great Queen's time, and which, if the Suazzo
bridge had now been as promptly struck down,
would have laid Cadiz open to an effective
attack. But, as Eliot afterwards bitterly described
it, it was a dry and hungry march into a
drunken quarter. Discovering on the way
several cellars stored with wine, the troops
became insubordinate, drunken, and disorderly;
and Wimbledon, in a fright, without either a
capable man's resource or a strong man's decision,
carried them headlong back to the fleet
without having seen an enemy. At first he
thought of retaining Puntal for better intercepting
of the expected convoy, but all attempts to
restore discipline were hopeless, and he re-
embarked with ignominy. He then cruised
about after the Spanish fleet for eighteen days,
suffered it to escape him unobserved during the
night, and returned to Plymouth with disease
and mutiny raging on all sides around him, the
officers loud in denunciation of his incompetency,
and the men decimated by a sickness which they
attributed to foul play and dishonesty in
provisioning the ships. Hundreds of seamen and
soldiers were landed in a dying state, and more
than a thousand were said to have perished
before the ships reached harbour. For many
months to come the appalling extent of the
disaster showed itself visibly in every road and
town on that western coast, and above all in the
streets of Plymouth."

In the next parliament that met after this
disaster, grounds of accusation against the
favourite had so multiplied, that Buckingham was
impeached by the House of Commons: Sir John
Eliot being its spokesman. Eliot was sent to
the Tower for his boldness of speech, and an
attempt was made by the king and the duke to
find matter against him; but they could not, and
the House of Commons would do nothing until it
had him back, so Eliot was released, and the king
(with his head still loosening) was discomfited.
In that kick against the traces, as in. all previous
struggles of like nature, the royal power suffered.
Parliament could be again dissolved, issuing, as
its last act, a Remonstrance to the People of
England; the favourite could be saved for the
moment by a nominal trial and a whitewashing in
the Star Chamber. But King Charles's head was
loosening, of his own obstinate act, and the fire
was lighted that should not be quenched till it
had burnt to ashes all the tyrannous pretensions
of the crown.

Since sixteen 'twenty-five, Charles the First
had been on the throne; but Buckingham still
was king— king alike over the departing James,
aged fifty-nine, and the incoming Charles, aged
five-and-twenty. And now, in the very first
year of his reign, Buckingham having him by
the ear, Charles's head had been set in the wrong
direction, and in the wrong direction he showed
his determination doggedly thenceforth to go.
He had declared for contest with his people,
and would rule by prerogative. Against the
bold John Eliot, paid informers, iniquitous
courts, obsequious judges, were now the
resources of the state. Eliot must be no longer
Buckingham's vice-admiral; but the office was
one for life, barring misconduct; the vice-
admirals were not removable at pleasure. After
the dissolution of June, sixteen 'twenty-six,
Eliot, returning to his duties, was exposed to
every plot against his honour that could be
fostered by the malice of the favourite. But Eliot
was careful to an exasperating degree. In every
exercise of his power as vice-admiral, some weak
point was eagerly sought to be invented. At
last, the base James Bagg prompting a new case,
it was resolved to condemn and sequester Eliot
first, and proceed afterwards to inquiry.
Sequestered accordingly, his patent of office was,
"upon credible information, that complaint hath
been made of divers foul abuses and
misdemeanours." A bill of indictment was framed,
and a commission appointed to take examinations:
of which the record amounts simply to a
strong assertion of the court victim's
unblemished honour. Meantime, his Majesty tried
the effect of a Royal Proclamation for supply;
a general forced loan; Buckingham's restless
passion and disordered vanity having urged
England into a war with France. The causeless
war was actually entered on; but the people
of England refused to submit. NO was the
reply met with by the commissioners of the
loan in every part of England; the prisons were
filled with recusants; and Eliot among their
number was in June, sixteen 'twenty-seven,
deposited as prisoner in the Gate-house. While
Eliot was there imprisoned, Buckingham sailed
for Rochelle, whence he brought back a
shattered fleet and the disgrace of a disaster
whereof Denzil Holies wrote: " This only every
man knows, that since England was England it
received not so dishonourable a blow." This
second great disaster spread consternation over
the land, and the cry for a parliament then became
irresistible. Five days after deciding for
a parliament, Charles, his head growing ever
looser and looser, paid money for foreign
mercenaries; by whose force he hoped to overawe
its counsels.

But the parliament was called; the eighty or
a hundred country gentlemen in restraint for
the loan were set at liberty; and the popular
candidates, including Eliot, Pym, Hampden, and
a certain Mr. Oliver Cromwell, then first returned
by the Puritans of Huntingdon, were almost
everywhere victorious. The third parliament of
Charles thus brought together, was, except only
the one that followed it, the greatest in our
history. John Eliot set forth in it, the people's
grievances in the wrongs done to liberty and to
religion; and the House resolved, passing over
in silence the king's message, that a bill should
be drawn containing the substance of Magna
Charta, and other statutes concerning the
liberty of the subject. Thus it gave birth
to the immortal Petition of Right. The king,
his head growing looser still, received it in
silence, and afterwards returned a disloyal
answer. Then Eliot boldly moved the House
to a Remonstrance, and, on its publication,
the wrath of the people against Buckingham