rary.

King James, in the end of March, 1625, died, leaving his majesty that
now is, engaged in a war with Spain, but unprovided with money to manage
it, though it was undertaken by the consent and advice of Parliament;
the people being naturally enough inclined to the war (having surfeited
with the uninterrupted pleasures and plenty of 22 years of peace) and
sufficiently inflamed against the Spaniard, but quickly weary of the
charge of it. Therefore, after an unprosperous attempt by sea on Cadiz,
and a still more unsuccessful one on France, at the Isle of Rhe (for
some difference had also begotten a war with that country), a general
peace was shortly concluded with both kingdoms.

The exchequer was exhausted by the debts of King James and the war, so
that the known revenue was anticipated and the king was driven into
straits for his own support. Many ways were resorted to for supply, such
as selling the crown lands, creating peers for money, and other
particulars which no access of power or plenty could since repair.

Parliaments were summoned, and again dissolved: and that in the fourth
year after the dissolution of the two former was determined with a
declaration that no more assemblies of that nature should be expected,
and all men should be inhibited on the penalty of censure so much as to
speak of a parliament. And here I cannot but let myself loose to say,
that no man can show me a source from whence these waters of bitterness
we now taste have probably flowed, than from these unseasonable,
unskilful, and precipitate dissolutions of parliaments. And whoever
considers the acts of power and injustice in the intervals between
parliaments will not be much scandalised at the warmth and vivacity
displayed in their meetings.

In the second parliament it was proposed to grant five subsidies, a
proportion (how contemptible soever in respect of the pressures now
every day imposed) never before heard of in Parliament. And that meeting
being, upon very unpopular and implausible reasons immediately
dissolved, those five subsidies were exacted throughout the whole
kingdom with the same rigour as if in truth an act had passed to that
purpose. And very many gentlemen of prime quality, in all the counties,
were for refusing to pay the same committed to prison.

The abrupt and ungracious breaking of the first two parliaments was
wholly imputed to the Duke of Buckingham; and of the third, principally
to the Lord Weston, then