t was diverted from it by the compleat inactivity
of that summer." He returned to England, and applied himself to a
severe course of study; first to polite literature and poetry, in
which he made several successful attempts. In a very short time he
became perfectly master of the Greek tongue; accurately read all the
Greek historians, and before he was twenty three years of age, he had
perused all the Greek and Latin Fathers.

About the time of his father's death, in 1633, he was made one of the
Gentlemen of his Majesty's Privy Chamber, notwithstanding which he
frequently retired to Oxford, to enjoy the conversation of learned and
ingenious men. In 1639 he was engaged in an expedition against the
Scots, and though he received some disappointment in a command of a
troop of horse, of which he had a promise, he went a volunteer with
the earl of Essex[2].

In 1640 he was chosen a Member of the House of Commons, for Newport in
the Isle of Wight, in the Parliament which began at Westminster the
13th of April in the same year, and from the debates, says Clarendon,
which were managed with all imaginable gravity and sobriety, 'he
contracted such a reverence for Parliaments, that he thought
it absolutely impossible they ever could produce mischief or
inconvenience to the nation, or that the kingdom could be tolerably
happy in the intermission of them, and from the unhappy, and
unseasonable dissolution of the Parliament he harboured some prejudice
to the court.'

In 1641, John, lord Finch, Keeper of the Great Seal, was impeached by
lord Falkland, in the name of the House of Commons, and his lordship,
says Clarendon, 'managed that prosecution with great vigour and
sharpness, as also against the earl of Strafford, contrary to his
natural gentleness of temper, but in both these cases he was misled by
the authority of those whom he believed understood the laws perfectly,
of which he himself was utterly ignorant[3].'

He had contracted an aversion towards Archbishop Laud, and some other
bishops, which inclined him to concur in the first bill to take away
the votes of the bishops in the House of Lords. The reason of his
prejudice against Laud was, the extraordinary passion and impatience
of contradiction discoverable in that proud prelate; who could not
command his temper, even at the Council Table when his Majesty was
present, but seemed to lord it over all the rest, not by the force of
argument, but an assumed superiority to which