One of the most implacable of the judges who were the instruments of the ruin of Raleigh was already threatened in his exalted seat. At the beginning of 1621 the king was compelled to convoke a Parliament, to obtain the subsidies which he needed. His son-in-law, the Elector-Palatine, placed by the Protestant faction on the throne of Bohemia, had imprudently accepted that offer without measuring the opposition which was about to be raised against him on the part of the Catholics of the Empire. He was now in danger of being driven from Bohemia, and deprived at the same time of his hereditary states. The Lower Palatinate had been attacked by the Catholic armies. James hesitated, lamented, cursing the ambition of his son-in-law, which had placed this business upon his shoulders; but he had already sent a small army corps to his assistance, and promised larger reinforcements. Parliament alone could place him in a position to keep his promises. {32} Parliament had no objection to this war, popular in England as a Protestant crusade; but it desired to set a price upon its liberality, and demanded that several retainers of monopolies should be tried, who had unworthily abused their scandalous privileges. From Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir Francis Mitchell, they soon came to the Attorney-General, Sir Henry Yelverton, and from him to one of the judges of the court of prerogatives, to the Bishop of Llandaff, convicted of having sold or bought justice. The vengeance of the Commons aimed even higher still: the Chancellor Bacon had said that corruption was the vice of the time. He had been profoundly smitten with it, and was to bear a signal punishment for his offences. On the 21st of March, 1621, the commission of Parliament entrusted with the inquiry into abuses in the matter of justice accused the Lord Chancellor, viscount of St. Alban's, upon twenty-two personal counts, while at the same time he was reproached with his connivance at offences of the same nature among his subordinates.