he aimed. The Commons persisted in presenting their
Remonstrance. Charles received it coldly and ungraciously; while
Buckingham, who had stood defiantly at his master's side as he was
denounced, fell on his knees to speak. "No, George!" said the king as he
raised him; and his demeanour gave emphatic proof that the Duke's favour
remained undiminished. "We will perish together, George," he added at a
later time, "if thou dost." He had in fact got the subsidies which he
needed; and it was easy to arrest all proceedings against Buckingham by
proroguing Parliament at the close of June. The Duke himself cared
little for a danger which he counted on drowning in the blaze of a
speedy triumph. He had again gathered a strong fleet and a fine body of
men, and his ardent fancy already saw the harbour of Rochelle forced and
the city relieved. No shadow of his doom had fallen over the brilliant
favourite when he set out in August to take command of the expedition.
But a lieutenant in the army, John Felton, soured by neglect and wrongs,
had found in the Remonstrance some imaginary sanction for the revenge
he plotted; and, mixing with the throng which crowded the hall at
Portsmouth, he stabbed Buckingham to the heart. Charles flung himself on
his bed in a passion of tears when the news reached him; but outside the
Court it was welcomed with a burst of joy. Young Oxford bachelors, grave
London Aldermen, vied with each other in drinking healths to Felton.
"God bless thee, little David," cried an old woman, as the murderer
passed manacled by; "the Lord comfort thee," shouted the crowd, as the
Tower gates closed on him. The very forces in the Duke's armament at
Portsmouth shouted to the king, as he witnessed their departure, a
prayer that he would "spare John Felton, their sometime fellow-soldier."
But whatever national hopes the fall of Buckingham had aroused were
quickly dispelled. Weston, a creature of the Duke, became Lord
Treasurer, and his system remained unchanged. "Though our Achan is cut
off," said Eliot, "the accursed thing remains."

[Sidenote: The Laudian Clergy.]

It seemed as if no act of Charles could widen the breach which his
reckless lawlessness had made between himself and his subjects. But
there was one thing dearer to England than free speech in Parliament,
than security for property, or even personal liberty; and that one thing
was, in the phrase of the day, "the Gospel." The gloom which at the
outset of this reign w