Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/127

 ever attempted to write the history of that reign and escaped without finding himself involved in a subject unsuited to an age in which Sporus and Locusta cannot be brought upon the scene. I do not dispute Hume's capacity, and as to his knowledge he knew enough to know that in the matter called the Gowrie Conspiracy there were pitfalls which even his dexterity might not enable him to escape, and therefore he avoided all mention of it. But though this might show prudence what did it say as to his love of truth? His account of the reign of James I. will remain a memorial of his extraordinary interpretation of the meaning of the word duty applied to a historian.

It can be shown that the first Lord Hyde of the name of Villiers was a man possessed of qualities very different from those of the unhappy minion of court favour who died by the knife of Felton, or of his brilliant and dissolute son who died at Helmsley, after having wasted some of the choicest gifts of nature and of fortune. The great estate of Helmsley, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, had been bestowed by the Parliament of England on Fairfax, their general, and had been part of the marriage portion which Fairfax's daughter had brought to Buckingham. Helmsley was purchased