For the expression of this opinion and the refusal to recant it the Duke of Buckingham and three other lords were ordered to the Tower, the king being greatly angered by the duke's request that his cook might be allowed to wait on him. On this incident Marvell remarks: "Thus a prorogation without precedent was to be warranted by an imprisonment without example. A sad instance! Whereby the dignity of Parliament and especially of the House of Peers did at present much suffer and may probably more for the future, _for nothing but Parliament can destroy Parliament_. If a House shall once be felon of itself and stop its own breath, taking away that liberty of speech which the King verbally, and of course, allows them (as now they had done in both houses) to what purpose is it coming thither?"[206:1] The character of this House of Commons did not improve with age. Marvell writes in the _Growth of Popery_:-- "In matters of money they seem at first difficult, but having been discoursed with in private, they are set right, and begin to understand it better themselves, and to convert their brethren: for they are all of them to be bought and sold, only their number makes them cheaper, and each of them doth so overvalue himself, that sometimes they outstand or let slip their own market. "It is not to be imagined, how small things, in this case, even members of great estates will stoop at, and most of them will do as much for hopes as others for fruition, but if their patience be tired out, they grow at last mutinous, and revolt to the country, till some better occasion offer. "Among these are some men of the best understanding were they of equal integrity, who affect to ingross all business, to be able to quash any good motion by parliamentary skill, unless themselves be the authors, and to be the leading men of the House, and for their natural lives to continue so. But these are men that have been once fooled, most of them, and discovered, and slighted at Court, so that till some turn of State shall let them in their adversaries' place, in the mean time they look sullen, make big motions, and contrive specious bills for the subject, yet only wait the opportunity to be the instruments of the same counsels which they oppose in others.