racter; and Buckingham at times was susceptible of
misery amidst his greatness, as I have elsewhere shown.[306] It could
not have been imagined that the luckless favourite, on the present
occasion, should have served as a pretext to set again in motion the
chaos of evil! Can any candid mind suppose that the king or the duke
meditated the slightest insult on the patriotic party, or would in the
least have disturbed the apparent reconciliation! Yet it so happened!
Secretary Cooke, at the close of his report of the king's acceptance of
the subsidies, mentioned that the duke had fervently beseeched the king
to grant the house all their desires! Perhaps the mention of the duke's
name was designed to ingratiate him into their toleration.

Sir John Eliot caught fire at the very name of the duke, and vehemently
checked the secretary for having dared to introduce it; declaring, that
"they knew of no other distinction but of king and subjects. By
intermingling a subject's speech with the king's message, he seemed to
derogate from the honour and majesty of a king. Nor would it become any
subject to bear himself in such a fashion, as if no grace ought to
descend from the king to the people, nor any loyalty ascend from the
people to the king, but through him only."

This speech was received by many with acclamations; some cried out,
"Well spoken, Sir John Eliot!"[307] It marks the heated state of the
political atmosphere, where even the lightest coruscation of a hated
name made it burst into flames!

I have often suspected that Sir John Eliot, by his vehement personality,
must have borne a personal antipathy to Buckingham. I have never been
enabled to ascertain the fact; but I find that he has left in manuscript
a collection of satires, or Verses, being chiefly invectives against the
Duke of Buckingham, to whom he bore a bitter and most inveterate enmity.
Could we sometimes discover the motives of those who first head
political revolutions, we should find how greatly personal hatreds have
actuated them in deeds which have come down to us in the form of
patriotism, and how often the revolutionary spirit disguises its private
passions by its public conduct.[308]

But the supplies, which had raised tears from the fervent gratitude of
Charles, though voted, were yet withheld. They resolved that grievances
and supplies go hand in hand. The commons entered deeply into
constitutional points of the highest magnitude. The curious eruditio