[162] ‘Ils ne feront point de traité avec le roi sans que les conditions suivantes ne leur soient accordées: à savoir 1. que l’ancienne alliance entre les roys et les royaumes de France et d’Ecosse sera entièrement retablie; 2. le roi d’Ingleterre ne pourra entreprendre aucune guerre sans l’avis et le consentement du parlement d’Ecosse, et s’il le fait autrement, les Ecossois ne seront tenus d’en prendre part; 3. dans le conseil des affaires étrangères et près de la personne du roi d’Ingleterre il y aura dorénavant des Écossois qui prendront garde, que rien ne se resolve qui préjudice à leurs alliances, 4. que les rois d’Ingleterre et leurs fils auront des Ecossois en chaque office de leur maison, 5. que le roi d’Ingleterre trouvera bon que les Ecossois tiennent un agent à la cour de France, ainsi qu’ils font a la Haye.’ [163] Traduction de l’instruction du Sr. Colvil envoyé par les Seigneurs d’Ecosse in Mazure, Histoire de la Revolution de 1688, iii. 406. The letter also is printed there according to the copy found in the French archives. CHAPTER V. STRAFFORD AND THE SHORT PARLIAMENT. About this time the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Thomas Viscount Wentworth, was summoned to England to take a seat in the Council of the King: the affairs of Scotland were the immediate cause of his return. The statesmen of England have always been distinguished from those of other countries by the combination of their activity in the Council and in the Cabinet with an activity in Parliament, without which they cannot win their way into the other sphere. Wentworth, like others, had first made himself a name in Parliament as a resolute and dangerous opponent of Buckingham. But there was as yet no clear consciousness of the rule, infinitely important for the moral and political development of remarkable men, that the activity of a minister must be harmonious and consistent with his activity as a member of Parliament. In the case of Wentworth especially it is clear that he opposed the government of that day, by which he was kept down, only in order to make himself necessary to it. His natural inclination was, as he once avowed, to live, not under the frown, but under the smile of his sovereign. The words of opposition to the government had hardly died away from his lips, when, at the invitation of that government, he joined it, although no change had been introduced into its policy. He accepted the position of Lord President in the North, although the powers of this office, which transgressed the ordinary limits of jurisdiction, were repugnant to those conceptions of English law of which he [A.D. 1639.] had just before been the champion. He had been trained beforehand for an office of this kind in the school of the Law Courts, principally by the proceedings of the Star Chamber, which he had attended for five years; he was afterwards for a time a Justice of the Peace, and had the reputation of knowing, perhaps better than any