I have supplied new facts, to make everything as present and as
true as my faithful diligence could repeat the tale. It was necessary
that I should sometimes judge of the first race of our patriots as some
of their contemporaries did; but it was impossible to avoid correcting
these notions by the more enlarged views of their posterity. This is the
privilege of an historian and the philosophy of his art. There is no
apology for the king, nor any declamation for the subject. Were we only
to decide by the final results of this great conflict, of which what we
have here narrated is but the faint beginning, we should confess that
Sir John Eliot and his party were the first fathers of our political
existence; and we should not withhold from them the inexpressible
gratitude of a nation's freedom! But human infirmity mortifies us in the
noblest pursuits of man; and we must be taught this penitential and
chastising wisdom. The story of our patriots is involved; Charles
appears to have been lowering those high notions of his prerogative,
which were not peculiar to him, and was throwing himself on the bosom of
his people. The severe and unrelenting conduct of Sir John Eliot, his
prompt eloquence and bold invective, well fitted him for the leader of a
party. He was the lodestone, drawing together the looser particles of
iron. Never sparing, in the monarch, the errors of the man, never
relinquishing his royal prey, which he had fastened on, Eliot, with Dr.
Turner and some others, contributed to make Charles disgusted with all
parliaments. Without any dangerous concessions, there was more than one
moment when they might have reconciled the sovereign to themselves, and
not have driven him to the fatal resource of attempting to reign without
a parliament![324]

FOOTNOTES:

[286] From manuscript letters of the times.

[287] Sloane MSS. 4177. Letter 317.

[288] The king had said in his speech to parliament, "I must let you
know I will not allow any of my servants to be questioned among you,
much less such as are of eminent place, and near unto me;" hence the
security of Buckingham, who showed the most perfect contempt for the
speakers who thus violently attacked him.

[289] Our printed historical documents, Kennett, Frankland, &c., are
confused in their details, and facts seem misplaced for want of
dates. They all equally copy Rushworth, the only source of our
history of this period. Even Hume