The exasperation was great. Charles and Buckingham took alarm; they yielded. This Parliament which had but lately been thought of no use but to vote subsidies, was already treated with upon a footing of equality; the Petition of Right was again presented to the king, and he replied with the usual formula, always uttered in French: _Soit droit fait comme il est désiré_. But the abuses were not reformed; it was a question of applying the principles. The king collected the customs dues without the authority of Parliament. The conflict recommenced; the king wished to gain some respite without dissolving Parliament. He prorogued the Houses until the month of January, 1629. Before that period, on the 23rd of August, 1628, the Duke of Buckingham was assassinated by a disaffected officer, named Felton, and in the hat of the latter was found some writing which recalled to mind the recent remonstrance of the House. The king, indignant and disconsolate, returned noiselessly into the path of despotism which he had, for a moment, apparently forsaken. He lost a favorite odious to Parliament; he detached from the coalition of the Commons one of its boldest and most esteemed chiefs. Sir Thomas Wentworth, soon afterwards Lord Strafford, entered the council of the king, notwithstanding the entreaties of his friends. When the House again assembled, on the 20th of January, 1629, it learned that the evasive reply of the king to the Petition of Right had been affixed at the bottom of the petition. {46} The printer had received orders to modify the legal text in this manner. The commissioners of the Commons, entrusted to verify the matter, did not mention it, as though blushing to disclose such a breach of faith; but their silence did not promise oblivion.