WANT OF CONFIDENCE IN BUCKINGHAM. Robert Mansell, was a member of the House. Let 289 CHAP. 1625. Aug. 10. ance of the It would perhaps have been well if Mansell had Continuresponded at once. The King's claim to be judge of debate. the grounds upon which he demanded supply had been met by the counter-claim of the House to judge the sufficiency of those grounds before they gave the money. But Mansell held his peace, and the debate went on. The King's cause was feebly defended by May. No one had been authorised to join issue with Phelips. Then came Seymour, still more personal in his attack than Phelips, complaining of peculation in high places, and of the sale of honourable preferments at Court.2 1 Camden Debates, 109; Commons' Journals, i. 814. 2 With respect to the alleged speech of Eliot I had better repeat what I have said in the preface to the Camden Debates: "In the first place I shall have to ask my readers to abandon the notion that the great speech prepared by Eliot in conjunction with Cotton for the debate of the 10th of August, was ever really spoken. Mr. Forster was, indeed, perfectly justified in inserting the speech, for not only does it bear throughout the impress of Eliot's mind, but Eliot has inserted it both in the Negotium and in his own collection of speeches, and though he does not use his name, he says, after reporting May's speech : But the esteem of precedents did remain with those that knew the true value of antiquity, whereof a larger collection was in store to direct the resolution in that case, which thus contained both reason and authority. "Then after giving the speech in the Eliot, not in the Cotton form, he goes on: This inflamed the affection of the House, and pitched it wholly on the imitation of their fathers; the clear demonstrations that were made of the likeness of the times gave them like reasons who had like interests and freedom. But the courtiers did not relish it, who VOL. I. U CHAP. VIII. 1625. Aug. 10. The debate was kept up for some time longer. Amongst the speakers was Wentworth, who had been at once forsook both their reason and their eloquence; all their hopes consisting but in prayers and some light excuses that were framed, but no more justification was once heard of, in which soft way the Chancellor of the Exchequer did discourse, &c. "This certainly is strong evidence, and in the face of it Mr. Forster was quite justified in treating with disdain the fact that nothing of this speech is to be found in the Journals. But the Journals do not now stand alone. We have three reports completely independent of one another, but all agreeing in omitting Eliot's speech, and in substituting one spoken by Sir Francis Seymour. If this were all, those who think Eliot's statement enough to counterbalance those of three independent witnesses might still hold that it had not been rebutted. But there is another argument far stronger. Sir Richard Weston, according to all four authorities, followed. He does not even allude to one of the arguments which are supposed to have been pouring out from Eliot. He utters no word of remonstrance against his tremendous personal attack upon Buckingham; but he applies himself very closely to Seymour's argument, and carefully answers it. I cannot believe that anyone who will take the trouble of reading Weston's speech at p. 112, can doubt that Seymour really spoke before him. And if so, where is there any room for Eliot's speech, which is substituted for his in the Negotium? "The two forms of the speech which have come down to us are, as Mr. Forster has pointed out, substantially the same, but the one is the speech of an orator, the other of an antiquary. Mr. Forster argues, that in the case of Cotton's speech, 'some one finding at the same time,' i.e. after 1651, when the speech was published by Howell in his Cottoni Posthuma, a manuscript copy of the speech purporting to have been spoken by Eliot, was misled by Howell into a marginal indorsement of it as "not spoken but intended by Sir John Eliot," and the preservation of the copy in the Lansdowne MSS., so indorsed, adds to the confusion.' "The argument is probably based upon the fact that, at the head of the speech (Lansd. MSS., 491, fol. 138) is written in a different hand from the rest of the paper 'Sir John Eliot's: this speech was not spoken but intended.' But any argument drawn from the difference of handwriting falls to the ground when it is observed that this is merely a copy of a heading which was originally at the top of the page, and the greater part of which has been cut off in the process of binding; enough, however, remains to show that the heading was originally in the same writing as the body of the document. My own belief is that it was a copy taken from Cotton's notes at the very time by some one who knew that Eliot intended to use them but did not. For, in after years, who was likely to call to mind the mere intention to deliver a speech, especially as it was known amongst Cotton's friends as his production ? WENTWORTH'S VIEW OF THE CASE. He re-elected for Yorkshire during the vacation. He had In a letter written by Sir S. D'Ewes, on the 4th of February, 1626 (Ellis, ser. 1, iii. 214), the writer, speaking of the omission of the King to land on his way to his coronation at Sir R. Cotton's stairs, says: I conceived the Duke had