Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/148

138 from his I ncarnatz'o-n to his Death and Burial. This work, which was printed at Boston, is a life of our Saviour with many illustrative and practical remarks. The last of his publications was his translation into Indian of Shepard's Sincere Convert, which he had nearly completed in 1664; this was revised by Grindal Ilawson and printed in 1689. Eliot died at Roxbury on the 20th of May 1690, at the age of eighty-six. He was acknowledged to have been a man whose simplicity of life and manners, and evangelical sweetness of temper, had won for him all hearts, whether in the villages of the emigrants or in the smoky huts of the natives of New England. His translation of the Bible and other works composed for the use of the Indians are written in the Mohican dialect, which was spoken by the aborigines of New England. By Eliot and others it was called the Massachusetts language. Although it is no longer read, the works printed in it are valuable for the information they furnish as to the structure and character of the un- written dialects of barbarous nations.  ELIOT, (–1632), one of the greatest among the English statesmen of the reign of Charles I., was born at his father’s seat at Port Eliot, a small ﬁshing-village on the River Tamar, in the month of April. He was the son of a country gentleman of hospitable habits, and of considerable inﬂuence, if we may judge from Eliot’s early entrance into public life. Against his youth no fault has been charged except such as was the natural fruit of a ﬁery but generous temper, and that it was not entirely spent in idle frolic is proved by the considerable scholarship which he attained. At ﬁfteen he entered Exeter College, Oxford; and, on leaving the university, he studied law at one of the inns of court. He also spent some months travelling in France, Spain, and Italy, in company, for part of the time, with young George Villiers, afterwards duke of Buckingham. At the age of twenty he married the daughter of one of his neighbours, a wealthy Cornish gentleman. He was only twenty—two when, in the distinguished company of Pym and \Vent— worth, he commenced his parliamentary career, and only twenty—seven when he obtained the appointment of vice— admiral of Devon, with large powers for the defence and control of the commerce of the county. It was not long before the characteristic energy with which he performed the. duties of his ofﬁce involved him in diﬁiculties. After many attempts, in 1623 he succeeded, by a clever but dangerous manoeuvre, in entrapping the famous pirate Nutt, who had for years infested the southern coast, in- ﬂicting immense damage upon English commerce. The issue is noteworthy, both as the event which ﬁrst opened Eliot‘s eyes to the corruptness of the Government, and as an example of one of the causes which produced the Great Rebellion. The pirate, having gained powerful allies at court by means of bribery, was speedily permitted to re- cominence his career of plunder; while the vice-admiral, upon charges which could not be substantiated, was ﬂung into the Marshalsea, and detained there nearly four months. A few days after his release Eliot was elected member of Parliament for Newport (February 1624). From the ﬁrst he perceived that the success of the popular cause required the entire independence of parliament; and his earliest. recorded speech was to propose that, as “misreports” were Constantly being carried to the king, the deliberations of the House of Commons should be kept strictly secret. In the days of Eliot, such a measure would have carried with it advantages of the ﬁrst importance ; and it was only natural that, in his anxiety to make parliament an efﬁcient check upon the crown, he should forget how necessary was the check upon parliament which would thus have been lost. In the ﬁrst three parliaments of the reign of Charles I. Eliot was the foremost leader of the House of Commons. The House was at that time rich in great statesmen. Upon its benches sat Pym, Humpden, Selden, Coke, and many other sincere and steadfast patriots. But, though in pro- foundness of erudition one or two, but only one or two, may have surpassed him, neither in force of genius, in ﬁre and power of oratory, in loftiness and ardour of sentiment, in inflexible ﬁrmness of resolution, nor in personal bravery and self-devotion, had he any superior, while in the union of these great qualities which made up his rare and noble character he had no equal. The circumstances of his past life also conduced to ﬁt him for his position. His ofﬁcial intercourse with the duke of Buckingham, and a certain important interview between them, in which the duke had incautiously unveiled his design of governing without parliament, should parlia- ment refuse submission, had given him an early and valuable opportunity of gauging the character of the favourite ; and a bitter experience had acquainted him with the corruptness of the court. Undeterred by any vestige of personal fear, he dared, in plain and uncompromising language, to expose all the abuses which oppressed the country through innumerable illegal exactions of many kinds and through the venality of the executive; and to point out how it was disgraced abroad by a foreign policy directed by the mere spleen of the favourite, and by the gross mismanagement of every campaign that had been undertaken. He dared to advise parliament to demand an account of the expenditure of the supplies which it had voted, and to refuse further supplies till such an account had been rendered. Nay, he dared even to brave the king’s deadliest hatred by naming repeatedly, with direct and sternest invective, the great duke of Buckingham, the all- powerful favourite, as chiefly responsible for the misgovern- ment of the country. He did not escape unpunished. In 1626, for drawing a bold parallel between Buckingham and Sejanus, he was sent to the Tower; but the House of Commons refused to proceed with any business till he should be released, and, on his release, passed a vote clearing him from fault. In the same year he was conﬁned for a time in the Gatehouse, whence, careless of mere personal considerations, he ventured to petition the king against forced loans. He was also accused of having, in his capacity of vice-admiral, defrauded the duke of Buckingham. who, among his innumerable oﬁices, held that of admiral of Devon, and was supplanted by a creature of the duke’s. And, ﬁnally, a sentence of outlawry was passed upon him. But the very fact that he was thus specially singled out for vengeance by the king only increased the conﬁdence reposed in him by the people. In 1628, despite the most strenuous opposition of the court, he was chosen member for his own county of Cornwall; and he resumed his work with undiminished zeal and courage. Ile at once advised the House to adopt, and ﬁrmly to maintain, the only policy which could be effective, namely, to vote no further supplies till they obtained redress of the grievances of which they complained. He joined with Coke, Selden, Littleton, \Ventwarth, and others in framing the Petition of Right, and, when the ﬁrst evasive answer was given to that peti- tion, and men scarce knew what to do for- wondering at the king’s madness and audacity, he fearlessly reviewed the events of the whole reign, and proposed a remonstrance to the king, naming the duke of Buckingham as the cause of the kingdom’s wretchedness. And, on the last day of that famous parliament, when Holles and Valentine held the Speaker in the chair by force, it was his voice which read a protest against levying tonnage and poundage and other