Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/136

122 king's speech in a spirit which admitted of no interruption or interference, they locked the door, and put the key in the hands of Sir John Finch, their speaker. This ominous proceeding struck terror into the king, and a conference with the upper house was proposed and accepted. There Buckingham endeavoured to smooth down the royal speeches and messages into something like a bearable and constitutional shape, and to defend his own conduct. But by this time the committee of evils, causes and remedies, had come to the conclusion that the only mode of preventing the recurrence of such maladministration as Buckingham had been guilty of, was to impeach and punish him. The house accordingly passed a resolution to that effect on the 8th of May.

As if Charles were actually inspired by madness, at this moment, when he needed all the assistance of the peers to screen his favourite from the impeachment of the commons, he made a direct attack on their privileges. Lord Arundel, the earl marshal, had given some offence to Buckingham, and was well known to be decidedly hostile to him. As he possessed six proxies, it was thought a grand stroke of policy to get him out of the house at the approaching impeachment; and a plea was not long wanting. Arundel's son, lord Maltravers, had married a daughter of the duke of Lennox without consent of the king, and as Lennox was of blood-royal, this was deemed offence enough to involve Arundel himself. He was charged with not having prevented it, but he replied, that the match had been made unknown to him; that it had been secretly planned betwixt the mothers of the young people. This was not admitted, and Arundel was arrested by a royal warrant, and lodged in the Tower. The real offender, if real offence there were, was Maltravers, but it was Arundel's absence which was wanted. The lords, however, took up the matter as an infringement of their privileges; they passed a resolution that "no lord of parliament, the parliament sitting, or within the usual times of privilege of parliament, is to be imprisoned or restrained, without sentence or order of the house, unless it be for treason or felony, or for refusing to give surety for the peace."

They sent an address to Charles demanding Arundel's immediate liberation; he returned an evasive answer: they sent a second address; Charles then ordered the attorney-general to plead the royal prerogative, and to declare the earl marshal as personally offensive to the king, and as dangerous to the state. The peers would not admit the plea, but passed a resolution to suspend all business till their colleague was set at large; and after a contest of three months the king was forced to yield, and the earl marshal resumed his seat in the house amid cheers and acclamations.

But this most imprudent conflict with the peers had another and still more damaging result. The earl of Bristol, who had been so unjustly and ungraciously received, or rather, not received, on his return from his Spanish embassy, to enable Buckingham and Charles to maintain their charge against Spain, had remained an exile from court and parliament, but not without keeping a watchful eye on the progress of events. He was not a man to sit down quietly under misrepresentation and injury; and now, seeing that the peers had roused themselves from their subserviency, and were prepared to take vengeance on the common enemy, he complained to the house of peers that, as one of their order, and possessed of all their privileges, his writ of summons to parliament had been wrongfully withheld. To have withstood this demand at this moment, might have led to a dangerous excitement. The writ was therefore immediately issued, but Bristol at the same time received a private letter, charging him on pain of the king's high displeasure not to attempt to take his place. The earl at once forwarded the letter to the peers, requesting their advice upon it, on the ground that it affected their rights, being a case which might reach any other of them, and demanding that he might be permitted to take his seat in order to accuse the man who, to screen his own high crimes and misdemeanours, had for years deprived of his liberty and right a peer of the realm.

This alarming claim of the earl's struck both the king and Buckingham with terror; and to prevent, if possible, the menaced charge, the attorney-general was instantly despatched to the lords to prefer a plea of high treason against Bristol. But the peers were not thus to be circumvented. They replied that Bristol's accusation was first laid, and must be first heard; and that without the counter-charge being held to prejudice his testimony. Bristol, thus at liberty to speak out, proceeded to town and to the house of peers in triumph, his coach drawn by eight horses, caparisoned in cloth of gold or tissue; and Buckingham, as if to present a contrast of modesty, a quality wholly alien to his nature, drove thither in an old carriage with only three footmen and no retinue.

Bristol charged him with having concerted with Gondomar to inveigle the prince of Wales into Spain, in order to procure his conversion to popery prior to his marriage with the Infanta; with having complied with popish ceremonies himself; with having, whilst at Madrid, disgraced the king, his country, and himself, by his contempt of all decency, and the vileness of his profligacy. He stated that, "As for the scandal given by his behaviour, as also his employing his power with the king of Spain for the procuring of favours and offices, which he conferred on base and unworthy persons, for the recompense and hire of his lust—these things, as neither fit for the earl of Bristol to speak, nor, indeed, for the house to hear, he leaveth to your lordships' wisdoms how far it will please you to have them examined." He went on to charge him with breaking off the treaty of marriage solely through resentment, because the Spanish ministers, disgusted with his conduct, refused any negotiation with so infamous a person, and that, on his return, he had deceived both king and parliament by a most false statement. All this the earl pledged himself to prove by written documents and other most undeniable evidence.

Instead of Buckingham attempting to clear himself as an innocent man so blackened by terrible charges would, it was sought to deprive the testimony of Bristol of all value by making him a criminal and a traitor to the king whilst his representative in Spain. Charles went so far as to send the lord keeper Coventry, a most pliant courtier, to inform the lords that he would of his own knowledge clear the duke, the duke himself reserving his defence till after the impeachment by the commons. Charles not only guaranteed to vindicate Buckingham, but accused Bristol of making a