inister of the Crown. The Lord
Treasurer, Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, had done much by his management
of the finances to put the royal revenues on a better footing. But he
was the head of the Spanish party; and he still urged the king to cling
to Spain and to peace. Buckingham and Charles therefore looked coldly on
while he was impeached for corruption and dismissed from office.

[Sidenote: Buckingham's plans.]

Though James was swept along helplessly by the tide, his shrewdness saw
clearly the turn that affairs were taking; and it was only by hard
pressure that the favourite succeeded in wresting his consent to
Cranfield's disgrace. "You are making a rod for your own back," said the
king. But Buckingham and Charles persisted in their plans of war. That
these were utterly different from the plans of the Parliament troubled
them little. What money the Commons had granted, they had granted on
condition that the war should be exclusively a war against Spain, and a
war waged as exclusively by sea. Their good sense shrank from plunging
into the tangled and intricate medley of religious and political
jealousies which was turning Germany into a hell. What they saw to be
possible was to aid German Protestantism by lifting off it the pressure
of the armies of Spain. That Spain was most assailable on the sea the
ministers at Madrid knew as well as the leaders of the Commons. What
they dreaded was not a defeat in the Palatinate, but the cutting off of
their fleets from the Indies and a war in that new world which they
treasured as the fairest flower of their crown. A blockade of Cadiz or a
capture of Hispaniola would have produced more effect at the Spanish
council-board than a dozen English victories on the Rhine. But such a
policy had little attraction for Buckingham. His flighty temper exulted
in being the arbiter of Europe, in weaving fanciful alliances, in
marshalling imaginary armies. A treaty was concluded with Holland, and
negotiations set on foot with the Lutheran princes of North Germany, who
had looked coolly on at the ruin of the Elector Palatine, but were
scared at last into consciousness of their own danger. Yet more
important negotiations were opened for an alliance with France. To
restore the triple league of France, England, and Holland was to restore
the system of Elizabeth. Such a league would in fact have been strong
enough to hold in check the House of Austria and save German
Protestantism, while it would h