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. The old King was the only cooperator who was not also an enthusiast in the movement of national revival; and after another year he was removed by death. After the readiness to use Buckingham as national leader, which had characterized the last Parliament of James, the determination to drive him from power, with which the first Parliament of Charles assembled, needs to be explained by two intervening events – the loss of Mansfeld’s army and the French marriage.
