The Duke of Buckingham followed Shaftesbury in this political movement, at the moment when Parliament was appealing to the king to banish him from his councils, as well as the Earl of Lauderdale. The House of Commons was debating on the impeachment of Lord Arlington. Less honest than Clifford, but like him a Catholic at heart, Arlington renounced an active part in politics and entered the household of the king. Lauderdale alone remained entrusted with the affairs of Scotland, and suffered the accumulated hatred which fell upon him in consequence of his indefatigable tyranny. {365} The ministry of the Cabal was at an end; with it ended the war with Holland, which had been burdensome, unpopular, and little glorious for the arms of England. In vain had Louis XIV. sent to London the Marquis of Ruvigny, a considerable person among the French Protestants, and justly esteemed in England. Parliament desired peace, and refused the subsidies. Charles II. yielded, as was his habit, to the clearly expressed wishes of the nation; and, with like conformity to his custom, he reserved his private opinions and secret manœuvres. "Pity me; do not blame me," he wrote to Louis XIV. On the 21st of February, 1674, Charles II. proceeded to Parliament, to announce to the two Houses that he had concluded with the United Provinces "a speedy peace, in accordance with their prayer, and he hoped also an honorable and a durable one." The English and Irish auxiliary regiments, commanded by the Duke of Monmouth, a natural son of the king, remained quietly in the service of France. Louis XIV. did not withdraw his subsidies from his royal dependent. The ladies who had served as a lien between the two crowns, and had negotiated the humiliating conditions of the alliance between the two kings, had died during the ascendency of the ministry of the Cabal--the Queen Henrietta Maria in the month of August, 1669, in France, where she habitually resided with her second husband, Lord Jermyn; the Duchess of Orleans, Madame Henrietta, in June, 1670, at the moment when she had just concluded the treaty of Dover--the latter not without a suspicion of poison. {366} Both were eulogized by Bossuet in the most magnificent language; both in a measure and with a different degree of responsibility were fatal to the destinies of England. Monk also had died on the 3rd of January, 1670, as calm before the progress of his malady as in the face of the enemy. Old and suffering as he was, he had personally hastened to encounter the Dutch when they entered the Thames. As they were re-embarking, their bullets whistled in the ears of the general. His aides-de-camp pressed him to retire. "If I was afraid of bullets, gentlemen," said Monk, "I should long ago have quitted this business."