prevented that act of grace to be done him, by reason of that piece I shewed you, which began, "Soe long as thou attendedst our master, now with God," framed by him. You may remember how I told you that I doubted him the author, by reason of the style and gravity of it.' 66 Curiously enough, the first words here given are not the first words of Cotton's work as it stands in the Cottoni Posthuma and the Lansdowne MSS. The paper which D'Ewes saw must have omitted the introduction relating to Clerke's censure by the House. On the other hand it was Cotton's, not Eliot's work which he saw. For Eliot began with a verbal difference: While thou remainedst in the service of King James.' "The most probable explanation is that the speech is by Cotton; that Cotton shrank from making use of it, and that Eliot, catching it up, breathed into it the fire of his own magnificent imagination, and converted the result of the antiquary's laborious investigation into words inspired with life. "It is easy to find reasons why, after all, Eliot should have preferred silence. In the first burst of his indignation at finding Buckingham had broken away from his compact, nothing would seem too hard to say. But when it came to the point, we should only be inclined to think more highly of Eliot if he shrunk back and refused to strike the first blow." Since these words were written I have an additional witness to call, and that is no other than Eliot himself. In the notes in his own handwriting which, through Lord St. Germans' kindness, I have before me, Seymour's speech is given, and not a word is said of any speech of Eliot's own. 1 Wentworth to Weston; Strafford Letters, i. 34. 291 CHAP. VIII. Aug. 10. 1625. CHAP. 1625. Aug. 10. A benevolence sug Coke. Mansell says he to be spent in war with Spain, it mattered little whether Buckingham or some more trusted councillors were to have the disposal of them. The internal affairs of England were the prime object of his solicitude from the first day on which he opened his mouth in Parliament. “Let us first,” he said, "do the business of the Commonwealth, appoint a Committee for petitions, and afterwards, for my part, I will consent to do as much for the King as any other." 1 Other speakers followed with various opinions, Coke gested by strangely enough suggesting a benevolence as the best way out of the difficulty. As a private man he was ready to give 1,000l., and that willingly, notwithstanding all his crosses. He hoped those of the King's council would do as much. Then at last Mansell rose. Since February, he said, he had not been at any debate of the Council of War. When the proposition had been made for the levy of 10,000 landsmen to go on board the fleet, he thought that proposition to no purpose, being such as would gall the enemy rather than hurt him.' He had a plan of his own which would be far more useful. Conway had told him that the resolution would admit no debate. The advice of the Council was asked only concerning the arms for 2,000 He had answered that he protested against the had not approved Buckingham's scheme. Adjourn ment. business itself. Upon this the Committee was adjourned to the next morning. It would be hard for Buckingham to wipe away the impression made by Mansell's words. By this time, too, Pennington and his sailors were back in England. The tale of the delivery of the ships by special orders from Buckingham must have been in every mouth. It was known that the French boasted that they would use them against Rochelle. The un 1 Camden Debates, 113; Eliot Notes. BUCKINGHAM ATTACKED BY NAME. confirmed assertion of Buckingham that there was peace in France was entirely disbelieved. Before the debate recommenced on Thursday morning a letter was read from William Legg, a prisoner to the Moorish pirates at Sallee. He was one, he said, of eight hundred Englishmen captured at sea. Enormous ransoms had been demanded, and those who refused or had been unable to pay had been treated with the utmost cruelty. Some of them had been tortured by fire, some were almost starved, and one poor wretch had been compelled to eat his own cars. Witnesses, too, who had escaped from the pirates were actually in attendance. One had been captured but eight leagues from the Land's End. It appeared that great spoil had been committed on the English coast, so that vessels scarcely ventured from port to port. If the West of England cried out against the rovers of Sallee, the East cried out against the Dunkirk privateers. Even the Huguenots of Rochelle had forgotten the respect due to English commerce. They had seized some ships of Bristol for service against the King of France, and had turned the sailors adrift on shore without money or provisions. It was Indignation was fast coming to a head. known that orders given by the Council for the employment of some of the King's ships against the pirates had been countermanded by the Navy Commissioners. It was replied that the Duke had given directions to Sir Francis Steward, one of the commanders of the fleet, to clear the seas of pirates. The answer was that Sir Francis Steward had looked calmly on whilst a capture was being made near the French coast, on the plea that he had no orders to act in foreign waters. At last Seymour spoke out what was in the mind of all. "Let us lay the fault where it is," he |