people were right in their policy of patience, and that unless other
measures were taken the fabric of despotism would fall at the first
breath of adverse fortune. Sir Thomas Wentworth, a great Yorkshire
landowner and one of the representatives of his county in Parliament,
had stood during the Parliament of 1628 among the more prominent
members of the Country party in the Commons. But he was no Eliot. He had
no faith in Parliaments, save as means of checking exceptional
misgovernment. He had no belief in the general wisdom of the realm, or
in its value, when represented by the Commons, as a means of bringing
about good government. Powerful as his mind was, it was arrogant and
contemptuous; he knew his own capacity for rule, and he looked with
scorn on the powers or wits of meaner men. He was a born administrator;
and, like Bacon, he panted for an opportunity of displaying his talent
in what then seemed the only sphere of political action. From the first
moment of his appearance in public his passionate desire had been to
find employment in the service of the Crown. At the close of the
preceding reign he was already connected with the Court, he had secured
a seat in Yorkshire for one of the royal ministers, and was believed to
be on the high road to a peerage. But the consciousness of political
ability which spurred his ambition roused the jealousy of Buckingham;
and the haughty pride of Wentworth was flung by repeated slights into an
attitude of opposition, which his eloquence--grander in its sudden
outbursts, though less earnest and sustained than that of Eliot--soon
rendered formidable. His intrigues at Court roused Buckingham to crush
by a signal insult the rival whose genius he instinctively dreaded.
While sitting in his court as sheriff of Yorkshire, Wentworth received
the announcement of his dismissal from office and of the gift of his
post to Sir John Savile, his rival in the county. "Since they will thus
weakly breathe on me a seeming disgrace in the public face of my
country," he said, with a characteristic outburst of contemptuous pride,
"I shall crave leave to wipe it away as openly, as easily!" His whole
conception of a strong and able rule revolted against the miserable
government of the favourite, his maladministration at home, his failures
and disgraces abroad. Wentworth's aim was to force on the king, not such
a freedom as Eliot longed for, but such a system as the Tudors had clung
to, where a large and