It was easier to overthrow one policy than to construct another. The Commons would have been content with sending some assistance to the Dutch, and with entering upon a privateering war with Spain. James, whose object was to regain the Palatinate, believed this could only be accomplished by a continental alliance, in which France took part. As soon as parliament was prorogued, negotiations were opened for a marriage between Charles and the sister of Louis XIII., Henrietta Maria. But a difficulty arose. James and Charles had engaged to the Commons that there should be no concessions to the English Roman Catholics, and Louis would not hear of the marriage unless very large concessions were made. Buckingham, impatient to begin the war as soon as possible, persuaded Charles, and the two together persuaded James to throw over the promises to the Commons, and to accept the French terms. It was no longer possible to summon parliament to vote supplies for the war till the marriage had been completed, when remonstrances to its conditions would be useless.
Buckingham, for Buckingham was now virtually the ruler of England, had thus to commence war without money. He prepared to throw 12,000 Englishmen, under a German adventurer, Count Mansfeld, through France into the Palatinate. The French insisted that he should maroh through Holland. It mattered little which way he took. Without provisions, and without money to buy them, the wretched troops sickened and died in the winter frosts. Buckingham's first military enterprise ended in disastrous failure.
Buckingham had many other schemes in his teeming brain. He had offered to send aid to Christian IV., king of Denmark, who was proposing to make war in Germany, and had also a plan for sending an English fleet to attack Genoa, the ally of Spain, and a plan for sending an English fleet to attack Spain itself.
Before these schemes could be carried into operation James died on the 27th of March 1625. The new king and Buckingham were at one in their aims and objects. Both were anxious to distinguish themselves by the chastisement of Spain, and the recovery of the Palatinate. Both were young and inexperienced. But Charles, obstinate when his mind was made up, was sluggish in action and without fertility in ideas, and he had long submitted his mind to the versatile and brilliant favourite, who was never at a loss what to do next, and who unrolled before his eyes visions of endless possibilities in the future. Buckingham was sent over to Paris to urge upon the French court the importance of converting its alliance into active co-operation.
There was a difficulty in the way. The Huguenots of La Rochelle were in rebellion, and James had promised the aid of English ships to suppress that rebellion. Buckingham, who seems at first to have consented to the scheme, was anxious to mediate peace between the king of France and his subjects, and to save Charles from compromising himself with his parliament by the appearance of English ships in an attack upon Protestants. When he returned his main demands were refused, but hopes were given him that peace would be made with the Huguenots. On his way through France he had the insolence to make love to the queen of France.
Soon after his return parliament was opened. It would have been hard for Charles to pass through the session with credit. Under Buckingham's guidance he had entered into engagements involving an enormous expenditure, and these engagements involved a war on the continent, which had never been popular in the House of Commons. The Commons, too, suspected the marriage treaty contained engagements of which they disapproved. They asked for the full execution of the laws against the Roman Catholics, and voted but little money in return. Before they reassembled at Oxford on the 1st of August, the English ships had found their way into the hands of the French, to be used against La Rochelle. The Commons met in an ill-humour. They had no confidence in Buckingham, and they asked that persons whom they could trust should be admitted to the king's council before they would vote a penny. Charles stood by his minister, and on the 12th of August he dissolved his first parliament.
Buckingham and his master set themselves to work to conquer public opinion. On the one hand, they threw over their engagements to France on behalf of the English Roman Catholics. On the other hand they sent out a large fleet to attack Cadiz, and to seize the Spanish treasure-ships. Buckingham went to the Hague to raise an immediate supply by pawning the crown jewels, to place England at the head of a great Protestant alliance, and to enter into fresh obligations to furnish money to the king of Denmark. It all ended in failure. The fleet returned from Cadiz, having effected nothing. The crown jewels produced but a small sum, and the money for the king of Denmark could only be raised by an appeal to parliament. In the meanwhile the king of France was deeply offended by the treatment of
the Roman Catholics, and by the seizure of French vessels on the ground that they were engaged in carrying goods for Spain.
When Charles's second parliament met on the 6th of February 1626, it was not long before, under Eliot's guidance, it asked for Buckingham's punishment. He was impeached before the House of Lords on a long string of charges. Many of these charges were exaggerated, and some were untrue. His real crime was his complete failure as the leader of the administration. But as long as Charles refused to listen to the complaints of his minister's incompetency, the only way in which the Commons could reach him was by bringing criminal charges against him. Charles dissolved his second parliament as he had dissolved his first. Subsequently the Star Chamber declared the duke innocent of the charges, and on the 1st of June Buckingham was elected chancellor of Cambridge University.
To find money was the great difficulty. Recourse was had to a forced loan, and men were thrown into prison for refusing to pay it. Disasters had occurred to Charles's allies in Germany. The fleet sent out under Lord Willoughby (earl of Lindsey) against the Spaniards returned home shattered by a storm, and a French war was impending in addition to the Spanish one. The French were roused to reprisals by Charles's persistence in seizing French vessels. Unwilling to leave La Rochelle open to the entrance of an English fleet, Richelieu laid siege to that stronghold of the French Huguenots. On the 27th of June 1627 Buckingham sailed from Portsmouth at the head of a numerous fleet, and a considerable land force, to relieve the besieged city.