to
England at large the baser features of his character were still unknown.
The stately reserve, the personal dignity and decency of manners which
distinguished the Prince, contrasted favourably with the gabble and
indecorum of his father. The courtiers indeed who saw him in his youth
would often pray God that "he might be in the right way when he was set;
for if he were in the wrong he would prove the most wilful of any king
that ever reigned." But the nation was willing to take his obstinacy for
firmness; as it took the pique which inspired his course on the return
from Spain for patriotism and for the promise of a nobler rule.

[Sidenote: The Parliament of 1624.]

At the back of Charles stood the favourite Buckingham. The policy of
James had recoiled upon its author. In raising his favourites to the
height of honour James had looked to being at last an independent king.
He had broken with parliaments, he had done away with the old
administrative forms of government, that his personal rule might act
freely through these creatures of his will. And now that his policy had
reached its end, his will was set aside more ruthlessly than ever by the
very instrument he had created to carry it out. In his zeal to establish
the greatness of the monarchy he had brought on the monarchy a
humiliation such as it had never known. Church, or Baronage, or Commons
had many times in our history forced a king to take their policy for his
own; but never had a mere minister of the Crown been able to force his
policy on a king. This was what Buckingham set himself to do. The
national passion, the Prince's support, his own quick energy, bore down
the hesitation and reluctance of James. The king still clung desperately
to peace. He still shrank from parliaments. But Buckingham overrode
every difficulty. In February 1624 James was forced to meet a
Parliament, and to concede the point on which he had broken with the
last by laying before it the whole question of the Spanish negotiation.
Buckingham and the Prince gave their personal support to a demand of the
Houses for a rupture of the treaties with Spain and a declaration of
war. A subsidy was eagerly voted; and as if to mark a new departure in
the policy of the Stuarts, the persecution of the Catholics, which had
long been suspended out of deference to Spanish intervention, began with
new vigour. The favourite gave a fresh pledge of his constitutional aims
by consenting to a new attack on a m