took a nearer view, and found in it matter for more grave reflection. Those that looked the more narrowly, he says, conceived one reason for both, and that Montagu's boldness and the archbishop's remissness were by command. Upon Wentworth's election for Yorkshire, and the debate which arose out of it, and upon the course taken later in matter of supply, Eliot has also that to say which none of the histories have said previously. In the debate on the former subject he himself came into collision with Wentworth, as he saw him moving up from the bar while his own case was under consideration. "In Senatum Venit!" he exclaimed, in the language of the old Roman when denouncing a greater criminal, for he had reason to believe thus early that Wentworth was faltering on the main point. Weston, indeed, carried him quite over at last; while out of the unceasing court-plotting, and conspiring which tarnished so many fair reputations, Eliot's reaches us clearly and entirely without a stain. At a later date Wentworth recalled his power and penetration deferentially. When matters had grown more serious, and after twelve years' intermission the name of Parliament again sounded through the land, Wentworth's spirit rose to the danger by raising up Eliot's image, and nerved itself for the coming struggle by thinking of that old antagonist, to whose memory no greater tribute has been ever offered than the words he uttered then :-"Sound or lame you shall have me with you before the beginning of the Parliament. I should not fail, though Sir John Eliot were living."

When the house had cleared itself of three-fourths of its members, from apprehensions of the plague, advantage was taken of this to force on a debate on the subject of supply. The modification of the tonnage and poundage bill was in debate, when Eliot was invited, as we said, to his final interview with Buckingham. He He "comming to York House finds the duke with his ladie yet in bed. But, notice being given of his comming, the dutchess rose and retired into her cabanett, and soe he was forthwith admitted and lett in." Ourselves, says Mr. Forster, admitted also to this strange interview, the curtain of the past is uplifted for us at a critical time.

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Judging the present moment of time by what we now know to have followed it, will it be too much to say that if Eliot could have here prevailed with Buckingham, and if the result had been that better understanding between the Parliament and the Court which he desired to establish, the course of English history might have changed? To Charles's quarrel with his first Parliaments, Clarendon ascribes all the troubles of his reign, and now the good or the ill understanding publicly is to date from this day. What privately is to flow from its two hours' conference, not alone to the men sitting in that bedchamber of York House, but to the royal master they would both have served, will not have exhausted itself for many years. It will not have closed when Buckingham's wretched death has come. When Eliot sinks beneath the king's unrelenting persecution of his favourite's fiercest assailant, it

will be working still. Not until that harsh persecution of Eliot is remembered and put forth in later years, to justify the harshness dealt out to an imprisoned king, will the cycle of wrong and retribution be complete that this day begins."

Eliot reasoned and pleaded; and he has told his own story of the interview, with the finale that Buckingham listened impatiently, and then let fall a hasty word, so that the whole truth flashed upon him. Success was not so much desired as reasonable ground for quarrel. "The proposition must proceed without consideration of success, wherein was lodged this project meerlie to be denied." "For the present," he concludes, this observation of Buckingham "gave that gentleman (Eliot himself) some wonder with astonishment; who with the seals of privacie closed up those passages in silence; yet thereon grounded his observations for the future that noe respect of persons made him desert his countrie."

Two days more were spent at Westminster amid discouraging influences, and Eliot went to pass the recess in the west, and to hear again of Turkish pirates. Having landed in various parts of Cornwall, they had committed devastations on a scale which at this day we can hardly realize. Eliot, in his character of Vice-Admiral, received an urgent entreaty for help from some of the principal western traders to protect their defenceless shores and sea; and, as he had manifestly closed his intercourse with Buckingham, he made direct appeal to the king. The

result showed the impossibility of any man obtaining, so long as Buckingham and his parasites ruled, any share of that settled protection for property as well as person, without which all government is imposture. On the other hand, illustrations even of their treachery were forthcoming from abroad, in the existence of a design to lend English ships of war to France for service against the Protestants of Rochelle. The consignment was so absolute and unreserved that Cardinal Richelieu might have used them (not merely as he did) against the port of Rochelle, but against the port of London. Pennington, the commander of this fleet, was commanded, according to His Majesty's express pleasure, to obey entirely the command of the Admiral of France; but Pennington, as he himself observes in a letter to Buckingham, would rather put his life at the king's mercy at home than go forward in this business. When he did go, under pressure himself, he reached Dieppe roads alone, for the merchant captains had refused to follow him, and he only induced their cooperation ultimately by the intervention of a royal warrant, which charged him to use all means possible to compel obedience, even unto the sinking of the ships. The intense religious feeling, the passionate Protestant zeal, which now animated the common people of England, was never more strikingly shone than in this incident, which concluded with the desertion of the crews of all the ships and their return to England, since they were resolved not to fight against their brother Protestants of France.

The Houses re-assembled at Oxford on Monday the 1st of August, and the first business was a complaint of the release of a Jesuit priest by a royal pardon, as Sir Edward Giles was passing through Exeter. Eliot, clear on the constitutional question, was urgent to fix the responsibility of this, exclusively on the ministers of the king, and not on the king himself. Mr. Forster shows how Hacket, Oldmixon, Echard, and Disraeli have blundered over this incident. Another debate was held on Montagu and the Oxford high churchmen, and Charles himself met the Houses on the Thursday following in Christchurch hall. Of the transactions then, and the morning after, the narrative of Eliot affords a most vivid picture. We see Sir John Cooke going up to consult His Majesty and the duke, previous to making his speech, and returning, adds Eliot, with a grim sort of humour, "As from an oracle inspired with a new spirit and wisdome." But Cooke was not very persuasive, either that day or afterwards, and on Friday Mr. Whistler, Sir Francis Seymour, Sir Humphrey May, and Sir Robert Philips pursued the main controversy, the latter in one of the most remarkable speeches ever uttered within those walls, and by which the narrow issue which Buckingham had sought to raise was put aside for ever. The speech of Sir Richard Weston, Chancellor of the Exchequer, was elaborate, but made small impression, after Philips's, while its final sentence was a threat, that "Beyond that day there would be no place for counsel." This was followed by one of Coke's