ortment, the indelicate eagerness with which he grasped at riches,
the ostentation with which he squandered them, his picture gallery,
filled with masterpieces of Vandyke which had once been the property of
ruined Cavaliers, his palace, which reared its long and stately front
right opposite to the humbler residence of our Kings, drew on him much
deserved, and some undeserved, censure. When the Dutch fleet was in the
Thames, it was against the Chancellor that the rage of the populace was
chiefly directed. His windows were broken; the trees of his garden were
cut down; and a gibbet was set up before his door. But nowhere was he
more detested than in the House of Commons. He was unable to perceive
that the time was fast approaching when that House, if it continued to
exist at all, must be supreme in the state, when the management of that
House would be the most important department of politics, and when,
without the help of men possessing the ear of that House, it would
be impossible to carry on the government. He obstinately persisted in
considering the Parliament as a body in no respect differing from the
Parliament which had been sitting when, forty years before, he first
began to study law at the Temple. He did not wish to deprive the
legislature of those powers which were inherent in it by the old
constitution of the realm: but the new development of those powers,
though a development natural, inevitable, and to be prevented only by
utterly destroying the powers themselves, disgusted and alarmed him.
Nothing would have induced him to put the great seal to a writ for
raising shipmoney, or to give his voice in Council for committing a
member of Parliament to the Tower, on account of words spoken in debate:
but, when the Commons began to inquire in what manner the money voted
for the war had been wasted, and to examine into the maladministration
of the navy, he flamed with indignation. Such inquiry, according to him,
was out of their province. He admitted that the House was a most loyal
assembly, that it had done good service to the crown, and that its
intentions were excellent. But, both in public and in the closet, he,
on every occasion, expressed his concern that gentlemen so sincerely
attached to monarchy should unadvisedly encroach on the prerogative of
the monarch. Widely as they differed in spirit from the members of the
Long Parliament, they yet, he said, imitated that Parliament in meddling
with matters which lay