Page:Life of Oliver Cromwell.pdf/7

 ted the ambitious, fickle, and unprincipled Duke of Buckingham to exercise in the affairs of the state. This noblemen, whose name was Villiers, and who had been suddenly raised from the estate of a private gentleman at once to peerage, and the first offices in the kindom, by James I., was the early companion and favourite of Charles, as he had also been of his weak father, whose attachment to him solely arose from that singular afffection which he always evinced for those of his own sex who were eminently handsome-a qualification which this unworthy favourite possessed in no ordinary degree.

To the unreasonable power, as we have said, which Buckingham exercised, is principally to be attributed the first appearance of that hostility to the crown, on the part of the Commons House of Parliament, which finally ended in its overthrow. Of course, it must be always kept in view, that the new ideas of civil liberty, which were fast gaining ground, formed, as it were, the basis of this inimical feeling between the King and his Parliament, and that the immediate and ostensible causes of quarrel were mere superstructures erected on the growing spirit of republicanism. As the breach widened between the Sovereign and the Commons, the latter began to refuse supplies, unless concessions in favour of civil liberty were made them in return. To this species of bargaining Charles would not by any means consent. That monarch, though one of the mildest men, unfortunately possessed notions, in some measure no doubt inherited from that great assertor of royal prerogative, his father, on the subject of the divine right of kings, which were altogether incompatable with the genius of the British Constitution. Charles, finding that he could not hope for relief from his