ABSTRACT
THE last Parliament of King James was the only Parliament, held between the death of Elizabeth and the Civil War, in which the programme laid by the Court before the Houses was identical with that laid by the Houses before the Court. The first of a rapid succession of four Parliaments, to which Charles and Buckingham appealed for support in their wars, it was the only one whose members took the two young men at their own valuation. Every good design was imputed to a silent Prince, of whom nothing was known, and a specious favourite, who gave an account of himself that was radically false. Summoning Lords and Commons to wait on him at Whitehall, as if he were King, the Duke unroUed to them the story of what he now imagined to have been his motives and conduct in the Spanish journey. Parliament, unwilling to compromise the prospect of a fair future by prying too closely into a doubtful past, accepted the tale, laid hold of his proffered alliance, which a single offence to his vanity would shatter, and therewith smote off from England the chains of Spanish diplomacy. Both Houses petitioned James to tear up the treaties still on foot. Their recommendations were carried by the Duke into the royal closet, where they received an assent no more voluntary than that which Walpole long afterwards gave to another breach with Spain.
