In forsaking the national party, to which he belonged, for hatred to Buckingham rather than from personal or fixed principles, Wentworth had embraced the royal cause with all his heart. "With an intellect too great to confine itself to domestic intrigues, and a pride too passionate to bow to the proprieties of the palace, he gave himself up enthusiastically to business, braving all rivalries as he shattered all resistance, ardent in extending and strengthening the royal authority, which had become his own, but assiduous at the same time in re-establishing order, in repressing abuses, in subjugating private interests which he deemed illegitimate, in serving the general interests which he did not fear." A friend of Wentworth, Laud, who was soon nominated Archbishop of Canterbury, had, with less worldly passions and with sincere piety, carried to the Council the same dispositions and the same designs. {48} He had less understanding than his colleague, and "pursued incessantly with an activity, indefatigable but narrow, violent, and harsh, whatever fixed idea dominated him, with all the transport of passion and the authority of duty." Such counsels would necessarily enter before long into contention with the court. Strafford (we give him the title under which he is known in history, although he did not yet bear it) went to Ireland, where he re-established order in the country and in the finances, so that kingdom, but lately a source of great expenditure, furnished revenues to the king. Laud was commissioner of the treasury, and endeavored to apply the same rules to the resources of the royal treasury in England; but the prodigality of the queen, the somewhat disdainful generosity of the king, who easily granted pensions, and the sumptuous life of the court, exhausted the resources of the arbitrary but regular government of the two ministers. The central power was weak and impotent, foreign politics were ill-directed, and the king was little regarded upon the Continent. Barbary Corsairs ventured into the British Channel, and as far as St. George's Channel, landing, pillaging the houses, and making prisoners. The merchant navy in vain asked for protection; the royal fleet was unarmed and ill equipped. Everywhere money was wanted; recourse was had to ever-increasing exactions. Strafford convoked the Irish Parliament, and contrived to chain it to his feet like a docile slave. The king forbade him to assemble it again, for both he and the queen dreaded the mere name of Parliament. {49} There, as elsewhere, the able, skillful, and foreseeing minister suffered under the yoke of feeble incompetence. Monopolies reappeared, affecting trade in all commodities: justice was sold, and everything furnished matter for litigation, out of which there was no escape but by payment of money. Absolute government continued without power, while its mean tyranny and administrative abuses weighed upon all classes of the nation. The