Under the maxim of the English Government, that “the King can do no wrong,” there is but one way of securing redress, in case of an undue exercise of royal power. As the Constitution presumes that the King never acts except under advice, his ministers, as his constitutional advisers, may be held responsible for all his acts. The impeachment of ministers, therefore, is the constitutional method of redress. It was the method resorted to in 1626. Articles of Impeachment were brought by the House of Commons against the King’s Prime Minister and favorite, the Duke of Buckingham. One of the most prominent members of Parliament, and the foremost orator of the day was Sir John Eliot. This patriot, born in 1590, and consequently now thirty-six years of age, was appointed by the Commons one of the managers of the impeachment. With such skill and vigor did he conduct the prosecution against Buckingham, that the king determined to put a stop to the impeachment by ordering Eliot’s arrest and imprisonment. Eliot was thrown into the Tower; but the Commons regarded the arrest as so flagrant a violation of the rights of members that they immediately resolved “not to do any more business till they were righted in their privileges.” The King, in view of this unexpected evidence of spirit on the part of the Commons, deemed it prudent to relent. Eliot was discharged; and the Commons, on his triumphal reappearance in the House, declared by vote “that their managers had not exceeded the commission entrusted to them.” Thus the first triumph in the contest was gained by the Commons. But the King was not unwilling to resort to even more desperate measures. He determined to raise money independently of Parliament, and, if Parliament should continue to pry into the affairs of his minister, to dispense with Parliament almost or quite altogether. This desperate determination he undertook to carry out chiefly by the raising of forced loans and the issuing of monopolies. But here again the King met with a more strenuous opposition than he had anticipated. Eliot and Hampden, with some seventy-six other members of the English gentry refused to make the contribution demanded. As such defiance threatened to break down the whole system, the King was forced either to resort to extreme measures or to abandon his method. He resolved upon the former course, but he was forced to the latter. He threw Eliot and Hampden into prison; but the outcry of the people was so great and so general that the necessary money could not be raised, and so he was obliged to call his third Parliament. Eliot and Hampden, though in prison, were elected members; and the King, not deeming it prudent to retain them, ordered their release a few days before the opening of the session.