NOTE 1, p. 8.—Ever since the Norman Conquest the royal assent to measures of Parliament has been given in a form from which there has been no variation. To “public bills” the words attached are “_le roy le veult_”; to petitions, “_soit droit fait comme il est désiré_”; and for grants of money, “_the King heartily thanks his subjects for their good wills_.” In the present instance, instead of _soit droit fait comme il est désiré_, the King caused to be appended to the petition, “The King willeth that right be done according to the laws and customs of the realm; that the statutes be put into due execution; and that his subjects may have no cause to complain of any wrong or oppressions contrary to their just rights and liberties, to the preservation whereof he holds himself in conscience as well obliged, as of his own prerogative.”—Rushworth, i., 588. On the forms of royal assent see the learned account by Selden in “Parliamentary History,” viii., 237. NOTE 2, p. 9.—Rushworth, i., 591. The version of Eliot’s speech given by Rushworth is the one ordinarily reprinted in modern collections. But in the papers of the Earl of St. Germans, a descendant of Sir John Eliot, Mr. John Forster, some years ago, found a copy of the speech corrected by Eliot himself while in prison. This form, much superior to the others, is the one here reproduced. NOTE 3, p. 16.—Eliot, in the expression, “want of councils,” doubtless alludes to the absorption of the various powers of the State by Buckingham. The allusion was not without reason, as the list of Buckingham’s titles shows. He was: Duke, Marquis, and Earl of Buckingham, Earl of Coventry, Viscount Villiers, Baron of Whaddon, Great Admiral of England and Ireland, etc., etc., etc., Governor-General of the Seas and the Ships of the same, Lieutenant-General Admiral, Captain-General and Governor of his Majesty’s fleet and army, etc., Minister of the House, Lord Warden, Chancellor, and Admiral of the Cinque Ports, etc., Constable of Dover Castle, Justice in Eyrie of the Forest of Chases on this side of the Trent, Constable of the Castle of Windsor, Gentleman of the Bedchamber, Knight of the Garter, Privy Councillor, etc. The royal domains that he had managed to have given to him brought an income of £284,395 a year. All this was so much drawn from the public treasury. See Bradie’s “Constitutional History,” new edition, vol. i., p. 424, and Guizot, “Charles I.,” Bohn’s ed., p. 15.