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again elected to serve in this parliament, yet they were far from wedding the war, or taking themselves to be concerned to make good any declarations made by the former: so that, though the war was entered in, all hope of obtaining money to carry it on was even desperate; and the affection they had for the duke, and confidence in him, was not then so manifest, as the prejudice they had now, and animosity against him, was visible to all the world: all the actions of his life ripped up and surveyed, and all malicious glosses made upon all he had said and all he had done: votes and remonstrances passed against him as an enemy to the public; and his ill management made the ground of their refusal to give the king that supply he had reason to expect, and was absolutely necessary to the state he was in. And this kind of treatment was so ill suited to the duke's great spirit, which indeed might easily have been bowed, but could very hardly be broken, that it wrought contrary effects upon his high mind, and his indignation, to find himself so used by the same men. For they who flattered him most before, mentioned him now with the greatest bitterness and acrimony; and the same men who had called him our saviour, for bringing the prince safe out of Spain, called him now the corrupter of the king, and betrayer of the liberties of the people, without imputing the least crime to him, to have been committed since the time of that exalted adulation, or that was not then as much known to them, as it could be now; so fluctuating and unsteady a testimony is the applause of popular councils.

This indignation, I say, so transported the duke,

that he thought it necessary to publish and manifest a greater contempt of them than he should have done; causing this and the next parliament to be quickly dissolved, as soon as they seemed to entertain counsels not grateful to him, and before he could well determine and judge what their temper was in truth like to prove and upon every dissolution, such who had given any offence were imprisoned or disgraced; new projects were every day set on foot for money, which served only to offend and incense the people, and brought little supply to the king's occasions, yet raised a great stock for expostulation, murmur, and complaint, to be exposed when other supplies should be required. And many persons of the best quality and condition under the peerage were committed to several prisons, with circumstances unusual and unheard of, for refusing to pay money required by those extraordinary ways; and the duke himself would passionately say, and frequently do, many things, which only grieved his friends and incensed his enemies, and gave them as well the ability as the inclination to do him much harm.

In this fatal conjuncture, and after several costly embassies into France, in the last of which the duke himself went, and brought triumphantly home with him the queen, to the joy of the nation; in a time, when all endeavours should have been used to have extinguished that war, in which the kingdom was so unhappily engaged against Spain, a new war was as precipitately declared against France; and the fleet, that had been unwarily designed to have surprised Cales, under a general very unequal to that great work, was no sooner returned without suc

cess, and with much damage, than the fleet was repaired, and the army reinforced for the invasion of France; in which the duke was general himself, and made that notable descent upon the Isle of Rhé, which was quickly afterwards attended with many unprosperous attempts, and then with a miserable retreat, in which the flower of the army was lost. So that how ill soever Spain and France were inclined to each other, they were both mortal enemies to England; whilst England itself was so totally taken up with the thought of revenge upon the person who they thought had been the cause of their distress, that they never considered, that the sad effects of it (if not instantly provided against) must inevitably destroy the kingdom; and gave no truce to their rage, till the duke finished his course by the wicked means mentioned before in the fourth year of the king, and the thirty-sixth of his age.

John Felton, an obscure person, who had been bred a soldier, and lately a lieutenant of a foot company, whose captain had been killed upon the retreat at the Isle of Rhé, upon which he conceived that the company of right ought to have been conferred upon him, and it being refused to him by the duke of Buckingham, general of the army, he had given up his commission of lieutenant, and withdrawn himself from the army. He was of a melancholic nature, and had little conversation with anybody, yet of a gentleman's family in Suffolk, of good fortune and reputation. From the time that he had quitted the army, he resided in London; when the house of commons, transported with passion and prejudice against the

duke of Buckingham, had accused him to the house of peers for several misdemeanours and miscarriages, and in some declaration had styled him, "the cause of all the evils the kingdom suffered, "and an enemy to the public."

Some transcripts of such expressions, (for the late license of printing all mutinous and seditious discourses was not yet in fashion,) and some general invectives he met with amongst the people, to whom that great man was not grateful, wrought so far upon this melancholic gentleman, that, by degrees, and (as he said upon some of his examinations) by frequently hearing some popular preachers in the city, (who were not yet arrived at the presumption and impudence they have been since transported with,) he believed he should do God good service, if he killed the duke; which he shortly after resolved to do. He chose no other instrument to do it with than an ordinary knife, which he bought of a common cutler for a shilling and, thus provided, he repaired to Portsmouth, where he arrived the eve of St. Bartholomew. The duke was then there, in order to the preparing and making ready the fleet and the army, with which he resolved in few days to transport himself to the relief of Rochelle, which was then straitly besieged by the cardinal of Richelieu; and for relief whereof the duke was the more obliged, by reason that, at his being at the Isle of Rhé, he had received great supplies of victual, and some companies of their garrison from that town, the want of both which they were at this time very sensible of, and grieved with.

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This morning of St. Bartholomew the duke had

received letters, in which he was advertised that Rochelle had relieved itself; upon which he directed that his breakfast might speedily be made ready, and he would make haste to acquaint the king with the good news, the court being then at Southwick, the house of sir Daniel Norton, five miles from Portsmouth. The chamber wherein he was dressing himself was full of company, of persons of quality, and officers of the fleet and

army.

There was monsieur de Soubize, brother to the duke of Rohan, and other French gentlemen, who were very solicitous for the embarkation of the army, and for the departure of the fleet for the relief of Rochelle; and they were at this time in much trouble and perplexity, out of apprehension that the news the duke had received that morning might slacken the preparations for the voyage, which their impatience and interest persuaded were not advanced with expedition; and so they had then held much discourse with the duke of the impossibility that his intelligence could be true, and that it was contrived by the artifice and dexterity of their enemies, in order to abate the warmth and zeal that was used for their relief, the arrival of which they had so much reason to apprehend; and a little longer delay in sending it would ease them of that terrible apprehension, their forts and works toward the sea and in the harbour being almost finished.

This discourse, according to the natural custom of that nation, and by the usual dialect of that language, was held with that passion and vehemence, that the standers by, who understood not

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