobility by procuring the appointment of Juxon, Bishop of London, to the place of lord treasurer, the highest secular office in the state. Juxon was a man of exemplary character, but of small ability in the duties of his proper calling, and of none at all in anything else. Nor was he ambitious of such a trust. But the archbishop had his ends to accomplish by placing such a man in the near intercourse with the king inseparable from that office.

Soon after the death of Buckingham, the office of chancellor of the exchequer was bestowed on Cottington-an old diplomatist and courtier; a man possessing a marvellous command of temper; fond of money, so as to be little scrupulous about the manner of getting it; an expert hypocrite whenever there was anything to be gained by putting on the mask; and always prepared to supply the royal wants by means of illegal exactions to any extent consistent with safety. His tyranny in the court of wards, especially, made him exceedingly unpopular with a large portion of the nobility and gentry through the kingdom.

During some years previous to the meeting of the Long

*Howell's State Trials, ubi supra.

Parliament, there was a lesser cabinet, among whom nearly all state matters were digested before being submitted to the meetings of the council; and in that lesser circle Laud and Cottington, little fitted as they seemed to be for acting together, divided the government in a great measure between them. Strafford was prevented taking the lead in that connexion which would otherwise have fallen to him, by his duties in Ireland. The Earl of Northumberland was invited to such conferences on the ground of his rank, more than on account of any disposition evinced by him to become active in public affairs; the Marquis of Hamilton possessed great influence with the king, but exercised his subtle and selfish policy more with regard to particular projects than to the general machinery of the government; and Vane and Windebanke, who completed this lesser council, were present as secretaries of state, their assistance being necessary to the shaping, and particularly to the execution, of the measures agreed upon. Vane was one of that numerous class of worthies who become the willing servants of a court, purely in consequence of having learnt to regard it as the quarter in which they may best serve themselves. Windebanke was governed by the same species of virtue, but prosecuted his objects with a bolder temper than his colleagues, particularly as it respected dispensing with the penal laws against Catholics. When the Long Parliament began to summons a number of state delinquents to account, Vane was deprived of his office. Windebanke would have suffered more considerably, had he not avoided the resentment of the house of commons by making his escape to France.

In so doing, Windebanke followed the example of Sir John Finch, the lord keeper of the great seal. This last person was the speaker of the commons in the parliament of 1628, but before the dissolution of that assembly

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he became the secret ally of the court, in its struggle with the popular party which ruled in the lower house. The court was not unmindful of his services; and Finch proclaimed his sense of the favour which it shed upon him, by the boldness and activity with which he supported its most extravagant pretensions. On the question of ship-money, he canvassed the judges, and extorted the votes of ten in support of it, Crook and Hutton being the only men who had virtue enough to avow themselves dissentients, and even they did so but in part. Finch, indeed, had the audacity to say in open court, that he hoped to see the day when no man would be found saucy enough to question the authority of an order in council any more than of an act of parliament. In short, this man began his career with little law and less principle; and, from 1628, gave himself up to prosecute the objects of an arbitrary government at all hazards. His head would probably have been the price of his temerity, had he not fled from the laws which he violated and the country which he betrayed.

In this brief review of the character of the persons constituting the government of England from 1629 to 1640, there is not a man, if we except Laud, of whom Clarendon has not spoken in terms of disparagement or censure, as strong, or even stronger, than will be found in the preceding pages. All the men of business, including Sir Richard Weston, Sir Francis Cottington, Bishop Laud, the Earl of Manchester, Sir John Finch, and their subordinates Cooke, Carleton, and Windebanke, were parties with whom the will of the king was, in fact, everything, and the community nothing. From the pampered sensuality of Carlisle, and the profligate selfishness of the Earl of Holland, no man could expect anything better than ensued. The Marquis of Hamilton was always

VOL. I.