Sometimes they throve the worse when Mr. James
Bagg had only themselves to plunder. To
Buckingham James Bagg transmitted, as a faithful
slave, hints of what he could do in management
of Admiralty business, and Buckingham
understood that Bagg could gain his end in the
enrichment of himself, and yet pour gold into the
coffers of his patron; because there were
merchants who could be robbed in the name of law
taken in vain, and because there were poor
mariners who could have bread taken out of their
mouths and be fed with rotten meat, that the
difference between good meat and bad for the
poor sailor might buy the duke more jewels
to his coat and Bagg more fat for his ribs.
A base Bagg was far more, therefore, to the
duke's mind than that simply honest, fervidly
wise, and, in the eyes of all base courtiers, terribly
shrewd, English gentleman, John Eliot.
Sir John Eliot took and delivered to the powers
that be, Nutt, the pestilent sea-robber, but all
Sir John Eliot got for his pains was imprisonment
in the Marshalsea, while Nutt went free
with the king's pardon! This was when Eliot
was thirty-three years old. Nine years afterwards,
when Eliot, " low in body, yet as high
and lofty in mind as ever," was dying in prison,
the triumphant pirate was afloat: the greatest
nuisance in his Majesty's dominions, and intercepting
even the plate and household goods of
the Lord Deputy upon their way to Ireland!

And while Eliot was serving an ungrateful
state, as represented by my lord of Buckingham,
in Cornwall or Devon and in the Marshalsea,
King James had an idea, which was, of
course, a bad one. Protestantism was being
hunted down upon the Continent, and his
own son-in-law had been hunted off a throne.
He wouldn't fight. He would do wonderful
things by treaties, marry his son to the Spanish
infanta, and so make money. The English
people hated Spain, as the strong type of
continental despotism in civil government and in
religion. But the treaties were in progress,
when it occurred to my lord of Buckingham to
go himself to Madrid with the young prince and
expedite negotiations. His incompetent interference
brought everything into confusion; so,
making virtue of failure, he and the prince
came home triumphant in defeat, joined the cry
of the English people against Spain, and were
received as friends of the country with bonfires
and great rejoicing. But poor old King James,
an instrument now in the hands of his favourite,
thought himself very ill used. It was at that
time, when Buckingham was enjoying his short-
lived strut in feathers not his own, and had repute
as a friend of the people, that Eliot entered
as member for Newport the parliament of sixteen
'twenty-three. He made the first speech
in that parliament; reviving and adopting the
protest on behalf of popular rights with which
its predecessor had been closed.

That parliament battled stoutly for the people,
and in it Eliot made a noble speech against the
kind's prerogative of imposing taxes at discretion:
which he showed, by the reasoning of a
good free trader, to be not only injurious to the
people, but also unprofitable to the king's exchequer.
A French match for the prince was
now on foot, and parliament remonstrated against
concessions to any Roman Catholic court. But
parliament was dissolved in dudgeon; Eliot went
back to his wife and family, and looked after the
enlistment of the poor creatures whom greedy
officials were to starve and send with Mansfeldt
to be thrown dead to the fishes or cast on the
shores of Holland to be " eaten by hogs." He
tried a batch of Turkish pirates who had plundered
goods and stolen men from English coasts,
and, when the next parliament met, that of 1625,
he was at Westminster again. It was an eventful
parliament. And of every event of it, of every
great speech made in it, and even of the peculiarities
of leading persons in it, we have now
for the first time a full record in Mr. Forster's
volumes. Eliot left a memoir describing it all,
which, under its fragmentary appearance and
Latin name of " Negotium Posterorum," has
been overlooked till now. But now, that which
was indeed the business of posterity, the tale of
the great turning-point in English History, is.
given at last by Mr. Forster into our hands.

It is too much to tell here. The duke had fitted
out a fleet for secret use, and wanted more and
more money. The only thing he was yet known
to have done with English ships, was, to deliver
eight of them up to be used by France against
the Protestants in Rochelle. He could not
make that infamous use of English men; they
mutinied, inserted protests in the Bible of
their sympathising chief, and at all risks flatly
refused to serve. But some greater work was
said to be in hand, and the cry to the Commons
was " Bleed, bleed!" The reply was, " After
there has been redress of public grievances the
people will have money and blood to spare."
Sitting in plague-smitten London, with men
falling dead around them, they resolutely deferred
the question of additional supply. The sitting
was adjourned to Oxford, also plague smitten.
Determined still to claim the people's rights,
they were dismissed, and met again after the
great fleet had sailed to Cadiz upon its enterprise:
of which Mr. Forster thus describes the
character and issue.

"In plain words, it was an attempt to fill the
king's empty coffers by a piratical foray on the
wealth of Spain; and hence the zealous and
secret appetite with which both king and duke
had at the first pursued it. But ill-manned, ill-
provisioned, and ill-commanded, it failed in every
point. Sailing for Cadiz Bay, the shipping in
that harbour might with ease have been taken;
but the Spaniards were able to secrete their
ships further up the harbour while time was lost
at Fort Puntal, which, after the English captains
had wasted their batteries upon it for four-and-
twenty hours, surrendered, at the mere summons
of a portion of the troops who were landed next
day, without firing a gun. Wimbledon, landing
the rest of his troops, then gave orders for the
destruction of the communications with the
main land, which Essex had found easy in the