wise. The first Parliament was dismissed by the King in three months; the second, summoned six months later, was in an even less conciliatory mood. Charles wanted money to pay for the fleet at Plymouth, and to keep up the army and navy; Parliament wanted redress of grievances. Sir John Eliot, who was to play a notable part in the coming struggle, voiced the discontent of the country: "Our honour is ruined, our ships are sunk, our men perished, not by the enemy, not by chance but . . . . by those we trust."

Who was to blame? The Duke of Buckingham.

"He has broken those nerves and sinews of our land, the stores and treasures of the King. There needs no search for it. It is too visible. His profuse expenses, his superfluous feasts, his magnificent buildings, his riots, his excesses, what are they but the visible evidences of an express exhausting of the State, a chronicle of the immensity of his waste of the revenues of the Crown?"

As a result of his outspokenness Eliot found himself in the Tower, but the attitude of Parliament was so menacing that he was soon set at liberty. The impeachment of Buckingham passed the House of Commons and the case was duly taken to the Lords. The Duke, richly

clad and adorned with jewels, appeared in person and the insolence of his bearing was noted by all. He put his trust in princes and his royal master stood by him. The King refused to dismiss him and hastily dissolved Parliament.

ever.

This, satisfactory as it was to Buckingham, left Charles in greater financial difficulties than His first experiment of requesting free gifts from his subjects was a disastrous failure, his second of demanding a forced loan had little better fortune. Among those who refused to pay we note the name of Oliver's cousin, the dauntless John Hampden, a young Buckinghamshire squire. "I could be content to lend but fear to draw upon myself the curse in Magna Charta, which should be read twice a year against those who infringe it." He was duly imprisoned for his fearlessness and such was the rigour of the treatment that though he lived to strike again he was never the same man.

Buckingham, whose position was far from secure, hoped to dazzle the country by success in arms, and with this in view he bethought himself of the besieged Protestants in Rochelle, and persuaded his master to place him at the head of an expedition of 10,000 men to go to their relief. The total and hopeless failure of this undertaking only complicated the King's

difficulties, and he was forced once more to summon a Parliament.

While all these momentous happenings were going on in the country at large the Cromwells had their share of the ups and downs of life in quiet Huntingdonshire. Sir Oliver was in great difficulties: he had lived far beyond his income and was obliged to sell the old family mansion at Hinchinbrook. He removed to Ramsey Mere, where he lived in diminished state on the remnants of his substance, retired from public life.

To outward eyes the fortunes of the family were at the ebb when Oliver Cromwell sought the suffrages of the townsfolk of Huntingdon and was duly elected to represent them in the third Parliament of the reign of Charles I.

CHAPTER V: Cromwell enters Public Life

ROMWELL bade farewell to his wife and children and rode off to London. Though the journey was only some sixty miles it was something of an undertaking since roads were often bad. It was no uncommon thing for a coach to stick fast in the mire and for travellers to bear with what patience they might long hours of delay before it could be extricated.

Once in town Cromwell's eye must have noted the changes that had taken place since his last visit, and he would probably have set about securing a lodging somewhere in the neighbourhood of Westminster. No doubt his cousin, John Hampden, who though but five years his senior was now an old Parliamentary hand, counselled and advised him.

It was no new scene for Cromwell. He must often have walked to the Abbey in his lawstudent days, and perhaps attended the Church of St Margaret nestling in its shadow-just as it stands to-day.

His glance would have rested with quickened interest on the beautiful Gothic building that then housed the Commons. In pre-Reformation

days it had been a chapel, the lower chamber dedicated to St Mary of the Vaults, the upper, where the House sat, to St Stephen. The House of Lords had their meeting-place in the adjoining ancient Court of Requests. These buildings were used by England's legislators until the disastrous fire of 1834 burnt them to the ground. But Westminster Hall still stands

as it stood in Richard II's day.

What were Cromwell's thoughts as he took his seat for the first time in the House, as a chosen representative of the people? It was a moment, in spite of future glories and triumphs, never to be forgotten. His keen eye noted the Speaker's chair with its rich gilding, the table for the Clerks of the House, the green-covered seats for the members rising in tiers on either side, with the galleries for strangers up above. This was but the body of the House-its soul was in the men who sat there. What giants there were in those days! Sir John Eliot, the noble patriot; Pym, the keen Parliamentary leader; Chief Justice Coke, deeply versed in law; Wentworth, now on the side of the Parliament, later as the Earl of Strafford to become the King's most trusted adviser.

How did the new representative for Huntingdon strike his fellow-members? He was a plain countryman, lacking many of the charms of