pecially aim at the duke of Buckingham. * * I would you would hasten for my supply, or else it will be worse for yourselves; for if any evil happen, I think I shall be the last that shall feel it." 1 Eliot smiled at this impotent rage. "We have had a representation of great fear," he said; "but I hope that shall not darken our understandings. Our wills and affections were never more clear," he continued, more ready, as to his majesty; but we are baulked and checked in our forwardness by those the king entrusts with the affairs of the kingdom." Again he inflamed the house by comments on the Spanish expedition. "The last action was the king's first action; and in this the king and kingdom have suffered dishonour. We are weakened in our strength and safety; our men and ships are lost." Then followed a bitter taunt against even the personal courage of Buckingham, who, it will be recollected, had left the command of the expedition to sir Edward Cecil. "The great general had the whole command, both by sea and land; and could the great general think it sufficient to put in his deputy and stay at home?" The orator next, taking advantage of the excitement of his hearers, thundered forth questions of a more fatal meaning. "Are not honours now sold, and made despicable? Are not judicial places sold ? And do not they then sell justice again? Vendere jure potest - emerat ille prius." After some well-employed classical allusions, Eliot proceeded thus : - " I shall, to our present case, cite two precedents. The first was in the eleventh year of Henry III. The treasure was then much exhausted; many disorders complained of; the king wronged by ministers. Many subsidies were demanded in parliament, but they were denied; and the lords and commons joined to desire the king to reassume lands which had been improvidently granted, and to examine his great officers, and the causes of those evils which the people then suffered. This was yielded unto by the king; and Hugh de Burgo was found faulty, and was displaced; and then the commons, in the same parliament, gave supply. The second precedent was in the tenth year of Richard II. Then the times were such, and places so changeable, that any great officer could hardly sit to be warmed in his place. Supply was at that parliament required: the commons denied supply, and complained that their monies were misemployed; that the earl of Suffolk (Michael de la Pole) then overruled all; and so their answer was, they could not give;' and they petitioned the king that a commission might be granted, and the earl of Suffolk might be examined. A commission," Eliot continued, reserving himself for a closing sarcasm at Buckingham, " at their request was awarded; and that commission recites all the evil then complained of; and that the king, upon the petition of the lords and commons, had granted that examination should be taken of the crown lands which were sold, of the ordering of his household, and the disposition of the jewels of his grandfather and father. I hear nothing said in this house of our jewels, nor will I speak of them; but I could wish they were within these walls!" 1 The effect of this speech was complete, and in the midst of the general indignation excited, Dr. Turner's resolutions, that "common fame" was a good ground of accusation against Buckingham, were passed; and notice was sent to the duke of the proceedings against him. At the same time, in illustration of the good faith with which they acted, they announced that the king's immediate necessities should be relieved while his minister was brought to trial; and they redeemed this pledge by a vote for the grant of three subsidies and three fifteenths. The king now felt more_strongly than ever the imminent danger of his favourite. Again

he interfered, and again his interference was defeated by the boldness of Eliot. "Remember," he said, "that parliaments are altogether in my power for their calling, sitting, and dissolution; therefore as I find the fruits of them good or evil, they are to continue or not to be." 1 The commons retired to deliberate this with locked doors, and the key placed in the hands of the speaker. What passed in that memorable sitting did not publicly transpire; but I can supply some portion of it at least from a manuscript letter of the time. "Sir John Eliot rose up and made a resolute (I doubt whether a timely)2 speech, the sum whereof was, that they came not thither either to do what the king should command them, or to abstain where he forbade them; and therefore they should continue constant to maintain their privileges, and not do either more or less for what had been said unto them." 3 This ominous meeting with locked doors alarmed the king; negotiations were opened, explanations offered, every possible resource of avoidance attempted, but in vain. It was too late to dispute the right of impeachment after the precedents of Bacon and Middlesex; and the commons, after addressing the king in decorous language, impeached Buckingham on twelve articles. 4

Eight chief managers were appointed. To Pym, Herbert, Selden, Glanville, Sherland, and Wandesford, was entrusted the duty of dilating upon the facts of the impeachment; to sir Dudley Digges the task of opening the proceedings in a " prologue" was committed; and for sir John Eliot the arduous duty was reserved of winding up the whole proceedings by one of his impressive perorations, that should serve as an “epilogue" to this mighty drama. They did not over estimate the value of his eloquence. 1

The speech delivered by him on this great occasion is an important chapter in his history. Sir Dudley Digges, a courtly patriot, had spoken the "prologue" in the highest prevailing style of ornate circumlocution and quaintly elevated metaphor. Professing to deliver himself in " plain country language, setting by all rhetorical affectations," the monarchy he compared to the creation, the commons to the earth, the lords to the planets, the king to the glorious sun, the clergy to the fire, the judges and magistrates to the air, and the duke of Buckingham to a comet, "a prodigious comet." All this was only a striking foil to the nervous and daring invective, the clear and gorgeous declamation, of Eliot. The proud minister, who had kept his seat during the harangue of Digges, insolently braving his accuser, and jeering his quaint expressions, was observed to leave the house when Eliot, on the following day, arose.2 It was well for himself that he had done so. Never was an attack made, in that or any succeeding time, so eloquent, so bitter, so earnest, so disdainful. The orator excelled himself. He had summoned to his service all his literary accomplishments, and he closely environed his argument with a passion that was absolutely terrible.

He began by describing the ambition of " this man," as he disdainfully termed the duke, impeaching it by "the common sense of the miseries and misfortunes which the people suffer," and protesting in eloquent phrase against those high misdemeanors which "have lost us the regality of our narrow seas, the ancient inheritance of our princes." He then exposed, as " full of collusion and deceit," the “inward character" of the mind of Buckingham. " I can express it," said Eliot bitterly, no better than by the beast called by the ancients stellionatus; a beast so blurred, so spotted, so full of foul lines, that they knew not what to make of it." He next presented to their lordships "the duke's high oppression" in all its strange extent, " not to men alone, but to laws and statutes, to acts of council, to pleas and decrees of court, to the pleasure of his majesty." The orator afterwards, having indulged some quiet sarcasms at Buckingham, his victims, and his extortions, thematically observed and exquisitely expressed," -advanced to the most serious imputations, which he handled with a fearful severity. "That which was wont to be the crown of virtue and merit is now become a merchandise for the greatness of this man, and even justice is made his prey! The most deserving offices, that require abilities to discharge them, are fixed upon the duke, his allies, and kindred. He hath drawn to him and his, the power of justice, the power of honour, and the power of command, in effect, the whole power of the kingdom, both for peace and war!" Eliot then painted a mournful picture of the result of the favourite's extortions in the present state of the kingdom, the "revenues destroyed, the fountain of supply exhausted, the nerves of the land relaxed," placing beside it, in vivid and indignant contrast, the gorgeousness of Buckingham's possessions. "He intercepts, consumes, and ex

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