King Charles I.: from a painting by Van Dyck.
4. Charles's Second Parliament. 1626.—The new Parliament met on February 6, 1626. Charles, in order to secure himself against what he believed to be the attacks of interested and ambitious men, had hit on the clever expedient of making sheriffs of the leaders of the Opposition, so as to secure their detention in their own counties. The Opposition, however, found a leader in Sir John Eliot, who, though he had formerly been a friend of Buckingham, was now shocked at the misconduct of the favourite and regarded him as a selfish and unprincipled adventurer. Eliot was not only a natural orator, but one of the most pure-minded of patriots, though the vehemence of his temperament often carried him to impute more evil to men of whom he thought badly than they were really guilty of. At present, he was roused to indignation against Buckingham, not only on account of the recent failures, but because, in the preceding summer, he had lent some English ships to the French, who wanted to use them for suppressing the Huguenots of Rochelle, then in rebellion against their king, Louis XIII. Before long the Commons, under Eliot's guidance, impeached Buckingham of all kinds of crime, making against him charges of some of which he was quite innocent, whilst others were much exaggerated. The fact that the only way to get rid of an unpopular minister was to accuse him of crime, made those who would otherwise have been content with his dismissal ready to believe in his guilt. Charles's vexation reached its height when he heard that Eliot had branded Buckingham as Sejanus. "If he is Sejanus," he said, "I must be Tiberius." Rather than abandon his minister, he dissolved Parliament, before it had voted him a sixpence.
Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I.: from a painting by Van Dyck.
5. The Forced Loan. 1626.—If the war was to go on, money must in some way or other be had. Charles asked his subjects to bestow on him a free gift for the purpose. Scarcely any one gave him anything. Then came news that the king of Denmark, to whom the promised 30,000l. a month had not been paid (see p. [501], [503]), had been signally defeated at Lutter, so that the recovery of the Palatinate was further off than ever. Some clever person suggested to Charles that, though the Statute of Benevolences (see p. 342) prohibited him from making his subjects give him money, no law forbade him to make them lend, even though there was no chance that he would ever be able to repay what he borrowed. He at once gave orders for the collection of a forced loan. Before this was gathered in, troubles arose with France. Louis XIII. was preparing to besiege Rochelle, and Charles believed himself to be in honour bound to defend it because Louis had at one time promised him that he would admit his Huguenot subjects to terms. Besides, he had offended Louis by sending out of the country the queen's French attendants, thinking, probably with truth, that they encouraged her to resent his breach of promise about the English Catholics (see p. [501]).