less and vehement temper. There was a hot impulsive
element in his nature which showed itself in youth in his drawing sword
on a neighbour who denounced him to his father, and which in later years
gave its characteristic fire to his eloquence. But his intellect was as
clear and cool as his temper was ardent. What he believed in was the
English Parliament. He saw in it the collective wisdom of the realm; and
in that wisdom he put a firmer trust than in the statecraft of kings. In
the general enthusiasm which followed on the failure of the Spanish
marriage, Eliot had stood almost alone in pressing for a recognition of
the rights of Parliament as a preliminary to any real reconciliation
with the Crown. He fixed, from the very outset of his career, on the
responsibility of the royal ministers to Parliament as the one critical
point for English liberty.

[Sidenote: The Parliament of 1626.]

It was to enforce the demand of this that he availed himself of
Buckingham's sacrifice of the Treasurer, Cranfield, to the resentment of
the Commons. "The greater the delinquent," he urged, "the greater the
delict. They are a happy thing, great men and officers, if they be good,
and one of the greatest blessings of the land: but power converted into
evil is the greatest curse that can befall it." But the Parliament of
1626 had hardly met when Eliot came to the front to threaten a greater
criminal than Cranfield. So menacing were his words, as he called for an
enquiry into the failure before Cadiz, that Charles himself stooped to
answer threat with threat. "I see," he wrote to the House, "you
especially aim at the Duke of Buckingham. I must let you know that I
will not allow any of my servants to be questioned among you, much less
such as are of eminent place and near to me." A more direct attack on a
right already acknowledged in the impeachment of Bacon and Cranfield
could hardly be imagined, but Eliot refused to move from his
constitutional ground. The king was by law irresponsible, he "could do
no wrong." If the country therefore was to be saved from a pure
despotism, it must be by enforcing the responsibility of the ministers
who counselled and executed his acts. Eliot persisted in denouncing
Buckingham's incompetence and corruption, and the Commons ordered the
subsidy which the Crown had demanded to be brought in "when we shall
have presented our grievances, and received his Majesty's answer
thereto." Charles summoned them to Whiteh