chasing, parliament or no parliament; for the country contained none more able, and their promptness in apostatizing gave him a reasonable ground for believing that they would not be deterred by a sense of shame, or by scruples of conscience, from going any lengths in the service of their new master. Wentworth, the most renowned of the company, had gone over to the court some time before this. After being one of the sturdiest of the reformers and boldest declaimers in the House of Commons,—after suffering imprisonment for refusing to contribute to the forced loan,-this eminent person, a gentleman of Yorkshire, who boasted his descent, by bastardy, from the royal line of the Plantagenets, out of a very ignoble rivalry, and an ambition for rank and titles (even his friends could find out no purer motives), made his peace with Buckingham a short time before that favourite's death, and sold himself, body and soul, to the court. He had his reward; and the splendour of it, no doubt, served as a decoy to other patriots of his stamp. He was elevated to the peerage by the title of Baron Wentworth; he was caressed by the king: he was taken to the bosom of Laud; and by the end of the year 1628 he was made a viscount and lord president of what was called the Court of York, or the Council of the North. From the first moment he obtained power he used it against his former political associates without mercy or remorse; and it may be that, from that very moment, the party set down the renegade for a sacrifice whenever the wheel of fortune should turn in their favour. indisputable and commanding abilities of the man also made them hate him the more because they feared him. Sir Dudley Digges, though a spirited debater and a man of talent, had been known for some time to be without principle; and, upon being offered the post of Master of the Rolls, he closed at once with the bargain, and turned round upon "the vipers," as the king called his former friends, the leaders of the opposition. Noye and Littleton, both distinguished lawyers, followed the same course: Noye was made attorney-general, Littleton solicitor-general. Being thus placed in a position to ex

The

plain and stretch the prerogative, they aid that work apparently without a blush at the recollections which were but as of yesterday, when they combated for the rights of parliament and the liberties of the people. There was no new king's favourite in lieu of Buckingham, for the Earl of Holland was rather the favourite of the queen (scandal said her paramour) than of Charles. Holland, however, like the extravagant Hay, earl of Carlisle, had a seat at the council-table, where also sat the pompous Arundel, earl marshal; the contemptible, horse-whipped Earl of Montgomery; his brother, the Earl of Pembroke; and the Earl of Dorset; who, one and all, thought more of pleasure than of business, and were content that the king should ruin himself or the nation, provided they could have their enjoyments. Charles's two secretaries of state at this time were Sir John Coke and Sir Dudley Carleton; his chancellor, or rather lord-keeper, was Lord Coventry; his lord privy seal the Earl of Manchester; and his lord-treasurer the Lord Weston, whom Eliot had denounced in the last session as the great enemy of the commonwealth. But all these counsellors together had not the power over the king of Wentworth and Laud. The rise of the churchman had been forwarded rather than checked by the assassination of his great patron Buckingham. Charles knew that he had long been in the habit of writing for the duke, and guiding him in matters of business: he called Laud into the privy council, and promised to raise him to the primacy as soon as it should please heaven to remove old Archbishop Abbot. It should seem that, on a closer acquaintance, the sympathies of the king and bishop chimed together wondrously well; and that, while Laud adored the divine right of kings, Charles embraced with the zeal of a crusader the right of the bishops to coerce the faith of his people.

All this time England was at war with France, Spain, and, in effect, with the Emperor of Germany; but so insignificant were the events that rose out of this state of hostility, compared with the events at home, that the minutest historians scarcely devote a page to them. In

deed, without any comparison with the important transactions at home, the warlike operations in which the English were actively concerned were paltry and honourless in themselves, being, in fact, little more than an exhibition of Charles's weakness. With France he had gone to war without reason, and he was glad to make a peace without honour, abandoning the French Protestants to their fate, and scarcely mentioning the cause of his sister and brother-in-law the Palatine. This peace with France was made public in the spring of 1629, and in the following year Charles, notwithstanding the prayers and tears of his wife, who would have prolonged the war, because France was still at war with Spain and the whole House of Austria, he concluded a peace with Philip, the pacification of King James being assumed as the groundwork of the treaty.

