he had done. A murder it undoubtedly
was, and not in the least to be defended: though he had freed England
from one of the most profligate, contemptible, and base court favourites
to whom it has ever yielded.

A very different man now arose. This was SIR THOMAS WENTWORTH, a
Yorkshire gentleman, who had sat in Parliament for a long time, and who
had favoured arbitrary and haughty principles, but who had gone over to
the people's side on receiving offence from Buckingham. The King, much
wanting such a man--for, besides being naturally favourable to the King's
cause, he had great abilities--made him first a Baron, and then a
Viscount, and gave him high employment, and won him most completely.

A Parliament, however, was still in existence, and was _not_ to be won.
On the twentieth of January, one thousand six hundred and twenty-nine,
SIR JOHN ELIOT, a great man who had been active in the Petition of Right,
brought forward other strong resolutions against the King's chief
instruments, and called upon the Speaker to put them to the vote. To
this the Speaker answered, 'he was commanded otherwise by the King,' and
got up to leave the chair--which, according to the rules of the House of
Commons would have obliged it to adjourn without doing anything more--when
two members, named Mr. HOLLIS and Mr. VALENTINE, held him down. A scene
of great confusion arose among the members; and while many swords were
drawn and flashing about, the King, who was kept informed of all that was
going on, told the captain of his guard to go down to the House and force
the doors. The resolutions were by that time, however, voted, and the
House adjourned. Sir John Eliot and those two members who had held the
Speaker down, were quickly summoned before the council. As they claimed
it to be their privilege not to answer out of Parliament for anything
they had said in it, they were committed to the Tower. The King then
went down and dissolved the Parliament, in a speech wherein he made
mention of these gentlemen as 'Vipers'--which did not do him much good
that ever I have heard of.

As they refused to gain their liberty by saying they were sorry for what
they had done, the King, always remarkably unforgiving, never overlooked
their offence. When they demanded to be brought up before the court of
King's Bench, he even resorted to the meanness of having them moved about
from prison to prison, so that the writs issued for that purpose should
not l