s of the rights of a king, and was
evasive, and not to be trusted. If his word could have been relied upon,
his history might have had a different end.

His first care was to send over that insolent upstart, Buckingham, to
bring Henrietta Maria from Paris to be his Queen; upon which occasion
Buckingham--with his usual audacity--made love to the young Queen of
Austria, and was very indignant indeed with CARDINAL RICHELIEU, the
French Minister, for thwarting his intentions. The English people were
very well disposed to like their new Queen, and to receive her with great
favour when she came among them as a stranger. But, she held the
Protestant religion in great dislike, and brought over a crowd of
unpleasant priests, who made her do some very ridiculous things, and
forced themselves upon the public notice in many disagreeable ways.
Hence, the people soon came to dislike her, and she soon came to dislike
them; and she did so much all through this reign in setting the King (who
was dotingly fond of her) against his subjects, that it would have been
better for him if she had never been born.

Now, you are to understand that King Charles the First--of his own
determination to be a high and mighty King not to be called to account by
anybody, and urged on by his Queen besides--deliberately set himself to
put his Parliament down and to put himself up. You are also to
understand, that even in pursuit of this wrong idea (enough in itself to
have ruined any king) he never took a straight course, but always took a
crooked one.

He was bent upon war with Spain, though neither the House of Commons nor
the people were quite clear as to the justice of that war, now that they
began to think a little more about the story of the Spanish match. But
the King rushed into it hotly, raised money by illegal means to meet its
expenses, and encountered a miserable failure at Cadiz, in the very first
year of his reign. An expedition to Cadiz had been made in the hope of
plunder, but as it was not successful, it was necessary to get a grant of
money from the Parliament; and when they met, in no very complying
humour, the King told them, 'to make haste to let him have it, or it
would be the worse for themselves.' Not put in a more complying humour
by this, they impeached the King's favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, as
the cause (which he undoubtedly was) of many great public grievances and
wrongs. The King, to save him, dissolved the Parli