But the other belligerents on the continent were carrying on the Thirty Years' War, which arose out of the Bohemian insurrection, with a very different spirit. The Lion of the North had started from his lair,-Gustavus Adolphus had crossed the Baltic on the 24th of June, 1630, and rushed into Germany for the support of Protestantism and the humbling of the Emperor Ferdinand. A series of most brilliant victories was obtained by the daring Swede, who was in close league not only with the Protestants of the empire, but with the French, who, guided by the bold policy of Cardinal Richelieu, now omnipotent in France, stretched their arms in all directions, across the Alps, the Pyrenees, to the frontiers of the Spanish Netherlands, to the Rhine and the Elbe. Savoy was not only overrun, but almost entirely conquered; and in Italy the cardinal dictated terms to the pope, who, as much out of necessity as out of inclination, had adhered to the House of Austria and to the emperor, who was considered as waging a religious war against heretics. When Gustavus Adolphus entered Germany, the power of the emperor was almost everywhere predominant. His generals, the ferocious Tilly, the bloody Pappenheim, the ambitious Maximilian of Bavaria, and Wallenstein, in whom all these qualities were united

in their extreme proportions, had crushed the power of the Protestant states, and laid waste, with every circumstance of cruelty, the territories of friends and foes. Wallenstein had been removed from command by the jealous fears of Ferdinand, who at one time fancied that the fortunate and aspiring general aimed, if not at the imperial crown, at the old crown of Bohemia; Maximilian of Bavaria was rejoicing in the possession of the Palatinate, which he had helped to win from his cousin Frederick; but Tilly and Pappenheim were still in the field with a vast army of veteran troops, so flushed with their many recent victories, that they called themselves invincible. But they were soon found to be no match for the highly disciplined, hardy troops from old Scandinavia, led on by a hero and a great tactician. The courtiers at Vienna told the emperor that the Swede was but a king of snow, who would melt away as he approached the south; but the Swede continued his onward course, and there was no melting away, or, if there was, it was of that nature which releases the avalanche from the mountain, to thunder through and overwhelm the valley beneath. The only event that clouded the joy and success of the Protestants was the capture of the rich and Protestant city of Magdeburg, which was effected by Tilly and Pappenheim while the Swedes were occupied in another direction. The ferocious Tilly let loose his wild Croats, Walloons, and Pandours upon the devoted citizens, who were massacred without distinction of age or sex. When they had sacked the richest houses they set fire to the rest, and, a violent wind rising, the whole town was soon wrapped in flames, which consumed both quick and dead. In less than twelve hours one of the finest cities of Germany was reduced to an unsightly heap of ruins and ashes, and 30,000 of its industrious inhabitants had perished by different kinds of deaths, but all horrible. Such a tragedy had not often been perpetrated in modern wars: the sack of Magdeburg excited horror throughout the civilized world; but the Protestants consoled themselves with the belief that it must be followed by the curse of the

Almighty,— and, in fact, it was the last of the emperor's successes in this war. We are called upon to mention the moral and devout bearing of the victorious Swedes, both because it was rare and beautiful in itself, and because, in the course of a few years, it became the model of that English army which terminated the civil war. In the imperial army, which also professed to fight for the blessed cause of religion, there reigned only immorality, lust, cruelty, and disregard of all the virtues and decencies of life: in the army of Gustavus, on the contrary, every fault was punished with severity; but, above all, blasphemy, violence to women, stealing, gaming, and fighting duels. Simplicity also of manners and habits was commanded by the military laws of Sweden; and in the whole camp, and even in the king's tent, there was neither silver nor gold plate. The eye of the sovereign observed as carefully the morals of his troops as their bravery. Every regiment was obliged to form itself in a circle round its chaplain for morning and evening prayers; and this pious act was then performed in the open air.*

And

It was in the month of November, 1630, that Charles signed his solemn treaty of peace with Spain. Philip, not in the treaty, but in a private letter, promised Charles to restore to his brother-in-law, the Palatine, such parts of his territories (they must have been very inconsiderable) as were then occupied by Spanish troops, and to use his best endeavours with his near relative, the emperor, to reinstate the expelled prince as he was before his acceptance of the Bohemian crown. Charles, as a fitting return, entered upon a secret contract, whereby he agreed to unite his arms with those of Spain for the subjugation of the Seven United Provinces, which his great predecessor Elizabeth had so largely contributed to free from the oppressive Spanish yoke. Charles, as a share of the spoil, was to have and to hold Zealand and other territories There had been a talk of this precious scheme before, when Charles and Bucking

* Schiller's History of the Thirty Years' War.