Page:History of England (Macaulay) Vol 5.djvu/375

Rh lingering in Holland till the latest possible moment. This was not the worst. The twenty-ninth of November came: but the King was not come. It was necessary that the Lords Justices should prorogue the Parliament till the 6th of December. The delay was imputed, and justly, to adverse winds. But the malecontents asked, with some reason, whether His Majesty had not known that there were often gales from the West in the German Ocean, and whether, when he had made a solemn appointment with the Estates of his Realm for a particular day, he ought not to have arranged things in such a way that nothing short of a miracle could have prevented him from keeping that appointment.

Thus the ill humour which a large proportion of the new legislators had brought up from their country seats became more and more acrid every day, till they entered on their functions. One question was much agitated during this unpleasant interval. Who was to be Speaker? The Junto wished to place Sir Thomas Littleton in the chair. He was one of their ablest, most zealous and most steadfast friends; and had been, both in the House of Commons and at the Board of Treasury, an invaluable second to Montague. There was reason indeed to expect a strong opposition. That Littleton was a Whig was a grave objection to him in the opinion of the Tories. That he was a placeman, and that he was for a standing army, were grave objections to him in the opinion of many who were not Tories. But nobody else came forward. The health of the late Speaker Foley had failed. Musgrave was talked of in coffeehouses: but the rumour that he would be proposed soon died away. Seymour's name was in a few mouths: but Seymour's day had gone by. He still possessed, indeed, those advantages which had once made him the first of the country gentlemen of England; illustrious descent, ample fortune, ready and weighty eloquence, perfect familiarity with parliamentary business. But all these things could not do so much to raise him as his moral character did to drag him down. Haughtiness such as his, though it could never have been liked, might, if it had been united with elevated sentiments of virtue and honour, have been pardoned. But of