one in England, what was required for the exercise of that office. Nature, inclination, and ability, united in fitting him to wield authority. The Council of the North, which embraced the counties of Yorkshire, Northumberland, and Westmoreland, the bishopric of Durham, the towns of Newcastle, York, and Hull, was restored by him, in spite of all opposition, to the high position which it had possessed under the Tudors. Charles I assisted him in this enterprise by conferring fresh powers upon him. But Wentworth afterwards found a far larger arena for his activity as Lord Deputy of Ireland, where we have already met with him, and where, for the first time for centuries, obedience to the King was once more enforced. He despised the custom, adopted by former viceroys, of coming to an agreement beforehand with the native nobility about the measures that were to be taken; his only counsellors were the exigencies of the country, his only support was the royal authority itself. He derived great advantage from the exclusive possession of the initiative in Parliament, which was enjoyed by the government in Ireland: he there brought his idea of the royal prerogative into practical operation; he declared to the members without any circumlocution, that reward, or even punishment, awaited each of them according to his behaviour during the deliberations. The resolutions of Parliament served him as his instruments in ruling the country; he put an army into the field, and found means to pay it: for the first time the revenues of Ireland covered the outgoings; the island was protected from piracies by its own naval power. While he remitted many oppressive burdens in favour of the Catholics, he yet gave fresh encouragement to the Protestant Churches by the agency of learned bishops and theologians; he maintained the conformity between the Irish and English Churches, which by his decisive word he had restored. Under him justice was regularly administered, principally for the protection of the humble and weak; he considered that in his position he was [A.D. 1639.] justified in directing arbitrary measures against the great, if at the same time he did not come into collision with the actual letter of the law, which he was careful not to do. The impulses of natural imperiousness he nevertheless moderated by deliberating with prudent confidants[164]. If Ireland, which needed the adjustment of internal rivalries and enmities, not by counsel but by a strong arm, had alone been concerned, Wentworth would certainly have been the right man for the government of that country; for he was, as it were, born to conduct administration according to his own judgment of what was best: he was indisputably one of the greatest of the administrators who rose up among the English before they gained possession of India. But nevertheless Ireland could only be governed on those principles which prevailed in the rest of the kingdom. What if these were in contradiction to