In vain did Charles, confirming but too closely the observations recently quoted by Lord Clarendon, resolve to defend his favourite. He addressed a letter to the Speaker, bidding him hasten the supplies. Forty ships, he stated, were ready for a second voyage, and, without an immediate grant of money, the object of that armament must be abandoned, and the navy disbanded. The Commons were adverse to any scheme founded by him whom they regarded as the very source of all the evils of which the country now complained. Buckingham was the object at whom every expression of discontent was aimed. Clement Coke, one of Sir Edward’s numerous family, observed that it would be better to die from an enemy abroad than to be destroyed at home. Dr. Turner, a physician whom Sir Henry Wotton styles “a travelled doctor of physick, of bold spirit and able elocution,” asked ministers whether it were not true that the loss of the King’s dominions over the narrow seas were not owing to the Duke’s mismanagement? Whether the enormous gifts of land and money to the Duke had not impoverished the Crown? Whether the multiplicity of offices which he held, and those whom he patronized, were not the cause of the bad government in the kingdom? Whether he did not connive at recusants, the Duke’s mother and father-in-law being both papists? Whether the sale of offices, honours, places of judicature, with ecclesiastical livings and preferments, were not owing to the Duke? Such was the dread of court influence in that day, that courage to put these questions implied in Dr. Turner a perfect independence of action and character very unusual at that period. Clement Coke was severely reproved by his father for his boldness, and the old lawyer refused to see his son for some time; but Dr. Turner, one of the very few of his profession who have sat in the House of Commons, not only escaped censure, but gained credit by his boldness, upon which the subsequent impeachment of the Duke was grounded.