he
impositions, the annual deficit had mounted to two hundred thousand. The
king had no mind to face the Parliament again; but a little experience
of affairs had sobered the arrogance of the favourite, and there still
remained counsellors of the same mind as Cecil, who pressed on him the
need of reconciling the Houses with the Crown. What at last prevailed on
the king were the pledges of some officious meddlers known as
"undertakers" who promised to bring about the return to the House of
Commons of a majority favourable to the demand of a subsidy. But pledges
such as these fell dead before the general excitement which greeted the
tidings of a new Parliament. Never had an election stirred so much
popular passion as that of 1614. In every case where rejection was
possible, the Court candidates were rejected. All the leading members of
the country party, or as we should now term it, the Opposition, were
again returned. But three hundred of the members were wholly new men;
and among them we note for the first time the names of the leaders in
the later struggle with the Crown. Calne returned John Pym; Yorkshire
sent Thomas Wentworth; St. Germans chose John Eliot. Signs of
unprecedented excitement were seen in the vehement cheering and hissing
which for the first time marked the proceedings of the Commons. But,
excited as they were, their policy was precisely that of the Parliament
which had been dissolved three years before. James indeed was farther
off from any notion of concession than ever; he had no mind to offer
again the Great Contract or even to allow the subject of impositions to
be named. But the Parliament was as firm as the king. It refused to
grant supplies till it had considered public grievances, and it fixed on
the impositions and the abuses of the Church as the first grievances to
be redressed. Unluckily the inexperience of the bulk of the House of
Commons led it into quarrelling on a point of privilege with the Lords;
and though the Houses had sate but two months James seized on the
quarrel as a pretext for a fresh dissolution.

[Sidenote: Benevolences.]

The courtiers mocked at the "addled Parliament," but a statesman would
have learned much from the anger and excitement that ran through its
stormy debates. During the session the king had been frightened beyond
his wont by the tone of the Commons, but the only impressions which
remained in his mind were those of wounded pride and stubborn
resistance. He s