out stretching
to the utmost the right of purveyance, and rendering it a kind of
universal robbery upon the people: the public clamor rose high upon this
occasion, and no one had the equity to make allowance for the necessity
of the king's situation. Suffolk, once become odious, bore the blame of
the whole; and every grievance, in every part of the administration, was
universally imputed to his tyranny and injustice.

This nobleman, sensible of the public hatred under which he labored, and
foreseeing an attack from the commons endeavored to overawe his enemies,
by boldly presenting himself to the charge, and by insisting upon his
own innocence and even upon his merits, and those of his family, in
the public service. He rose in the house of peers; took notice of the
clamors propagated against him; and complained that after serving the
crown in thirty-four campaigns; after living abroad seventeen years,
without once returning to his native country; after losing a father and
three brothers in the wars with France; after being himself a prisoner,
and purchasing his liberty by a great ransom; it should yet be
suspected, that he had been debauched from his allegiance by that enemy
whom he had ever opposed with such zeal and fortitude, and that he had
betrayed his prince, who had rewarded his services by the highest honors
and greatest offices that it was in his power to confer.[*] This speech
did not answer the purpose intended. The commons, rather provoked at his
challenge, opened their charge against him, and sent up to the peers
an accusation of high treason, divided into several articles. They
insisted, that he had persuaded the French king to invade England with
an armed force, in order to depose the king, and to place on the throne
his own son, John de la Pole, whom he intended to marry to Margaret,
the only daughter of the late John, duke of Somerset, and to whom, he
imagined, he would by that means acquire a title to the crown: that he
had contributed to the release of the duke of Orleans, in hopes that
that prince would assist King Charles in expelling the English from
France, and recovering full possession of his kingdom: that he had
afterwards encouraged that monarch to make open war on Normandy and
Guienne, and had promoted his conquests by betraying the secrets of
England, and obstructing the succors intended to be sent to those
provinces; and that he had, without any powers or commission, promised
by treaty to c