stronger man might have harbored, that he made this resolve. What
Charles wanted was simply the means of filling his exchequer; and if
Parliament would not give him that except by a dicker for reforms, and
humiliating pledges which he could not keep, why then he would find new
ways of raising money without them. His father had done it before him,
he had done it himself. With no Commons there to rate and insult him,
it could be done without hindrance.

He was not grand enough, nor base enough, nor was he rich enough, to
carry out any organized design upon the country. He simply wanted
money, and had such blind confidence in Kingship, that any very serious
resistance to his authority did not enter his dreams. It was the
limitations of his intelligence which proved his ruin, his inability to
comprehend a new condition in the spirit of his people. Elizabeth would
have felt it, though she did not understand it, and would have loosened
the screws, without regard for her personal preferences, and by doing
it, so bound the people to her, that her policy would have been their
policy. Charles was as wise as the engineer who would rivet down the
safety-valves!

Sir Thomas Wentworth (Earl Strafford), who had taken the place of
Buckingham, was an apostate from the party of liberty. Disappointed in
becoming a leader in the Commons he had drawn gradually closer to the
King, who now leaned upon him as the vine upon the oak.

[Sidenote: Earl Strafford. The "Star Chamber."]

This man's ideal was to build up in England just such a despotism as
Richelieu was building in France. The same imperious temper, the same
invincible will and administrative genius, marked him as fitted for the