result being that these ruffs immediately went out of fashion. There were other occupants of the Tower during the reign of James I, and the records are miserable enough; intrigues and plots among rival aspirants to power frequently ended in imprisonment of the defeated. The rise of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, is undoubtedly a notable fact of the ignoble reign, but can only be touched upon here as connected with the imprisonment of Sir John Eliot, Sir Edward Coke, and Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex. Cranfield, a creation of Buckingham, was one of the foremost accusers of Bacon for corrupt practices. He had been made Master of the Wardrobe and Lord High Treasurer. He was convicted of robbing the magazine of arms, of pocketing bribes and selling offices, and of making false entries of the royal debts. He was condemned to pay a fine of £50,000, and to be imprisoned for life. He was released, however, in a few weeks, lived in retirement for the rest of his life, and remained neutral during the Civil War. He died in 1645. Two sons in succession succeeded him, after which the family became extinct. The schemes and intrigues concerning the proposed marriage of Charles with the Infanta of Spain and the tortuous policy of the Duke of Buckingham have not come within our scope. But it has to be noted that Sir John Eliot, who had by reason of his great ability been appointed Vice-Admiral of Devon, had got into trouble during Buckingham’s absence in Spain, by arresting a notorious pirate named Nutt, who was under the secret patronage of Calvert, the Secretary of State, and Eliot was sent to prison on false charges. He was liberated after some months and got a seat in Parliament in 1624, where he almost immediately displayed remarkable power of oratory. Buckingham had now broken with Spain, and in this Eliot heartily went with him, but his feeling was altogether based upon the rights of the House of Commons and the popular feeling against any Spanish alliance. He was one of the leaders also of the impeachment of the Earl of Middlesex. Soon there appeared serious signs of his divergence from the king’s policy. He was no Puritan, having a strong antipathy to Calvinism; but he urged enforcement of the recusancy laws against the Roman Catholics, because religion “made distractions among men.” As Mr. Gardiner puts it, his creed was “_the monarchy of man_.... There must be unity and purity of faith, and that faith must be one which brought man face to face with his Maker” (vol. v., p. 343). In those same early days he was in conflict with another man who was to become one of the most prominent politicians of his day—Thomas Wentworth, presently Lord Strafford. Wentworth too, according to his light, was a patriot. He was sincerely desirous for the prosperity of the country, but held that strength is the essence of good government, had a contempt for constitutional forms, and in his arrogance, knowing his own good intentions, paid no respect to